On Christianity and American government

"The fundamental basis of this nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in the right for anybody except the state."

-- President Harry S. Truman

History Quote

Some things just never seem to change . . .

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

-- Cicero , 55 BC

Paulsen's ill-advised plan

A large number of economists in this country signed a letter to Congress requesting that we do not rush in to Paulsen's plan for bailing out specific investors and companies who made some bad investments.

I've reproduced the letter in it's entirety below the fold.

(This letter was sent to Congress on Wed Sept 24 2008 regarding the Treasury plan as outlined on that date. It does not reflect all signatories views on subesquent plans or modifications of the bill)

To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate: As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:

1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.

2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.

3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.

Signed (updated at 9/27/2008 6:00PM CT)

Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Ackerberg Daniel (UCLA)
Adler Michael (Columbia University)
Admati Anat R. (Stanford University)
Ales Laurence (Carnegie Mellon University)
Alexis Marcus (Northwestern University)
Alvarez Fernando (University of Chicago)
Andersen Torben (Northwestern University)
Baliga Sandeep (Northwestern University)
Banerjee Abhijit V. (Massachussets Institute of Technology)
Barankay Iwan (University of Pennsylvania)
Barry Brian (University of Chicago)
Bartkus James R. (Xavier University of Louisiana)
Becker Charles M. (Duke University)
Becker Robert A. (Indiana University)
Beim David (Columbia University)
Berk Jonathan (Stanford University)
Bisin Alberto (New York University)
Bittlingmayer George (University of Kansas)
Blank Emily (Howard University)
Boldrin Michele (Washington University)
Bollinger, Christopher R. (University of Kentucky)
Bossi, Luca (University of Miami)
Brooks Taggert J. (University of Wisconsin)
Brynjolfsson Erik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Buera Francisco J.(UCLA)
Cabral Luis (New York University)
Camp Mary Elizabeth (Indiana University)
Carmel Jonathan (University of Michigan)
Carroll Christopher (Johns Hopkins University)
Cassar Gavin (University of Pennsylvania)
Chaney Thomas (University of Chicago)
Chari Varadarajan V. (University of Minnesota)
Chauvin Keith W. (University of Kansas)
Chintagunta Pradeep K. (University of Chicago)
Christiano Lawrence J. (Northwestern University)
Clementi, Gian Luca (New York University)
Cochrane John (University of Chicago)
Coleman John (Duke University)
Constantinides George M. (University of Chicago)
Cooley, Thomas (New York University)
Crain Robert (UC Berkeley)
Culp Christopher (University of Chicago)
Da Zhi (University of Notre Dame)
Darity, William (Duke University)
Davis Morris (University of Wisconsin)
De Marzo Peter (Stanford University)
Dubé Jean-Pierre H. (University of Chicago)
Edlin Aaron (UC Berkeley)
Eichenbaum Martin (Northwestern University)
Ely Jeffrey (Northwestern University)
Eraslan Hülya K. K.(Johns Hopkins University)
Fair Ray (Yale University)
Faulhaber Gerald (University of Pennsylvania)
Feldmann Sven (University of Melbourne)
Fernandez, Raquel (New York University)
Fernandez-Villaverde Jesus (University of Pennsylvania)
Fohlin Caroline (Johns Hopkins University)
Fox Jeremy T. (University of Chicago)
Frank Murray Z.(University of Minnesota)
Frenzen Jonathan (University of Chicago)
Fuchs William (University of Chicago)
Fudenberg Drew (Harvard University)
Gabaix Xavier (New York University)
Gao Paul (Notre Dame University)
Garicano Luis (University of Chicago)
Gerakos Joseph J. (University of Chicago)
Gibbs Michael (University of Chicago)
Glomm Gerhard (Indiana University)
Goettler Ron (University of Chicago)
Goldin Claudia (Harvard University)
Gordon Robert J. (Northwestern University)
Greenstone Michael (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Gregory, Karl D. (Oakland University)
Guadalupe Maria (Columbia University)
Guerrieri Veronica (University of Chicago)
Hagerty Kathleen (Northwestern University)
Hamada Robert S. (University of Chicago)
Hansen Lars (University of Chicago)
Harris Milton (University of Chicago)
Hart Oliver (Harvard University)
Hazlett Thomas W. (George Mason University)
Heaton John (University of Chicago)
Heckman James (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)
Henderson David R. (Hoover Institution)
Henisz, Witold (University of Pennsylvania)
Hertzberg Andrew (Columbia University)
Hite Gailen (Columbia University)
Hitsch Günter J. (University of Chicago)
Hodrick Robert J. (Columbia University)
Hollifield Burton (Carnegie Mellon University)
Hopenhayn Hugo (UCLA)
Hurst Erik (University of Chicago)
Imrohoroglu Ayse (University of Southern California)
Isakson Hans (University of Northern Iowa)
Israel Ronen (London Business School)
Jaffee Dwight M. (UC Berkeley)
Jagannathan Ravi (Northwestern University)
Jenter Dirk (Stanford University)
Jones Charles M. (Columbia Business School)
Jovanovic Boyan (New York University)
Kaboski Joseph P. (Ohio State University)
Kahn Matthew (UCLA)
Kaplan Ethan (Stockholm University)
Karaivanov Alexander (Simon Fraser University)
Karolyi, Andrew (Ohio State University)
Kashyap Anil (University of Chicago)
Keim Donald B (University of Pennsylvania)
Ketkar Suhas L (Vanderbilt University)
Kiesling Lynne (Northwestern University)
Klenow Pete (Stanford University)
Koch Paul (University of Kansas)
Kocherlakota Narayana (University of Minnesota)
Koijen Ralph S.J. (University of Chicago)
Kondo Jiro (Northwestern University)
Korteweg Arthur (Stanford University)
Kortum Samuel (University of Chicago)
Krueger Dirk (University of Pennsylvania)
Ledesma Patricia (Northwestern University)
Lee Lung-fei (Ohio State University)
Leeper Eric M. (Indiana University)
Letson David (University of Miami)
Leuz Christian (University of Chicago)
Levine David I.(UC Berkeley)
Levine David K.(Washington University)
Levy David M. (George Mason University)
Linnainmaa Juhani (University of Chicago)
Lott John R. Jr. (University of Maryland)
Lucas Robert (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)
Ludvigson, Sydney C. (New York University)
Luttmer Erzo G.J. (University of Minnesota)
Manski Charles F. (Northwestern University)
Martin Ian (Stanford University)
Mayer Christopher (Columbia University)
Mazzeo Michael (Northwestern University)
McDonald Robert (Northwestern University)
Meadow Scott F. (University of Chicago)
Meeropol, Michael (Western New England College)
Mehra Rajnish (UC Santa Barbara)
Mian Atif (University of Chicago)
Middlebrook Art (University of Chicago)
Miguel Edward (UC Berkeley)
Miravete Eugenio J. (University of Texas at Austin)
Miron Jeffrey (Harvard University)
Moeller, Thomas (Texas Christian University)
Moretti Enrico (UC Berkeley)
Moriguchi Chiaki (Northwestern University)
Moro Andrea (Vanderbilt University)
Morse Adair (University of Chicago)
Mortensen Dale T. (Northwestern University)
Mortimer Julie Holland (Harvard University)
Moskowitz, Tobias J. (University of Chicago)
Munger Michael C. (Duke University)
Muralidharan Karthik (UC San Diego)
Nair Harikesh (Stanford University)
Nanda Dhananjay (University of Miami)
Nevo Aviv (Northwestern University)
Ohanian Lee (UCLA)
Pagliari Joseph (University of Chicago)
Papanikolaou Dimitris (Northwestern University)
Parker Jonathan (Northwestern University)
Paul Evans (Ohio State University)
Pearce David (New York University)
Pejovich Svetozar (Steve) (Texas A&M University)
Peltzman Sam (University of Chicago)
Perri Fabrizio (University of Minnesota)
Phelan Christopher (University of Minnesota)
Piazzesi Monika (Stanford University)
Pippenger, Michael K. (University of Alaska)
Piskorski Tomasz (Columbia University)
Platt Brennan C. (Brigham Young University)
Rampini Adriano (Duke University)
Ray, Debraj (New York University)
Reagan Patricia (Ohio State University)
Reich Michael (UC Berkeley)
Reuben Ernesto (Northwestern University)
Rizzo, Mario (New York University)
Roberts Michael (University of Pennsylvania)
Robinson David (Duke University)
Rogers Michele (Northwestern University)
Rotella Elyce (Indiana University)
Roussanov Nikolai (University of Pennsylvania)
Routledge Bryan R. (Carnegie Mellon University)
Ruud Paul (Vassar College)
Safford Sean (University of Chicago)
Samaniego Roberto (George Washington University)
Sandbu Martin E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Sapienza Paola (Northwestern University)
Savor Pavel (University of Pennsylvania)
Schaniel William C. (University of West Georgia)
Scharfstein David (Harvard University)
Seim Katja (University of Pennsylvania)
Seru Amit (University of Chicago)
Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University)
Shimer Robert (University of Chicago)
Shore Stephen H. (Johns Hopkins University)
Siegel Ron (Northwestern University)
Smith David C. (University of Virginia)
Smith Vernon L.(Chapman University- Nobel Laureate)
Sorensen Morten (Columbia University)
Spatt Chester (Carnegie Mellon University)
Spear Stephen (Carnegie Mellon University)
Stevenson Betsey (University of Pennsylvania)
Stokey Nancy (University of Chicago)
Strahan Philip (Boston College)
Strebulaev Ilya (Stanford University)
Sufi Amir (University of Chicago)
Tabarrok Alex (George Mason University)
Taylor Alan M. (UC Davis)
Thompson Tim (Northwestern University)
Troske Kenneth (University of Kentucky)
Tschoegl Adrian E. (University of Pennsylvania)
Uhlig Harald (University of Chicago)
Ulrich, Maxim (Columbia University)
Van Buskirk Andrew (University of Chicago)
Vargas Hernan (University of Phoenix)
Veronesi Pietro (University of Chicago)
Vissing-Jorgensen Annette (Northwestern University)
Wacziarg Romain (UCLA)
Walker Douglas O. (Regent University)
Walker, Todd (Indiana University)
Weill Pierre-Olivier (UCLA)
Williamson Samuel H. (Miami University)
Witte Mark (Northwestern University)
Wolfenzon, Daniel (Columbia University)
Wolfers Justin (University of Pennsylvania)
Woutersen Tiemen (Johns Hopkins University)
Wu Yangru (Rutgers University)
Yue Vivian Z. (New York University)
Zingales Luigi (University of Chicago)
Zitzewitz Eric (Dartmouth College)

The State of Our Government

The libertarian in me cannot help but appreciate this . . .


[Via Despair, Inc.]

This is the kind of . . .

. . . Government and Politics class that every single high-school student in this country should take.

My AP Government and Politics students are studying economic and social policy this week and so we've been looking at the federal budget. First, I gave them a list of the major items that are part of the federal budget and had them guess what percent of the budget was spent on each category. Almost uniformly the students were way off guessing that the biggest percent of the budget went for defense and guessing from 30 to 50% went to defense instead of about 20% which is the actual percent. Then they spent today's class playing this budget simulation game which readers might enjoy trying out. You get to play around with the increasing or decreasing items in the budget as well as taxes and then find out the effect your new numbers have on the federal deficit. First I told the kids to just take a bit of time and pretend they had complete control of the budget and see what they could do with the deficit. The kids cheerfully cut Social Security and Medicare. Many cut defense spending sharply and raised taxes. Even so, few were able to balance their budgets.

Then I told them to work in groups and pretend they were congressmen who wanted to get reelected so that they could only make cuts or raise taxes that they could sell to their constituents. They soon realized that it would be impossible to make any dent in the deficit. Then I asked them what they could accomplish if they had to hold all the mandatory spending on entitlements and interest on the debt. They immediately realized how hopeless any budget balancing would be at that point.

We've also been talking about the looming problems with Social Security, facts that the newest report on shortfalls on entitlements makes even clearer. My hope is that my students at least will listen more skeptically when they hear candidates making promises about new spending programs while swearing fiscal sanity. They are aware what an impossibility it has become for any reform of Social Security and why they should be demanding that politicians address their concerns that they're going to spend their peak earning years paying for my generation's retirement while they will have no guarantee that those same benefits will be there for them when they are ready to retire.

It's not the most entertaining unit that we cover all year, but I believe that it's one of the most important that we cover all year in preparing them to be intelligent voters.

Bless you, Betsy.

Reality check: Earmarks

It seems that the Democrat-run Congress is no better at reducing earmarks than the Republican-run Congress was. In fact, 2007 had the second-highest number of earmarks in history.

A closer look at the numbers reveals that isn’t exactly true. Liberals are comparing the fiscal 2008 total of 11,043 to the fiscal 2005 total of 13,997. What they don’t tell you is that this year’s number is the second highest on record and it’s a sharp increase from the past two years.

How Congress burns our tax dollars

Congress is wasting our tax dollars because they aren't passing appropriations legislation on time.

Politicians regularly take shots at Washington bureaucrats, but federal workers rarely get a chance to fire back. They should. Congress' failure under both parties to do its most basic job — fund the federal government — is a national disgrace.

Read the whole thing.

A loss of confidence

Mark Tapscott has a sobering op-ed about the crisis of public confidence in America's political class. This is how he starts:

Nothing is so critical to the continuing health of a republic than the confidence of people that their elected representatives have their best interests at heart in their decision-making. Once that confidence is lost, a revolution of one sort or another becomes likely. In America, such a crisis could be right around the corner.

Consider the latest Gallup Poll, which finds only 14 percent of the American people have "a great deal of" confidence in Congress or "quite a lot," compared to 19 percent a year ago. That is the lowest confidence rating Gallup has ever recorded for Congress since the survey firm began measuring public opinion on major American institutions in 1973.

Congress is far from alone in suffering plummeting confidence ratings. The presidency dropped from 33 percent to 25 percent and the Supreme Court from 40 percent to 34 percent during the same period. The trend line for all three branches has been downward since 9/11.

The "fourth branch" of government, the mainstream media, also has declining public confidence ratings. Television news dropped from 31 percent to 23 percent, while newspapers were down to 22 percent, compared to 30 percent a year ago.

Go read the rest.

Thank you, Pelosi/Reid

New Gallup data show confidence in Congress at all time low

More shenanigans from the keystone kongresspersons

Once again, our elected representatives are pulling a boner -- this time by trying to limit your and my access to our elected representatives -- a First Amendment right.

John Fund is on the trail.

I've reprinted it all in the extended entry.

For a change, I am finding myself on the same side of an issue as the ACLU. Maybe there is hope for them yet . . .

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Cutting the Grass
Congressional Democrats prepare another assault on the First Amendment.

Monday, May 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows 6 in 10 Americans think the Democratic Congress "hasn't brought much change." Eager to change this impression, the Democrats are frantically trying to pass legislation before Memorial Day. First on the agenda is a bill restricting lobbying, which is heading for the House floor with lightning speed. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to pass it tomorrow, sending it to the full House for a final vote next Tuesday or Wednesday.

When a bill moves that quickly, you can bet an someone will try to make some last-minute mischief. Hardly anyone objects to the legislation's requirement that former lawmakers wait two years instead of one before lobbying Congress. Ditto with bans on lobbying by congressional spouses and restrictions on sitting members of Congress negotiating contracts with private entities for future employment.

But the legislation may be amended on the floor to restrict grassroots groups that encourage citizens to contact members of Congress. The amendment, pushed by Rep. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts, would require groups that organize such grassroots campaigns to register as "lobbyists" and file detailed quarterly reports on their donors and activities. The law would apply to any group that took in at least $100,000 in any given quarter for "paid communications campaigns" aimed at mobilizing the public.

---

< br /> The same groups that backed the McCain-Feingold law, limiting political speech in advance of an election, are behind this latest effort to curb political speech. Common Cause and Democracy 21 say special-interest entities hide behind current law to conceal the identities of their donors, whom they would have to reveal if they were lobbying Congress directly. "These Astroturf campaigns are just direct lobbying by another name," says Rep. Meehan, who is resigning from the House this summer and views his bill as his last hurrah in Congress.

But the First Amendment specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for redress of grievances." The Supreme Court twice ruled in the 1950s that grassroots communication isn't "lobbying activity," and is fully protected by the First Amendment. Among the groups that believe the Meehan proposal would trample on the First Amendment are the National Right to Life Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union. The idea goes too far even for Sen. John McCain, who voted to strip a similar provision from a Senate lobbying reform bill last January.

The possible outcomes are disturbing. For example, Oprah Winfrey operates a website dedicated to urging people to contact Congress to demand intervention in Darfur. If her Web master took in over $100,000 in revenue from Ms. Winfrey and similar clients in a single quarter, he might be forced to make disclosures under the law.

"It's huge," Jay Sekulow of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, told The Hill newspaper. "It's the most significant restriction on grassroots activity in recent history. I'd put it up there with the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act"--the formal name for McCain-Feingold.

McCain-Feingold itself is riddled with loopholes, producing a slew of unintended consequences. Its provisions allowing candidates who compete against wealthy opponents who spend their own money to accept larger-than-normal legal contributions in order to compete inexplicably don't apply to the race for president. That means Mitt Romney and John Edwards, both of whom are independently wealthy, have a clear advantage should they run low on cash and need to inject funds into their campaigns quickly.

---

< br /> "Judged by the most visible results on promises like getting big money out of politics or cleaning up politics, campaign finance reform has been, to put it mildly, a disappointment," admits Mark Schmitt, a supporter of such reforms who has written a thoughtful essay in the journal Democracy. He urges reformers to now focus on expanding the "range of choices and voices in the system" and to take seriously the worries of those who fear that McCain-Feingold's restrictions on "election communication" have the potential to squelch important political speech. The Supreme Court is set to rule next month on a case addressing precisely that issue, and Justice Samuel Alito may be more inclined to view McCain-Feingold skeptically than was Sandra Day O'Connor, who was part of a 5-4 majority upholding the law.

Given the checkered history of campaign finance reform, its frequent use by one side of a political debate to hobble opponents, and the prospect that courts may yet find portions of McCain-Feingold unconstitutional, it would be a travesty for a Congress desperate for a quick-fix legislative accomplishment to circumscribe the First Amendment with little debate and even less understanding of what the consequences will be.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Traffic cameras

I used to be cautiously in favor of stop light cameras, and such, but after reading this article, I am reconsidering my position.

Others worry about safety. Red-light cameras are supposed to make us safer by discouraging people from running red lights. The trouble is that they work too well. Numerous studies have found that when these cameras are put in place, rear-end collisions increase dramatically. Drivers who once might have stretched the light a bit now slam on their brakes for fear of getting a ticket, with predictable results. A study of red-light cameras in Washington, D.C., by The Washington Post found that despite producing more than 500,000 tickets (and generating over $32 million in revenues), red-light cameras didn't reduce injuries or collisions. In fact, the number of accidents increased at the camera-equipped intersections.

Likewise, red-light cameras in Portland, Ore., produced a 140 percent increase in rear-end collisions at monitored intersections, and a study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council found that although red-light cameras decreased collisions resulting from people running traffic lights, they significantly increased accidents overall.

This problem can be aggravated by jurisdictions that shorten the duration of yellow lights, apparently to generate more ticket revenue. Last year, CBS News reported on an especially egregious case in Maryland: A traffic-camera intersection had a 2.7-second yellow light, while nearby intersections had 4-second times. Shorter yellow lights are more dangerous--but shorter yellow lights plus traffic cameras generate revenue.

I think this article has reawakened the libertarian leanings I've been accused of having . . .

[Via Glenn Reynolds.]

Cutting back on spending

If this article is correct, I will feel a little better about a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Republican leaders left behind just enough spending authority to keep the government operating through mid-February, less than halfway through the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Democrats have signaled that when they take control of Congress in January they will extend that funding authority for the remainder of the year based largely on the previous year's spending levels, which will result in many cuts in programs.

The Democrats also will do something that is certain to anger many lawmakers but cheer critics of excessive government spending: They will wipe out thousands of lawmakers' pet projects, or earmarks, that have been a source of great controversy on Capitol Hill. In the past, lawmakers have peppered individual spending bills with earmarks benefiting special interests. But the funding resolution the Democrats intend to pass in lieu of spending bills will be devoid of earmarks.

When the government spends less money, the government gets smaller. And the government is something this country can use less of.

Hope for democracy

The Futurist looks at the Age of Democracy. And makes a couple of observations:

1) The Western Hemisphere has done a much better job of establishing democracy than the Eastern Hemisphere, with 90% of Western Hemisphere residents living in green count[r]ies.

2) India is hugely important to any discussion of increasing democracy in the world, given its size and what it is surrounded by. The US would do well to cultivate broader ties with India as quickly as possible, and India would do well to cooperate rather than revert back to 'non-aligned' nonsense.

Graphics and charts are a part of the post. Generally, things are looking up from this perpective. Go check it out and see if you agree.

Don't sweat the small stuff

As a resident of Texas, I have been completely unaware of blind people who want to hunt here. I certainly hope our Texas legislators try to tackle some of the important issues that this state faces today -- and stop playing around with nonsense like this!

The bully Senate?

OpinionJournal has a good op-ed about an implicitly threatening letter from two senators to the CEO of ExxonMobil.

Here's a brief excerpt from the letter:

Climate change denial has been so effective because the "denial community" has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists. ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific "debate" and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as "sound science."

A study to be released in November by an American scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change denial front groups in 2004 alone.

The op-ed response to this letter is in the extended entry.

Global Warming Gag Order
Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up.

Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.

We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."

The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations.

---

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.

The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

---

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about "censorship." That's exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

The Senators' letter is far more serious because they have enormous power to punish Exxon if it doesn't kowtow to them. A windfall profits tax is in the air, and we've seen what happens to other companies that dare to resist Congressional intimidation. It's to Exxon's credit that, in its response to the Senators, the company said that it will continue to fund free market research groups because "there is value in the debate" that helps promote "optimal public policy decisions." Too bad that's not what the Senators care about.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

I find it disturbing that two senators from this country would try to suppress dissenting voices in a critically important scientific debate.

He should be missed

Rich Galen sums up John Bolton's tenure at the United Nations. Here is how he begins.

Elections have consequences. The Democrats will control the US Senate, so, the President had to choose between either getting Robert Gates confirmed for Secretary of Defense or John Bolton confirmed for Ambassador to what is officially, if erroneously, called the United Nations.

I'm saddened, but not surprised that so many of our national leaders are pleased by this resignation. John Bolton has worked diligently to represent the United States of America's interests to the UN. And he has done a good job. His efforts to make the UN more accountable and more relevant to the global community were admirable -- and made some small headway.

I regret his departure.

Confirm John Bolton

He's competent, effective, loyal, and he's on our side, so let's keep Bolton as our ambassador to the United Nations. And he's proven his worth:

. . . John Bolton has been too good an ambassador - at a time when America sorely needs an effective envoy at Turtle Bay - to be tossed on the scrap heap because of the Democrats' short-sightedness.

* It was Bolton who recently organized the majority coalition that blocked Hugo Chavez's Venezuela from winning a seat on the Security Council.

* It was Bolton who worked with France to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah (flawed as it was).

* It was Bolton who took the lead in pressing for comprehensive reform of the U.N.'s rotting institutional infrastructure.

* It is Bolton who has refused to play the game of diplomatic double-talk, refusing to participate in the new - and already discredited - Human Rights Council, which he memorably called a case of "putting lipstick on a caterpillar and calling it a butterfly."

Ohio GOP Sen. George Voinovich, who first opposed Bolton, has since switched sides, hailing his performance and warning that he "cannot imagine a worse message to send to the terrorists and to other nations deciding whether to engage in [fighting terrorism] than to . . . replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations."

Go read the whole New York Post article.

Rumsfeld: An alternate view

Douglas Feith, who worked with Donald Rumsfeld for four years (2001-2005), provides a different perspective of the former Secretary of State. One that is closer to my understanding of him through dofferent military contacts I have through my work.

What Rumsfeld believed, said and did differs from the caricature. The public picture of him today is drawn from news accounts reflecting the views of people who disapproved of his policies or disliked him. Rumsfeld, after all, can be brutally demanding and tough. But I believe history will be more appreciative of him than the first draft has been. What will last is serious history, which, like serious literature, can distinguish appearance from reality.

If you're interested in balance, go read the whole thing.

He will be sorely missed

We Texas Aggies are going to miss Dr. Robert M. Gates. He has been a tremendous leader at Texas A&M University, and is loved by Aggies worldwide.

On the other hand, Texas A&M is accustomed to sending its own out in service to our country (sometimes with tragic results). Dr. Gates is just continuing that tradition.

I've reprinted Dr. Gates' bio in the extended entry.

Dr. Robert M. Gates is the 22nd President of Texas A&M University, the nation's seventh largest university and an institution recognized internationally for its teaching, research and public service. He assumed the presidency of the land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant university on August 1, 2002. Dr. Gates served as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999-2001.

He served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993. In this position, he headed all foreign intelligence agencies of the United States and directed the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Gates is the only career officer in CIA's history to rise from entry-level employee to Director. He served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989 and as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at The White House from January 20, 1989 until November 6, 1991 for President George H.W. Bush.

Dr. Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.

Dr. Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA's highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

He is the author of the memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, published in 1996.

Dr. Gates serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education, the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He is President of the National Eagle Scout Association.

Dr. Gates serves as Chairman of the Independent Trustees of The Fidelity Funds, the nation's largest mutual fund company, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc.

A native of Kansas, Dr. Gates received his bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary, his master's degree in history from Indiana University, and his doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University. Dr. Gates is 62, and he and his wife Becky have two adult children.

Good luck to you, Dr. Gates. And Godspeed.

Rumsfeld resignation

Austin Bay, over at his blog provides some analysis of the Rumsfeld resignation -- with some help from his military buddies.

(1) I think the resignation wasn’t entirely contingent on the election– though the Democratic win made Rumsfeld resignation a certainty. Robert Gates (currently president of Texas A&M University) has worked with James Baker on the “War on Terror” strategy evaluation. The Baker ”bi-partisan” political fall-back position for prosecuting the war was already in the works.

(2) One of the very smart young officers I know suggests the resignation is political prep for prosecuting the war even more vociferously. I think he’s on to something.

(3) I am very skeptical of Nancy Pelosi’s “one hundred hours” promise. Her one hundred hours (that’s one hundred days on blog time) will be sound and fury and media sensation, but not much beyond that. Still, Rumsfeld is a scalp. Another one of the very smart troops says that should Pelosi-led investigations start in earnest, Rumsfeld is already two-months gone. A nice tactical political move, if the troop’s hunch is correct.

(4) The big race in 2006 was Lamont versus Lieberman. Joe Lieberman won. Joe’s core issue: VIctory in the War on Terror, which means victory in Iraq. That’s a warning to Nancy Pelosi and Co. If they go “nutsroots-Lamont Left” they will squander their victory. Ed Driscoll suggests 2006 is a race-to-the center. Lieberman has carved out one the strongest personal political position in America. For Joe, it’s November lemonade made from the bitter lemons of August.

Joe Lieberman is this man. Nancy Pelosi had better pay attention.

This is the problem the world still faces on November 8, 2006. It faced it on September 10, 2001, but darn few folks acknowledged it.

Recommended.

Election Day 2006

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."

-- Samuel Adams

Please vote. It is not only our privilege, but is also our duty.

Intellipedia

The Wikipedia concept applied to the U.S. intel community.

Intelligence officials say the format is perfect for sharing information between agencies, a centerpiece of the reform legislation that established Negroponte's office as national intelligence director after the September 11 attacks.

They also said it could lead to more accurate intelligence reports because the system allows a wider range of officials to scrutinize material and keeps a complete, permanent record of individual contributions including dissenting points of view.

That might help avoid errors of the kind that led to the widely criticized 2002 national intelligence estimate that said Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

This is a really smart move! It appears that some of our intel reforms are good ones. Thankfully.

[Via the Jawas.]

Presidential interview

Michael Barone was part of an interview with President Bush, and reports on some of his observations of the President.

First of all, Bush started off with a lengthy monologue, trying to put a historical perspective on where we are now. He clearly sees his primary mission as protecting the American people from the terrorists who want to do everything they can to hurt and destroy us and our civilization. He makes the point that we ought to listen to their words when they threaten to kill us–even though our first instinct is to flinch and turn away from threats that, if taken seriously, are extremely disturbing. Later he returned to this theme. The September 11 attacks made it clear, he said, that we're at war, and we're still at war. These terrorists want to kill us and destroy our civilization, and they will use any excuse that comes to mind–Israel, the Crusades, and if not the Crusades then the cartoons.

"If this country lets down its guard, it will be a fatal mistake."

Go read the whole thing.

Presidential greatness

. . . and George W. Bush.

James Lewis puts those two things together in an essay about why George W. Bush will be ranked with other great presidents.

I’ll bet right now that Bush 43 will come to be seen as one of the most important presidents, not because he has solved the challenges of the war we now face, but because he is the first president to try to do so with all his heart and soul. In the Long War on Islamofascism, future administrations will learn from George W. Bush, just as Cold War presidents learned from Harry S Truman. Truman didn’t win the Cold War, but he defined it for the next forty years. Like Truman’s, this is a watershed administration, gifted with the intelligence and courage to recognize the times we live in.

Recommended.

Solzhenitsyn on the West

Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave an address at Harvard on 8 June 1978 about why the West was not prevailing over tyranny. Though these words were spoken 28 years ago, they are so very pertinent to the world we find ourselves in today that I just had to share them with you.

This speech really resonates.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

(NOTE: I failed to note the blog where I first stumbled upon a reference to this speech, but I'll gladly give credit, if you just let me know.)

A World Split Apart
Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University June 8, 1978

By Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on the occasion of the 327th commencement of this old and illustrious university. My congratulations and best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "VERITAS." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I said ...

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of destroying each other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom - in this case, our Earth - divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform.

For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to its religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered people's approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society's fragility.

We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account.

Convergence

But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development bears little resemblance to all this.

The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too. and this can hardly suit anyone.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them.

A Decline In Courage

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state.

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.)

The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, and leisure, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one's precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one's nation must be defended in an as yet distant land?

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

The Direction Of Freedom

Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people's right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency - all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist's civil rights. There is quite a number of such cases.

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man - the master of the world - does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. (There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.)

The Direction Of The Press

The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word "press" to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it?

Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.

Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed everyday, confusing readers, and then left hanging?

The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan "Everyone is entitled to know everything." (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)

Hastiness and superficiality - these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.

A Fashion In Thinking

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development.

In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons - maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. An example is the self-deluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world . The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art.

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the U.S.

Not A Model

But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points.

Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Humanism And Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the pro-claimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: the Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs.

Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before The Turn

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth - imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but - upward.

Reprinted from A World Split Apart by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, (Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1978).

Leading the struggle

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and policy advisor to President Bush, shows us the same picture that Bush sees in the Middle East. And it's a scary one. But one that I believe to be accurate.

The war in Iraq, without doubt, complicates our approach to Iran. It has stretched the Army and lowered our reservoir of credibility on WMD intelligence. But Iran's destabilizing nuclear ambitions are not a guarded secret; they are an announced strategy. If the lesson drawn from Iraq is that the world is too unknowable and complicated for America to act in its interests, we will pay a terrible price down the road.

As these events unfold, our country will need a better way of doing business, a new compact between citizens and their government. Americans have every right to expect competence and honesty about risks and mistakes and failures. Yet Americans, in turn, must understand that in a war where deception is the weapon and goal of the enemy, every mistake is not a lie; every failure is not a conspiracy. And the worst failure would be a timid foreign policy that allows terrible threats to emerge.

He has much more to say in the article. Please read the whole thing. I highly recommend it.

[Hat tip to Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]

1996 Welfare Reform Law

Conservatism in government works!

Read all about it in the extended entry.

Welfare Check
The doomsayers were dead wrong about reform.

BY RON HASKINS
Sunday, July 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Ten years ago next month, a bipartisan majority in Congress and a Democratic president launched America's welfare policy in a new and largely uncharted direction.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the predictions of doom hurled against the Republican welfare reform bill signed by President Clinton on Aug. 22, 1996. Mr. Clinton had previously vetoed two versions of welfare reform when, with skill, daring and persistence, Republicans in the House and Senate pushed it through Congress a third time and put it again on the president's desk. In an act of remarkable political courage, Mr. Clinton defied senior members of his own party and most of the American left and signed the radical bill into law.

The left, led by senior Democrats in Congress, the editorial pages of many of the nation's leading newspapers, the Catholic bishops, child advocates in Washington and the professoriate, had assaulted the bill in terms that are rare, even by today's coarse standards. Democrats speaking on the floor of the House labeled the bill "harsh," "cruel" and "mean-spirited." They claimed that it "attacked," "punished" and "lashed out at" children. Columnist Bob Herbert said the bill conducted a "jihad" against the poor, made "war on kids" and "deliberately inflict[ed] harm" on children and the poor. Sen. Frank Lautenberg said poor children would be reduced to "begging for money, begging for food, and . . . engaging in prostitution."

Many Democrats and pundits shouted that the bill would throw a million children into poverty. Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund said that no one who believed in the Judeo-Christian tradition could support the bill. Even God, it seemed, opposed the evil Republican bill.

---

The major reform that evoked this onslaught was the proposal to end the entitlement, or legal guarantee of cash benefits, promised by the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Kate O'Beirne, now of National Review, perfectly captured the philosophy of entitlement in 1995 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that the nation's welfare system operated on the principle of "spend more, demand less." Republicans wanted to demand more by breaking the entitlement and making the cash contingent on serious attempts to find work and achieve self-support.

After three decades of failed federal "work" programs, Republicans had spent years behind the scenes--under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, Clay Shaw, Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and others--developing ideas about how to encourage, cajole or, when necessary, force mothers on welfare to work. Specifically, Republicans proposed to end the entitlement to cash, impose a five-year time limit on benefits, require mothers to prepare for and search for work or have their cash benefit reduced or terminated, and require states to place half their welfare caseload in programs that lead to employment.

Granted, this new system would subject poor mothers to greater risk than the entitlement system it replaced. But in this regard welfare mothers would be no different from millions of other low-income Americans who rely on personal effort rather than government largesse.

Besides, Republicans argued, Congress had created a series of programs that provided substantial support to poor and low-income working families. A typical mother leaving welfare for work earns only around $10,000 per year laboring in an $8 per hour job--the only kind of job for which most poor mothers are qualified. But the Earned Income Tax Credit gives them up to an additional $4,500 (in today's dollars), they qualify for food stamps worth around $2,000, their children are covered by Medicaid, and most who need help paying for child care receive it. On earnings of $10,000, then, mothers leaving welfare have total income of well over $16,000 in cash or near cash--more than twice as much as they would have had on welfare--and their health insurance and child care are usually covered.

In the decade that has passed since the 1996 reforms, the welfare rolls have plummeted by nearly 60%, the first sustained decline since the program was enacted in 1935. Equally important, the employment of single mothers heading families reached the highest level ever. As a group, mothers heading families with incomes of less than about $21,000 per year increased their earnings every year between 1994 and 2000 while simultaneously receiving less money from welfare payments. In inflation-adjusted dollars, they were about 25% better off in 2000 than in 1994, despite the fall in their welfare income.

Over the same period, the child-poverty level enjoyed its most sustained decline since the early 1970s; and both black-child poverty and poverty among female-headed families reached their lowest level ever. Even after four years of increases following the recession of 2001, the child poverty level is still 20% lower than it was before the decline began. Similarly, measures of consumption and hunger show that the material conditions of low-income, female-headed families have improved. Although welfare reform was not without problems, none of the disasters predicted by the left materialized. Indeed, national surveys show that almost every measure of child well-being--except obesity--has improved since the mid-1990s.

---

The 1996 law, in perhaps the most direct legislative clash of liberal and conservative welfare principles since the New Deal, was a victory for conservative principles. Poor mothers scored a victory for themselves and their children, showing that given adequate motivation and support from work-based government programs, they can join the American mainstream, set an example for their children and communities, and pull themselves and their children out of poverty.

But there's a rub for conservatives: Now and for the foreseeable future, the nation will have millions of poorly educated and unmarried young mothers who are capable of producing labor value of around $8 per hour when they first enter the labor market. They face a Hobson's choice of living in poverty on welfare or living in poverty while working--unless government subsidizes their income. These work-based subsidies--the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, child care, and so forth--were already in place in 1996 and have been improved since. In effect, welfare reform made government benefits contingent on work, poor mothers responded appropriately, and the combination of earnings and government benefits brought them and their children out of poverty.

Still, there's a lot here for everybody to like--work for conservatives and work-contingent government benefits for the left. The irony of welfare reform is that it firmly implanted the conservative principle of self-sufficiency in federal policy which, in turn, brought the liberal principle of government support for the poor into its most effective form--namely, encouraging work.

Above all, welfare reform showed that work--even low-wage work--provides a more durable foundation for social policy than handouts.

Mr. Haskins is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law," forthcoming from Brookings.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Congress is not omniscient

Walter Williams has a very interesting op-ed up at Townhall about what our legislators don't know may be very important to legislation -- and they don't know a lot of stuff. Here's how he begins:

One of the great contributions of Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek was to admonish us to recognize the insurmountable limits to human knowledge. Why? Not even the brightest minds, and surely not the U.S. Congress, can ever have the knowledge to shape an economic system entirely to our liking. To think we can represents the height of arrogance and a pretense of knowledge. The billions upon billions of interrelationships between an economic system's human and non-human elements defy human capacity to know.

Recommended.

Oil regulation

Pete du Pont has an interesting op-ed up at OpinionJournal wherein he maintains that American politicians are addicted to regulating oil. And that has been the biggest cause of our current dependence on foreign oil.

I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.

Addicted to Regulation
The real reason for America's foreign-oil dependence.

BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that "America is addicted to oil." But it would be more accurate to say that America is addicted to opportunity, and oil and its products help us seize it.

American oil consumption is indeed rising, from more than 15 million barrels a day in the early 1980s to more than 20 million today. It is likely to continue to increase--another 33% over the next 25 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy--because crude oil is a useful substance. Some 40% of our oil consumption is for cars and light trucks; 32% for buses, railroads, ships, trucks and agricultural machinery; and another 17% goes into petrochemicals to produce products from plastic to paint. These uses represent opportunities, not addictions.

The problem is that America's domestic petroleum production has significantly declined, from 10 million barrels a day in 1970 to about 5 million today. Our response has been increasing importation of oil, now more than 12 million barrels a day.

So expanding America's energy production is the obvious priority. Common sense would suggest that we should begin tapping into the estimated 102 billion barrels of oil sitting under America's Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska. That domestic supply could replace America's importation of foreign oil for some 25 years.

---

But our country's political establishment, from Congress to the press and the presidency, has worked for a quarter century to prevent increases in our energy supply.

In 1980 President Carter imposed a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies, which raised $40 billion rather than the $227 billion promised. Rather than easing energy shortages, the tax reduced domestic oil production by between 3% and 6% and gave imported oil from foreign countries a competitive advantage that increased imports of foreign oil by about 10%.

In 1990 the first President Bush issued a presidential directive forbidding access to about 85% of Outer Continental Shelf oil and natural gas reserves. In 1998 President Clinton extended the moratorium through 2012.

In 1995 Mr. Clinton vetoed a budget bill that would have allowed oil exploration and drilling in part of the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Prudhoe Bay fields, just to the west of ANWR, have delivered 15 billion barrels of oil through the Alaska pipeline to the U.S. market without damage to Alaskan land, caribou or other wildlife. ANWR contains 10 billion barrels of oil, so Mr. Clinton's veto today is costing America about a million barrels of oil each day. Yet Congress has repeatedly defeated efforts to open ANWR to exploration.

As the Heritage Foundation points out, the U.S. "is the only nation in the world that has placed a significant amount of its potential domestic energy supplies off-limits."

Congress has also limited the capacity to refine our oil. After Hurricane Katrina, a bill to streamline the refinery permitting process--we have not built a new one since 1976--and encourage the building of refineries on closed military bases was blocked in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when every Democratic senator, along with Jim Jeffords (I., Vt) and Lincoln Chaffee (R., R.I.) voted "no."

---

We could reduce our importation of, and "addiction" to, foreign oil in various ways.

Nuclear power is one. We have 104 nuclear power plants in operation in America that provide clean energy and decrease by 700 million tons the CO2 released into our atmosphere each year. But we have stopped building nuclear power plants: Construction of the last one began three decades ago. President Bush has proposed the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative to facilitate plant construction. Sixteen companies have expressed interest, and 25 new nuclear plants are under consideration.

Offshore drilling for natural gas is another way. There are some 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. We currently consume about 23 trillion cubic feet per year, so that amounts to a 19-year supply. But the House last month voted 217-203 to block the opening of some Outer Continental Shelf areas to natural gas exploration and drilling.

Then there is ethanol, the heavily subsidized energy produced from crops like corn, soybeans and sunflowers. Ethanol producers receive a 51-cent-a-gallon federal subsidy, which cost the government $1.4 billion last year, and are protected from international ethanol imports by a 2.5% tariff and an import duty of 54 cents a gallon.

But it is not clear that ethanol is a good economic or energy bargain. Producing it requires diesel fuel for tractors to plant and harvest the corn and fertilizers, and pesticides to allow it to grow, so it takes about seven barrels of oil to produce eight barrels of corn-based ethanol. But then more truck or rail fuel is required to deliver it, since there are no pipelines from corn country to urban areas, making shipping ethanol about double the cost of shipping gasoline. In the end ethanol may be a more expensive fuel. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) says there is no policy reason for ethanol: "If the ethanol producers and the corn growers weren't benefiting from this, we wouldn't be doing it."

Cleaner coal technology--we have 200 years worth of coal--is being pursued, as are other energy sources such as wind and solar power that may ultimately be some help in meeting our energy needs.

So what does the political establishment think of all these energy alternatives? Except for ethanol, wind and solar power, not much.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's energy speech to the National Press Club last month perfectly (and politically correctly) makes the establishment's point. Yes, she is for wind power, solar power and increasing the amount of oil stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, all good things. But she is also:

• For a windfall profits tax on oil (though she doesn't call it that), which would, as in 1980, reduce domestic oil production; and for higher taxes on oil companies so government, rather than the market economy, can regulate energy production.

• Against the construction of additional nuclear power plants--America's cleanest source of energy--because of her "real concerns" about the "quality of the oversight provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission." That translates into not enough governmental control over an industry that is too hot to touch politically.

• Against ANWR drilling (she has voted against it half a dozen times), and against additional offshore drilling.

• For greatly expanded--and greatly subsidized--ethanol production.

Her overall goal is "reducing our dependence on foreign oil by at least 50% by 2025." But expanding nuclear power, drilling for the proven reserves of oil and gas off our coasts, and even eliminating the ethanol import tariffs and subsidies all are politically incorrect energy policies that the Washington establishment will not permit.

That's too bad, because they are the correct policies that would help a great many Americans enjoy greater opportunity. But that's the political establishment's thinking, which makes government control--not oil--the addiction that is misdirecting our national energy policy.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Above the law

Or so Congress would have you believe. Robert F. Turner has a good column up at OpinionJournal about the Constitution and Congressional assertion that their legislative offices are immune to search and seizure.

It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

Congress Isn't Above the Law
And bribery isn't "speech or debate."

BY ROBERT F. TURNER
Sunday, May 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

How strong is the case against Louisiana's Rep. William Jefferson?

According to numerous press accounts, after videotaping Mr. Jefferson receiving a $100,000 bribe from an FBI informant, the government executed a search warrant of his home and found $90,000 of that money hidden in his freezer. In another case, a Kentucky businessman pleaded guilty to paying Mr. Jefferson $400,000 in bribes for official favors; and one of the congressman's key staff members has already entered a guilty plea to aiding and abetting the bribery of a public official.

Based upon such compelling evidence and Mr. Jefferson's refusal to comply with a subpoena to surrender key documents for eight months, a federal judge issued the search warrant that was executed in the congressman's Capitol Hill office last weekend. The FBI took exceptional measures to ensure that no privileged documents would be surrendered to investigators, with any close calls being made by a federal judge.

One might expect that others in Congress would be grateful that a scoundrel in their midst has apparently been caught red-handed. But there is obviously a more fundamental issue here, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert quickly joined forces with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, not to commend the FBI for its outstanding work, but to vehemently denounce its actions on the theory that members of Congress are above the law.

Specifically, they accused the FBI of violating the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the "Speech or Debate" clause of the Constitution. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner has scheduled hearings for Tuesday on this "profoundly disturbing constitutional question."

---

The "Speech or Debate" clause is contained in Article I, Section 6, which provides that members of Congress "shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." The provision was designed to protect legislators from civil law suits and unwarranted harassment by the executive branch, such as charges of defamation stemming from criticisms of the president during congressional debate.

Put simply, only Congress can inquire into the motives or content of votes, speeches or other official legislative acts.

But as the Supreme Court observed in the 1972 case of U.S. v. Brewster, the clause was never intended to immunize corrupt legislators who violate felony bribery statutes--laws that have expressly applied to members of Congress for more than 150 years. In Brewster, the court noted the clause was not written "to make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility," adding: "Taking a bribe is, obviously, no part of the legislative process or function; it is not a legislative act. It is not, by any conceivable interpretation, an act performed as a part of or even incidental to the role of a legislator."

Such behavior is therefore not protected by the Constitution. The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause was to protect the integrity of the legislative process, and the court noted that bribery, "perhaps even more than Executive power," would "gravely undermine legislative integrity and defeat the right of the public to honest representation."

A dozen years ago, I testified before the House Committee on Administration on this same basic issue. Newt Gingrich and other reformers were trying to bring Congress under the same ethics laws it had imposed upon the rest of the country, and some indignant legislators seemed confident that the laws were not supposed to apply to them. The hearing was held in a small room in a part of the Capitol Building off-limits to the public, with exactly enough chairs for members, staff and the three witnesses.

Two members of the public who managed to make their way to the room were turned away on the grounds that there was "no room" for public observers.

Critics of the Gingrich proposal did not hear what they wanted. Some seemed genuinely shocked when I informed them that, in Federalist No. 57, James Madison noted one of the constraints in the Constitution to prevent legislators from enacting "oppressive measures" was that "they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."

---

It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.

In light of the attitudes held by so many of our legislators, it is no wonder three times as many Americans disapprove of Congress's job-performance as approve, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Those are Congress's lowest numbers since the Democrats were last in power a dozen years ago.

According to Gallup, 83% of Americans view congressional corruption as a serious problem. There is an election coming up in five months, and legislators who wish to survive it might wish to step back and permit the FBI to do its job.

Mr. Turner is a co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and a professor on the university's general faculty.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

What she said!

Phoenix is a bit upset about the scofflaws in Washington, D.C..

She makes some good points. Go read her post.

Imperial Congress

The editors at NRO have a good op-ed up about Congress' latest departure from reality.

By nothing more than dumb luck, the Republican-controlled Congress—lambasted for the junkets, earmarks, and “culture of corruption� that have aligned to produce the lowest approval ratings in memory—was handed a shot at some desperately needed redemption. All its leaders had to do was make the right choice between condemning the rankest corruption and displaying an outsized arrogance. Guess which one they chose?

Stuck on stupid it seems . . .

Recommended reading.

Some movement toward immigration reform

It is not moving quickly, nor does it have strict enough security provisions for me, but Congress seems to finally be taking immigration reform seriously. Michael Barone, at U.S. News & World Report, has a post up with some good discussion about the immigration reform bill currently making it's way through both Houses.

Conviction politics. A columnist is tempted to say that the politicians should toss aside political concerns and do what they believe is in the public interest. Easy enough to say. But something just like that may be happening. Politicians act out of some combination of calculation and conviction; the proportions vary. On immigration there are some politicians, of both parties and on both sides, who are visibly acting out of conviction. And not just the noisy immigration restrictionists, like Rep. Tom Tancredo, who wants a border fence. These conviction politicians include Edward Kennedy and John McCain, who favor relatively generous guest-worker and legalization provisions, and Sens. Jon Kyl and John Cornyn, who favor a less generous version. Add to this list George W. Bush, who seems poised to take an unusually active role on the issue.

The route to agreement is to give all of these conviction politicians much of what they want. A fence, high-tech border-security and identification devices, some compromise on guest workers and legalization–all could be part of an omnibus measure. As for the calculation politicians, as they try to assess the political landscape and reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings of various polls, they appear to be coming to the conclusion that inaction–or blocking action now that the issue is so visible–poses a higher political risk than taking action. Voters understandably believe we should have better border security and should do something about the 12 million illegal immigrants in our midst. Neither Congress nor President Bush has acted in five years. Maybe, just maybe, they're on the brink of doing so now.

I recommend it.

Some movement toward immigration reform

It is not moving quickly, nor does it have strict enough security provisions for me, but Congress seems to finally be taking immigration reform seriously. Michael Barone, at U.S. News & World Report, has a post up with some good discussion about the immigration reform bill currently making it's way through both Houses.

Conviction politics. A columnist is tempted to say that the politicians should toss aside political concerns and do what they believe is in the public interest. Easy enough to say. But something just like that may be happening. Politicians act out of some combination of calculation and conviction; the proportions vary. On immigration there are some politicians, of both parties and on both sides, who are visibly acting out of conviction. And not just the noisy immigration restrictionists, like Rep. Tom Tancredo, who wants a border fence. These conviction politicians include Edward Kennedy and John McCain, who favor relatively generous guest-worker and legalization provisions, and Sens. Jon Kyl and John Cornyn, who favor a less generous version. Add to this list George W. Bush, who seems poised to take an unusually active role on the issue.

The route to agreement is to give all of these conviction politicians much of what they want. A fence, high-tech border-security and identification devices, some compromise on guest workers and legalization–all could be part of an omnibus measure. As for the calculation politicians, as they try to assess the political landscape and reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings of various polls, they appear to be coming to the conclusion that inaction–or blocking action now that the issue is so visible–poses a higher political risk than taking action. Voters understandably believe we should have better border security and should do something about the 12 million illegal immigrants in our midst. Neither Congress nor President Bush has acted in five years. Maybe, just maybe, they're on the brink of doing so now.

I recommend it.

The Bush presidency

Jack Kelly has a good summation of many folk's frustration with President Bush. Mine included.

Get a grip

On spending, that is. OpinionJournal reports on some potentially good news -- about the emergency spending bill that has recently passed the Senate.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Veto Hallelujah
The Senate is challenging George Bush's presidential manhood.

Friday, May 5, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

All bad things must come to an end, and it may just be that President Bush's record for not casting vetoes will soon be history. So much the better that he is promising to break his dubious record by nixing the astonishing supplemental spending bill passed by the Senate yesterday.

If ever a bill deserved a veto, this is it. The ball of blubber rolled out of the world's greatest spending body at $108.9 billion, a mere $14.4 billion more than Mr. Bush requested. The original request was for Iraq, Afghanistan and hurricane relief, but these "emergency" spending bills have become regular bacchanalia because they fall outside the limits set by the annual budget spending "caps."

And speaking of toga parties, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd took to the Senate floor to deplore Mr. Bush's veto threat as an outrage that would deny money for all sorts of domestic disasters, including farm losses and coal-mine accidents. "If the President wants to veto a bill that funds the troops, if he wants to veto a bill that funds victims of Hurricane Katrina . . . have at it," he taunted.

As Mr. Byrd knows from his years in the Roman Senate, this is a time-honored legislative tactic: Load up a vehicle that the President wants with junk that you want, and dare him to veto. We trust Mr. Bush knows his Presidential manhood is being challenged here. The Senate's misbehavior only grew worse in the wake of his veto threat, as if the Members don't believe he can finally be serious. They loaded up with earmarks, such as the $700 million Mississippi railroad to nowhere, and some $4 billion in farm aid at a time when farm income is high thanks to soaring commodity prices.

The bill passed 78-20, which means this Senate bender is bipartisan. But 35 GOP Senators have also sent Mr. Bush a letter pledging to support his demand to reduce the bill's total cost; that's one more vote than needed to block a veto override. Meanwhile, over in the House, GOP leaders are finally behaving like, well, Republicans. Speaker Denny Hastert declared the Senate bill "dead on arrival" in a House-Senate conference. "The House has no intention of joining in a spending spree at the expense of American taxpayers," he added. Hallelujah.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Hallelujah, indeed.

Petronomics update

Brendan Miniter gives us some insight into why our energy policy has contributed to higher fuel prices.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

Running on Empty
On the highway, fuel is in short supply. In Washington, ideas are.

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, May 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

ALONG INTERSTATE 95, Md.--Driving to New York from Washington recently I came across something worse than $3-a-gallon gasoline, price gouging or oil-company windfall profits. At a rest stop outside Baltimore a makeshift sign had a stark message for motorists: "No gas." The Exxon station serving northbound traffic had run dry. I eventually found enough regular unleaded to keep going north, but only after watching two other drivers argue over a working pump at another station that was running out of gas.

This is not a replay of the 1970s with widespread shortages, long gas lines and rationing. But with gas prices off the charts, crude above $70 a barrel, and now "spot shortages" at service stations in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas and elsewhere, it's not hard to see why lawmakers in Washington feel compelled to do something. And what we're getting is the kind of policy ideas we can expect in a panic.

Congress is now considering revoking $2 billion in tax credits for oil companies that it stuffed into an energy bill just last year. The House Energy Committee plans hearings. And there's already plenty of grandstanding about lavish executive pay and record profits. (Adding more fuel to the fire, Exxon Mobil reported last week that it took in $8.4 billion in profits over the past three months, up 7% from a year earlier.) Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican and sometime sane voice, captured the mood when he told a reporter that "Nobody has any sympathy for oil companies on Capitol Hill right now."

On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Bush is also revving his engine with nowhere to go. He too wants to suspend oil-exploration tax credits that he signed into law a mere eight months ago, though he doesn't say how this will increase crude oil production and therefore bring down prices at the pump. He wants to investigate allegations of price gouging and to raise fuel-economy standards for cars. And he will stop steering oil into the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, making a few additional million barrels available on the market. The man who complained about America's addiction to oil now says "every little bit helps."

Actually looking to the reserve is not such a bad idea. Steering oil away from or even tapping into the reserve won't cut the price of gasoline by much. President Clinton proved that in the 1990s by releasing oil from the reserve and watching as just a few pennies were shaved off prices at the pump. But if law makers insists on doing something, tinkering with the reserve is one of the less destructive things they can do.

---

One reason for all the creative thinking on energy policy in Washington these days is that Congress has embraced little more than bad policy for years. Last year's energy bill actually contributed to this year's price spikes and shortages with new mandates that in effect strip out one antipollution gasoline additive (MTBE) and add in another (ethanol). Energy experts don't describe it that way. Instead they tell us that the MTBE requirement is disappearing as of May 5. But with the additive now said to pollute groundwater, any oil executive worth his salary knows that leaving it in one day longer than federal law requires it to be there is an open invitation to be sued.

Congress could have given oil companies a little flexibility by including liability protection in the energy bill. It chose not to. And it's true that oil companies can decide where to sell ethanol-blended gasoline. But the new rules require four billion gallons of it be sold somewhere in the U.S. this year and even more next year. That's great for corn growers, but not so good for consumers as oil companies figure out where to sell the new fuel.

With MTBE on its way out, something has to take its place. Substituting ethanol is even a good idea, except that it's only gotten more expensive since Congress mandated its use. And it's a lot easier to add a subsidy for the corn-based fuel to a piece of legislation than it is to add the fuel itself to a gallon of gas. Ethanol can't be mixed at refineries. Instead it has to be shipped separately to terminals closer to local gas stations and blended there. That requires new equipment and new supply chains. Ethanol also doesn't mix well with the old MTBE gas, so service stations have to empty and scrub their tanks before taking delivery of the new fuel. That's creating hiccups in the system we see as spot shortages. Congress could make the changeover a lot easier if it would repeal the ethanol mandate. But that's a non-starter on the Hill.

With the president's approval rating at 36% and Congress's at 22%, no one is willing to step on the breaks before Washington pushes through more bad policies. The president is right about one thing. It's going to be a tough summer for drivers.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The Supreme Court

Daniel Heninger does an excellent job reporting on the daily deliberations that go on in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's an interesting peek at the workings of our highest court.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

A Day in Court
Scalia floats and Breyer rocks.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Roe v. Wade, creating the right to an abortion. This column is not about abortion. It is about the Supreme Court.

The preceding two sentences would strike some as a contradiction. As proved by the nomination hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee for John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court resides now in the political mind as all about the right to an abortion, with the rest of the world mere footnotes.

This week offered the last oral arguments in the Court's current term, and on Monday I went to see and hear what the nine Justices do when they are not thinking about abortion. Like a New Yorker who has never been to the Statue of Liberty and a Washingtonian who's never visited the White House, I've managed a career in political journalism without attending an oral argument before the Supreme Court. In a perfect world, all Americans would. Sen. Arlen Specter is proposing to make the Court's corner of the world perfect, but more (well, a little) on him later.

Attending the Supreme Court may be better than going to church insofar as you can't attend the Court in your gym clothes. The Court's hearing chamber may be the last best place to experience authentic decorum anywhere in America. Cell phones? They even forbid reading material. As the moment to begin arrives, a clerk instructs, "Remain absolutely silent." The best yet: "If you find yourself falling asleep, you are free to leave the courtroom." A somnolent 7-year-old in front of me was admonished twice.

The Court is not wholly immune from the compulsions of popular culture. When they entered the chamber, one felt in the presence of celebrities. They sit beneath a large suspended clock, with Roman numerals. Its sweeping second hand is visible to the attorneys who have 30 minutes to make their case. As the 10 a.m. start approached, the room fell from murmurs to whispers to still silence.

---

The Court heard oral arguments for two cases. The first, anyone could understand; the second, no one could understand. Both held the audience rapt.

The question before the Court in Brigham City v. Stuart was whether police in Utah, responding to complaints about a loud party in a house at 3 a.m., and arriving on the sidewalk to see a kitchen fight among four apparently intoxicated individuals, were wrong to enter the house without getting a warrant. Utah's courts ruled against the police.

Before a word of argument, Justice Scalia, his seniority placing him next to Chief Justice Roberts, had rocked backward, his face suffused with skepticism. To his left, Justice Souter had fixed the attorneys with a stiff, slightly scary New Hampshire stare. Justice Breyer, at one end of the bench, appeared grandly bored (he is not, as Michael P. Studebaker, Mr. Stuart's attorney, will learn). Justice Thomas famously asks no questions at oral argument, but he and Justice Breyer appear to be bench buddies, rocking back to smile and chat each other up over some point of shared amusement.

Brigham City is a case designed to amuse, insofar as Mr. Stuart's attorney is arguing that the police should have telephoned a judge for a warrant even as a fistfight was under way. The Fourth Amendment issue is that the states have varying and conflicting standards in such instances.

There is much discussion of warrants, knocks and noise levels.

Justice Souter: "Why knock if it's obviously a futile gesture, if no one will hear?"

Justice Scalia: "Why is the trial court obsessed with knocking?"

Justice Breyer: "The Constitution says 'reasonable.' A policeman isn't a lawyer. . . . A warrant would take half an hour. There would be more drinking, more violence. What's wrong?"

Mr. Studebaker: "It still requires a warrant."

Justice Breyer, appearing to side with the police, and with emphasis: "I'm saying it's not. It's reasonable." Justice Scalia has now sunk so low in his chair that only the top half of his face is visible to the gallery. He looks like he's floating in a Jacuzzi. Justice Stevens brings down the house with the morning's best probable-cause line: "The adults were intoxicated? That's a serious crime in Utah!"

Chief Justice Roberts, peering over his reading glasses, ends it: "The case is submitted."

---

Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust is from another planet. A class-action securities case raising issues of federal and state jurisdiction (of material interest to the mutual-fund industry), it is impossibly abstruse. Yet the colloquy between the Justices and the two competing lawyers fixates the audience. It is an 11-piece orchestra playing a complex legal concerto, and at the end the impulse is to applaud.

Later, the Justices will discuss the cases in a book-lined conference room around a rectangular table. Each Justice has three stacked pads of paper--small, medium and large. Clerks never sit in. There is no record of the conversation. Unlike the sprawling office edifices of Congress in the nearby streets, the Court occupies one square building. On a tour of its nooks and crannies, one encounters virtually no one. The Court's work is done by nine Justices and some 37 clerks, plus a legal team to help choose among 10,000 submitted cases.

Agreed: The issues that rage around the Court over constitutional interpretation are worth fighting over. But in an op-ed piece this week, Judiciary Chairman Specter raged that the public deserved to have the Court's "power" televised. He is wrong. TV of its nature would surely diminish the Court. Anyone who wishes may listen to past oral arguments at www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage. That includes, quite eerie to hear, Roe v. Wade.

Institutions matter. The Congress is approaching dysfunction. Perhaps the country can survive that. The American presidency has morphed beyond human scale. But to enter the Supreme Court and encounter the place, the people and its essential purpose is to feel carbon-dated to 1789. Though often maddening, its majesty remains intact.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The Supreme Court

Daniel Heninger does an excellent job reporting on the daily deliberations that go on in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's an interesting peek at the workings of our highest court.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

A Day in Court
Scalia floats and Breyer rocks.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Roe v. Wade, creating the right to an abortion. This column is not about abortion. It is about the Supreme Court.

The preceding two sentences would strike some as a contradiction. As proved by the nomination hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee for John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court resides now in the political mind as all about the right to an abortion, with the rest of the world mere footnotes.

This week offered the last oral arguments in the Court's current term, and on Monday I went to see and hear what the nine Justices do when they are not thinking about abortion. Like a New Yorker who has never been to the Statue of Liberty and a Washingtonian who's never visited the White House, I've managed a career in political journalism without attending an oral argument before the Supreme Court. In a perfect world, all Americans would. Sen. Arlen Specter is proposing to make the Court's corner of the world perfect, but more (well, a little) on him later.

Attending the Supreme Court may be better than going to church insofar as you can't attend the Court in your gym clothes. The Court's hearing chamber may be the last best place to experience authentic decorum anywhere in America. Cell phones? They even forbid reading material. As the moment to begin arrives, a clerk instructs, "Remain absolutely silent." The best yet: "If you find yourself falling asleep, you are free to leave the courtroom." A somnolent 7-year-old in front of me was admonished twice.

The Court is not wholly immune from the compulsions of popular culture. When they entered the chamber, one felt in the presence of celebrities. They sit beneath a large suspended clock, with Roman numerals. Its sweeping second hand is visible to the attorneys who have 30 minutes to make their case. As the 10 a.m. start approached, the room fell from murmurs to whispers to still silence.

---

The Court heard oral arguments for two cases. The first, anyone could understand; the second, no one could understand. Both held the audience rapt.

The question before the Court in Brigham City v. Stuart was whether police in Utah, responding to complaints about a loud party in a house at 3 a.m., and arriving on the sidewalk to see a kitchen fight among four apparently intoxicated individuals, were wrong to enter the house without getting a warrant. Utah's courts ruled against the police.

Before a word of argument, Justice Scalia, his seniority placing him next to Chief Justice Roberts, had rocked backward, his face suffused with skepticism. To his left, Justice Souter had fixed the attorneys with a stiff, slightly scary New Hampshire stare. Justice Breyer, at one end of the bench, appeared grandly bored (he is not, as Michael P. Studebaker, Mr. Stuart's attorney, will learn). Justice Thomas famously asks no questions at oral argument, but he and Justice Breyer appear to be bench buddies, rocking back to smile and chat each other up over some point of shared amusement.

Brigham City is a case designed to amuse, insofar as Mr. Stuart's attorney is arguing that the police should have telephoned a judge for a warrant even as a fistfight was under way. The Fourth Amendment issue is that the states have varying and conflicting standards in such instances.

There is much discussion of warrants, knocks and noise levels.

Justice Souter: "Why knock if it's obviously a futile gesture, if no one will hear?"

Justice Scalia: "Why is the trial court obsessed with knocking?"

Justice Breyer: "The Constitution says 'reasonable.' A policeman isn't a lawyer. . . . A warrant would take half an hour. There would be more drinking, more violence. What's wrong?"

Mr. Studebaker: "It still requires a warrant."

Justice Breyer, appearing to side with the police, and with emphasis: "I'm saying it's not. It's reasonable." Justice Scalia has now sunk so low in his chair that only the top half of his face is visible to the gallery. He looks like he's floating in a Jacuzzi. Justice Stevens brings down the house with the morning's best probable-cause line: "The adults were intoxicated? That's a serious crime in Utah!"

Chief Justice Roberts, peering over his reading glasses, ends it: "The case is submitted."

---

Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust is from another planet. A class-action securities case raising issues of federal and state jurisdiction (of material interest to the mutual-fund industry), it is impossibly abstruse. Yet the colloquy between the Justices and the two competing lawyers fixates the audience. It is an 11-piece orchestra playing a complex legal concerto, and at the end the impulse is to applaud.

Later, the Justices will discuss the cases in a book-lined conference room around a rectangular table. Each Justice has three stacked pads of paper--small, medium and large. Clerks never sit in. There is no record of the conversation. Unlike the sprawling office edifices of Congress in the nearby streets, the Court occupies one square building. On a tour of its nooks and crannies, one encounters virtually no one. The Court's work is done by nine Justices and some 37 clerks, plus a legal team to help choose among 10,000 submitted cases.

Agreed: The issues that rage around the Court over constitutional interpretation are worth fighting over. But in an op-ed piece this week, Judiciary Chairman Specter raged that the public deserved to have the Court's "power" televised. He is wrong. TV of its nature would surely diminish the Court. Anyone who wishes may listen to past oral arguments at www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage. That includes, quite eerie to hear, Roe v. Wade.

Institutions matter. The Congress is approaching dysfunction. Perhaps the country can survive that. The American presidency has morphed beyond human scale. But to enter the Supreme Court and encounter the place, the people and its essential purpose is to feel carbon-dated to 1789. Though often maddening, its majesty remains intact.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

The Supreme Court

Daniel Heninger does an excellent job reporting on the daily deliberations that go on in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's an interesting peek at the workings of our highest court.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

A Day in Court
Scalia floats and Breyer rocks.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, April 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Roe v. Wade, creating the right to an abortion. This column is not about abortion. It is about the Supreme Court.

The preceding two sentences would strike some as a contradiction. As proved by the nomination hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee for John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court resides now in the political mind as all about the right to an abortion, with the rest of the world mere footnotes.

This week offered the last oral arguments in the Court's current term, and on Monday I went to see and hear what the nine Justices do when they are not thinking about abortion. Like a New Yorker who has never been to the Statue of Liberty and a Washingtonian who's never visited the White House, I've managed a career in political journalism without attending an oral argument before the Supreme Court. In a perfect world, all Americans would. Sen. Arlen Specter is proposing to make the Court's corner of the world perfect, but more (well, a little) on him later.

Attending the Supreme Court may be better than going to church insofar as you can't attend the Court in your gym clothes. The Court's hearing chamber may be the last best place to experience authentic decorum anywhere in America. Cell phones? They even forbid reading material. As the moment to begin arrives, a clerk instructs, "Remain absolutely silent." The best yet: "If you find yourself falling asleep, you are free to leave the courtroom." A somnolent 7-year-old in front of me was admonished twice.

The Court is not wholly immune from the compulsions of popular culture. When they entered the chamber, one felt in the presence of celebrities. They sit beneath a large suspended clock, with Roman numerals. Its sweeping second hand is visible to the attorneys who have 30 minutes to make their case. As the 10 a.m. start approached, the room fell from murmurs to whispers to still silence.

---

The Court heard oral arguments for two cases. The first, anyone could understand; the second, no one could understand. Both held the audience rapt.

The question before the Court in Brigham City v. Stuart was whether police in Utah, responding to complaints about a loud party in a house at 3 a.m., and arriving on the sidewalk to see a kitchen fight among four apparently intoxicated individuals, were wrong to enter the house without getting a warrant. Utah's courts ruled against the police.

Before a word of argument, Justice Scalia, his seniority placing him next to Chief Justice Roberts, had rocked backward, his face suffused with skepticism. To his left, Justice Souter had fixed the attorneys with a stiff, slightly scary New Hampshire stare. Justice Breyer, at one end of the bench, appeared grandly bored (he is not, as Michael P. Studebaker, Mr. Stuart's attorney, will learn). Justice Thomas famously asks no questions at oral argument, but he and Justice Breyer appear to be bench buddies, rocking back to smile and chat each other up over some point of shared amusement.

Brigham City is a case designed to amuse, insofar as Mr. Stuart's attorney is arguing that the police should have telephoned a judge for a warrant even as a fistfight was under way. The Fourth Amendment issue is that the states have varying and conflicting standards in such instances.

There is much discussion of warrants, knocks and noise levels.

Justice Souter: "Why knock if it's obviously a futile gesture, if no one will hear?"

Justice Scalia: "Why is the trial court obsessed with knocking?"

Justice Breyer: "The Constitution says 'reasonable.' A policeman isn't a lawyer. . . . A warrant would take half an hour. There would be more drinking, more violence. What's wrong?"

Mr. Studebaker: "It still requires a warrant."

Justice Breyer, appearing to side with the police, and with emphasis: "I'm saying it's not. It's reasonable." Justice Scalia has now sunk so low in his chair that only the top half of his face is visible to the gallery. He looks like he's floating in a Jacuzzi. Justice Stevens brings down the house with the morning's best probable-cause line: "The adults were intoxicated? That's a serious crime in Utah!"

Chief Justice Roberts, peering over his reading glasses, ends it: "The case is submitted."

---

Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust is from another planet. A class-action securities case raising issues of federal and state jurisdiction (of material interest to the mutual-fund industry), it is impossibly abstruse. Yet the colloquy between the Justices and the two competing lawyers fixates the audience. It is an 11-piece orchestra playing a complex legal concerto, and at the end the impulse is to applaud.

Later, the Justices will discuss the cases in a book-lined conference room around a rectangular table. Each Justice has three stacked pads of paper--small, medium and large. Clerks never sit in. There is no record of the conversation. Unlike the sprawling office edifices of Congress in the nearby streets, the Court occupies one square building. On a tour of its nooks and crannies, one encounters virtually no one. The Court's work is done by nine Justices and some 37 clerks, plus a legal team to help choose among 10,000 submitted cases.

Agreed: The issues that rage around the Court over constitutional interpretation are worth fighting over. But in an op-ed piece this week, Judiciary Chairman Specter raged that the public deserved to have the Court's "power" televised. He is wrong. TV of its nature would surely diminish the Court. Anyone who wishes may listen to past oral arguments at www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage. That includes, quite eerie to hear, Roe v. Wade.

Institutions matter. The Congress is approaching dysfunction. Perhaps the country can survive that. The American presidency has morphed beyond human scale. But to enter the Supreme Court and encounter the place, the people and its essential purpose is to feel carbon-dated to 1789. Though often maddening, its majesty remains intact.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Reducing Congressional spending

It's very obvious to many Americans that the Republican-controlled government is out of control when it comes to spending. Pete du Pont, former governor of Delaware and current chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, presents some suggestions to help Congress control spending excesses in an essay published by OpinionJournal this week.

Though I don't fully agree with all of his suggestions, he has written a thoughful piece that has some very workable solutions to our government's current problem with fiscal incontinence.

I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.

Dog the Swag
How Republicans can break the spending habit.

BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

"What do you suppose [they] are in the Congress for, if it ain't to split up the swag?"--Will Rogers

Splitting up the swag ("booty, money, valuables") seems to be what the congressional Republican Party is about.

The Heritage Foundation reported last week that this sixth year of a Republican Presidency and Congress will see government expenditures of $23,760 per household--$6,500 more than when they came to power in 2001 and the highest inflation-adjusted annual spending since World War II. Excluding homeland security, domestic discretionary spending has increased 7.6% per year. Education spending is up 139%; energy spending has doubled, and the Bush Medicare prescription drug bill will add $33 billion a year to federal expenditures.

A Republican House enacted all this spending, a Republican Senate approved almost all of it (Democrats did control the upper chamber for a little under two years in 2001-02), and a Republican president signed it all. Congress has appropriated a cumulative $350 billion more than the president requested in his annual budgets, but none of that additional spending was disapproved by him--indeed, President Bush is the only president since John Quincy Adams (1825-29) never to use his veto power in a full term in office.

One political truth is that when legislators see elected executives taking no action to control spending, they spend and spend. Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Budget Committee chairman, notes that "emergency spending"--which is not controlled by budget or other spending rules--averaged $22 billion a year in the 1990s and is now up to $100 billion a year. Last year 13,997 earmarks--money for hometown handouts--totaling $27 billion, were approved by Congress. In this year's House budget bill there are 9,963 of them costing $29 billion. The House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, pulled the bill from a floor vote when conservative Republicans demanded that votes be allowed on each earmark. But it will be back, and likely passed without amendment.

Last week's Specter swag grab--a $7 billion addition to domestic spending through an appropriations subcommittee that Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter chairs--was an addition that the senator says was "not sort of a gimmick; it is a gimmick." It was supported by every Democrat and a majority of the 55 Republican senators, which led Sen. Specter to conclude that the Republican party of the 21st Century is "now principally moderate, if not liberal."

Mr. Specter is pretty much on the mark about the Washington world, but he's dead wrong about America's Republicans. The national majority are neither moderate nor liberal but believe in conservative economic values: lower tax rates, controlled spending, and a market- as opposed to government-oriented economy. It is not Republicans who are liberal, it is the current Republican government that is fiscally liberal and the biggest budget-busting federal spenders since the 1960s.

---

So how can Republicans get their identity back? The current Congress is unlikely to fix itself from the inside--would a Congressional majority ever want to give up authority to do anything?--so it will be up to the American people to fix it from the outside.

First, the president must be persuaded to reduce congressional spending. He must use his rescission authority to force the Congress to vote on rescinding some $15 billion, about the average of what presidents have requested since the rescission process began in the 1970s. The president has proposed one rescission of $2.3 billion, but he must be far more aggressive.

Second, when Congress enacts legislation exceeding the president's requested budget spending levels, he should veto those spending bills. Legislators need to be forcefully reminded that spending requires executive as well as legislative approval.

Third, the president needs line-item veto authority. Most of the states governors have it and use it to control spending, and so should the President. When President Bush recently suggested a line-item veto, Mr. Lewis said the legislative branch of government had the spending power and to give any veto power to the president "could be a very serious error." But the opposite is the case: the line-item veto is a very serious improvement that the president and Republicans should pursue.

Next, Congress needs to clean up its earmark spending process. As a start it should adopt the proposal from Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) that each earmark's sponsor be identified in the text of spending bills, and that a vote be allowed on specific earmark proposals. Congress should also establish term limits for Appropriations Committee members so that the congressional political establishment cannot go on swag-splitting forever.

---

Then comes the hard part--the long-term solution of a constitutional amendment to control the Congressional spending process. Republicans should launch a constitutional balanced budget amendment effort as they did in 1982, when 32 states (two short of the 34 required) petitioned Congress for a constitutional convention to consider one; the U.S. Senate approved an amendment with the required two-thirds majority; and it failed in the House by 46 votes. There are several substantive choices--the Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights that limits spending to inflation plus population growth (with any additional revenue being refunded to the taxpayers) is one; another is the Delaware constitutional requirement that there be a three-fifths vote of the Legislature to approve spending more than 98% of revenue. A constitutional amendment requiring a supermajority congressional vote for spending in excess of revenues would be a substantial step forward.

Finally, there are two alternatives other than expenditure control that would change congressional spending habits. The first is the flat tax. Congress uses our current tax code's 66,000-page complexity to reward some constituents with lower rates and higher deductions, and punish others with the opposite. The flat tax would eliminate such political manipulation, raise government revenues, and save taxpayers much of the $150 billion and six million hours it costs Americans to comply with the current tax code.

Then there is the McCain-Feingold campaign spending law, a significant incumbent-protection device. It violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by limiting an individual's right to spend money to elect people he believes in. That makes it much easier for incumbents to get re-elected, no doubt why Congress is so eager to continue expanding its limitations on campaign spending. Repealing it would strengthen freedom of speech, increase congressional turnover, and reduce the seniority monopoly that has enacted the $350 billion in excessive spending.

None of these changes will be easy to accomplish, but a paradigm shift is needed to control spending excesses and restore the economic conservatism that has long been the core of the Republican Party's election victories. The White House has fresh staff leadership this week in Josh Bolten, a good time to begin changing its spending habits. Otherwise the next two elections are going to be the worst of times.

Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

AMT - A Monstrous Tax

Terence Jeffrey tells the reader about how the Alternate Minimum Tax is getting ready to body slam middle income families.

A prodigal GOP may have already spent middle-class American families into a tax increase.

It will come in the form of the Alternative Minimum Tax.

This is not good.

Seven factors of failure

Ralph Peters provides us with seven signs of non-competitive states.

The Seven Factors

These key "failure factors" are:

• Restrictions on the free flow of information.
• The subjugation of women.
• Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
  
• The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
  
• Domination by a restrictive religion.
• A low valuation of education.
• Low prestige assigned to work.

Go read his accompanying analysis.

"General"-izing

OpinionJournal has published an interesting editorial and they do NOT call for Rumsfeld's head. A decidedly counter-culture approach, I know.

I reprinted it in the extended entry.

The Generals War
What's behind the attacks against Rumsfeld.

Monday, April 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

So when did Generals cease to be responsible for outcomes in war? We ask that question amid the latest calls by certain retired senior military officers for Donald Rumsfeld to resign over U.S. difficulties in Iraq.

Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr., for one, was quoted last week as saying the Defense Secretary's "absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq" mean he is not "the right person" to continue leading the Pentagon. Mr. Swannack, who commanded the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, joins other ex-uniformed Iraq War critics such as former Centcom Commander Anthony Zinni and retired Army Major General John Batiste. But there's far more behind this firefight than Mr. Rumsfeld's performance.

Mr. Zinni in particular neither fought the Iraq War nor supported it in the first place. He is a longtime advocate of "realism" in the Middle East, which is fancy-speak for leaving Arab dictators alone in the name of "stability." What Mr. Zinni really opposes is President Bush's "forward strategy of freedom," not the means by which the Administration has waged the Iraq campaign.

---

As for those who've raised the issue of competence, we'd be more persuaded if they weren't so impossibly vague. If their critique is that Mr. Rumsfeld underestimated the Sunni insurgency, well, so did the CIA and military intelligence. Retired General Tommy Franks, who led and planned the campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, took a victory lap after the invasion even as the insurgency gathered strength.

If their complaint is that Mr. Rumsfeld has since fought the insurgents with too few troops, well, what about current Centcom Commander John Abizaid? He is by far the most forceful advocate of the "small footprint" strategy--the idea that fewer U.S. troops mean less Iraqi resentment of occupation.

Our point here isn't to join the generals, real or armchair, in pointing fingers of blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq. Mistakes are made in every war; there's a reason the word "snafu" began as a military acronym whose meaning we can't reprint in a family newspaper. But if we're going to start assigning blame, then the generals themselves are going to have to assume much of it.

A recent article by former Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor for the Center for Defense Information details how the U.S. advance on Baghdad in March and April 2003 was slowed against Mr. Rumsfeld's wishes by overcautious commanders on the scene. That may have allowed Saddam and many of his supporters to escape to fight the insurgency. General Abizaid also resisted the first assault on Fallujah, in April 2004, which sent a signal of U.S. political weakness. We don't agree with all of Mr. Macgregor's points, but it is likely that these Rumsfeld critics are trying to write their own first, rough draft of historic blame shifting.

Our own view is that the worst mistakes in Iraq have been more political than military, especially in not establishing a provisional Iraqi government from the very start. Instead, the U.S. allowed itself to be portrayed as occupiers, a fact that the insurgency exploited. But the blame for that goes well beyond Mr. Rumsfeld--and would extend to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and to Mr. Bush himself.

Mr. Rumsfeld's largest mistake may have been giving L. Paul Bremer too free a hand to govern like a viceroy in 2003 and 2004 when a more rapid turnover of political power to Iraqis, and more rapid training of Iraqi forces, might have made a big difference. More than anything else, that unnecessary delay in Iraq's political and self-defense evolution has contributed to the current instability.

But that is for the historians to sort out. What matters now is doing what it takes to prevail in Iraq, setting up a new government and defeating the terrorists. How firing Mr. Rumsfeld will help in any of this, none of the critics say. They certainly aren't offering any better military strategy for victory.

More than likely, Mr. Rumsfeld's departure would create new problems, starting with a crisis of confidence in Iraq about American staying power. What do Mr. Rumsfeld's critics imagine Iraqis think as they watch former commanders assigning blame? And how would a Rumsfeld resignation contribute to the credible threat of force necessary to meet America's next major security challenge, which is Iran's attempt to build a nuclear bomb? Sacking the Defense Secretary mid-conflict would only reinforce the Iranian mullahs' belief that they have nothing to worry about because Americans have no stomach for a prolonged engagement in their part of the world.

---

The anti-Rumsfeld generals have a right to their opinion. But there's a reason the Founders provided for civilian control of the military, and a danger in military men using their presumed authority to push elected Administrations around. As for Democrats and their media allies, we can only admire their sudden new deference to the senior U.S. officer corps, which follows their strange new respect for the "intelligence community" they also once despised. U.S. military recruiters might not be welcome on Ivy League campuses, but they're heroes when they trash the Bush Administration.

Mr. Rumsfeld's departure has been loudly demanded in various quarters for a couple of years now, without much success, and on Friday Mr. Bush said he still has his every confidence. We suspect the President understands that most of those calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's head are really longing for his.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

A case for federalism

David Gelernter has an essay up at the Weekly Standard that makes a good case for a return to federalism in America.

Federalism has been losing ground ever since FDR hugely expanded the scope and power of the central government in the 1930s and '40s, and segregationists used states' rights as a weapon against integration in the 1950s and '60s. Modern conservatives are likely to complain about court-ordered damage to democracy, not to federalism. And of course it's true that, when unelected judges override elected legislatures, democracy loses.

Good points are raised. Recommended reading.

Secretary of HUD - a snapshot

The Washington Post has a good biographical snapshot of Alphonso Jackson, Secretary of Health and Urban Development.

It is worth reading about this man who overcame the odds to become a respected and successful leader.

National Security Strategy

Michael Barone writes about the recently revised National Security Strategy document.

Those who are looking for a confession of error or a change of course will be disappointed. The March 2006 National Security Strategy -- call it NSS 2.0 -- reiterates much of the earlier document. NSS 2.0 repeats the doctrine of pre-emption: The United States "will, if necessary, act pre-emptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense."

Go read the whole thing.

Constitution quiz

Phoenix, over at Villians Vanquished has posted a pop quiz about the U.S. Constitution.

I only got 19 of 25 right (the amendment-specific questions kicked my tail), but that's still passing, at least. And considering I haven't studied the subject in over 20 years, I figure I'm doing all right.

However . . . I think I'm going to spend some time getting reacquainted with the Constitution of the United States of America. After all, it's my government . . .

Compromise & debate: the democratic process

OpinionJournal published an op-ed on Sunday that points out some clear indicators that democracy is happening in Iraq, after all.

It's a good read. I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

The Shiite Choice
Compromise and debate lead to democratic progress in Iraq.

Sunday, February 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

It's become a cliché in some circles that Iraq won't be ready for "Jeffersonian" democracy any time soon. And maybe not. But the more we watch the political developments that the U.S. is fostering in Iraq, the more we see the kind of compromise and debate that are crucial to democratic progress.

The latest news is the orderly election last weekend of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as the Shiite Alliance's candidate to serve as Prime Minister for the next four years. Mr. Jaafari has been Prime Minister since the election of Iraq's interim government in January 2005, and he won the permanent nod by a single vote over Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri). Mr. Mahdi, in turn, gracefully accepted defeat and congratulated Mr. Jaafari. "You should console me in this situation," Mr. Jaafari replied. "This is a big burden and a position of difficulties." He's certainly right about the latter.

---

Mr. Jaafari has been criticized as a weak leader. But to be fair, his government has only had a short time in office and has suffered from the stigma of being temporary. If he now goes on to win approval by Iraq's full parliament, his legitimacy will not be questioned and he'll have a fairer chance to show what he can do.

Though not the most inspiring of political personalities, Mr. Jaafari is well-liked by the Iraqi public and by his fellow political leaders. He delegates power and is willing to trust the skills of those around him. He has also never been associated with even a hint of corruption. And far from being a reformed Baathist, he has an untainted record of courageous opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Of all the Shiite Alliance's conceivable choices for the post, Mr. Jaafari is also the least beholden to Iran. U.S. diplomats seemed to favor Mr. Mahdi for some reason. But unlike Sciri, Mr. Jaafari and his Dawa Party don't seem dependent on Tehran and are unquestionably indigenous Iraqi patriots.

Mr. Jaafari can also call upon a strong team already in office. We're particularly impressed with Defense Minister Saddoun Dulaimi, a Sunni brought in by the Shiite Alliance despite the Sunni boycott of the January 2005 vote. Mr. Dulaimi has overseen the growth of the Iraqi Army into a better fighting force and he is also uncorrupt and free of any ties to the Sunni insurgents. Another face who could return is Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi. Although he didn't win a seat after leaving the Shiite Alliance to lead his own slate for December's vote, he has a good working relationship with Mr. Jaafari, as well as managerial skills and knowledge of financial markets.

Some degree of continuity will be important. The U.S. decision to cashier the postwar Governing Council in favor of Ayad Allawi and a team of unknowns in June 2004--only to see Mr. Jaafari and the Governing Council's other leaders win Iraq's first two elections--was unnecessarily disruptive and delayed the development of Iraqi institutions. The exception here is the Interior Ministry, which Mr. Jaafari delegated to Sciri and which has been credibly accused of mistreating some Sunni prisoners. That has to be cleaned up.

---

Speaking of Mr. Allawi, we hope he will stay in Iraq to lead the loyal opposition if he doesn't get a post in the new government. Many secular-minded Iraqis gave their votes to Mr. Allawi believing he was the U.S.-favored candidate, and they deserve a strong voice in parliament.

But whatever happens on that front, we trust that the closely divided vote in favor of Mr. Jaafari will allay Western fears of Iraq's domination by a monolithic, Iranian-linked Shiite bloc. The Shiite Alliance is a very uneasy coalition that includes leaders like Mr. Jaafari, Sciri's Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who don't always get along.

And watching them all as a source of moral authority is the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has also shown himself to be an Iraqi patriot who opposes the imposition of an Iranian-style clerical government. In any case, the Alliance lacks the two-thirds majority in parliament to impose its will, so compromise with Kurdish, Sunni and secular Shiites will be essential to successful governance.

Mr. Jaafari's nomination for Prime Minister is the latest positive step in Iraqi political development--which includes two elections, negotiations to write a new and liberal constitution and a successful referendum on that document. We'll let the cynics decided if this qualifies as "Jeffersonian," or merely Iraqi pragmatism, but whatever it is we'll call it progress.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

ABLE DANGER coverup?

ABLE DANGER was an operation designed to develop intelligence about Al Qaeda operatives through "data mining" public domain information available on the Internet. The operation was conducted prior to 9-11 and the name of Mohammed Atta came up and was associated with Al Qaeda. The rest of the story is unclear because there seems to be an internal struggle going on within the intelligence community. Public hearings are now being conducted to attempt to determine how much intelligence we really had on Atta before he flew a plane into the WTC.

Jack Kelly attended the first public hearing and had this to say about it.

This is a developing story that, I believe, holds some key information about the state of our intel community at the turn of the century.

Education excellence

Betsy Newmark seems to be doing an excellent job of educating her AP Government students. She assigned viewing the State of the Union address to her classes and the next day they discussed what her students thought about various aspects of the speech. The responses ran the gamut from super-liberal to hyper-conservative with everything in between. She was also impressed with the general perceptiveness of her students.

It's a good read. Recommended.

State of the Union address

Here is President Bush's State of the Union Address from Tuesday.

Usually SOTU speeches are pretty lame. This one, however, was pretty darn good. Though I'm a little worried by his plans for immigration -- they were not made clear in this address.

I've reprinted it in its entirety in the extended entry below.

President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address
United States Capitol
Washington, D.C.

9:12 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, members of the Supreme Court and diplomatic corps, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream. Tonight we are comforted by the hope of a glad reunion with the husband who was taken so long ago, and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King. (Applause.)

Every time I'm invited to this rostrum, I'm humbled by the privilege, and mindful of the history we've seen together. We have gathered under this Capitol dome in moments of national mourning and national achievement. We have served America through one of the most consequential periods of our history -- and it has been my honor to serve with you.

In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of goodwill and respect for one another -- and I will do my part. Tonight the state of our Union is strong -- and together we will make it stronger. (Applause.)

In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom -- or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy -- or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting -- yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership -- so the United States of America will continue to lead. (Applause.)

Abroad, our nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal -- we seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it. On September the 11th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state 7,000 miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. Dictatorships shelter terrorists, and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer -- so we will act boldly in freedom's cause. (Applause.)

Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies in the world. Today, there are 122. And we're writing a new chapter in the story of self-government -- with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan, and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink, and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom. At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half -- in places like Syria and Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran -- because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require their freedom, as well. (Applause.)

No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam -- the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death. Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder -- and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East, and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder.

Their aim is to seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world. Lacking the military strength to challenge us directly, the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear. When they murder children at a school in Beslan, or blow up commuters in London, or behead a bound captive, the terrorists hope these horrors will break our will, allowing the violent to inherit the Earth. But they have miscalculated: We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. (Applause.)

In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat. By allowing radical Islam to work its will -- by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself -- we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals, or even in our own courage. But our enemies and our friends can be certain: The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil. (Applause.)

America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe, and liberated death camps, and helped raise up democracies, and faced down an evil empire. Once again, we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed and move this world toward peace. We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders -- and for the others, their day will come.

We remain on the offensive in Afghanistan, where a fine President and a National Assembly are fighting terror while building the institutions of a new democracy. We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. First, we're helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized.

Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts, and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom. And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy. Iraqis are showing their courage every day, and we are proud to be their allies in the cause of freedom. (Applause.)

Our work in Iraq is difficult because our enemy is brutal. But that brutality has not stopped the dramatic progress of a new democracy. In less than three years, the nation has gone from dictatorship to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections. At the same time, our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration, clearing out insurgent strongholds, and turning over territory to Iraqi security forces. I am confident in our plan for victory; I am confident in the will of the Iraqi people; I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning. (Applause.)

The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home. As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels -- but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)

Our coalition has learned from our experience in Iraq. We've adjusted our military tactics and changed our approach to reconstruction. Along the way, we have benefitted from responsible criticism and counsel offered by members of Congress of both parties. In the coming year, I will continue to reach out and seek your good advice. Yet, there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. (Applause.) Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy. (Applause.)

With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor. A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, would put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country, and show that a pledge from America means little. Members of Congress, however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option: We must keep our word, defeat our enemies, and stand behind the American military in this vital mission. (Applause.)

Our men and women in uniform are making sacrifices -- and showing a sense of duty stronger than all fear. They know what it's like to fight house to house in a maze of streets, to wear heavy gear in the desert heat, to see a comrade killed by a roadside bomb. And those who know the costs also know the stakes. Marine Staff Sergeant Dan Clay was killed last month fighting in Fallujah. He left behind a letter to his family, but his words could just as well be addressed to every American. Here is what Dan wrote: "I know what honor is. ... It has been an honor to protect and serve all of you. I faced death with the secure knowledge that you would not have to.... Never falter! Don't hesitate to honor and support those of us who have the honor of protecting that which is worth protecting."

Staff Sergeant Dan Clay's wife, Lisa, and his mom and dad, Sara Jo and Bud, are with us this evening. Welcome. (Applause.)

Our nation is grateful to the fallen, who live in the memory of our country. We're grateful to all who volunteer to wear our nation's uniform -- and as we honor our brave troops, let us never forget the sacrifices of America's military families. (Applause.)

Our offensive against terror involves more than military action. Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change. So the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East. Elections are vital, but they are only the beginning. Raising up a democracy requires the rule of law, and protection of minorities, and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote.

The great people of Egypt have voted in a multi-party presidential election -- and now their government should open paths of peaceful opposition that will reduce the appeal of radicalism. The Palestinian people have voted in elections. And now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace. (Applause.) Saudi Arabia has taken the first steps of reform -- now it can offer its people a better future by pressing forward with those efforts. Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity. (Applause.)

The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people. The regime in that country sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon -- and that must come to an end. (Applause.) The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. (Applause.) America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats.

Tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran. (Applause.)

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, and fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands. Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery. We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption, and despair are sources of terrorism, and organized crime, and human trafficking, and the drug trade.

In recent years, you and I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls, and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform. For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life. Short-changing these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country. I urge members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home. The enemy has not lost the desire or capability to attack us. Fortunately, this nation has superb professionals in law enforcement, intelligence, the military, and homeland security. These men and women are dedicating their lives, protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. (Applause.) They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime -- so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act. (Applause.)

It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous Presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again. (Applause.)

In all these areas -- from the disruption of terror networks, to victory in Iraq, to the spread of freedom and hope in troubled regions -- we need the support of our friends and allies. To draw that support, we must always be clear in our principles and willing to act. The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world. Yet we also choose to lead because it is a privilege to serve the values that gave us birth. American leaders -- from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy to Reagan -- rejected isolation and retreat, because they knew that America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.

Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy -- a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom. (Applause.)

Here at home, America also has a great opportunity: We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

Our economy is healthy and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs -- more than Japan and the European Union combined. (Applause.) Even in the face of higher energy prices and natural disasters, the American people have turned in an economic performance that is the envy of the world.

The American economy is preeminent, but we cannot afford to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors, like China and India, and this creates uncertainty, which makes it easier to feed people's fears. So we're seeing some old temptations return. Protectionists want to escape competition, pretending that we can keep our high standard of living while walling off our economy. Others say that the government needs to take a larger role in directing the economy, centralizing more power in Washington and increasing taxes. We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy -- even though this economy could not function without them. (Applause.) All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction -- toward a stagnant and second-rate economy.

Tonight I will set out a better path: an agenda for a nation that competes with confidence; an agenda that will raise standards of living and generate new jobs. Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.

Keeping America competitive begins with keeping our economy growing. And our economy grows when Americans have more of their own money to spend, save, and invest. In the last five years, the tax relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses, and families -- and they have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth. (Applause.) Yet the tax relief is set to expire in the next few years. If we do nothing, American families will face a massive tax increase they do not expect and will not welcome. Because America needs more than a temporary expansion, we need more than temporary tax relief. I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent. (Applause.)

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we've reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending, and last year you passed bills that cut this spending. This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another $14 billion next year, and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009. (Applause.)

I am pleased that members of Congress are working on earmark reform, because the federal budget has too many special interest projects. (Applause.) And we can tackle this problem together, if you pass the line-item veto. (Applause.)

We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements. This year, the first of about 78 million baby boomers turn 60, including two of my Dad's favorite people -- me and President Clinton. (Laughter.) This milestone is more than a personal crisis -- (laughter) -- it is a national challenge. The retirement of the baby boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire federal budget. And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices -- staggering tax increases, immense deficits, or deep cuts in every category of spending. Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security -- (applause) -- yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away. (Applause.) And every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse.

So tonight, I ask you to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This commission should include members of Congress of both parties, and offer bipartisan solutions. We need to put aside partisan politics and work together and get this problem solved. (Applause.)

Keeping America competitive requires us to open more markets for all that Americans make and grow. One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy American. With open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker. (Applause.)

Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values, and serves the interests of our economy. Our nation needs orderly and secure borders. (Applause.) To meet this goal, we must have stronger immigration enforcement and border protection. (Applause.) And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty, allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally, and reduces smuggling and crime at the border. (Applause.)

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care. (Applause.) Our government has a responsibility to provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility. (Applause.) For all Americans -- for all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, and help people afford the insurance coverage they need. (Applause.)

We will make wider use of electronic records and other health information technology, to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors. We will strengthen health savings accounts -- making sure individuals and small business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get. (Applause.) We will do more to make this coverage portable, so workers can switch jobs without having to worry about losing their health insurance. (Applause.) And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB/GYN -- I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year. (Applause.)

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources -- and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research -- at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy. (Applause.)

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years. (Applause.)

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. (Applause.) By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past. (Applause.)

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people -- and we're going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science. (Applause.)

First, I propose to double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. This funding will support the work of America's most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources.

Second, I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit -- (applause) -- to encourage bolder private-sector initiatives in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life -- and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come. (Applause.)

Third, we need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We've made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science, bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms, and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs. If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world. (Applause.)

Preparing our nation to compete in the world is a goal that all of us can share. I urge you to support the American Competitiveness Initiative, and together we will show the world what the American people can achieve.

America is a great force for freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.

In recent years, America has become a more hopeful nation. Violent crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1970s. Welfare cases have dropped by more than half over the past decade. Drug use among youth is down 19 percent since 2001. There are fewer abortions in America than at any point in the last three decades, and the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row. (Applause.)

These gains are evidence of a quiet transformation -- a revolution of conscience, in which a rising generation is finding that a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment. Government has played a role. Wise policies, such as welfare reform and drug education and support for abstinence and adoption have made a difference in the character of our country. And everyone here tonight, Democrat and Republican, has a right to be proud of this record. (Applause.)

Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions. They're concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage. They worry about children in our society who need direction and love, and about fellow citizens still displaced by natural disaster, and about suffering caused by treatable diseases.

As we look at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before -- and we will do it again. (Applause.)

A hopeful society depends on courts that deliver equal justice under the law. The Supreme Court now has two superb new members -- new members on its bench: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. (Applause.) I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law, and not legislate from the bench. (Applause.)

Today marks the official retirement of a very special American. For 24 years of faithful service to our nation, the United States is grateful to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. (Applause.)

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. (Applause.)

A hopeful society expects elected officials to uphold the public trust. (Applause.) Honorable people in both parties are working on reforms to strengthen the ethical standards of Washington -- I support your efforts. Each of us has made a pledge to be worthy of public responsibility -- and that is a pledge we must never forget, never dismiss, and never betray. (Applause.)

As we renew the promise of our institutions, let us also show the character of America in our compassion and care for one another.

A hopeful society gives special attention to children who lack direction and love. Through the Helping America's Youth Initiative, we are encouraging caring adults to get involved in the life of a child -- and this good work is being led by our First Lady, Laura Bush. (Applause.) This year we will add resources to encourage young people to stay in school, so more of America's youth can raise their sights and achieve their dreams.

A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency -- and stays at it until they're back on their feet. So far the federal government has committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We're removing debris and repairing highways and rebuilding stronger levees. We're providing business loans and housing assistance. Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived.

In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country. The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child, and job skills that bring upward mobility, and more opportunities to own a home and start a business. As we recover from a disaster, let us also work for the day when all Americans are protected by justice, equal in hope, and rich in opportunity. (Applause.)

A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented, and treated, and defeated. More than a million Americans live with HIV, and half of all AIDS cases occur among African Americans. I ask Congress to reform and reauthorize the Ryan White Act, and provide new funding to states, so we end the waiting lists for AIDS medicines in America. (Applause.) We will also lead a nationwide effort, working closely with African American churches and faith-based groups, to deliver rapid HIV tests to millions, end the stigma of AIDS, and come closer to the day when there are no new infections in America. (Applause.)

Fellow citizens, we've been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. Sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore. Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.

Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma, and achieved only half a victory over segregation. The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. Like Americans before us, we will show that courage and we will finish well. We will lead freedom's advance. We will compete and excel in the global economy. We will renew the defining moral commitments of this land. And so we move forward -- optimistic about our country, faithful to its cause, and confident of the victories to come.

May God bless America. (Applause.)

END 10:03 P.M. EST

U.S. intel and Saddam's Iraq

Stephan F. Hayes has an op-ed at the Weekly Standard about the case for war in Iraq and how it has become publicly distorted. He discusses the Democrat party politics about this, but also talks about the Bush administration's failure to get the real story out to the nation.

Recommended.

The U.N. at 60

The L.A. Times provides a summary of the high points from a new movie : "Broken Promises, The United Nations at 60."

The rogues and terrorist and despots and dictators who run the show are not going to give up control. And they outvote us, they can veto things. You can't fix the U.N. because its members don't want it to be fixed.

-- Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, on the UN

It is interesting reading.

Judge Alito

Jonathan Adler, over at OpinionJournal has a good column about what qualifies Samual Alito for the Supreme Court. Here's an excerpt:

There being no question about Judge Alito's accomplishments and credentials, the debate over this nomination will focus squarely on his jurisprudence. Already at least one Democratic aide reportedly called Judge Alito a "right-wing wacko." Such epithets grossly distort his record. He is not a dogmatic conservative; his record shows a man more interested in getting the law right and faithfully applying applicable precedents than scoring rhetorical points or advancing an ideological agenda. As he commented in an interview earlier this year, "Judges should be judges. They shouldn't be legislators, they shouldn't be administrators."

The whole article is in the extended entry.

A Brilliant Judicial Mind
Alito isn't "pro-life" or "pro-choice" but "pro-law."

BY JONATHAN H. ADLER
Tuesday, November 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

With the nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, President Bush has returned to the approach that served him so well when he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court--that of picking the best available candidate irrespective of diversity concerns. Judge Alito's credentials are more like those we have come to expect from Supreme Court nominees, including an Ivy League education and substantial judicial experience--more than any Supreme Court nominee since before World War II. Yet he also has significant executive branch and prosecutorial experience that could add a unique perspective to the court.

There is nothing "stealth" about this choice, no need to fight over documents or trust that the president knows Judge Alito's "heart," for a brilliant judicial mind is clearly on display in his public record. Over the past 15 years he has shown himself as a thoughtful, serious conservative with impressive intellectual chops. This is not meant to denigrate the accomplishments or integrity of Ms. Miers, an accomplished attorney who has dedicated much of her life to public service. Indeed, it is to Ms. Miers's profound credit that after her withdrawal, she immediately turned to helping pick the next nominee.

Judge Alito is a supremely qualified nominee who should (though he may not) win a quick and easy confirmation. Some Senate Democrats will find reasons to oppose him, but he once held their support. He was confirmed unanimously by a Democratic Senate in 1990 only two months after he was first nominated by George H.W. Bush.

There being no question about Judge Alito's accomplishments and credentials, the debate over this nomination will focus squarely on his jurisprudence. Already at least one Democratic aide reportedly called Judge Alito a "right-wing wacko." Such epithets grossly distort his record. He is not a dogmatic conservative; his record shows a man more interested in getting the law right and faithfully applying applicable precedents than scoring rhetorical points or advancing an ideological agenda. As he commented in an interview earlier this year, "Judges should be judges. They shouldn't be legislators, they shouldn't be administrators."

---

Judge Alito is most often compared to Antonin Scalia. Years ago one journalist even dubbed him "Scalito," and the name stuck. While the two share an ethnic heritage and a constitutionalist judicial philosophy, it would be easy to overstate the comparison. Judge Alito's opinions are rarely adorned with zingers or verbal barbs at his colleagues. What he may lack in rhetorical flair, however, he more than makes up for with analytical rigor. Whereas Justice Scalia's caustic wit and penchant for tweaking his colleagues (particularly Justice O'Connor) might have cost him in building court majorities, Judge Alito's subtle charm and cooler approach could make him a powerful intellectual force on the court.

A Justice Alito may vote with Justice Scalia on many issues, but they would hardly march in lockstep--and when they disagree we would be treated to an intellectual debate of the highest order. One area we may expect to see differences between the two is on the First Amendment. Judge Alito's record suggests that he is more sympathetic to religious liberty claims, and more willing to hold that purportedly neutral government regulations unnecessarily impede upon the right to live in accord with one's religious ideals. He has ruled favorably in challenges by Muslims and Native Americans who argued that local laws impermissibly burdened the exercise of their faiths. There are also indications a Justice Alito could take a more expansive view of constitutional protection for free speech, including religious expression. In several cases he has voted to protect public school students' rights to express their own religious views.

Judge Alito's most controversial opinion may be his partial dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which he voted to uphold the constitutionality of a spousal notification requirement for abortions. The three-judge panel in Casey unanimously upheld several abortion restrictions adopted by the Pennsylvania Legislature, including a parental-notification requirement and a 24-hour waiting period before a woman could obtain an abortion. While both policies may restrict the availability of abortion, neither constituted an "undue burden" on a woman's right to abort her fetus, as the Supreme Court subsequently held. Where Judge Alito differed with his colleagues was on whether it was an "undue burden" to require married women to notify their husbands prior to obtaining an abortion. This requirement was subject to several exceptions and was easily circumvented.

After a careful reading of the available Supreme Court precedent, Judge Alito concluded that this spousal notification was a constitutionally permissible limitation on a woman's right to an abortion. His opinion gives no hint as to whether he would personally support spousal notification, or other regulations. This is not a judge's role, he explained: "Whether the legislature's approach represents sound public policy is not a question for us to decide. Our task here is simply to decide whether [the law] meets constitutional standards." This is the hallmark of judicial restraint.

Placing Judge Alito's Casey dissent in the context of his other abortion-related decisions further demonstrates his commitment to law over predetermined policy outcomes. In Planned Parenthood v. Farmer (2000), he joined the court in striking down New Jersey's ban on partial-birth abortion as inconsistent with prevailing Supreme Court precedent. Five years earlier, he joined a majority opinion that deferred to an executive branch agency's interpretations of federal law, even though doing so meant blocking a state from limiting government funding of abortions. In short, his record is neither that of a "pro-life" or "pro-choice" judge, but of a "pro-law" judge.

---

It is often said that judicial appointments are perhaps the most important part of a president's legacy. If so, this part of the Bush legacy should be secure. In nominating Chief Justice Roberts and now Judge Alito, President Bush has nominated two jurists with powerful intellects who could shape the law for years to come.

We may not all agree with all of their decisions, but we will respect their judgment, appreciate their analyses, and admire their commitment to the law. As a law professor, I look forward to the opportunity to study Justice Alito's future opinions with my students, as I am confident a Justice Alito would contribute well to a Supreme Court of which we can all be proud.

Mr. Adler teaches law at Case Western Reserve University and is a visiting professor at the George Mason University School of Law.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

TABOR for Texas!

The Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) sounds like a good idea for Texas, too. Here's a taste:

For example, during the boom years of the 1990s, when many states nearly doubled their spending, Colorado's TABOR spending limitation kept government growth to reasonable limits, and forced politicians to return over $3 billion dollars to taxpayers. When the recession hit at the end of the '90s, Colorado escaped the tax increases and budget cuts seen in California and other states that had over-spent in the good years.

In fact, since TABOR was enacted in Colorado, the state has regularly outpaced the rest of the country in economic growth. Advocates for limited government across the nation are beginning to demand this brand of spending cap. Citizens in Maine just turned in 55,000 signatures to put a TABOR-like measure on the 2006 ballot and a group in Oklahoma has launched a petition drive to establish a similar state spending cap there.

You should read the rest, though, because it's not all sweetness and light. The link within the quote was of particular interest to me.

Maybe we should press for a federal TABOR, as well!

Big government and the media

Peggy Noonan, over at OpinionJournal, knows a thing or two about big government and journalism. She talks about the contemporary role our government has assumed and how modern journalism has influenced it. But her article really revolves around how the US government is big on authority, but light on responsibility.

TV people like to say they only report the story, they aren't the story. But with their constant alarms and agitation they are contributing to a bad story. It is a story of a people who are encouraged to demand that the government make them safe, when the government will not make them safe, and the people know it deep in their hearts. Still, they give the government more authority in the hope that it will take responsibility.

And how we, the people, are helping it to get bigger. It's a good read.

I've reprinted it in the extended entry.

PEGGY NOONAN

The Scofflaw Swimmer
Government takes too much authority and not enough responsibility.

Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

With the DeLay indictment and another Supreme Court nominee soon to be announced, the subject has moved on from Hurricane Katrina. But I'm still thinking about it.

News reports and common media wisdom this week suggested Katrina was actually a smaller story than we thought--fewer dead than had been feared, more hype than was helpful. But to me the impact of Katrina is growing bigger and more consequential. It was a watershed event that revealed, unforgettably, the inadequacy of government; the fragility of presidential reputations; the presence of fissures within the dominant party; and the incapacity of the opposition to be constructive in response to the event, or even to show the bare minimum political talent of effectively capitalizing on it.

But I think Katrina revealed something else: a change in the relation of the individual and those who would govern him.

---

David Brooks on "Meet the Press" Sunday said he thought Katrina had given rise to a greater public desire for "authority" and "order." I found what he was saying typically thoughtful, but I differ with him. That difference gives rise to this piece.

I don't think Americans are or have been, by nature, lovers of authority. When we think of the old America we think of house-raisings on the prairie and teeming cities full of immigrants, but a big part of the American nature can also be found in the story of Jeremiah Johnson, the mountain man who just wanted to live off by himself, unbothered and unmolested by people and their churches and clubs and rules. He didn't like authority. He wanted to be left alone.

We live in the age of emergency, however, and in that age we hunger for someone to take responsibility. Not authority, but a sense of "I'll lead you out of this." On 9/11 the firemen took responsibility: I will go into the fire. So did the mayor: This is how we'll get through, this is how we'll triumph.

In New Orleans, by contrast, the mayor seemed panicked, the governor seemed medicated, and the airborne wasn't there until it was there and peace was restored. Until then no one took responsibility. There was a vacuum. But nature abhors a vacuum, so rumors and chaos came in to fill it. Which made things worse.

No one took charge. Thus the postgame commentary in which everyone blamed someone else: The mayor fumbled the ball, the governor didn't call the play, the president didn't have a ground game.

---

No one took responsibility, but there was plenty of authority. People in authority sent the lost to the Superdome and the Convention Center. People in authority blocked the bridges out of town. People in authority tried to confiscate guns after the looting was over.

And they did things like this: The day before hurricane Rita hit Texas, last Friday, I saw on TV something that disturbed me. It was not the usual scene of crashing waves and hardy reporters being blown sideways by wind gusts. It was a fat Texas guy swimming in the waves off Galveston. He'd apparently decided the high surf was a good thing to jump into, so he went for a prehurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. When I saw it the guy was standing there in orange trunks being astonished as the cops put handcuffs on him and hauled him away.

I thought: Oh no, this is isn't good. This is authority, not responsibility.

You'd have to be crazy, in my judgment, to decide you were going to go swim in the ocean as a hurricane comes. But in the America where I grew up, you were allowed to be crazy. You had the right. Sometimes you were crazy and survived whatever you did. Sometimes you didn't, and afterwards everyone said, "He was crazy."

Last week I quoted Gerald Ford: "The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." I was talking about money. But it applies also to personal freedom, to the rights of the individual, including his right to do something stupid as long as it's legal, like swimming.

Government has real duties in disaster. Maintaining the peace is a primary one. But if we demand that our government protect us from all the weather all the time, if we demand that it protect us from rain and hail, if we make government and politicians pay a terrible price for not getting us out of every flood zone and rescuing us from every wave, we're going to lose a lot more than we gain. If we give government all authority then we are giving them all power.

And we will not only lose the right to be crazy, we'll lose the right to be sane. A few weeks ago when, for a few days, some level of government, it isn't completely clear, decided no one should be allowed to live in New Orleans after the flood, law-enforcement officers went to the home of a man who had a dry house, a month's supply of food and water, and a gun to protect himself. The police demanded that he leave. Why? He was fine. He had everything he needed. The man was enraged: It was his decision, he said, and he was staying.

It is the government's job to warn and inform. That's what we have the National Weather Service for. It is not government's job to command and control and make microdecisions about the lives of people who want to do it their own way.

This sort of thing of course has been going on for a long time. In Katrina and Rita it just became more dramatically obvious as each incident played out on TV.

Governments always start out saying they're going to help, and always wind up pushing you around. They cannot help it. They say they want to help us live healthily and they mean it, but it ends with a guy in Queens getting arrested for trying to have a Marlboro Light with his Bud at the neighborhood bar. We're hauling the parents of obese children into court. The government has increasing authority over our health, and these children are not healthy. Smokers, the fat, drinkers of more than two drinks per night, insane swimmers in high seas . . .

We are losing the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs and demands of the state. Again, this is not new. It's a long slide that's been going on for a long time. But Katrina and Rita seemed to make the slide deeper.

It is hard for governments to be responsible, and take responsibility. It takes real talent, and guts. But authority? That's easier. Pass the law and get the cuffs.

---

I want to mention the media's part in this. This week it was their turn in the barrel. They reported rumors and hyped the event by going with every story that came by--rapes in the Superdome, people shooting at helicopters, armed gangs roving the streets, etc.

Rush Limbaugh is correct when he says what happened in New Orleans proves again that the famous filters of the MSM--the layers of editors they say protect them from the kinds of mistakes that can be made by bloggers and other lone cowboys of the information age--guarantee nothing in terms of the reliability of reportage.

But the media story has three parts.

Reporters on the ground in New Orleans deserve great credit. They were trying to get the story, trying to fill a vacuum--the vacuum left by government's failure to take responsibility. Government officials were giving them incorrect information--it was the mayor of New Orleans himself who said there may be 10,000 dead. They were often in considerable personal danger. They were human, tough, hardy, imperfect and often heroic. They deserve our thanks.

Then there were the anchors who became upset as the story unfolded and showed their emotion on the air. This wasn't bad until the end. When Anderson Cooper blasted a U.S. senator for verbal glad-handing it was not only refreshing, it was needed. But by the end the new indignation had degenerated, as such things do. When I last saw Soledad O'Brien I think she was berating a city councilman because someone left a Chihuahua in the Garden District. Now and then anchors remind you that you've swum with smarter porpoises.

But neither the rumor mongering nor the posing was really harmful, or harmful in a way that couldn't be remedied. The worst part of TV in the hurricane coverage was the nonstop, wall-to-wall, relentless hammering of the viewers about the danger they were in if they were in . . . the path of the storm.

TV is there to be watched. Each network and channel succeeds if you watch. They try--they're in business after all--to do everything they can to make you watch. They give you pretty reporters and bright human-interest stories. But they also try, when they get the chance, to terrify you. They try to terrify you into watching. Rita is on a flight path into the very heart of Galveston. The storm may drown Houston. If Port Arthur is submerged it will cause massive loss of life. All humans have been ordered by all levels of government to evacuate. Flee, I tell you! Run for your lives!

We will probably find out more people died of media-induced heart attacks than of Hurricane Rita itself.

If government cannot distinguish between authority and responsibility, media have trouble distinguishing between the helpful reporting of facts and the whipping up of fear.

The latter not only does not help, it hurts. Here's one way: when you endlessly pound America with the idea that Armageddon is imminent, you're pushing Americans to conclude that only something big can save them, something huge, something omnipotent--like government.

Which is only too happy to take authority. And only too likely to dodge responsibility.

TV people like to say they only report the story, they aren't the story. But with their constant alarms and agitation they are contributing to a bad story. It is a story of a people who are encouraged to demand that the government make them safe, when the government will not make them safe, and the people know it deep in their hearts. Still, they give the government more authority in the hope that it will take responsibility.

The two cops who arrested the guy swimming in the waves before the hurricane hit Texas: they did it in front of cameras. They probably did it because of the cameras. Big media is watching. Big government has to act.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," forthcoming in November from Penguin, which you can preorder from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

CIA reform

Jack Kelly has a post up -- a column, really -- about CIA Director J. Porter Goss' housecleaning efforts.

Jack makes some good points. I just hope that Mr. Goss is successful. We Americans have trouble doing intel at a national level, it seems.