Category: Old Dish

Byron York has another important piece this morning on National Review Online. Yes, it’s true the law itself bars FBI checks on gun-owners who might be terrorists, as Glenn Reynolds pointed out yesterday. So why not change the law? If this administration believes that everyone needs to sacrifice something except the NRA, they’re going to commit political suicide. The closer you look at Ashcroft’s performance yesterday, the worse it seems.

Conservatism after September 11: my take. Posted opposite and on TNR.com.

In defense of NPR; Clinton; and Satan (just kidding about the last one). Plus: more liberal laundry and computer theology.

Look, I support many of the measures the administration has put in place to try and prosecute terrorists. A large amount of the criticism has been way overblown. Military tribunals are almost certainly necessary. The war mandates changes that we shouldn’t contemplate in peacetime. The priority right now is to prevent more massacres of American citizens. But you’d have to be brainless not to realize that many of these measures can be improved, amended, and corrected after a healthy debate. I’d like to see much more detail on the procedures of military tribunals; judicial review of their decisions; government eavesdropping of lawyer-client conversations only by an independent judge – not government lawyers; and other fixes. Many people – from Jeff Rosen and Laurence Tribe to Akhil Amar to Stuart Taylor Jr. – are not viscerally opposed to emergency measures but worried (as we all should be) about any unnecessary endangerment of civil liberties. They and others have made important contributions to the debate, which needs to continue. In that respect, Attorney General Ashcroft’s tone at yesterday’s hearings was way off. He came close to asserting that the Congress itself was somehow soft on terrorism for raising questions about new laws. I agree with the Washington Post today that that’s offensive and dumb. The administration has done a sterling job in this war so far. Hubris shouldn’t lead them to push their luck.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliché, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration Enron did so much to put in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don’t work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Mr. Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.” – Paul Krugman, New York Times today.

WHILE I’M AT IT: “Money to rebuild New York? Sorry, no.” – from the column cited above. Now, everyone knows that a large sum of federal money has already been apportioned to New York City for recovery and rebuilding. So what can Krugman mean? Read the column again and you’ll see there’s no qualification here. He doesn’t say “More money to rebuild New York?” Or: “Enough money to rebuild New York?” Is Krugman unaware of the funding? Or is this simply a smear?

Even the cartoonists are joining in.

MY POLITICS AND YOURS: Here’s a diverting little quiz. It asks you all sorts of economic, social and political questions and then plots your politics on a little graph. It doesn’t simply go right to left. It also measures you on a libertarian/authoritarian axis as well. Some of the questions need far more context and are way too crude. But the exercise does help show how our new politics has to be thought of outside a crude right-left paradigm. I’m fascinated to know where my readers end up, but don’t email me to let me know. I’ll be flooded. The scores run from – 10 to + 10 on the economic left-right axis; and – 10 to + 10 on the social libertarian-authoritarian axis. No surprise that I’m in the economic right/social libertarian box. I’m slightly more economically conservative (+ 6.25) than I’m socially libertarian (- 4.10). And the box I’m in is the least populated there is.

I’m sorry but I don’t agree with president Bush’s compassion toward American traitor, John Walker. This Newsweek scoop reveals Walker’s non-cooperation with CIA agent, Johnny Spann, moments before Spann was killed by Walker’s friends among the Taliban. Walker needs to be tried for treason. Period.

“[President Bush] also said Democratic senators ‘need to stop fussing and stop talking and get something to my desk that will take care of the workers and provide stimulus to this economy.’ ” – Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, December 5.
“”There seems to be a little bit of a logjam in Washington, D.C. right now. And I know that Senators from both parties, if they could hear the stories about — and I’m sure they do, I’m sure they listen when they go home. But they need to act. They need to stop fussing and stop talking and get something to my desk that will take care of the workers and provide stimulus to this economy.” – President Bush’s actual remarks, same day (emphasis added).

A little gem from the Onion.

One theme of James Bennet’s otherwise excellent recent dispatches from Israel has been that the current conflict was in part caused by the Bush administration’s “malign neglect” of the peace-process. This ignores the fact that more Israelis have been murdered by terrorists since the Oslo Accord than in all the years since 1948. It is also belied by the New York Times’ own story today by David Firestone that documents Hamas’s plans for terror and supplanting the PLO since at least 1993.

ASHCROFT, BUTTERFIELD AND GUNS: The invaluable weblogger, Glenn Reynolds, dismantles Fox Butterfield’s New York Times’ piece on attorney general Ashcroft’s ruling on gun checks today. Reynolds argues that “a firearms registry that permits the lookup of individuals is specifically forbidden by statute.” Hmmm.

THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ANTI-WAR LEFT: Be sure to check out Ron Radosh’s response to Jake Weisberg in the current Frontpage magazine. Thinking about this debate overnight, it occurred to me that I should add something. Although I disagree with Jake about the salience of the anti-war left, he does have one good point. Those of us who hammered the nihilists, post-modernists and feeble-minded after September 11 might seem to be going overboard in one respect. In retrospect, with regard to this war, these people turned out to be pretty irrelevant. But there was no way we could have predicted that at the time, and under the circumstances, I think we were right to take no chances. Jake will have noticed that the anti-left campaign has now subsided in this regard. But more generally, the reason for our vehemence was that we decided to take the opportunity of the war to expose and discredit the far-left more broadly. The reason is obvious. For the past generation, the pomo left has hijacked our universities, helped destroy good high school education, derailed good causes like gay rights, and acted as a horrifying bully whenever it won power. Most of the time, sane good people couldn’t be bothered to take notice of these authoritarians. The war changed that. By showing how people like Sontag, Pollitt, Chomsky, Moore, et al were incapable even of responding to mass murder, we were able to show how deeply corrupt their thinking was and is. The war was an invaluable opportunity to expose them to a wider audience, discredit and marginalize them. I make no apologies for doing so. Liberals whose cause is also derailed by these extremists should, in my opinion, join in. And some liberals – like The New Republic – have. It’s a pity that Jake and others should now rise to these leftists’ defense just when we have them somewhat on the run. I say: smoke ’em out wherever they’re hiding.

THOSE SWEDISH CHARACTERS: I’m sorry for the weird characters in an item posted yesterday. To all of you Microsoft gloaters, it had nothing to do with Apple. It’s too boring to go into detail but it was a series of tech errors. I hope it won’t happen again.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment. You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions… And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic. ” – Umberto Eco.

Here’s an op-ed by someone who ought to know on Bill Clinton’s negligence with regard to al Qaeda. It’s by one Mansoor Ijaz, the interlocutor between the Clinton administration and Sudan in 1996 and after. One devastating passage: “In July 2000–three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen–I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States’ closest Arab allies–an ally whose name I am not free to divulge–approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials. The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden’s extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family–Clintonian diplomacy at its best.” Let’s see how Joe Conason spins his way out of this one.

THE REAL BUSH: Amazing that Salon ran this little piece, but from everything I know, it tells you much more about the real character of our president than any number of hatchet-jobs from Dowd, Wolff, etc. Enjoy.

CAMELOT IS A SILLY PLACE: I’m a sucker for Lego and Monty Python, so this little movie amused me no end. Give it a whirl.

THE NON-EXISTENT LEFT: Yes, I know these people don’t really exist. Their influence is always exaggerated by crazy daisy-cutter rightists like yours truly, but this piece by Stanley Kurtz is really eye-opening. Author Christina Hoff Sommers was invited to speak about various educational methods designed to eradicate differences between boys and girls in American education. The forum was the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention (CSAP) of the Department of Health and Human Services. When Sommers was about to launch into criticism of some of these programs, she heard what might be described as the rallying cry of the academic left when they come across someone who disagrees with them. “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” yelled professor Jay Wade of Fordham University. Sommers’ talk was ended. All Sommers had done was argue against positions held by the leftist educational establishment. Their response was to humiliate, insult and silence her, which is what they do every day on their respective campuses against anyone deviating from their agenda. The apologists for the far left – they don’t exist, they’re fringe, they’re irrelevant – have one thing in common. They haven’t been targeted by these intolerant bullies. Maybe when they are, they will wake up and see what’s really out there.

THE TALIBAN’S DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL: All the rest of NATO may have given up on policing their militaries for homosexuals, but the United States can rest easy knowing that one military that still supports U.S. policy is the Taliban. Any consorting with beardless young men in the army is strictly forbidden. This story from the Daily Telegraph tells of a weird and fastidious obsession.