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I posted yesterday about the whispering campaign by the Obama advisers through Andrea Mitchell of NBC that somehow McCain had cheated by gaining access to the questions asked by Pastor Rick Warren of their candidate. This was an obvious ploy to draw attention away from Obama’s comparatively tepid performance and to lay McCain’s crisp and authentic responses at the foot of some shenanigans.

One of my, ahem, “deep cover” sources in the Obama campaign has sent me a list of approaches Obama considered but rejected before settling on the “no zone of silence” allegation:

1.  McCain got the questions when one of his old buddies from the Hanoi Hilton finger-tapped them in Morse Code through the wall of the room in which McCain was staying.

2.  Pastor Rick Warren is really a Karl Rove operative promoting McCain to bring about a “third Bush term,” and the questions, as well as McCain’s powerful answers later, were beamed to McCain through the chip implanted in McCain’s brain by Darth Cheney himself, with help from the Secret Service agents in control of McCain’s transportation.

3.  What’s the big deal about McCain? Anyone can give clear, direct, and emotionally gripping answers to straightforward questions. It takes a complex and agile academic mind of a higher dimension to give nuanced and detailed circumlocutions and deceptive non-responses.

4.  McCain is 72 years old and has had 26 years in the Senate to build up his resume and provide solid responses of substantive achievement and strong character to these questions. Obama has had fewer than 4 years, so his reserve of experience from which to draw is much less. Even if McCain’s answers were twice as good as Obama’s, McCain has six-and-a-half times as much experience in national and international matters. So, Obama still performed more than three times as well as McCain did with what he had.

5.  The Reverend Jeremiah Wright warned Obama about how churches in these White communities operate.

6.  Comparing Obama’s performance to McCain’s is an example of the old politics of competition and conflict. People are tired of that. It emphasizes what divides us, instead of what unites us. When Rick Warren asked about having acted against his political interest, Obama reached across the aisle by talking about what he and John McCain share. When John McCain was asked about himself and his views, McCain just talked about himself and his views. In similar vein, McCain said that his most gut-wrenching decision was not to take the easy way out for release from the Hanoi Hilton, while Obama pointed out his opposition to the Iraq War while in the Illinois state senate. This shows, once again, McCain’s selfish concern about how decisions affect him, whereas Obama as a citizen of the world is concerned about how his decisions affect the people of Illinois and Iraq if war breaks out between them.

7.  Look, Michelle threatened to open a can of whup-a_s on Barack for his lousy performance, so we had to come up with some explanation that appealed to her paranoia about the way that The Man keeps down her people.

8.  In every previous presidential debate or interview of this type before this campaign, a White man was the winner. We need diversity among debate winners, so the quality of the responses should be only a part of the evaluation of who won. Clearly, in line with the Supreme Court’s decision on law school admissions, under a “holistic review” that considers race and diversity along with quality of performance, Obama won. Obama’s racial composition, along with his experience of having lived in many states as well as in Indonesia, clearly outshines McCain’s blinding Whiteness. And the only serious time McCain has spent outside Washington, D.C., is a few years in Hanoi.

9.  “Has anyone seen Hillary recently? Whaddya mean, you’ve lost her? Are the Superdelegates still under lock and key? No, I mean literally.”

10. McCain has had decades to prepare himself for this occasion. For more than five years in Hanoi, he had nothing to do but lay the groundwork for what he was going to say, even surreptitiously using his Communist captors as players in his underhanded scheme. In those years, Obama was barely out of diapers, and up to that time, he just remembers his mother saying repeatedly, “I hope I don’t have to change any more of those.” So, while McCain could draw on riveting stories of religious faith, all Obama took from those years was his theme of hope and change. McCain may have done a lot with a lot; Obama has done a lot with very little. Advantage: Obama.

In law, this is called res ipsa loquitur. In this context, it’s best just to let the article speak for itself.

Another thought-provoking article by Charles Murray about the irrelevance of the BA and undergradute education. He makes the point that the BA only shows endurance and, at best, perseverance. Instead, he proposes a system of certification based on tests of knowledge that can be acquired in other ways. He points to on-line educational programs or “universities, as an alternative to more expensive and time-consuming programs at brick-and-mortar colleges.

I think that he raises some valid points. Too many people are going to college for little discernible reason other than it gives them something to do to delay adulthood, all their friends are doing it, their families expect them to do it, and employers require the BA if they don’t want to end up having to take fast-food orders until social security kicks in. As I’ve noted before, the declining appeal of college for men also will eventually lead to alternative proposals for skills training. And, broadly speaking, males prefer to learn by doing, by more individualized supervised training, and through their own efforts. Studies have shown that classroom settings of long-term passive intake among a co-educational group are not as conducive to males’ learning as to females’. This is more of a problem among middle- and high-schoolers than among the more self-selected college cohort. But as more marginal students have entered college, this group has taken on more of the disconnected, seat-warming attitude of those secondary school students. Moreover, Murray’s point then also applies to secondary schools. Why, other than for baby-sitting reasons and to avoid overloading the job market too early, do we require everyone to attend school for twelve years? Those destined for particular academic pursuits and taking honors classes might have a reason. But the bored kid who would be better off in some apprenticeship or some more particularized certificate training program is just wasting time.

I do see some problems with Murray’s proposal of getting on-line certification when he begins to extend this to laboratory science disciplines and to some of the liberal arts and humanities disciplines that stress creativity, abstract reasoning, and dialectics and other argumentation. Such classic academic disciplines go beyond a rotely fact-based epistemology. The learning occurs in a guided group setting done frequently over a long time. That setting may have varying degrees of formality, from the peripatetic approach of Socrates to the classroom seminar that meets in room W311 on Mondays at 10:00 a.m. While such learning is not inconceivable through an on-line “university,” it is more accessible through a traditional school. On-line “discussion groups” don’t have the same pedagogical effectiveness for such endeavors.

Still, technological advances, the increasing use of on-line courses even at traditional schools, the success of “universities” such as University of Phoenix that cater to older and second-career students, and the mushrooming of certificate and degree programs through non-conventional deliverers of knowledge, point to changes and flux at least in post-secondary education. One possible good result from such changes would be to lessen the power of so many “progressive” professors to re-educate their students in a (in their view) properly “critical” perspective of America. Teaching for outcome-based certification testing lends itself less to indoctrination than the commonplace American college classroom.

I am in favor of drilling and exploring for oil wherever and however. So, I am in favor of drilling here, as well. If one drives on the Pacific Coast Highway towards and past Santa Barbara, there are oil platforms already, many of them hidden as artificial “islands.” They are hardly obtrusive eyesores. Usually when potential off-shore drilling is discussed now, it is to be rather far off-shore, beyond 50 miles. But I think the drilling mentioned in that article is in existing fields closer to shore. What I find interesting is that the seepage that the article discusses (the results of which I have stepped into many times at the beach, to my annoyance) can be avoided by drilling as it relieves the pressure that contributes to the seepage from the ground. So, drilling is environmentally friendly to people and wildlife!

Via Powerline, a quick review of the Obama plans for American military and defense spending. A good thing to review while Russia is acting like, well, Russia.

I have posted some thoughts and links about the prospect of China as a world power challenger to a 21st century pax americana. Here is an article by Ross Douthat of The Atlantic about Russian intentions in Georgia. He criticizes Max Boot’s suggestions of more confrontational tactics by the U.S. against Russia. But he sees Russia as unable to regain its former empire or as a world power challenger to the U.S. Rather, Russia’s internal conditions and contradictions at best make it a regional power. He provides a link to an Atlantic article from 2001 that describes in interesting detail the pessimistic outlook for Russia. While that article is outdated in various particulars, its essence is still correct. In some ways Russia may be better off today than eight years ago due to the rise in oil prices. But in other ways, such as the spread of infectious diseases and the continuing decline in population and in life expectancy, matters have got even worse.

Putin is a masterful politician (being head of the secret police tends to demonstrate a certain skill at ruthlessness and survival) and showed his political acumen in his planning of the Georgian crisis. His manipulation of events clearly outclassed his lightweight counterpart in Georgia. He correctly calculated Western impotence to change the outcome from whatever he wants. On the other hand, the Russian military campaign in Georgia, while obviously successful at destroying things and punishing a country that has 3% of the population of Russia, from what I have been reading was not executed particularly professionally. If this is an indication of their prowess, I doubt that our military tacticians (not our strategists) are losing much sleep over them. So, it seems to me that Douthat’s analysis is correct. It is foolish for the West to challenge the Russians in their backyard. And the Russians still have nuclear weapons. And they still cause mischief with their support of Iran and various other enemies of the U.S. So, they bear watching and containing. Perhaps, on occasion, they need push-back, such as, say, on their increasingly significant arming of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela with offensive weapons, and on the rumors of military bases in Cuba. Moreover, our flight from history, one hopes, has ended. Putin has exposed his game very clearly. From now on, when W looks deeply into Putin’s eyes, he will see what McCain wisecracked he saw, “the letters K and G and B.”

While the West cannot do much right now about the military situation, the political stage has suddenly been lit to show relations with Russia in a very different light that will be difficult to forget. If more realistic policies toward Russia emerge from this (and McCain has been far clearer about this need than Obama, to no one’s shock), the West’s temporary political embarrassment over Georgia will be a cheap price to pay.

Scott Ott explains the inexplicable at Scrappleface. Here it is the apparent pre-pubescent age of the Chinese gymnasts. It is all in the calculation of the years, you know, as, for example, one human year is seven dog years. As Scrappleface explains, those girls are actually in their twenties under our calculations. I think that Hollywood works the same way. People who were born, say, in the 60s acting and trying to look like they were born in the 80s. Madonna is only one of many who come to mind.

My eldest daughter played the French Horn in her middle and high school’s concert band. I know, the French Horn player lends itself to cheap comic effect in certain movies that deal with, say, band camps. That clearly does not do justice to either the instrument or the skill necessary to play it. This article delves into the sublime tone that can be coaxed from the instrument and the difficulty of doing so. I have always loved the Horn’s tone, and I have various recordings of horn concertos, military marches, and hunting overtures that show the Horn to wonderful effect. But I know about the pitch-related disasters that can and will happen to even the best players of this temperamental instrument. By the way, what we commonly refer to as the French Horn has the valve structure of what used to be known (and still is in Europe) as the German Horn. The French version has a different valve structure.

Yes, I listened to the Obama and McCain interviews by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church. If you didn’t hear them, here are the transcripts. I think that McCain clearly outpointed Obama on energy, candor, and substance. Obama came across as a congenial conversation partner who is playing out of his league in matters of substance. The more I see and hear Obama without the teleprompter, the more obvious it becomes why he will not have a series of townhall meetings with McCain as he once proposed. I used to think that the difference in their physical appearance would be very damaging to the public’s perception of McCain. But at these meetings they would have to answer questions, and, if the Saddleback performance is a measure, Obama would have his head handed to him by McCain. If I were Obama, I would cut back on the big audience rallies because they are such a contrast to Obama’s performance in press conferences and debates where the lack of his substance becomes embarrassingly apparent. Such rallies will be viewed as the empty staged events that they are, for a candidate who has nothing to offer but image. More evidence that Obama and his people know that he lost. They’re privately accusing McCain of cheating and letting their tools in the press, this time Andrea Mitchell of NBC, float the story. Of course, they wouldn’t do it publicly because then one of them, perhaps even the candidate himself, would have to have the fortitude to stand up and take the fire. But that would require them to demonstrate the character strength that they sorely lack.

The answer by Obama that annoyed me the most (among a number of them) was the one that dealt with various Supreme Court Justices. He wouldn’t have appointed Clarence Thomas because of a lack of experience? Actually, Obama began to say that word and in the middle changed it to intellectual capacity, calling Thomas a moron, in essence. I think that Thomas is very bright and the most original thinker in a number of constitutional matters on the Supreme Court. Even intellectually honest scholars who are not disposed to his views give him credit for his intellectual acumen. For Obama to challenge Thomas’s lack of experience and intellect is rich, indeed. On his worst day, Thomas runs circles around Obama on substance, especially in constitutional law. And then Obama mentions himself and Justice Scalia as both having taught at the University of Chicago, suggesting that they are of equal intellectual quality. Sure, just like a KIA is a performance car like a Ferrari. Powerline has a similar evaluation. I disagree with the Powerline guys, though, in that I remember Obama also mentioning Chief Justice Roberts as someone whom he did not support because of Roberts’s alleged strong executive branch leanings to the detriment of Congress and the Court. Hmm, I think that the dissent Roberts wrote in the Guantanamo detainee cases was over the fact that the Supreme Court struck down in an illogical opinion an act of Congress signed by the President.

On a related matter, I am not entirely comfortable with the role played by Pastor Rick Warren and Saddleback Church in this intensely political matter. This was far more than some informal appearance by each of the candidates for an interview geared to matters of interest of evangelicals as such. This was purposely much more like a political forum and has been treated that way by the public and the press. There sure wasn’t this type of coverage when a candidate met with Jerry Falwell. Nor would the event have passed muster in the same way had this been conducted by, say, the Catholic archbishop of Denver. I don’t know much about Rick Warren, and by all accounts, he conducted this fairly, assuredly more fairly than would have been done by the media wing of the Democratic Party that normally supervises these types of events.

But I have also read some articles that point to his odd takes on Christianity and and questionable, or at least naive and ignorant political positions. In politics, at least, and perhaps even in fundamental matters of faith, he seems to be playing above his competence, similar to his “friend,” Obama.

This is why I make students read and prepare cases for class. At least they won’t end up as embarrassing footnotes in court of appeals opinions. Now, before my students snicker at this genius’s law school alma mater, I should point out two things. First, he graduated from the Loyola Law School in New Orleans, not the one in Los Angeles. Different LA. Second, as suggested by my heading, I still hear too much of this type of response from my students despite my efforts, so this passage has the tone of gallows humor.

This is an absolutely fascinating look by Joshua Green of The Atlantic into Hillary’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. It reveals the Byzantine back-stabbing among her operatives, a paralyzed campaign staff, an incoherent and unfocused collection of messages, a spendthrift approach to campaign expenditures (not surprising: they just forgot that they can’t spend what they don’t have, like the government), and a confused and at times non-assertive, almost passive, candidate. But I think that her pollster and adviser Mark Penn’s analysis of Obama is dead on. Had Penn’s advice been followed cleverly but consistently, Obama would have lost, just as he did those primaries held once Penn’s negative approach was finally used.

If McCain hopes to win, he had better get his surrogates to start putting Penn’s message out there. Obama certainly is doing his best to reinforce the image that Penn describes:

“All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.
      Save it for 2050.
      It also exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

I previously posted about Mark Helprin’s article on the rise of China and the problems this will bring to the West if the latter’s fecklessness about military matters and geopolitical maneuvering does not end.

On the other hand, here is an article that argues that, whatever growth China may experience, it will not be the dominant power of the 21st century. There are too many hurdles, from China’s quickly aging population, to its non-existent social safety net, to its destructive environmental policies, to its inflexible political authoritarianism, to its unattractive ideology of suspicion, to allow China to become a world superpower. Its status as a poorly performing economy, on a per capita basis between Swaziland and Morocco, is unlikely to change significantly enough to propel China into the top ranks.

Interesting analysis of the fighting between Georgia and Russia over what seems to a casual observer just some minor piece of territory in the former occupied by people who want to be within the borders of the latter. There is a much greater strategic threat to Georgia’s existence from Russian control than sovereignty over a comparatively few square miles.

One more thought. As to the strategic importance of this area to the U.S., take a look at a map. Leave aside the major oil pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey, which provides the sole alternative to a trans-Russian pipeline for oil from that area to the West. If we want to supply our troops in Afghanistan, this is part of the air corridor to that country. Afghanistan is land-locked. To get there, the planes have to fly over Iran and Pakistan. At least the former, but I believe also the latter, has denied overflight rights for our military planes. Instead, we have to fly over Turkey or the Caucasus countries, and then over one of the Central Asian “Stans,” most favorably Turkmenistan. All of them are former Soviet “republics,” (and sometimes rather disreputable regimes) who will be watching with interest what happens to Georgia.

Yes, this would be funny. If it weren’t so true.

Whenever you feel optimistic about the future, consider reading an article by Mark Helprin. He’ll cure you of it quickly. Here is an article about the rise of China, in economic and military sectors. This, he argues, makes China a significant potential threat in the future, one to which this campaign is paying no attention. China’s ancient core cultural and political imperatives, such as its non-republican style of government, are immune to Western reform efforts, except to whatever small extent the Chinese choose to adapt them. That is why all the Western hand-wringing over Tibet will never change the facts on the ground. Helprin excoriates the West and its governing elites for their feckless pacifism, and their unwillingness to deal with the rising threat at a time when the cost of such action would be comparatively little. He catches the difference in attitude between China and the U.S. in his remark that “whereas the passion in China is to ‘let the civil support the military,’ including building the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the passion in this country is to protect sea mammals from sonar, thus successfully blocking coastal anti-submarine-warfare training.” How true; and how many other examples abound. He cites the shameful decline in the size of the American Navy and Air Force that represents the best deterrent against Chinese attempts to dominate the U.S. I fully agree with him on those points. I also agree that the matter could easily be remedied by expanding a very small amount of our GDP above that which we are spending now. Our spending now is well below our average peacetime military spending over the last 60 years. I would rather see tax money go to such efforts than to fund social boondoggles in health, welfare, and education spending that have seen trillions of dollars get poured into bottomless pits of spending and made little difference. As the old Republican saying goes, “We fought a war against poverty, and poverty won” (at least if the lamentations of liberals as to the horrific social conditions in the U.S. are to be believed.

So, while I am sympathetic to his call for more military innovation and spending consistent with our geographic position and our need for a strong presence on water and in the air and space, his Cassandra-approach fails to note China’s many weaknesses. He only indirectly notes China’s reliance on cheap labor, and then only to say how we have failed to match their economic growth because of our insufficient dedication to automation. That seems a bit strained. He points to China’s phenomenal growth, but other than a quick mention glides over the fact that China’s base from which to measure growth is so phenomenally low compared to ours. Rather he sees this in China’s favor, instead of a liability. As China’s economic baseline rises, its phenomenal rate of growth cannot sustain itself because of structural stresses in the economy in labor, capital investment, environmental impact, and political and social inertia. To counter-pose an example to his, if an economy has a GDP of 100 billion, a phenomenal growth of 10% makes the GDP 110 billion. If an economy has a GDP of 10 trillion, a tepid growth of 1% leaves the GDP at 10 trillion, 100 billion. The growth rate for the latter may appear sluggish compared to the former, but the latter’s GDP rose by an amount almost equal to the entire GDP of the former. He concedes that factors of inflation and population size and growth have to be considered in measuring the true state of affairs. It may be true that China eventually can catch the U.S., but, barring some cataclysmic American collapse, not soon.

Long before that happens, China’s own internal social and political contradictions will cause the growth rate to contract. One of those contradictions he alludes to, namely, the requirement of lots of cheap labor. The Chinese population is aging fast, perhaps faster than any other country’s. Where is that huge supply of cheap labor going to come from in a country with no social net and a one-child per family policy? To avoid major social unrest, labor is going to have to pay for that social net through taxes. That will help cool growth quickly. And that is just one of the problems. So, while China can become a rival and even a threat at some level to the U.S., it’s more of a threat to its neighbors, from Taiwan and Japan to the east, to Vietnam to the south, to India to the west, and to Russia to the north. Even now, the emptiness of Russian Siberia and its mineral richness must be a tempting target for the Chinese. That said, the call for, say, a doubling of the size of the U.S. navy to 600 ships (Helprin wants 1000 ships) is eminently reasonable. So is the call for larger numbers of advanced aircraft. So is the need to work on unconventional forms of warfare, such as electronic warfare, to deal with China as it evolves technologically.

Helprin overstates his case. China bears watching and, potentially, containing. But there are greater potential threats to the U.S. and its interests, both from large states (Russia), nuisance regimes (Venezuela and Iran), and non-states (various criminal terrorist enterprises perhaps aided by states). China is not an inevitable enemy of the U.S. Nor is it an awe-inspiring super power driven by some messianic expansionist ideology, or a freedom-loving, individual enterprise-exporting commercial republic. Being able to put on an impressive Olympic opening ceremony, complete with lip-synching moppet, does not make a super power.

This is an article by Professor Victor Davis Hanson about the real politik brilliance of the Russian attack on Georgia as part of a long-term strategy to humiliate the West. While the attack seems to have exposed weaknesses in the military itself despite a “victory” over an army a fraction of the attacking force’s size, the political part of Putin’s plan is coming up aces for him. The West’s placing of all its eggs in the “soft power” basket, except in Iraq and Afghanistan, will cause more and more problems in the next decade or two with Russia, China (over Taiwan), and numerous second and third-rate nations. In light of the knee-jerk reactions by Americans and Europeans that I have heard and read that, of course, somehow this is the U.S.’s and Bush’s fault through the Iraq war, etc., why would any enemy take seriously the U.S. and, even more so, the Europeans? I fully agree with Hanson’s assessment about the uselessness of NATO in Afghanistan, and the problem of Western dependence on oil and gas from thug states such as Putin’s Russia.

Hanson’s indictment exposes the core of the loss of Western resolve:

“The Russians have sized up the moral bankruptcy of the Western Left. They know that half-a-million Europeans would turn out to damn their patron the United States for removing a dictator and fostering democracy, but not more than a half-dozen would do the same to criticize their long-time enemy from bombing a constitutional state.”

So, I’m stuck in traffic on the 101 Freeway, getting bored reading the Coexist, Free Tibet, and Obama ‘08 bumperstickers on the Subaru in front of me, when a thought occurs to me. I remember Star Trek. What if I could convert Jupiter into pure energy and shift into warp drive? I could go faster than light and get to work in …. well, faster than driving on the 101. Actually, since I’m driving a Corolla, not the starship Enterprise, and since I’m just going to work, not to flee Klingons, I might be OK just converting something the mass of Mars or Obama’s ego into pure energy. But then, I’m not a scientist, so I figure someone trained in physics can tell me the exact manner in which this would work or crash.

Then I get home, and I read this. Now, as with many great ideas, the devil is in the details. For one, the idea wouldn’t be ready for practical application for several millenia, and I’ll probably be retired by then, not driving on the 101. For another, some of the details of the physics involved seem a bit, shall we say, hazy. It reminds me of the cartoon, where the physicist is explaining some concept to a colleague. The blackboard is covered with a huge mathematical formula. The physicist notes, pointing to a point in the middle of the formula, “And then a minor miracle occurs here.” That seems to be the nature of the explanation given by these physicists for their 11th dimension warp drive. (That goes to show you how far we’ve come in 40 years. In the 1960s, there were some who thought it was cool to drive listening to the 5th Dimension—a very tepid attempt at musical humor.) So for now, sad to say, Star Trek-type travel is still fiction just like William Shatner’s nuanced acting.

Oh, one more thing, if it’ll take only several millenia to figure out a way to convert Jupiter into energy, can we convert something into energy in just several years that is only one-thousandths the size of Jupiter? That would take care of our energy needs real well, so we wouldn’t have to use that spaceship to find other planets in the Great Pelosi-Reid Void of the Outer Galaxial Shelf to drill for oil.

Only in Hollywood. George Clooney has bought the rights to Salim Hamdan’s story. Hamdan was bin Laden’s driver and convicted of supporting terrorism. This poor doting family man with the fine sense of humor, as The International Herald Tribune described him, will now become an icon through the efforts of Mr. Clooney, long known for his (ahem) deep, thoughtful, and balanced approach to George Bush, Republicans, and the American military. Clooney will portray Hamdan’s military defense lawyer.

As Powerline dryly notes, there is finally an American military officer that Hollywood can admire.

Yet another reason why I try to avoid most recent Hollywood movies. Mr. Clooney is one whose movies I seek to avoid, in particular.

I have posted before about the importance of making preparations for further oil exploration in bringing down the price of oil now. There are some further columns along those lines here and here. I thought telling that the former column points to a scholarly article making this same argument that was rejected for publication—not because of academic deficiency in research or analysis, but because the conclusion was too obvious.

Here is a link with information about the truly stupendous nature of the shale oil deposits potentially open for exploration in the U.S., if the politicians remove the regulatory hurdles. If Jordan has the technology, so do we. Obviously, the economic feasibility of extracting such oil depends, as all such efforts do, on the price of oil and the cost of production. But there seems to be no real reason to believe that we are about to run out of oil. As the price rises, more and more ways to produce it become available.

While it is too early to ask the Men’s Wearhouse to stock these cloaks, science fiction is again edging closer to science fact. The possibilities are mind-boggling, both good and bad.

Another case of self-censorship by the West in regards to matters dealing with Islam and Mohammed. This time, Random House has withdrawn an offer to publish what appears to be a fictionalized account of Mohammed’s youngest wife, A’isha, from “her” perspective. She is the girl to whom Mohammed became betrothed when she was six or seven (I’ve read both ages), and whom he married and consummated their relationship when she was 9 and he was in his 50s. From the description, the book appears to have enhanced some of the sexual aspects and become somewhat of a bodice-ripper, as would be expected of a “fictionalized account.” Again from the description, the offended professor who sent the emails to various Muslim acquaintances and described this as “soft pornography” seems over-the-top in her verdict.

Random House’s decision obviously has nothing to do with a lack of literary, or at least commercial, value in the book. Read the exhaustive steps the author took to give the work verisimilitude. Rather, the publisher was concerned about violence from radical adherents of Islam, which, as a result of such reactions, less charitable commentators have archly called the “religion of the perpetually offended.” The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and the Danish publication of various cartoons about Mohammed caused precisely such reactions and obviously are on the publisher’s mind. The Da Vinci Code, The Last Temptation of Christ, and various and sundry “art works” that involve a crucifix in urine, the Madonna with dung smeared on her, and a homoerotic depiction of Jesus, to name a few, are of course fine and dandy. If Christians merely dare to object to such questionable works (or even to suggest that public, taxpayer-supported museums should not show them), they are denounced for their attempted “censorship.” Meanwhile, the work garners attention, and the creator gets fame and fortune. That is because Christians understand the concept of free speech, even offensive free speech. But it is certainly not beyond imagining that the success in inducing self-censorship in others, achieved by Muslims through threats and intimidation, will not go unnoticed by others who get offended by criticism or parody.

Here are the article by Asra Nomani and the response by Denise Spellberg, the University of Texas professor named by Ms. Nomani as the principal force that set in motion Random House’s self-censorship.

Here is a column by Diane West discussing Random House’s craven decision in comparison to the courage of the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. That indomitable survivor of the Russian Gulag had one criticism of the West and a warning to it. He feared the collapse of civil courage among the West’s elite and the beginning of the end for Western civilization that this collapse portends.

If you have a curiosity about the current conflict in the Caucasus between Russia and Georgia over a “break-away province” of the latter, here is a good overview of the inter-ethnic, inter-religious, and geographic mess that is the Caucasus. Countries have enclaves in other countries that the latter don’t recognize. It’s as if Mexico controlled a part of the interior U.S., and the U.S. controlled a part of interior Mexico. Michael Totten brings his expertise to the matter, and he links to further articles that explore the potential tinderbox that is the oil-rich and pipeline-strategic Caucasus. If you want some insight into the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia now playing itself out in the Russian military campaign, use Totten’s link to the Slate articles by Joshua Kucera and Anne Applebaum.

The Guantanamo military commission that convicted Salim Hamdan of providing support for terrorism (in the form of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden) sentenced him to only 5 1/2 years. He has served 5 years, so he could be out in six months. The details are in a post by Andrew McCarthy in National Review, along with a follow-up post. This is a shockingly low sentence. If this had been the bombing of the federal building in Kansas City and an American was caught who had been Timothy McVeigh’s (the bomber) driver and confidant, and had rockets in his vehicle when caught, I doubt that he would have received such a lenient sentence. As Andrew McCarthy points out, the civilian courts routinely hand down longer sentences than this. Does anyone think that this sentence will scare the low and mid-level members of terrorist groups?

I posted earlier that I thought that an appeal was certain. My opinion was based on the assumption that a sentence closer to the 30 years sought by the prosecution would be handed down. Perhaps the military judge did this to delay any appeal that challenges the military commission system as a whole, and to pave the way for more trials of heavier-duty terrorists whose challenge to the system would be less likely to find sympathy among judges. Make this a sort of show case to establish the bona fides of the system and let more cases percolate upward. I have heard nothing that would establish that as the reason for the sentence, but it might make smart strategic sense.

Hamdan will not necessarily be released, though. He can still be held after his sentence is over, if the government can establish under the procedure for unlawful enemy combatant detainees that he continues to be a threat. Perhaps we have not yet seen the end of Mr. Hamdan’s presence at Gunatanamo.

UPDATE: The International Herald Tribune’s description of Hamdan’s verdict as, “One poorly educated Yemeni, with an impish sense of humor and two little girls, is guilty of supporting terrorism by driving Osama bin Laden,” is really quite funny. Nothing about weapons and explosive devices in the car, nothing about his long-term relationship with Osama bin Laden. Hamdan sounds like someone who just happened to pick up a hitch-hiking bin Laden on his way to the mosque, and who is really a kind of cuddly teddy bear and good family man. The rest of the article puts the American military justice system on trial. Another “newspaper” that writes for the world-wide anti-American elites.

Via Powerline: Nothing to add. Hmm, actually there is something to add to the theme.

This cannot be good. If these people who bought the fake degrees and were hired based on them performed their jobs competently, what does that say about the value of such degrees and higher education in general?

Some more information about Title IX and its extension to hiring practices in university science departments. Title IX is part of a federal law that was passed to increase opportunity for females to participate in college sports. Because proportionately fewer females choose to participate in college sports than males do, and because the program looks to participation based on enrollment ratios, the higher percentage of women attending college (nearing 60% of overall college enrollment) has forced universities to abandon many men’s sports teams. So, while the program has indeed increased the number of female sports teams, it has gone well beyond helping women to hurting men. But the feminist defenders and cowed Congressmen brook no alteration to Title IX that might take account of differences in interest and enthusiasm for collegiate sports between the sexes and liberate colleges from the specter of litigation and financial penalties if they provide funds to male and female teams based on the actual level of participation. One ironic result about which I have read is that the University of Maryland athletic department has a constant struggle to recruit participants for its female lacrosse team, while the male lacrosse team has to turn away very eager and qualified participants. I would just open all inter-collegiate teams to men and women and have them compete head to head for spots on the teams. That would eliminate the claimed discrimination against women. Then, the colleges can also have intramural sports programs or club teams that reflect the true interest in participating in such activities among both men and women.

So what is done with a program that has undermined athletics overall? Why, we extend it to deal with the (non-existent) sexism in hiring at university science departments. Women are underrepresented in some of these departments in proportion to the Ph.D. applicant pool. But they are overrepresented in others and in various non-science departments as university affirmative action programs turn themselves into pretzels to hire females. As to female overrepresentation, nothing would be done, of course.

The real reason for the smaller absolute numbers of women in the physical sciences, math, and engineering is the different interests between the sexes in pursuing such topics and in later career decisions. Should a federal law that promotes less competitive and dedicated female participation in athletics be applied to do its corrosive magic in the vastly more important area of scientific research to force promotion of less qualified and interested females over more qualified and interested males? I wonder if the Chinese and other foreign challengers will be as accommodating as we are in stultifying their scientific research for the sake of politically correct numbers and quotas.

An interesting finding is that white men are underrepresented in 10 out of 15 academic areas and overrepresented in only 3, in relation to the applicant pool. Imagine that. Will anything be done about that? Come on, you know the answer already.

UPDATE: Another article about the impact of Title IX on men’s collegiate sports and the potential impact on developing American talent for success at international competitions in “lesser” sports.

This case out of the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals involves a strip search by school officials of a teenager for—wait for it—IBUPROFEN. The fact that they were looking for prescription strength ibuprofen doesn’t matter, since the policy under which they were acting applies to over-the-counter strength, as well. All they had as evidence was a statement from another student who had been caught with the ibuprofen and who implicated this 13-year-old honor student. When the school officials searched this girl’s belongings and found nothing, they proceeded to strip-search her. The student should be thankful, though, that the officials were looking for ibuprofen, not for aspirin. Given their demonstrated lack of mental acuity, those officials probably would have gone beyond a mere strip search and conducted a body cavity search looking for a_s-peer-in.

I remember the media and politicians going on for months wringing their hands and proclaiming their horror at the “abuses” at Abu Ghraib prison, where some whacked-out undisciplined guards had naked Iraqi adult prisoners (who were there because of suspected unlawful armed action) put women’s underwear on their heads. Those guards were prosecuted, and some of their superiors who had failed to prevent this were demoted. But where is the outrage when school officials force 13-year-old American kids to be subjected to a strip search over some ibuprofen pills? The worst that will happen to these officials is that they get sued in a civil action (with, most likely, indemnification by the school district for any damages awarded against them). And nothing will happen to their superiors. There are plenty of reports of similar actions by other school officials, so this is not unique. Could it be that government school officials tend to be predominantly from the part of the political spectrum whose actions enjoy a degree of immunity from criticism by the press? And then they tell us that the civilian justice system is so much better than the military justice system?

The dissent would have given immunity from suit to the school officials because “the law was not clear” at the time the search was conducted. There is a general rule that, while phrased differently under different circumstances, basically holds that you cannot avoid legal responsibility for actions just because you are not clear about the law. In essence, that applies most clearly if the action obviously violates fundamental tenets of ethical behavior and common sense. In criminal law, it is said that ignorance of the law is no defense at least to charges of male in se crimes, that is, crimes that are obviously wrong conduct (murder, theft, arson, etc.). Subjecting a child to a strip search over ibuprofen is, to me, so obviously against decent behavior and common sense that the absence of a clear pre-existing formal judicial or legislative pronouncement against such conduct is no excuse for civil liability. But then I am not as qualified to make such judgments as the dissenting eminences who sit on that court.

Some disturbing news from a convention by committed leftist nutroot activists. They are seriously planning unprecedented investigations and “Nuremberg-style” tribunals to look into “exposing” and, as some of them would have it, criminalizing, political decisions made by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, various Cabinet officials, other functionaries, down to fairly minor advisers. (As an aside, the left doesn’t like extraordinary military commissions to try accused foreign terrorists, but they find them just fine and dandy to try American citizens. Will there be foreigners on these “Nuremberg-style” tribunals, as there were on the original?)

Even if I were a Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferer, I would decline to head down that road. Once we begin to criminalize political decisions that do not involve direct commission by the accused of actual and commonly-understood crimes, we cannot turn back from that road. Sooner or later, the opposing political side will do the same thing to “our” politicians. And sooner or later, this will spread from going after the politicians, to going after the advisers, to going after the supporters.

I am firmly convinced now (as I was then) that the reason the Republicans went after Clinton to get him out of office was payback for what was done to Nixon 25 years earlier. That process in 1973 and 1974 had opened the door for a political opposition in control of Congress to remove a popularly elected President on flimsy grounds of what each President’s supporters saw as legal technicalities arising out of minor matters. Even if both Nixon and Clinton might have been removed for other constitutionally suspect conduct, the actual grounds appeared as make-weight arguments to many.

So, if the Democrats under an Obama presidency want to go after Republicans in this way, the Republicans sooner or later will have a chance to turn the tables. Count on them to do it. Republican elephants have at least as long memories as Democratic jackasses. And an anti-Bush witchhunt will divide the country in a way that will make that come about sooner rather than later.

The left has its nutters, and there is a real prospect that these people will emerge from their basements, media cubicles, and faculty offices to take roles in an Obama-Reid-Pelosi government. But the right has its nutters, too. While the Republicans do a better job at keeping them away from the controls than do Democrats at controlling theirs, an anti-Republican witch hunt will weaken the will to keep them at bay. I read enough blogs and comments to know that there are quite a few folks on the right who would listen sympathetically to a call to put Democrats (politicians, media types, professors, attorneys) on trial for treason or sedition for having leaked secret information that helps terrorists, for having vociferously and continuously undermined the American military, for showing more concern about the rights of accused terrorists than the lives of American citizens, and for other real or perceived resentments arising out of more general cultural concerns and policies. And a lot of these people seem to own guns.

Putting their Republican opponents on trial would make the Democrats fair game and would legitimize the right’s nutters in a way that they aren’t now. It would be a terrible blow to our democratic system, which depends on certain unspoken rules of civility toward the political losers to function smoothly and harmoniously. The left’s constant harping that any election they lose must be the result of voter manipulation has already undermined the system’s legitimacy. Let’s not increase the volume of bitterness through farcical show investigations and trials that would be far worse than the House Unamerican Activities Committee hearings or the Army-McCarthy hearings. It’s a genie that should be kept in a tightly plugged bottle.

Investigations and trials of politicians after they leave office are nothing new. The ancient Athenians and the medieval Republic of Venice formally recognized such proceedings. The former especially used them as a tool not just against personal corruption (which was the objective in Venice), but also as a tool of political recrimination. The downside was that each side used this against the other, with the side effect that often this would extend to attacks on the persons and property of supporters of those politicians. As Plato correctly recognized, this was an apparently inevitable byproduct of unrestrained democracies where the line between political decisions and legal culpability was not clearly established. It was conditions of that sort in democratic states that the framers of our Constitution saw as incompatible with personal security and rights in property. The Federalist Papers make this unmistakably clear and explain why the framers hoped to avoid such conditions through the structures of the new Constitution. But, ultimately, those structures depend on a spirit of toleration and moderation to operate effectively for the greatest human happiness and peace. That spirit won’t survive if we start criminalizing or quasi-criminalizing ordinary political decisions, as the liberal nuts described in the article want to do.

Were you as surprised and suspicious as I was when Hillary just folded up her tent and faded away a couple of months ago? After all, these are the Clintons we’re talking about. Then my ears perked up when I heard Bill Clinton basically parsing the term “qualifications” when asked a few days ago about whether Obama was ready to be President. “Well, one can make the argument that no one is really ready to be President. One could argue that…. One can make that argument.” Next question, please. I could almost hear Bill say, “Well, that depends on what the meaning of ‘ready’ is.” Not exactly a gushing endorsement, especially on something that Hillary had harped (yes, I chose that word on purpose). I then heard Hillary talk off-handedly about the need to put her name in nomination at the convention, “for the good of party unity.” Sure, Hill. Clearly, there is no unity over at the party of Bill and Hill, Barry and Michelle.

This article offers a tantalizing argument that Hillary may be planning a last-second take-away of the nomination that she has bamboozled Obama into thinking is his. While he travels on his Obama World Tour 2008 and then goes on vacation, she is still plotting and scheming like the Lady MacBeth caricature that she is. I would certainly enjoy such a spectacle, but I don’t see it happening. The reaction from the Black voting bloc would be devastating to her campaign and to the party. Rather, I think that she will go for maximum publicity, prime time speech, have her name put in nomination, and demonstrate how many supporters she has and how she has won the popular vote and the big industrial and swing states, while Obama gets North Carolina, South Dakota, and all those other rock-ribbed non-Democratic states. Then she and Bill continue their non-support of Obama, stoke the fires of Democratic and feminist discontent, and hope that her friend John McCain finally takes advantage of the public’s increasing Obama fatigue and the media’s at least slight annoyance with His Imperiousness, the Obamessiah. If McC. wins, she makes her push for 2012, when the public’s fatigue with Republicans will be even greater than it is now.

If I were conspiratorially inclined, I would add that some more politically harmful things will emerge about Obama, courtesy of the Clintons, in an October surprise, in exchange for a quiet McCain pledge not to seek reelection in 2012. Obviously, these things would not be announced, but all the stuff about Obama’s association with weird preachers and violent 60s radicals came out when Hillary was sinking politically, although it was known earlier. What a coincidence! I don’t know that this will happen. But for Hillary just to go quietly as if her loss is no big deal just makes no sense. Bill is less adept at hiding his thoughts, and it is rather obvious that he is not graciously taking Hillary’s loss to Obama as just another one of those things that happens to people every day.

Via Professor Shaffer: Indeed.

I wonder what the press and the left’s reaction would be if this were an anti-abortion activist encouraging such harassment of an abortionist and his family, rather than a former Democrat Senator and recent presidential candidate saying it about a (civilian) prosecutor of terrorists and that prosecutor’s family. I know how cities, “civil rights” groups, and courts would respond, namely, with statutes and injunctions against the actions urged by Senator Gravel. I know that because we discuss such specific reactions when studying Supreme Court cases in my First Amendment class that have upheld just such restrictions on the conduct Gravel urges.

BTW, Senator Gravel, it’s “lying down,” not “laying down.”

No, this is not from The Onion. But perhaps Bill is to monogamy what his former vice-president is to energy conservation (see post below).

This is good news. I have always been amazed how vigorously universities seek to censor speech in a way that would make the professors wax wroth if this were done to anyone else. First Amendment libertarians when their speech is at issue turn into moralizing censors when they disapprove of others’ speech. Prohibiting “generalized sexist speech” is such a  blatantly vague and overbroad abridgment of speech that it is hard to believe that a university with a law school would even attempt such nonsense. And trying to justify the restriction by analogizing it to a restriction on high schoolers who engage in organized speech that arguably encourages drug use in opposition to a school policy, is simply weak.

Al Gore was in the news not long ago challenging the U.S. to get away from carbon fuels for electricity production within ten years. I posted how Gore’s mansion, which was reported some time ago to use many times the energy of the average American home, was using more energy after he “made it greener.” But, Gore claimed, he was carbon neutral by buying offsets from others. I also posted about the vastly more environmentally friendly house that George W. Bush has in Crawford, Texas.

What is Gore doing these days? Well, our esteemed leader in all matters environmental seems to have bought a huge, 100 foot houseboat, complete with jet skis. Of course, he claims, the houseboat produces 40-50% less carbon emission than other boats of similar size (which, no doubt, are the size of the typical recreational boat owned by average Americans). Powerline estimates, rather generously, the carbon footprint of Gore’s environmental boat. Like its owner’s, the boat’s footprint is more Bigfoot than Tinker Bell. I can’t wait for Gore’s speech telling average Americans to get rid of their outboard motor fishing dinghies and buy sailboats, and for his challenge that within ten years all jet skis be powered by batteries.

The news channels have just announced that there has been a verdict by the military commission in Guantanamo that is trying Osama bin Laden’s driver, Hamdan. Hamdan has repeatedly challenged the constitutionality of the process and tried to delay the trial. The news channels have not yet announced what the verdict is.

UPDATE: Here are the details of the verdict. It’s hard to know what to make of this. Obviously, there will be an appeal, likely to the Supreme Court, to test the constitutionality of the military commission structure enacted by Congress in response to the last Hamdan decision. The split verdict is unsurprising. They didn’t want to be seen as rubber-stamping all the charges. At the same time, they weren’t going to reject the whole process and let Osama’s driver, caught with two surface-to-air rockets in his car, go free. One interesting point is that one type of charge of which he was acquitted was the terrorism conspiracy charge. That was the charge that the Supreme Court in the first Hamdan case held to be improper for a presidential military commission to try. Presumably that problem was avoided by having these commissions approved by Congress, but who knows whether the Supreme Court will follow its own precedent.

Of course, if the defense attorney is correct in his charge that the crime of which Hamdan was convicted was not a crime until after his client was seized, he may be raising an ex post facto law claim. That could give a reviewing court a way to reverse the conviction without reaching the merits of the constitutionality of the military commission process. Or they could uphold the commissions on the way to resolving whether providing material support to terrorists is a crime that is so bad that everyone is on notice that such conduct is criminal even in the absence of a formal statute. A “common law of war” analogy.

A few years ago, Reason magazine published an article about the benefits of free enterprise that do not show up in hard economic statistics. Although the article was published in reference to the economic slowdown that followed the bursting of the tech sector speculation bubble and the 9/11 attacks, it resonates strongly today.

This article covers an Obama appearance before journalists in which he discusses the need for Americans to atone for its history of unjust treatment of American Indians and Blacks not just through words, but also deeds. He specifically refers to “reparations.” As someone who came to this country as a child, long after slavery and Jim Crow laws, I might feel less responsible than others for what happened 150 years ago to the ancestors of people making a claim for reparations.

“Reparations” would be a horrible mistake. The idea itself is bad. If you give them to Blacks, why not to others? If you base them on slavery, would that exclude those who came to the U.S. voluntarily, say from the West Indies, as Colin Powell’s parents did? If you base them on more amorphous concepts of discrimination, why not extend this to Americans of Chinese, Irish, Mexican, or whatever descent? All new immigrant groups tend to suffer discrimination and can point to victim-hood.

From whom should they come? Everybody? Why? Shouldn’t it be from the descendants of slaveholders or slave traders? Requiring corporations who, say, insured slave property before the Civil War to pay is based on highly attenuated and speculative profit considerations.

How do we determine who is Black? Would Obama qualify for reparations, when he is half-White, and his Black ancestor came from Kenya only fifty years ago and just to study (on scholarship) before he left to go back to Africa?

Whatever amount is calculated will never be enough, like in a payoff to extortionists, because the social conditions that are really giving rise to these demands are much more deeply-rooted than can be dealt with by a one-time infusion of a comparatively small amount of money. Looking to cure the social pathologies of various communities by throwing some money their way is even less likely to succeed than has been the case with the much larger amounts that have been thrown at them over the years. If anything, those payments have created a culture of victimhood and entitlement that stands in marked contrast to the themes of self-reliance and hard work that characterized the exhortations of those groups’ leaders in previous generations.

Liberals are so fond of looking at “root causes.” Yet the only thing they can come up with to explain the problems within those communities is the same simplistic and jejune one that they have come up with year after year for the last seven decades, “racism.” When the problems persist or have got worse for at least some portion of those groups, and when racism as an explanation becomes ever more detached from the reality of changed social attitudes, one would think that other root causes would be examined. But there are simply too many who have too much invested, economically, politically, and ideologically, in the current fantasy world of politically correct racial posturing for the self-proclaimed “reality-based” liberal community to base their proposals on, well, reality.

BTW, note the fawning and adulation that Obama received from the assembled “sober” and “detached” journalists, despite the admonition that they not display such sentiments. The mere fact that such a warning had to be given already tells a lot. And we can trust these journalists to tell the story of the campaign in a neutral and even-handed manner?

A couple of months ago, I posted an email that I received from someone unknown to me who informed me that he had launched legal actions against the President, the Chief Justice, former U.S. Attorneys General, and numerous other officials. The actions were purportedly brought by him on behalf of the U.S. as criminal cases. The cause supposedly was that these people were engaged in attempts to kidnap and murder him, and that, further, they were engaged in a seditious conspiracy to cover up these dastardly deeds.

Well, it has been my pleasure to receive two further emails from him detailing additional legal actions he has brought. By now the defendants include over 14,000 government officials, Senators, Congressmen, judges, as well as the usual suspects (Bush, et al.). It may not be a vast right-wing conspiracy yet, but as my emailer describes it, there seems to be at least a half-vast conspiracy. He is certainly impressed with his own importance, if he thinks that a conspiracy of that magnitude is focused on him, and so far unsuccessfully. After all, the great Julius Caesar was done in by a conspiracy of only about sixty.

The two emails follow for your reading enjoyment. It may not be kind to have some laughs at the expense of this obviously tortured (in a figurative sense) soul, but then I am simply sending along what he craves others to read. If you go to his personal website to which he links (www.anthonykeyter.com), he appears from his picture to be rather normal. That picture may have been taken before he suffered this outrageous ill fortune at the hands of these 14,000 and climbing, conspirators. You will also have the opportunity to see his letters to the Boeing company implicating them in the treasonous and otherwise criminal activities of the various defendants. Incidentally, he claims he was a test pilot for them at one time. I wonder if any of his sentiments are the product of premature pressure loss in one of the test vehicles. You will also be able to peruse the various legal actions, civil and criminal, he has pursued against government officials and his wife(!).

Despite the hilarity that these emails provide, read them as I did, with a sense of relief that you are not the protagonist in this tragicomedy.

The Economist has two articles on the issue of religious conversion here and here,