The Dish

Blair gets his policy changes. Here’s one expert last week with an insightful take on the Bush-Blair relationship:

Blair had been put into the position of having to appear before the president as petitioner. He asked for relief on U.S. tariffs (Bush had raised them on steel in an election play to steel-producing states, a move earlier rejected by Clinton); for rendering British prisoners at Guantánamo to Britain; and for substantive U.S. pressure on the Israel-Palestine peace process. But Blair was rebuffed.

Or maybe Sid Blumenthal just had the wrong sources.

BLOGS AND SPORTS: The web broke the news of Curt Schillings’ arrival at the Red Sox. Old media, watch out.

I’d say that the case for honoring the legendary actor, singer and athlete, Paul Robeson, is pretty strong on purely personal and artistic grounds. As a campaigner against racism, Robeson’s legacy is an important one. But it remains the case that Robeson was an avid support of Stalin long after the mass murderer’s crimes against humanity were known and acknowleged. Robeson was a full-fledged apologist for the Stalinist terror and even refused to condemn Stalin’s pact with Hitler. If he’d been a staunch supporter of Hitler and backed the Fuhrer in the pact, do you think we’d be honoring him today? Or is a Father Coughlin stamp coming out soon? Here’s how the Washington Post describes the late communist:

Also being released early in 2004 will be the 27th stamp in the Black Heritage series, which will honor actor, singer, civil rights activist and athlete Paul Robeson.
David Failor, executive director of stamp services for the Postal Service, said there was strong support from the public for a stamp honoring Robeson, who was labeled a subversive for his mid-century activism against racism and anti-Semitism.

No wonder Duranty kept his Pulitzer.

PRO-LIFE, PRO-GAY MARRIAGE: Another conservative sees the connection. The connection I’d draw more readily is affirmative action. I’m against affirmative action for exactly the same reason I’m for gay marriage: I think people should be treated equally by the government, regardless of characteristics they do not choose. The state has no right carving out special rights for racial minorities or sexual majorities, treating one group differently than another. There should be the same standards for all: academic excellence and emotional responsibility. We shouldn’t be saying tacitly that minority students can’t be expected to meet the standards; and for the same reason, we shouldn’t be telling gay couples that their relationships are somehow inherently and civilly inferior to straight ones. You could call this argument conservative, I suppose. But it is basically liberal: limited government with equal treatment, so far as possible, for all its citizens. (Heads up: I’ll be debating the issue of marriage rights at Fordham University in the Bronx on Wednesday night at the Keating First auditorium at 6.30 pm. I’ll also be talking about friendship to a joint meeting between Colgate University’s gay group and its College Republicans tomorrow night at the campus chapel at 7 pm. The joint invitation is a first, and I’m delighted to accept it. Everyone welcome.)

“Here’s why marriage will likely survive last week’s crushing decision out of Massachusetts: Because despite all the horrors of Section 4, above, human beings want and deserve a soul mate; someone to grow old with, someone who thinks our dopey entry in the New Yorker cartoon competition is hilarious, and someone to help carry the shopping bags. Gay couples have asked the state to explain why such privileges should be denied them and have yet to receive an answer that is credible.” – from Dahlia Lithwick’s superb evisceration of the “defense of marriage” rhetoric.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “My daughter was born with a cleft palate. We where shocked and saddened when she was born. We had no idea. Had we known it would never have occurred to us to abort our child. She had five surgeries before her 5th birthday. She is now a 19 year old college sophomore, studying engineering after graduating from high school with honors. She is a beautiful young lady and doesn’t suffer from lack of attention from the opposite sex. She has brought us great pain and great joy, as every child does to every parent. She will soon be a productive, well adjusted, tax paying adult and I couldn’t be prouder.
We are traveling a slippery slope, Andrew. How soon before someone argues that children, after birth, are not really viable until ‘X’ age? The right to choose begins in the bedroom (or back seat) not after the fact.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Aelred of Rievaulx is generally believed to have lived from 1109 to 1167. That makes him twelfth century, not tenth century. I should have double-checked.

In Britain, a six-month pregnancy is ended because the unborn child had a cleft palate. An abortion-provider defends the decision. So, I bet, would NARAL.

“Exercise is as addictive as booze and fags, say scientists” – from a headline in today’s Guardian.

Vanity Fair’s editor, Graydon Carter, will be writing a book about the evil and iniquity of George W. Bush. Carter is not exactly a man seized by ideology (although he is a Castro-lover), so his venture into polemics is more interesting as a sign that the social elite – especially the Manhattan upper crust – now regards it as an indispensable attribute to hate the president. Carter wrote an anti-Bush editorial recently in which he mistook trillions of dollars for quadrillions. Funny enough – but a trivial cognitive error, compared to being unable to distinsguish between a liberation and an occupation.

I don’t know, but this is surely good news. I was also interested to read this:

Here is what you have yet to hear reported in the mainstream media. In the few weeks since Coalition forces began to launch major counter-insurgency attacks, beginning with Operation Iron Hammer, over 1100 Iraqi Guerrillas have been captured or killed. This represents one-fifth of the entire strength of the Ba’athist and Islamist forces in the country. These figures, presented to President Bush in a secret briefing during his Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, do not include the forty-six terrorists killed in a battle on November 30th. In other words, the US armed forces are killing and capturing fifteen of the enemy for each loss of their own: and this figure is distorted by the high number of US personnel killed in aircraft shoot-downs in November, a figure which is not likely to be repeated. In individual combat, the results look more and more like those of the last Sunday in November: forty-six of the enemy killed and eight captured with no losses among our forces. At the present rate, the entire force possessed by the enemy will be destroyed, and the country pacified, in a matter of months.

This reads like excessive optimism to me, but I hope he’s right. The best analysis, as usual, came from John F Burns in yesterday’s NYT. He uses a simple conversation to unpeel the layers of deception, self-interest, self-deception and fear that now envelop Iraqi society. It seems to me obvious that in this war, unlike the war against al Qaeda, capturing or killing the central figure, Saddam, is the sine qua non of continuing progress.

… against the FMA. And another! Money quote:

Amending the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman would be unwise for two reasons. Constitutionalizing social policy is generally a misuse of fundamental law. And it would be especially imprudent to end state responsibility for marriage law at a moment when we require evidence of the sort that can be generated by allowing the states to be laboratories of social policy.

This is the Cheney position. And it’s the right one. I’m struck by how so many of the truly excellent conservative writers – Will, Goldberg, Brooks, Horowitz spring to mind – oppose this amendment. Some endorse same-sex marriage; others don’t. But they all see how dangerous the proposed amendment is to sane constitutionalism and robust federalism. Let the states decide.

HEY, BIG SPENDER: The fiscal conservative critique of the Bush administration continues to gain ground. Here’s another tough critique called “The Bush Betrayal.” Why the emerging consensus? It’s true. The current deficits are nothing in comparison with what’s coming. I’ve said it before but if I were a Democrat running for president (hold the giggles) I’d outflank Bush on the right in Iraq and on the deficits. I’d argue for more resources for democratizing Iraq and a war on corporate and agricultural welfare. No, I wouldn’t touch the tax cuts. I love tax cuts. I’m just of the old-fashioned school that you shouldn’t send domestic spending through the stratosphere at the same time. I guess I’d get about three votes in Iowa.