The University of California system took some predictable steps to tighten its belt this week in the face of the state budget crisis, cutting some services and boosting student tuition. Equally predictably, students across the state have responded with a series of self-concerned protests, taking over campus buildings at Berkeley and UCLA.
Perhaps most predictably of all, the New York Times has started in with its faux-poignant protest coverage, as illustrated in this slide show (complete with a don't-tase-me-bro moment). Two things about this mess:
First and foremost, the protests are about privileged kids demanding subsidies from working people. The UC system will continue to be heavily subsidized by taxpayers, and the students who attend are among the most naturally gifted, with the highest future earning potential, in the country. This is especially true at the system's flagship schools of Berkeley and UCLA, where the protests have been most intense. Narcissism and self-absorption are the norm on college campuses, but it really is pushing the limits to throw such a tantrum at the idea that you will be getting a smaller amount of free money taken out of the paychecks of strapped taxpayers, most of whom could never dream of the advantages and opportunities you enjoy.
Second, these protesters claim the mantle of the free-speech movement, but it is a betrayal and a subversion of the principles of free speech to forcibly occupy a school building and block out its rightful owners and occupants (including other tuition-paying students). The very idea of free speech is to facilitate the peaceful exchange of ideas, without allowing the use or threat of force to distort the process. The whole enterprise suffers when thugs begin breaking out the chains and barricades and committing property crimes in order to get their way.
With the long winter nights drawing in, what NROreaders need is a puzzle to while away the hours. I have just the thing.
I subscribe to The Economist, and the November 21-27 issue arrived in the lunchtime post. The Economisthas both text and pictures, of course. Most of the pictures are photographs, but some are little drawings meant to illustrate some point or other. Taken out from the surrounding text, these drawings are often very enigmatic -- often teetering on the edge of surrealism, in fact.
Here are three from the current issue. You may either (a) try to figure out what news topic they are illustrating, or (b) supply spoof captions in the manner of the New Yorkerweekly competition, or (c) just quietly congratulate yourself on being a wide ocean away from this sort of Brit-journalistic whimsy.
In the recent magazine, Mr. Nordlinger writes: "[H]is words give comfort and heart -- plus ammunition -- to those bewildered or dismayed by the present period, and unable to express themselves as a Krauthammer can."
I would say the same of all who write for National Review.
Ditto Yale, ditto So Cal. To complete the sad trifecta, I also work in Hollywood. For my penance, I will now give $100, say 10 Hail Marys, and thank You Know Who for Jack Dunphy.
I asked Ralph Reed, who, thinking she's probably not going to run for president in 2012, says: "Unless she runs, not much."
Reed doesn't doubt that Sarah Palin may consider running for president of the United States, but recommends a little space between 2008 and when she does. He adds: "My sense is that she is going to be a major force in the party---and a force for good, by the way...."
So who in 2012? Reed says:
One thing you can count on in every presidential cycle in the Republican party: There is always a surprise. That was true for Pat Robertson in 1988, Pat Buchanan in 1996, John McCain in 2000, and Huckabee and Palin in 2008. No matter how many times you chart the primaries, you can't predict the unpredictable, and someone you least expect catches fire. Who will that be in 2012? By definition, we really don't know.
Rep. Lamar Smith, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and immigration-enforcement stalwart, wheedled updated statistics out of DHS and found that, in the words of the Washington Timesstory:
Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.
And note that Obama's crowd didn't take over until after the first third of FY 2009, so the numbers are likely to fall even further next year. At a DHS conferenceon immigration yesterday for employers, J-Nap's comments made it clear that she would permit no illegals to be arrested at worksites -- only Americans (employers) would be arrested, if even that.
At the same time, the administration is hyping its new worksite enforcement strategy of auditingfirms' personnel files and requiring illegal employees to be fired. Two of the highest-profile incidents were American Apparel, an L.A. firm headed by outspoken amnesty proponent (and Canadian immigrant) Dov Charney, which had to fire one-quarter of its workers; and ABM Industries, which had to fire 1,200 of its employees in Minnesota. In addition, where there's proof that employers knew of the illegal status, ICE issues (small) fines.
I share the frustration of some immigration hawks that audits can't replace arrests; one retired ICE agent, speaking to Minnesota Public Radio, asked "Why give people an opportunity to leave the employment without taking any action against them as individuals?" In fact, this kind of employer-only enforcement sends a not-so-subtle message that illegal workers are not morally responsible for their actions (including multiple felonies).
Be that as it may, a widespread and sustainedcampaign of audits of firms likely to employ lots of illegals is better than nothing. Especially for big firms, the disruption of work and the unwanted attention will be a powerful incentive to enroll in E-Verify (and the Social Security Number Matching System and the Image Program) to make sure they screen out illegals from their work force. But that will only happen if employers (and illegal aliens) are persuaded that the pressure will not abate; otherwise, it'll just be the latest political stunt from Washington, and if you keep your head down for a while, it'll pass.
The audit strategy is a repriseof a Clinton-era effort tried one time at Nebraska's meatpacking plants and then discontinued. The employers and politicians were so crazed at the sucess of the initiative that they got Janet Reno to fire the INS official who came up with the idea. It shows how much things have changed that this strategy, so controversial ten years ago, is now touted by the open-borders crowd as their answer to the evil Bush-era policy (at least at the very end of the Bush term) of actually arresting illegal aliens andsanctioning employers. And the only reason the debate has shifted so much is that the political class didn't get its amnesty and was forced to get progessively more serious about enforcement. If we keep denying them amnesty, maybe they'll eventually start enforcing the law in earnest.
I think this sentence from an essay in the current Timemagazinepretty much sums up, not only the tension between Obama's campaign rhetoric and the present realities in the war against terror, but also his general policies abroad:
"Since then, experts within the government have struggled to come up with a policy that can reconcile the President's ideological opposition to indefinite detention with the apparent need to make use of it in order to close Guantánamo."
One can sympathize with Obama, who now faces bad and worse choices on all these matters. But why did the self-righteous Candidate Obama, in Manichean fashion, assert throughout 2007 and 2008 that the Constitution-shredding Bush had gratuitously trampled our rights under the pretext of national security? Moral clarity without responsibility then, complexity with the responsiblity of governance today?
I give up surfing the web during Lent every year, although I always grant myself a dispensation to read NRO -- giving that up would entail too much suffering.
The stimulus money was supposed to be directed to job creation, remember? Well, you will be happy to know that instead the government thought, in this economic context, it would be a good idea to spend $452,000 on "Respiratory Health Impacts of Wildfire Particulate Emissions Under Climate Change," which is basically a study that will likely show that wildfires cause smoke and that smoke can cause respiratory issues.
There's Ponnuru (for SCOTUS!). There's Dalyrmple. Jeff Bell. Alex Alexiev. Brookhiser. Nordlinger. Brookhiser. Steyn. Rob Long. Kevin Hassett. And much more.
Surtaxes are the new rage this year. Nancy Pelosi wants a 5.4 percent surtax on the rich to pay for half of the health-care-reform costs and now senior House Democrats have introduced legislation that would impose a surtax beginning in 2011 to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill would require the president to set the surtax so that it fully pays for the previous year’s war cost. But it would allow for a one-year delay in the implementation of the tax if the president determines that the economy is too weak to sustain that kind of tax change. It also would exempt military members who have served in combat since Sept. 11, 2001, along with their families, and the families of soldiers killed in combat.
Here is my question: If the Democrats believe that fairness requires that everyone shoulders a piece of the cost of the war, why shouldn't that rule also apply to health-care reform?
It appears I got my transcripts of yesterday's press conference confused. The remarks about global governance were not made by Baroness Ashton -- although she doubtless agrees with them -- but by the new president of Europe himself, Herman Van Rompuy.
Amnesty keeps receding into the future. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the amnesty point man in the House, had pledged to introduce a bill in October, then promised it in November, and this week, in a conference call hosted by the Campaign to Reform Immigration for America ("a project of the Tides Advocacy Fund"), announced that he'll be introducing a bill in December. I wouldn't even count on that, given that lawmakers might not want to go home for Christmas break and hold town halls where people complain about both health care andimmigration (which is why Chuck Schumer has said his Senate companion bill will be introduced in January, after lawmakers are safely back in Washington).
Where do you start? This is a really unbelievable bill.
Because the provisions that the CBO looked at are so jiggered, even though CBO's numbers are real, it's about an unreal assumption.
If you start with 2015, which is essentially where the benefits start, and you go into the future, every ten years you will have a plan that is not [costing] $800 billion. It will be [costing] $1.5 trillion. Which means that except for the early years -- in which there are no benefits paid out and a lot of taxes paid in -- you're going to have a huge net deficitwhich will probably be around half a trillion every decade.
Secondly, even if you had the revenue neutrality, which you won't, everybody assumes: Well, that is going to help us economically. In fact, to achieve revenue neutrality, you have to increase taxes, and you're going to have to have spending cuts.
Those increases in taxes, and cuts in spending, are now not available in reducing the otherdeficits outside of health care which are going to amount to $9 trillion over the next decade.
So you create a new entitlement, you support it with new taxes and spending cuts which you cannot now use in reducing the outside -- the other -- deficits, which are destroying the dollar and the federal budget.
…Of all the ways in which you can raise revenue, in the Reid bill it's done with raising the payroll tax in the middle of a recession with over 10 percent unemployment -- exactly at a time when you want to encourage employment and lower the payroll tax. It's perverse.
On the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s mammogram recommendations:
People are reacting as if we never had a panel or a recommendation before. Years before, we had a recommendation from a panel like this who said start at age 40. Every day the FDA is deciding this new drug is a good one or not -- and if it's not, you don't ever see it.
So it is not as if these kinds of independent commissions don't exist and determine what we get and what we don't. So the issue here is not panels in general or recommendations in general, it's the recommendation in and of itself.
…And the problem here is a mammogram is extremely inaccurate. One in ten tests which are returned as cancer are not, so you have a 10 percent false positive, which causes not just anxiety and suffering, but new tests, more [diagnostic] radiation, even a [surgical] procedure, and perhaps other harms …
And the balance of this is -- how much that is worth [vs.] how many …real cancers are caught.
So when you have inexact tests and inexact screenings, you have to make a determination and decide how to balance them. I think the report is a fairly good recommendation. It's not aimed at saving money. It would, but that's not what its recommendations are based on.
In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits -- and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.
this pollsaying that a majority of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election from McCain last year; I'd like to see some other pollsters ask the same question. But if it is true, it suggests a widespread disconnection from reality that's pretty troubling. It's not as though it was a close election.
McCain's share of the national popular vote also signaled trouble. On the surface, his total, 45.6%, seemed respectable. Many Republican presidential candidates had received less in recent memory. But all of those candidates save one, Barry Goldwater, had run races with serious third-party candidates. Goldwater aside, McCain's showing was the worst GOP result in a two-party race since Wendell Willkie garnered 44.8% in 1940. To look at it another way, Obama's 52.9% was the second-highest for a non-incumbent Democrat in American history, trailing only FDR's 57.4% in 1932.
Maine Republican who is a fan of Sarah Palin, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, which means I am pushing the left side of your supporters. Many would consider me a RINO, so "going rogue" here in making a contribution to NRO, but truly appreciate your reasoned thoughtful conservatism. Big fan of Rich, Jonah and Mark.
Thanks for your effort, I read and appreciate NRO writers every day. I just today emailed Senator Sherrod Brown asking him to rethink his political future, if he goes against Ohioans on health insurance legislation.
I donated a pittance a day or so ago but felt the need to send this observation. As an avid reader of NRO generally and The Corner in particular, there is an ethereal sense of union &camaraderie spilling from the various contributor comments being posted by KJL.during this fund drive. It seems to not matter the amount given or from what part of the globe contributions have come; whether the contributors are professional, blue collar, unemployed or stay at home - the certain sense of optimistic urgency threading through so many of the comments is palpable! Keep on fightin’…..
OK, OK, I surrender. I’ll make a contribution simply because you guys are the best. But please, please, please stop this never ending stream of contributor emails deifying your blog. It’s as if NRO were a holy shrine for conservatives and you guys were the high priests and priestesses of the tribe to whom we readers come annually to pay tribute and raise hosannas to the sky in thanks that you deign to bless us with your written word. I don’t mind the tribute part but this adulation crap does grow tiresome. Where do I pay?
I promise it won't last much longer. The Corner will soon go back to its regularly scheduled programming -- and should be hopping tomorrow on the Senate, by the way.
In the meantime, other e-mails suggest to me many of you are enjoying the comments from your fellow readers, and not because you think we're priests and priestesses, but because you enjoy the company of your friends -- even the ones you haven't met, but are in the same room with, virtually, day in and day out.
After taking Derb's advice and getting a government job (though one that is actually a federal function) I feel it's my duty to make a donation to NRO with my inflated government salary.
Without NRO and its crystal clear ideas and detailed debates to clear my head from hallway conversations at post, I'm sure I'd find my new office much foggier.
From a nobody who's feeling the squeeze of the era in which we live (Obamania?). Many co-workers here at the office were already let go (a "non-billable", good friend of nearly 10 years was abrubtly and unceremoniously escorted from the building yesterday). Those of us remaining know we're on borrowed time . . . suffice it to say the mood is not particularly jubilant, but we persist because that's what Americans do. I personally draw much strength from the spirit of Mr. Buckley (Nearer my God to Thee) and his legacy on display in the talented group of conservatives there at NRO. We're never giving in and, because you're important as well as entertaining, here's a little donation to see that y'all stay put as well. Blessings . . .
Thank you, National Review! We are subscribers to the hold-in-my-hands magazine as well as all-through-the-day readers of The Corner. Quick! Take this money before our government decides it knows better how to spend it than we ourselves do.
We've been doing these online fundraising drives for a few years now and I'm so overwhelmed this year in a special way by the volume of donations at numbers like $15 and $20 from students and the unemployed. From families with not a lot of disposable income. People care about what's happening in their country and see the need now in a critical way for smart debates, good ideas, and somewhere that highlights what works and exposes what doesn't. We'll keep at it -- in no small part thanks to your support.
There's an excellent and ongoing response to this morning's postabout conservative novels. Looking for some good fiction? Read the comments section at HeyMiller.com. Please feel free to join the conversation, too.
When I visited the DDay memorial last summer, I wished they did have something to acknowledge the USSR's role in WWII. It did have an impact on the Normandy invasion, because the Wehrmacht in June 1944 was a lot weaker than it was on June 22, 1941; and most of the combat that had weakened it was on the Eastern front.
I would propose instead of a bust of Stalin, a bust of two Red Army soldiers. One poor Ivan Ivanovich (or whatever the Soviet equivalent of GI Joe was) who died fighting the Germans, and his mate, Ivan Denisovich, the Red Army veteran who went off to the Gulag as the war ended because he had been captured by the Germans at one point. (Ivan Denisovich in Solzhenitsyn's novel was in the Gulag for having surrendered to the Germans).
We've seen a tremendous out-pouring of support in response to the fundraising drive. Kathryn's posts are just the tip of the iceberg. Well over a 1,000 of you have contributed, and I can't tell you how encouraging and inspiring this is. Some of you I've already thanked personally, but just let me say this to everyone else: thank you, thank you, thank you. For the rest of you, it's still not too late to give, and I thank you in advance!
My conservatism was recently awakened by my graduate work in finance and economics. I now realize that conservative principles not only work but are necessary conditions for freedom. NRO provides a great forum which both challenges and strengthens my beliefs as I try to awaken in others that which I know resides in nearly all Americans.
How much would you pay to watch Sarah Palin beat the stuffing out of Andrew Sullivan? What would Barack Obama’s official Kenyan birth certificate be worth to you? How about a videotape proving that Bill Ayers not only wrote Dreams from My Father, but also translated it from the original Russian? How about a new Christmas CD with Robert Byrd singing all of his Yuletide favorites (“I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,”“I’m Dreaming of an Even Whiter Christmas,”etc)? What would you pay for a DVD of John Kerry saying “Do you know who I am?”one time too many at a biker bar?
Alas, I can’t promise to deliver any of those things any more than I can immanentize the eschaton or hold more than 46 Cheetos in my mouth at any one time.
But what I can promise you is that NROwill continue to be there for you, like the creepy dude at the local library who smells like cabbage and keeps following you around to tell you that nobody really understands the true story of the War of 1812. Except we’re not creepy (“Keep telling yourself that”—The Couch) and don’t smell like cabbage (except around the in-house festival of St. Stanislaus), and while we may have our theories about the “War”of 1812, we instead mostly share conservative insights, news, anti-zombie strategies, humor, timewasters, debates, philosophy, tips about how to maintain sanitary standards in public restrooms, and lamentations about the sorry state of hand-drying technology therein. And, of course, we share dog stories of high caliber while tastefully referencing rodents of unusual size, Cthulhu, Mendoza, cats, and the ghosts of Mecosta: all on account of the flies. We keep the mainstream media on their toes like Robert Reich at a urinal, and cause the Left to fume and fulminate like volcanoes uncowed by the presence of airborne laser-lancing equipment.
And you in turn keep us engaged like Picard’s Enterprise at Warp 9. Okay, that’s lame. You keep us on top of our game like Michael Moore sitting on a Parcheesi board? You keep us sharp like the crease in Mark Steyn’s trousers? (“Move away from the keyboard, Goldberg”—The Couch.)
Whatever.
We love our readers, but not in the sense that we want to take you out back of the middle school and get you pregnant. We’re grateful to you for so much. And not just your money, which —don’t get me wrong —we want more than Joe Biden wants to be taken seriously. You’re our fact checkers and our tipsters. Our best friends and our harshest critics. What was it John Cusack said about Nick in The Sure Thing? “Nick’s your buddy. Nick’s the kind of guy you can trust, the kind of guy you can drink a beer with, the kind of guy who doesn’t mind if you puke in his car. Nick!”Well, you’re our Nick, and we want to be yours, but not in a gay way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And Nick, buddy, pal, Kemosabe, we really do need your help. Sure, I could give you the Tommy BoyCallahan-brake-pads speech, asking you to give for your sake and your daughter’s sake. Sure, I could show you the books and run you through the numbers. And you could also take a look up a steer’s you-know-what, but why not take the butcher’s word for it?
Please help. For me. Please.
Oh, I know what you’re saying: “Why should I do it for Goldberg? I had to kill a man with my bare hands in Machu Picchu for my money.
OK! OK! OK! KJL, your putting reader's comments in the Corner has shamed me into it. I donated last year, but this year I was going to claim "it's the economy." Ha! No excuse. I rely on NRO for my daily "right" view of the world which is so lacking elsewhere. So here's my modest contribution.
Oh, how the international community loves Barack Obama —loves to stiff him, play him along, and manipulate him. He’s the world’s celebrity ingenue, the slender naïf perpetually undone by the recalcitrance of foreign leaders.
And you thought the Pelican State had seen it all. Nearly five years ago, then-Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, a Democrat, hid $90,000 cash in his freezer. Following an FBI bribery sting, he was finally sentenced to 13 years in prison last week. Turns out he was a cheap date.
ABC News reportsthat Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu, one of the last Democrats holding out on supporting Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s health-care legislation, has sweetened Louisiana’s slice of Obamacare by $100 million (via disaster-relief dollars) in a little-noticed provision on page 432 of Reid’s bill. Landrieu, of course, is not doing anything to hide this $100 million allocation. If anything, she’s proud of it. It’s “something she has been working on for a long time,”says Robert Sawicki, Landrieu’s press secretary.
Not all of Landrieu’s colleagues, however, are quite so happy about it. One reason: The $100 million provision was hammered out behind closed doors on Thursday in Reid’s office.
“I’m sure they were talking about more than the weather,”Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) tells NRO. Look, says McCain, “there should not be a surprise boost in Medicaid funding for states that have been declared disaster areas in the last seven years. If you look at what’s in that provision, you see the benefits those states (that are home to fence-sitting Democrats) will receive, especially Louisiana, which suffered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
“We need to engage in an extensive debate over these things,”says McCain. By dispensing such fine-print favors, he adds, Reid could be seen as trying to “buy”Landrieu’s vote.
“In a 2,074-page bill, there’s a lot of room for mischief,”says McCain.
In light of the current debate over health-care reform and its cost, this video, narrated by Dan Mitchell, is a very good reminder of why government-run health care is a terrible idea that will cost billions more than what is announced. For instance, Mitchell reminds us that government's ability to forecast the cost of its new entitlement programs is terrible. When Medicare was created in 1965, the long-term forecast was that the program would cost $12 billion in 1990. Wrong. It turned out to be over $100 billion. Today, it costs $500 billion. The same thing is true with Medicare and pretty every other government-run program.
The important message of this video is that no matter what CBO, Pelosi, the Senate, or Baucus tell us, either version of these plans are budget busters and that we will, as taxpayers, have much to lose.
By the way, here is Don Marron's estimate of the cost of the Senate bill:
If I only I could give 10 times as much. As a conservative high school Latin teacher in blue-state New Jersey, I would be completely lost without my daily lunch-break dose of NRO. Every day I eagerly share your insightful commentary and brilliant reporting with my few but stalwart conservative colleagues. God bless you all.
Someone leaked thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit in the U.K. yesterday. I haven't had time to read them all or to assess whether or not they're genuine, although I understand the CRU's head has suggested they are. In any event, my better half has literally done my job for me and put together a round-up of links about the leak. If they are genuine, some of the remarks are damning and will be very hard to explain away. Despite that, I imagine the usual suspects will be waving their hands so fast they'll take off.
The National D-Day Memorialin Bedford, Va., plans to install a bust of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, according to this report. Sounds like a really bad idea. Okay, so the Soviets were a part of the Allied coalition during the Second World War. But I don't recall Cossacks storming the beaches at Normandy -- and this is a D-Daymemorial we're talking about. We shouldn't go out of our way to commemorate one of history's most murderous enemies of freedom.
UPDATE: E-mail:
you left out the best part of the D Day story with Stalin.
"the national parks service responded positively when we informed them of Stalin bust"
NRO's contribution to the maintenance of freedom is incalculable so I will have to start with a down payment of $100. Keep up the good work. Cheers from down under.
But one of my listeners has a far more interesting theory...
Oprah will be the VP nominee in 2012 No question about that . . . it is set in stone . . . Joe B will step aside saying that the world is in great shape and he is going to retire to the Delaware Valley. Makes perfect sense . . . she has nothing left to prove . . . will kill any opportunity for Sarah P . . . and will allow the Prez to put in place his successor . . . she wraps up her show in September 11 and starts campaigning immediately . . . You heard it here first . . .
Oprah vs. Sarah? Now that would be a money-maker on cable PPV.
Yesterday, the European Union decided who its leaders should be following implementation of the Lisbon Treaty. Note I say the European Union and not the people of Europe, because they have no role in the process. Europe has once again become an elitist/technocrat's dream, and there is plenty of evidence of the technocrats' delight in this press conference:
There is no better example of the elitism than the "High Representative," referred to Cathy Ashton, who is of course The Baroness Ashton of Upholland, ennobled in 1999. Wikipedia outlines her resume before taking the ermine:
Ashton studied a broad degree in economics at Bedford College, University of London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London), graduating with a BSc in sociology in 1977. Between 1977 and 1979 Ashton worked at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was later elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs. As of 1983 she worked for the Social Work Training Council.
From 1983 to 1989 she was Director of Business in the Community working with business to tackle inequality, and established the Employers’Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now, and the Windsor Fellowship.
She chaired the Health Authority in Hertfordshire from 1998 to 2001, and her children's school governing body, and became a Vice President of the National Council for One Parent Families. She briefly advised the producers of several U.S. television shows, most notably Boston Legal on sensitive storylines.
She therefore gains the position of High Representative without ever having submitted herself to electoral approval, but with an impeccable leftist technocrat's curriculum vitae.
Now what does she say in that press conference?
2009 is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet.
Lord Monckton (who is not seeking high office, I should point out here!) was roundly condemned for warning that global governance was the aim of the enviro-technocrats for the conference at Copenhagen. Here we see that aim laid out plainly, for all Americans to see, by the new chief envoy of the European Union. American sovereignty is under threat from the transnational technocrats, and the financial and environmental "crises" are the stalking horses for that goal.
You are the only thing keeping me sane at this moment in time . . . as I sit at my desk in the Capitol . . . facing a long, long few weeks ahead. I am not alone on the Hill in saying that you all are true heroes. True intellectuals. True conservatives. And most importantly, simply true. Thank you for what you do.
The EU's oligarchs have now chosenthe union's new "president" (actually the president of its council, which will likely prove to be an important distinction) and "foreign minister" (or to give the job its full, magnificently pompous, vaguely Ruritanian title, "high representative"). For the former job, they have picked an obscure Belgian prime minister (are there any famous Belgian prime ministers?), a federalist fanatic whose only real achievement has been to keep his miserable wreck of a nation together over the last year or so. As for the high representative, she's an obscure British baroness (and current EU trade commissioner) who never seems to have been elected to anything, but is married to an left-establishment journalist and did suceed in helping force the dishonest, undemocratic and unlovely EU ConstitutionLisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, qualifications that have meant something to someone.
Europe's press is underwhelmed by the election of these two dullards, but the choice is good news for two critical constituencies (in fact, the only two critical constituencies -- as the national electorates count for nothing). Neither the Belgian nor the baroness will represent too much of a challenge to the egos of the EU states' various prime ministers and nor, more critically, will they have the personalities or ability to challenge the ever-growing power of the unaccountable bureaucrats entrenched in the EU's commission -- who have, of course, a leadership, and ever-more ambitious agenda, of their own.
For more detailed background, the bestplace to turnis, as usual (despite some unecessary remarks about what the baroness looks like), the invaluable EU Referendum.
I'm sacrificing a new amp for this donation, but I figure it's worth it . . . as long as you DON'T send me a copy of that horrible new Star Trek movie. NRO + NR print = bliss.
This coming Tuesday (November 24) would have been Bill Buckley’s 84th birthday. We think a nice way to remember Bill is the way he remembered his own life and doings -- through his literary autobiography, Miles Gone By. This beautiful hardcover (a NY Timesbestseller when it was first published in 2004) is nearly 600 pages, and includes a CD of WFB reading selections.
Woven from personal pieces composed over the course of a celebrated writing life of more than 50 years, Miles Gone By. Is a wonderful account of the larger-than-life man who founded the modern conservative movement. As the brassy member (one of ten children!) of the large and rambunctious Family Buckley, as the enfant terrible who had all academia in an uproar over his first book, God and Manat Yale, from there on to the CIA spy, the National Reviewfounder, the Firing Lineinquisitor, father and husband, novelist, sailor, submariner (his account of seeing the Titanicis trés cool), friend (you’ll enjoy Bill’s perspective on his many good friends, from Ronald Reagan and Claire Booth Luce to Roger Moore and David Niven), mayoral candidate, Bach aficionado . . .
How the life of the larger-than-life Bill Buckley can be contained in 600 pages is a mystery, but it is in Miles Gone By. Now, why are we promoting this book? Because we just came across two boxes, hidden for the past five years under other boxes, in the NRstorage room. If you would like a copy the cost is only $30, which includes shipping and handling. You may order it safely and securely here, but you had best do it immediately because these will be gone before you know it.
Just a note to Philly NRfolks -- I will be on the local public radio, WHYY-FM, from 10 to 11 this morning. Opposite me will be a fellow from The Nation. Topics are Palin, Obama in China, health care, terror trials, Afghanistan, and so on. Sounds like the works. See you, Brotherly Lovers (or whatever).
I plan to assemble a list of great conservative novels for NRODT, probably for an issue in early 2010. It will be a good and interesting list because so many readers of The Corner sent in suggestions when I blegged for them in August. I'd like to open the lines once more -- except this time, please post your comments at HeyMiller.com, my personal website. The current top item is called "Novels of the Right." That's the place to air your thoughts.
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
I am a family physician, regular Corner reader and NRODT subscriber. Thanks for all of your work for general conservatism, and especially in your efforts to keep me from becoming a G-7 or whatever I'd become under the new American health care.
My all-time favorite response to John McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate was from Wendy Doniger, a feminist professor of religion at the University of Chicago. Professor Doniger wrote of the exceedingly feminine “hockey mom”with five children: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
The best part about that sentence: Doniger uses the pronoun “her”—twice.
Just this week, a liberal blogger at The Atlantic who has dedicated an unhealthy amount of his life to proving a one-man birther conspiracy theory about Palin’s youngest child (it’s both too slanderous and too deranged to detail here) shut down his blog to cope with the epochal, existential crisis that Palin’s book presents to all humankind. The un-self-consciously parodic announcement seemed more appropriate for a BBC warning that the German blitz was about to begin, God Help Us All.
Indeed, some of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated.
I'm glad NPR's This American Life is getting some love from NR. I've long thought that it is simply great radio. That it ended up on the right side of a public policy question is nice confirmation of its honesty.
Having converted my decades long subscription to NRODT to the sleek, modern NR Digital, I can now donate the difference to sprucing up my daily online home (NRO). It's like saving the planet for capitalism.
In the Washington Timesthis morning, there is a AP story (it's not really a report, more an ill-informed supposition) positing that a New York jury might very well spare the 9/11 bombers from the death penalty. AP reasons that "New York juries are [so] loath to impose the death penalty, even for terrorists," that, "in fact, a jury spared the lives of two Osama bin Laden followers a month after Sept. 11, while the World Trade Center's ruins were still smoldering."
It's a bogus claim. The story does not mention the two "followers" by name, but it seems clear AP is referring to two of the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed Daoud al-`Owhali and Kalfan Khamis Mohamed. The trial jury in Manhattan did deadlock on the death penalty -- meaning they got life-imprisonment because a death verdict must be unanimous. But that happened in June and July 2001 (see hereand here). We were over two months away from smoldering ruins.
I don't think a civilian trial in New York City is a good idea either, and I think New York juries are a crapshoot. We've had great juries for terrorism cases (mine was), but Manhattan is also the place where Sayyid Nosair got acquitted of murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane -- despite shooting him in front of dozens of people and being apprehended after a shoot-out/chase in possession of the gun proved to have killed Kahane. But whatever is to be deduced from all this, fictionalizing the record does not help.
This is a bargain for all the enjoyment I have gotten. Living on the the other side of the world for the past year The Corner keeps me informed on more than just politics. Sorry if that sounds like an ad but it's true. I still plan to watch 24 when I can track it down since I missed it all last year.
One thing you can thank the declining dollar for is that I am currently teaching in Taiwan and paid in New Taiwan Dollars. The drop in the USD gives me the extra money to be able to donate to you.
The idea of having a Thanksgiving Day turns out to be especially inspired when the nation is going through dark times: The attempt to search out things we’re thankful for reminds us of a lot of great stuff we take for granted. Peggy Noonan’s columnis an excellent example of this. When most people talk about American culture these days, they’re grousing -- liberals about birthers and talk radio, conservatives about sex and anti-Americanism in the entertainment industry. But Peggy makes a point that hadn’t occurred to me, yet one which on reflection appears absolutely right:
I love TV, and the other day it occurred to me again that we are in the middle of a second golden age of television. I feel gratitude to the largely unheralded network executives and producers who gave it to us. The first golden age can be summed up with one name: “Playhouse 90.”It was the 1950s and ’60, when TV was busy being born. The second can be summed up with the words “The Sopranos,”“Mad Men,”“The Wire,”“Curb Your Enthusiasm,”“ER,”“24,”“The West Wing,”“Law and Order,”“30 Rock.”These are classics. Some nonstars at a network made them possible. Good for them.
Some of these shows I’ve never seen. But the ones I have are generally terrific, and do our era great credit. Sopranos: I have close to zero interest in Mafia stories, but I gave this one a try on the advice of the late WFB, and was thrilled by its depiction of the banality - the suburbanity- of evil. West Wing: An addictive political soap opera with, at its heart, a genuinely patriotic love of our country and its institutions. 24: Contrary to an opinion held mostly by people who don’t watch it, it’s not a thuggish celebration of torture and jingoism but a state-of-the-art cliffhanger with a heart. Curb Your Enthusiasm: I have seen a total of about 45 minutes of Seinfeld, and don’t remember laughing once; this show about Seinfeld’s creator has me not just laughing, but enjoying -- regularly -- “the shock of recognition.”
It’s easy to get downhearted about our culture, and there’s plenty of garbage out there to get downhearted about. But it was ever thus; and it’s great to be reminded that there’s still a lot of life in our republic of the arts.
Why must Charlie Crist persist in his divisive, increasingly embattled primary campaign against Marco Rubio? Does GOP unity mean nothing to him? When will this ruinous civil war end?
In reply to the post you had on Thompson, Pete Hegseth misses the point entirely, I think. Thompson is not declaring defeat in Afghanistan in Reid-like fashion. Rather, he says in the video, "this didn't/doesn't have to be so." Thompson's implied point, it seems to me, is just this -- with Obama at the helm and with his lack of resolve and his fear of making a decision the war is lost. It is judgment agains the administration not the war effort.
Thanks for NRO. I'll be making a contribution later tonight.
From Chuck Todd's interviewwith President Obama, November 18:
TODD: You gonna sign health care before the state of the union? OBAMA: I expect so. TODD: But obviously not the end of the year at this point? OBAMA: You will not hear that from me. TODD: You're not ready to say that? OBAMA: Absolutely not.
Previous comments by the president:
October 5: "And so if you're willing to speak out strongly on behalf of the things you care about and what you see each and every day as you're serving patients all across the country, I'm confident we are going to get health reform passed this year."
September 12: "Nobody should be treated that way in the United States of America, and that's why we're going to bring about change this year."
July 23: "I want the bill to get out of the committees; and then I want that bill to go to the floor; and then I want that bill to be reconciled between the House and the Senate; and then I want to sign a bill. And I want it done by the end of this year. (Applause.) I want it done by the fall. (Applause.)"
July 1: "It's not something that we're going to keep on putting off indefinitely. This is about who we are as a country. And that's why we are going to pass health care reform -- not ten years from now, not five years from now; we are going to pass it this year. (Applause.) That is my commitment. We're going to get it done. (Applause.)" June 22: "AARP is committed, as I am, to achieving health care reform by the end of this year."
June 13: "I know some question whether we can afford to act this year. But the unmistakable truth is that it would be irresponsible to not act." May 13: "We've got to get it done this year. We've got to get it done this year -- both in the House and in the Senate. And we don't have any excuses; the stars are aligned." May 11: "It's reform that is an imperative for America's economic future, and reform that is a pillar of the new foundation we seek to build for our economy; reform that we can, must, and will achieve by the end of this year."
March 5: "And our goal will be to enact comprehensive health care reform by the end of this year. That is our commitment. That is our goal." February 24: "So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."
Ithaca College was great and lots of fun (except, perhaps, for the obligatory left-wing townie who provided running commentary throughout the entire Q&A period, although it was more amusing than disruptive). Thanks to everyone who showed up, and my hat's off to the intrepid Ithaca College Republicans who uphold the conservative banner in the most difficult circumstances.
Two points about the strange decision to bring the 9/11 terrorists to New York:
One, Senator Grassley's point about federal attorneys and their past advocacy for detainees is worth listening to. I'll leave it to Andy McCarthy to ascertain the legal ramifications of Grassley's concern that there are lawyers in Eric Holder's Justice Department who (a) may be involved in the decision-making that brings the terrorist combatant KSM and others to civil trials in New York, and (b) not so long ago either were pro bono attorneys working on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees or were employed by firms who provided such subsidized legal work for those at Gitmo.
If any of that were found to be accurate, it would obviously present serious conflict-of-interest problems. But more important than the legal ramifications would be the political consequences.
I don't think the American people would take well to the idea that government prosecutors of the terrorists who had a hand in the murder of 3,000 Americans are, in some way, connected in the past with defense work on behalf of those very terrorists. That would be radioactive in political terms.
Two, we are now watching a very Orwellian development, as ACLU lawyers, civil libertarians, and liberal Obama-administration prosecutors all jostle to outbid one another in pretrial chest-pounding -- boasting about the overwhelming evidence that will seal the fate of KSM. Our "don't rush to judgment" president has also weighed in and assured the country that the "suspect" will be tried and convicted in federal court, before being executed. (Obama had better be careful: There may one or two ACLU attorneys out there who are not quite on the administration bus and, in customary fashion, may use all that "pretrial" prejudicial publicity as grounds for moving the case to, say, San Francisco, or perhaps as the basis for some sort of pretrial dismissalmotion.)
Apparently, the party line is something like this:
(1) We will try the terrorist detainees to show the world the singular strength of our justice system (and embarrass the prior administration).
(2) Since KSM is already guilty, we will convict and execute him to prove to the right wing that we are responsible in meting out death sentences to mass murderers of Americans.
(3) But if by chance KSM and others take advantage of the system (in the fashion that many of us have made quite lucrative past legal careers doing), it won't matter, because in just this one exceptional case we will fudge a bit, and in Old West fashion either ensure his conviction and execution or, if he is acquitted, find an extralegal way to keep him incarcerated (in Guantanamo?).
In other words, liberal barristers are now rushing to judgment, in essence admitting that we will have show trials -- public disclosures of all the evils of the Bush-Cheney era, but not to the point of imperiling the pre-established verdict, or, failing that, the pre-established perpetual detention. (I don't think the excuse that "KSM got off because we had to uncover the Cheney waterboarding" will quite work this time.)
They all better be careful. Holding this trial is like letting a cobra loose in the living room: No one quite knows where it will squirm to, and when it will turn up to strike -- only that if it does, the bite will be lethal.
The wonderful contributors to NRO provide my wife and me with a shield against the daily barrage of non sequiturs directed at us from our liberal friends. Thanks, and never give in!
I recently jumped from a lucrative career as a Washington DC corporate firm lawyer to serve the country as an Infantry Officer in the US Army so, alas, I only lament the smallness of the donation I am able to provide. Trust me, NRO is a daily lifeline; I can't contemplate a day without it. Keep up the great work!
AEI President Arthur Brooks announced today that General David H. Petraeus will be presented with the 2010 Irving Kristol Award. General Petraeus, who commands the United States Central Command, will deliver the Kristol lecture on Thursday, May 6, 2010.
The yearly award is presented at the Institute's annual dinner to an individual, selected by the AEI Council of Academic Advisers, who has made exceptional intellectual or practical contributions to improved government policy, social welfare, or political understanding.
As Kathryn noted, today Sen. Fred Thompson declared, “It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost.”That’s right: Senator Thompson has declared America’s defeat in Afghanistan. Read it here.
I have a high regard for Senator Thompson, and greatly appreciated his robust and courageous support for the Iraq surge in 2007. But on this, he is dead -- and dangerously -- wrong.
Let’s go back to an interview Senator Thompson gave on Hannity and Colmeson May 1, 2007:
HANNITY:The biggest battle we have is this war on terror, this battle in Iraq. We have a really deep divide in the country. Senator Reid the war is lost. We still have to finish the job there. Where do you stand in general on the war on terror and, more specifically, in Iraq, and on the divide surrounding Iraq?
THOMPSON:Well, let's talk about Senator Reid for a moment. Right before I came over here, I was sitting outside, getting a bite to eat, before we did our interview. A young woman [former Army captain] came up and asked if she could sit down and talk to me a minute. . . . I asked her what she thought about this. She said, "How in the world can anyone, any one of our leaders, declare war, declare that the war has been lost when we've got troops in the field? My friends are over there in the field. I know what they think about this."
And, of course, it's just like all other Americans think. The very idea that they would do this and undercut our efforts over there is unprecedented. And it's not only unprecedented; it's awful politics.
We should not be fearful of these people politically. We just need to concentrate on what's right. What is right? We need to take advantage of any opportunity we've got down there. I've got a lot of faith in Petraeus. I knew him when he was at Fort Campbell when I was in the Senate. He tells me we've got a shot? We've got to take that shot.
I’m sure Senator Thompson made many similar comments in 2007, and he was right. Sen. Harry Reid’s statement was unprecedented, and it was awful politics. And if Petraeus says we have a shot, then we’ve got to take that shot.
In light of the above, what is Senator Thompson doing undercutting the mission in Afghanistan? Is the mission less justified? Is it less achievable? Or is McChrystal less capable? No. Senator Thompson’s issue with the Afghanistan mission is President Obama. And while I share many of his frustrations -- indecisiveness, lack of will, unwillingness to articulate the need to win -- none of them give him, or anyone, grounds to declare the war lost.
It’s awful politics, but no longer unprecedented. Senator Thompson is doing his best Harry Reid impression.
President Obama may not be many people’s preferred commander in chief, but he is our commander in chief. He still may commit sufficient resources to Afghanistan, and it’s almost certain that his generals will support additional troop levels. Our warriors will take the fight to the enemy, and hopefully turn the tide in Afghanistan.
The war is not lost, but it could be lost; especially if our political leaders, and political commentators, start making statements like this. There may be a point at which the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth pursuing, but it’s certainly not before the president announces his decision on troop levels and our top-tier generals are given a chance to execute a counterinsurgency strategy.
I’m disappointed in Senator Thompson; he knows better. His statements were political, and they do nothing but undermine our troops in the field. We cannot afford to do to President Obama on Afghanistan what the Left did to President Bush on Iraq.
Please accept this contribution for the vital work that you do. I have either subscribed, read, or otherwise followed National Review ever since my graduation from college (1979 -- getting old). Carry on.
A federal judge has decided to holdthe U.S. Army Corps of Engineers liable for the flooding in New Orleans that followed Hurricane Katrina. At issue is the Corps' maintenence of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a rarely used shipping channel that hurricane experts warned for years should be shut down. I wrote about the Corpsfor NRODT shortly after the Katrina disaster. A scientist I talked to explained why MRGO posed a threat:
Dr. Ivor van Heerden of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center explains the geography: “The MRGO and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway [GIWW] join together in an area known as the funnel. You have the Industrial Canal in the middle of New Orleans. Heading off eastward from it is a canal that opens into a big Y —that’s where the GIWW and MRGO merge. That’s one of the very weak points in the system. When you get a surge such as Katrina, the water flowing westward amplifies the surge and leads to levee overtopping in those areas. There was very significant erosion during that levee overtopping during Katrina. It’s the design and location of the levee systems which creates this funnel effect, which caused levee overtopping and erosion and added to the flooding of eastern Orleans and St. Bernard’s parishes.”
So why didn't the Corps close MRGO down? The short answer is that even though traffic was declining and residents of New Orleans hated it, a few influential companies still preferred the channel, and they joined the Port of New Orleans in lobbying to keep it open. The Corps, like most government agencies, hates to give up anything in its portfolio, and the Louisana congressional delegation likes to bring home the bacon, so MRGO stayed open in spite of the risks.
In other words, don't just blame the Corps. Congress has the final say on the Corps' budget, and the Port of New Orleans played a role. The larger issue is that the Corps -- again, like most government agencies -- is prone to being captured by special-interest groups and used by Congress as a vehicle for pork spending. This might be the only time in history that pork kept an artery unclogged, when it would have been better to plug it up.
Robert P. Casey, the deceased former governor of Pennsylvania, spent his political career defending the principle that every human life is of infinite value. It cost him politically within his own party; but for Casey, politics was a calling to a higher cause -- fidelity to the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence. In a 1995 speech at Notre Dame, he said this:
You know, for eight years, I served as governor of Pennsylvania. All the problems that America confronts today, health care, the level of taxation, education, economic growth, crime, welfare, the environment -- you name it, a state like Pennsylvania -- we see it all. All these things are important, they're very important. They concern the day to day business of government. They were my life for eight years. But, in the end, they are relative problems. And they demand relative solutions. They are about how we shall live as a people in America. Of course the economy is of urgent concern to everyone, and properly so -- the issue of how we make our livelihood, how we pay our bills, how we invest for our future. But the need to protect the unborn child is just as urgent as the economic concerns that confront our country.
In the case of the unborn child we're dealing not just with our livelihoods, but with lives . . . not just how comfortably we will live, but how comfortably we will live with our consciences. Think about it, why do all parties to this debate routinely call abortion a "social issue"? Because deep down we know that the fate of one life touches us all. In a way, all the talk about values misses the point. Because we are talking about a thing of infinite value. Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself. The value of everything else is weighed against it. The abortion debate is not about how we shall live, but who shall live. And more than that, it's about who we are.
Now the governor’s son and namesake, the current junior senator from Pennsylvania, will be tested by the standard his father set. If he votes for cloture on the motion to proceed on the health-care bill, he will be making possible the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v.Wade, and mandating that all citizens participate through federal funding. Senate majority leader Harry Reid needs all 60 Democratic senators to bring the legislation to the floor and make it the order of business. So Senator Casey has the fate of the bill completely in his power. If he adds his vote, that will mean that any effort to add the pro-life Stupak language from the House bill will require 60 pro-life votes, which, as Senator Casey knows, are not there. Casey’s original vote to proceed will have stacked the deck against defending life.
Everyone will be watching how the senator votes -- including, perhaps most poignantly, the man who said of abortion, “it’s about who we are.”
-- Frank Cannon is a principal of Capital City Partners, a Washington consulting firm.
Here's to helping ease the twinge of guilt from getting something this good for free. Without your valuable service many of us would be lost in a liberal morass.
Using actual stimulus spending data from Recovery.gov, my colleague Jerry Brito and Eileen Norcross of the Mercatus Center have launched the new version of Stimulus Watch.
The website, unlike the administration’s one, allows you to search for contracts and grant awards by state and city, by awarding agency, or by recipient. And they will even have a keyword search soon. The really cool aspect of the site is that once you find an award that interests you, you can vote on whether you are satisfied with it or not, add to the wiki description of the project, and join in the conversation about the award in the comments section.
With this website, it will become obvious which contracts are bogus, which ones are wasteful, or which ones simply don't exist!
Back in February, Brito and Norcross made the list of "shovel-ready projects" available in the same way and it proved to be a very valuable tool in exposing the ridicule of these projects (see thisfor instance). This version promises to do even more.
Check it out and be ready to laugh and cry at the same time when see that your tax dollars are used to pay for picnic tablesor replace the motor on a boat.
I'm a Canadian who thinks that one of the most important things for the world is that the US remain prosperous, free, and engaged in spreading freedom. NRO is an important voice in support of those goals. Good luck!
You are getting the donation that I otherwise would have made to the Republican National Committee this year. NRO is definitely making more headway in the fight for conservative values! Keep up the great work.
Two boys in parochial school, wife totals her car two weeks ago, uncovered medical expenses, really cannot afford this, but you guys are my sanity in times of collective national irrationality. I will skip lunch for a month or two . . .
Final thought, slip some prozac in Derb's tea, he needs to cheer up, we are not totally doomed, it just feels that way as BHO reminds the current generation why great societies are based on capitalism, not collectivism.
At 25, I'm a third generation National Review subscriber. My grandfather and my father have both subscribed to NR for years and I began reading it occasionally in high school and college. I only became a devotee after I graduated from college and started working full time. Then I fully realized the importance of a commentary magazine w/ a convservative point of view. My wife sometimes laughs at me for sitting down and reading my new NR cover to cover when it comes in the mail, but as any NR subscriber knows, once you start reading it's pretty hard to put down.
Thank you for all you do and PLEASE keep up the great work. We need conservative views and arguments more than ever and I don't know of a better place to find and hear those arguments than National Review.
In September, he revealed that a famous graph using tree rings to show unprecedented 20th century warming relies on thin data. Since its publication in 2000, University of East Anglia professor Keith Briffa's much-celebrated image has made star appearances everywhere from U.N. policy papers to activists' posters. Like other so-called "hockey stick" temperature graphs, it's an easy sell—one look and it seems Gadzooks! We're burning ourselves up!
"It was the belle of the ball," Mr. McIntyre told me on a recent phone call from Ontario. "Its dance card was full."
At least until Mr. McIntyre reported that the modern portion of that graph, which shows temperatures appearing to skyrocket in the last 100 years, relies on just 12 tree cores in Russia's Yamal region. When Mr. McIntyre presented a second graph, adding data from 34 tree cores from a nearby site, the temperature spike disappears...
Prior to the Briffa graph revelation, he had also caught a statistical error that undercut another exalted "hockey stick" graph prominently featured by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, this one by Michael Mann, head of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center... In 2007, Mr. McIntyre found a technical gaffe that forced NASA to correct itself and admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year recorded in the continental U.S.
"The science is settled" means: The politics is settled. So the science has to follow.
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has decided not to run for governor of New York next year after months of mulling a candidacy, according to people who have been told of the decision.
His decision is a blow to many Republican leaders, who had viewed Mr. Giuliani as the strongest potential candidate in a year in which voter anger and anti-Albany sentiment appear to be swelling.
P.S. I think Matt Yglesiasis right to doubt that the unemployment rate will have as much effect on the midterm elections as Douthat thinks it will. As bad as the high-unemployment 1982 elections were for Republicans, for example, we shouldn't forget that it was the first election under the district lines of the 1980s, which were generally more favorable to congressional Democrats than those of the 1970s. (Republicans did fine in the Senate elections that year.)
