You Can't Handle The Truth

Claudia Rosett on the best way to topple tyrannies---tell the truth:

They are demanding, simply: "The Truth."

Why is this so important? Because the truth--however problematic or undiplomatic--is one of the most effective and underused weapons in the arsenal of democracy. The U.S. State Department, or for that matter the folks at the Quai D'Orsay, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the United Nations, could do worse than to procure and post on their own office walls some of those Lebanese signs that demand "The Truth."
It bears noting under despotic regimes anywhere, the most common reason for which democratic dissidents are jailed is simply that they have dared to tell the truth. Tyrants depend on fictions, on the lies that all their subjects support them, that they have a legitimate monopoly on power and that what they do is for the best. When that facade cracks, there is an opportunity for genuine liberation.

In Lebanon's case--as widely reported over the past few weeks-- the Lebanese want most immediately the truth about who was behind the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, killed by a huge bomb in Beirut on Feb. 14. But that murder-mystery is linked to a much broader picture. Most Lebanese believe the culprit was the totalitarian regime of neighboring Syria, which for more than a generation, under the false banner of "stability," has gotten away with occupying and brutalizing Lebanon. With Hariri's murder, the Lebanese decided they had had enough of threats and cover-ups and lies. Their demand for the truth about Hariri's killers swelled last month into the biggest democratic uprising in the history of the modern Middle East, in which some one million Lebanese staged a protest last month in downtown Beirut to demand that Syrian forces leave their country, and make room for freedom--and truth.

Despots remain in power through a carefully-orchestrated web of lies. As soon as the Nazi High Command figured out that Hitler wasn't sane and wasn't invulnerable, they hatched the plot that didn't kill him but drove him into a hole in the ground nonetheless. Once Baghdad Bob was off the air, Saddam Hussein was powerless. Tyrants around the world fear the truth getting out---they are paper tigers, unable to count upon even the support of their people to enforce their monstrous will.

Rosett is right---the truth shall set us free.

Comic Cover of the Week: Fables # 36

What a great image!



Fables is a great book, a reimagining of classic children's fairy tales set in the modern era where most of the famous characters of lore are living as refugees in our mundane world.

Update:

I don't feel too badly about being a comic book geek given that Brainster's digging DEEP into the bowels of his collection to pull out interesting covers from days of yore.

Isn't Understanding Religion Easier If You're, Well, Religious?

The MSM continues to show basic ignorance and lack of inquisitiveness regarding religion in the ongoing coverage of papal succession.

Hunter Baker's on to something here:

The coverage for breaking taboos of the Christian faith has been uniformly positive in secular media, which is good because enthusiastic press is typically the only reward one should expect based on recent historical trends in the Protestant world. Since the time of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s and '30s, in which fundamentalists decisively lost the battle for control of the Presbyterian and Northern Baptist denominations, the conservative offshoots (fundamentalist, charismatic, and evangelical) have far surpassed their home churches in numbers, activity, and cultural influence. The reason for the long recession of the liberal church is easy to explain. When the church conforms itself to the prejudices of the popular, it resembles culture rather than standing as a powerful critic of it. As such, it becomes another boring non-profit operation sending forth useless platitudes. ("Here's one to grow on!")

The question for the accommodating churches becomes how long the thrill of breaking down a major taboo can sustain an enterprise sitting on a limb cut from its tree? After transitions have been made and parishioners have enjoyed a brief charge from the nice story in the Times, there is really little point in taking out Sundays or any other part of the week for church. Once the victory seems final enough (a few lesbians are consecrated and even the most patient foes find their way to more sturdy communities of faith), the clock once again begins ticking in earnest on the future of the church-in-name-only. The golf course and the agreeable scriptures of the swollen Sunday New York Times beckon those who see no more acts of liberation to perform. Meanwhile, ministers with little to proclaim help ever-dwindling flocks understand that they must get over their need for a savior.

Heedless of the latest poll by the AP or, well, anybody else, Pope John Paul II insisted on orthodoxy over focus group feedback. Though many liberal American Catholics desired a series of newspaper-happy taboo busters after Vatican II, the great Bishop of Rome refused to oblige. He lived through terrible periods of fascist and communist oppression and knew that only a church built on a firm foundation of historical claims and supernatural revelation could stand against the machinations of "scientific" ideology gone mad with power.

Atheist reporters miss the boat when they cover papal succession as a purely political issue. Politics are strictly a secondary (if not tertiary) concern.

It would help if the MSM had enough churchgoers within its ranks to realize the basic differences between the various Christian denominations, which they tend to call "conservative" or "liberal" (or more likely, "regressive" and "progressive") instead of providing context for why Presbyterians and Catholics don't see eye-to-eye. As Patrick O'Hannigan notes:

It is impossible to understand John Paul without understanding that his entire thought and being was grounded in the incarnation, the teaching, the suffering, death, resurrection and promised return of Jesus Christ," Neuhaus wrote, letting the proverbial cat out of the bag.

Some of those Protestants who did not join Neuhaus in crossing the Tiber to Catholicism are silent about papal motivation not because they feel out of their depth, but because to credit Jesus with inspiring the pope would force a re-examination of their own prejudices. Doing that, they might find unwelcome confirmation of what an American Spectator alumnus called the editor of this publication's "cheeky assertion" that "Among Christian
religions, only one is the genuine article, and it's known as Roman
Catholicism."

Protestant failure to address papal motivation can be read as a backhanded compliment to the late pontiff. For example, at least one preacher on the militantly Calvinist edge of the reformed tradition is of the opinion that the pope's death represents a chance for other Christians to "expose Catholic errors," which by his curious lights include "dogmatic denial of the gospel."

One presumes that more Catholics, Baptists, and Pentecostals truly believe in their faith than your typical reporter believes in their abiding socialist faith or the Democratic Party to which they lend their allegiance---wouldn't it provide for interesting stories on a regular basis to explore the faultlines of the major religious sects in America? Why confine this to Christmas and (perhaps) Easter?

And watch out for the theocracy being erected even now by the Methodist-in-Chief and his nefarious compadres in the Evangelical Movement:

"The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube," Danforth wrote.

"The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active," he wrote. "It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."

Well, if three legislative initiatives are all it takes to prove that a political party has been taken over by a sect, then clearly the Democratic Party is wholly controlled by the radical environmentalists. Or maybe it's the radical feminists. Or the lawyers. Or the unions. Pick one, and your argument would be just as persuasive as Danforth's, whose assertions just don't hold up to close scrutiny.

Again, if MSM reporters (and apparently some GOP Senators) knew anything about religion, they'd realize that getting the various Christian denominations to come together and make common cause on anything is next to impossible. When you believe that your church represents the One True Faith, it's quite hard to bind together with another church's adherents. The Hair Helmet Hamas fail to understand this, since they lump all Christians together into the Religious Right bucket. A trip through the Bible Belt (the horror!) might disabuse them of this notion. Yet given the glow in their reporting of Communism to this day, they simply might be immune to anything which challenges their worship of the abstract State.

If there's anybody who's simply better opining about religious issues than George Neumayr of The American Spectator, I don't know who it is. Once again, he nails it:

Since they can't get away with imprisoning popes anymore -- though a group of Dutch liberals did try to prosecute Pope John Paul II, declaring him a criminal for having violated a "hate crimes" code (he had simply reiterated the Church's teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful) -- they are reduced to controlling popes through media propaganda and pressure, which at the moment means mau-mauing timid or heretical churchmen into naming a liberal one. On the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and other organs of predictable anti-Catholic bias has come a blast of unsolicited advice to a leaderless Church.

Why would people who hate the Church pose as reformers who know what's best for it? Why would they care so passionately about the direction of a religion to which they don't belong? For the same reason the French philosophes and revolutionaries monitored and pressured the Church: it is a force that they must either neutralize or hijack in order to achieve their designs for the world. Look at the immense, obsessional energy that the left spends on trying to pressure the Church into green-lighting their favorite sexual sins. Why do they care so much about what the Church teaches? The reason is that they know that if they could just get the Catholic Church's imprimatur on the Sexual Revolution it would spread everywhere. A liberal Pope, as far as they are concerned, would be even better than a liberal Chief Justice on the Supreme Court.

Modern liberalism is an acid that burns through everything it touches. The Church has shriveled in proportion to its exposure to it. Now those who have long sought its death present themselves, carrying more of this acid, as its healer, and even, as Thomas Cahill wrote in the New York Times, finger Pope John Paul II, who resisted it, as the Church's enemy. "He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church," writes Cahill, who blames the Pope for "intellectual incompetents" and "mindless sycophants" in the episcopate. "The situation is dire. Anyone can walk into a Catholic church on a Sunday and see pews, once filled to bursting, now sparsely populated with gray heads." He then proposes a "solution," which amounts to trading the teachings of Jesus Christ for modern liberalism.

This Op-Ed is worth remembering when the liberals, both outside and inside the Church, begin their march for "reforms" on the grave of Pope John Paul II. The roses that they lay on it have many thorns.

Anyone familiar with the Catholic Church in New England can attest to the rightness of this commentary. The fall of the Episcopal Church in America is due entirely to embracing these "reformers", who have plenty of opinions yet somehow don't make it into the pews on Sunday, volunteer for anything, or throw cash into the offering plate. Liberalism is indeed an acid wearing away religion.

The New York Times claimed that the religious supporters of Terri Schiavo and her family were an angry lynch mob waiting to erupt. We're still waiting for the eruption:

So what became of that mob after Schiavo expired last week?

They wept and prayed, hugged one another, and went home.

Such "extremism" was mirrored by President Bush, who reacted to Schiavo's passing with this expression of fanatical religiosity: "The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."

What the cognitive shut-ins at the Times cannot seem to grasp is that commitment to articles of faith, like those professed by the President or enacted by the protestors, doesn't equate with contempt for the Enlightenment. On the contrary, the actuating principle of the Enlightenment, the proposition that all human beings are created equal, is itself an article of faith -- since human beings are not created equal intellectually or physically or in any measurable way. Enlightenment values of reason and tolerance now infuse the belief systems of Jews and Christians.

It's funny how the MSM doesn't fear the Islamic fanatic terrorists who incinerated thousands of people right in the very capital of Blue State America, and yet they spend their nights losing sleep over an American religious fanaticism which never arrives.

If there's any better indication as to why Americans should ignore the recommendations of the MSM and keep the Left out of political power in perpetuity, I can't think of one.

Doesn't He Have A House To Build Or Something?

More on the Bush Administration decision to leave Jimmy Carter home:

Carter did meet with Pope John Paul II, and hosted the pontiff in Washington, D.C., in 1979. Carter claimed a kinship with the Catholic priest, though it isn't clear that the Vatican thought so highly of Carter's diplomatic skills, particularly after he left office. Carter was often the wrong side of the political fence when it came to elections and policies in Latin America, where John Paul II devoted a great deal of time in the 1980s stamping out the Marxist "Liberation Theology" movement. At one point in 1979, the Vatican sought assistance from the Carter Administration State Department to limit the travels of U.S. Maryknoll missionaries to Central American countries, where they were teaching and preaching Liberation Theology alongside like-minded Latin American priests.

"The other thing that people forget is that Carter has treated President Bush very badly. He has openly criticized the President in a manner that President Clinton has not," says a Bush administration source. "He has traveled around the world bad-mouthing this president and this country's policies. I would be surprised if a single person gave a thought to including him in the delegation."

Jimmy Carter is the most disgraceful president we have ever had, surpassing even the murderous founder of the Democrats, the serial murderer Andrew Jackson. Has there been any greater foe of liberty than the toothy appeaser from Plains?

It is a tragedy that America lost the wisdom of Ronald Reagan so soon after his presidency, yet the doddering idiocy of Jimmy Carter survives 25 years after he was thrown out of office.

Taxes For Thee But Not For Me

When nonprofits attack:

THE RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK and the Ruckus Society are two of the biggest practitioners of so-called civil disobedience. For instance, in its campaign to stop Home Depot from selling lumber from old growth forests, Rainforest Action Network has had disloyal Home Depot employees rig their stores' intercom systems to announce "Old-growth wood for sale on aisle number 3." At one event a Rainforest Action Network activist dressed as a black bear chained himself to the store's rafters and used a bullhorn to assail employees and customers with loud denunciations of store policies. In 1999 Rainforest Action Network proclaimed May 25 a day of "ethical shoplifting"; activists stole lumber from Home Depot stores, which they later handed over to the FBI. The San Francisco Chronicle recently noted that Rainforest Action Network activists wear their arrest records like badges of honor. Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune has been arrested a dozen times for offenses like trespassing and disorderly conduct; the arrest record of Rainforest Action Network founder Randy Hayes reports 18 arrests for similar offenses. Rainforest Action Network is unashamed that its illegal actions violate the rights of Home Depot's employees to make a living and its customers' rights to purchase legal products.

The Ruckus Society is even more brazen. Several times each year it hosts an "Action Camp" where, according to the Society's website, "participants split their time between theoretical and strategic workshops focusing on a wide array of advanced campaign skills and hands-on technical training in tactics for nonviolent actions." Those nonviolent actions include illegal ones. One camp provided "training to perform illegal acts, such as using bicycle locks to join activists into human blockades," according to an article in California's Contra Costa Times. A Baltimore Sun article recounts an exercise in how to handle police arrests. After arrestees are put into a van, the participants are instructed to blockade the van by lying down around it and locking arms.

Ruckus Society director John Sellers claims that much of his group's training is for legal activities protected by the First Amendment, such as "constructing giant props and holding protests." He insists that the training "isn't intrinsically designed to break the law." But after he described various climbing techniques, I asked, "Is this just for climbing trees?" Sellers replied, "It includes urban climbing techniques to hang banners from buildings." "So it is activity that can potentially get you arrested?" I inquired. "Yes," he responded.

Why on Earth does the GOP stand for these last redoubts of Bolshevism to go unimpeded? If the government sees fit to go after churches' tax exemptions for political involvement, how do they justify refraining from taxing domestic terrorists like the groups mentioned above?

Middle-Aged and Irrelevant---U2?

Rock and roll, the young man's game:

The U2 soundtrack is different. It's the impossible dream that somehow rock and roll can be made congruent with adulthood. U2 doesn't carry it alone. Bruce Springsteen, similarly, thinks of his music in grand, if not messianic, terms. Who else would have the audacity to make a "September 11th album," its title track written in the disembodied voice of a dead firefighter? And yet when Springsteen performs the song, he gyrates and pumps his fist in the same way he did when he was young.

Springsteen, U2, and a few others make the same promise: that adolescent longings and music can address the problems of global politics, life and death. But the outside world, impersonal and indifferent, usually can't be bothered with emotional appeals. Rock is a dream that dies hard.

Don't tell Bono that, though. The poor guy is still out there, chasing it. Sure, he's well paid, but you know what they say about money and happiness. It's the same with money and dignity.

This is the problem with comic books today as well. The constant search for "relevance", the effort to make them more "adult". The medium is quite simply an adolescent's medium. Your typical comic book writer does nothing more than regurgitate cliches, slavishly emulating the comics he loved as a kid or (in the case of the older writers) merely recycling their old work. The artists eschew anatomy for the thrill of drawing enormous pecs and breasts. The vast majority of it is simply unreadable crap, made moreso by the introduction of "relevant" political screed which was already stale when they first contemplated it listening to Pink Floyd while stoned in their parents' basement.

If you're going to play rock, drop the pretension and play it without apology. If you're going to be "an artist", then you'd better find another musical genre, as rock is much too limiting for such adult interests. It's too shallow. Dive into the blues or torch songs or something capable of more than slapping riffs and quasi-mystical verses together. And I say that as an unabashed rock fan.

Same thing with comics. If you're going to write them, put your head down and write the best you can, but don't presume you're cranking out "King Lear" every 30 days. If you feel compelled to tell more mature stories, you'd be better suited to choose a more mature medium. Michelangelo didn't draw on sackcloth, you know.

The Too-Friendly Skies?

When it comes to training to become an airline pilot, apparently no Americans need apply.

Michelle Malkin is on the case, as usual.

Can we not agree that this politically correct crap goes out the window when 2977 Americans get incinerated by very un-P.C. foreign terrorists?

Why is it so radical a concept to our legislators that American citizenship should carry benefits as well as burdens, not least of which being the ability to ply a lucrative trade within one of the freest nations on the planet?

The Other Side of Sandy McBurglar

The Wall Street Journal thinks we're wearing tinfoil hats for thinking Sandy Berger was up to no good when he knowingly stole and destroyed classified documents from the National Archives:

Some people won't let a bad conspiracy theory go. We're referring to those who loudly assert that former NSC adviser Sandy Berger was trying to protect the Clinton Administration when he illegally removed copies of sensitive documents from the National Archives in late 2003.

On Wednesday, we quoted Justice Department prosecutor Noel Hillman that no original documents were destroyed, and that the contents of all five at issue still exist and were made available to the 9/11 Commission. But that point didn't register with some readers, who continue to suggest a vast, well, apparently a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy. The Washington Times, the Rocky Mountain News and former Clintonite Dick Morris have also been peddling dark suspicions based on misinformation.

The confusion seems to stem from the mistaken idea that there were handwritten notes by various Clinton Administration officials in the margins of these documents, which Mr. Berger may have been able to destroy. But that's simply an "urban myth," prosecutor Hillman tells us, based on a leak last July that was "so inaccurate as to be laughable." In fact, the five iterations of the anti-terror "after-action" report at issue in the case were printed out from a hard drive at the Archives and have no notations at all.

"Those documents, emphatically, without doubt--I reviewed them myself--don't have notations on them," Mr. Hillman tells us. Further, "there is no evidence after comprehensive investigation to suggest he took anything other than the five documents at issue and they didn't have notes." Mr. Berger's sentencing is scheduled for July, and Mr. Hillman assures us Justice's sentencing memo will lay out the facts and "make sure Mr. Berger explains what he did and why he did it." Meanwhile, conservatives don't do themselves any credit when they are as impervious to facts as the loony left.

Perhaps the WSJ editorial board would care to enlighten us as to why we shouldn't think Berger had nefarious motives, perhaps by asking WSJ reporters to do some actual reporting?

The MSM Loves Gay Weddings---Unless One Groom's A Republican

The New York Times demonstrates breathtaking bias once more in a "news" article:

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

"I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners," he said.

He declined further comment on the wedding, which was in December.

Some of Mr. Finkelstein's associates said they were startled to learn that this prominent American conservative had married a man, given his history with the party, especially at a time when many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have campaigned against same-sex marriage and proposed amending the Constitution to ban it. Mr. Finkelstein has been allied over the years with Republicans who have fiercely opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and has been the subject of attacks by gay rights activists who have accused him of hypocrisy. He was identified as gay in a Boston Magazine article in 1996.

There's a lot to pick at here, but let me just hit a couple of highlights:

1. The "wedding" happened in December. It's April now. How's this news?

2. How is it relevant that a political consultant who supports gay marriage tried "to demonize [opponents] as liberal"? "Demonize" is an awfully-loaded term, don't you think? Anyone not think Andrew Cuomo et al are liberals? Why is The Times suddenly afraid to embrace the liberal label, apparently viewing it as McCarthyite to so call someone? Very odd.

3. Is demonizing someone as gay as bad as demonizing them as liberal? If so, why the neutral "identified as gay" terminology when Boston Magazine "outed" him in 1996, a McCarthyite practice if ever there was one. The Times didn't like it when Bill Clinton was "outed" as a liar and adulterer by other press outlets, yet they seem curiously neutral when it comes to the private sexual lives of GOP operatives.

Must be their support for Jesse Helms.

Pretty youronic of The Times, don't you think?

You've Got Prison

Spammer gets nine years. What, the gas chamber was full?

A man convicted in the nation's first felony case against illegal spamming was sentenced to nine years in prison Friday for bombarding Internet users with millions of junk e-mails.

However, Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne delayed the start of Jeremy Jaynes' prison term while the case is appealed, saying the law is new and raises constitutional questions.

A jury had recommended the nine-year term for the Raleigh, N.C., man.

Jaynes, 30, who was considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services such as a "FedEx refund processor," prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his e-mails, and prosecutors said Jaynes' operation grossed up to $750,000 per month.

Spamming is a crime. Severe sentencing might give American spammers pause. Unfortunately, it might also merely increase offshore spamming, since the international community is too busy seeking ways to prosecute American soldiers and political leaders than to deal with this kind of fraud.

Is CBS Hiring Iraqi "Insurgents" to Provide Their Coverage?

I'm inclined to side with the Coalition on this one:

Multinational forces detained an individual "who was injured when forces returned fire after they came under attack by small arms fire" earlier this week, a statement said.

"He was standing next to an armed insurgent who was killed at the time that he was injured. The individual in question was carrying press credentials from CBS News.

"Military officials detained this individual and are conducting an investigation into his previous activities as well as his alleged support of anti-Iraqi insurgency activities.

"There is probable cause to believe that (he) poses an imperative threat to coalition forces."

Terrorists have a long history of masquerading as neutral noncombatants in order to escape the terror zone unmolested. Whether its Palestinian terrorists pretending to be Red Crescent workers or Syrian and Iranian terrorists working as "stringers" and "freelancers" for the MSM, we should constantly ask ourselves just how these folks managed to be in the right place at the right time to cover attacks as they happen, not the immediate aftermath of those attacks.

If the MSM companies had any sense of propriety or patriotism at all, they'd be asking these questions themselves.

Fat chance of that.

More here.

Hitting the MSM Where It Hurts

General Motors stunned the MSM with an announcement it was withdrawing advertising from the L.A. Times:

GM's move came a day after the L.A. Times published a column by its Pulitzer Prize-winning auto critic, Dan Neil, about the automaker's brand strategy.

The column's headline called the Pontiac G6 "a sales flop." It also said the automaker should "dump" Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and "let the impeachment proceedings begin."

GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney said the move to withdraw advertising was not spurred by any specific story but by "concerns over accuracy and misrepresentations with the paper's editorial coverage over a period of some time."

Finally, a crack in the wall of bias.

I predict that the circulation scandals the MSM is currently sitting on in the newspaper world will explode into a major issue over the next few months as advertisers realize they've been defrauded and demand much lower rates. As this happens, the increased pressure on profitability, combined with the exodus from the MSM following their awful and transparent bias during the Iraq War and the last election campaign, will lead to major restructuring and the acceleration of conservative media into the mainstream.

Companies would be smart to start taking advantage of the major blogs---they offer the opportunity for a much more targeted marketing campaign. Also, if companies are tired of MSM distortions, why not establish blogs themselves instead of talking to the Hair Helmet Hamas and waiting to see what comes out the end of their anti-business, anti-American media machine?

French Women Don't Take Baths

Myrna Blyth takes on the latest craze---American women who want to be like French women:

In truth, both these books wildly over-generalize and make their much-hyped points based on the experiences and attitudes of small groups of elite women. Chic svelte Parisians, of course, not all French women are the ones who make sure they don’t get fat. And it’s not most American mothers, but a very few upper-middle-class moms whose religion of Motherhood makes them agonize over throwing the perfect toddler birthday party, complete with bouncy tent.

Now I, of course, would never generalize in the same way. That would be like my saying all French men lack courage on the battlefield. Or calling them, for example, cheese-eating surrender monkeys. No, Mireille and Judith, you Francophiles, I would never do that. Even if it might be true.

Since Word Girl simply refuses to keep to her side of the blog, I'm going to trounce all over hers and talk about dieting and women's issues. And maybe even fashion.

First off, whenever Americans tend to think of French women, they tend to think of French women celebrities. Got news for you, folks---Catherine Deneuve stands out in a crowd in Paris, too. Your average French woman is pretty average. And given dubious hygiene, smoking like a chimney, and poor grooming habits (have you got a Monchichi in a headlock there, Madame?), your average French woman is quite a bit below the American average, to my mind. Even if the average American woman occasionally buries her head in the Blue Bell container and doesn't come up for air until she's sucking down cardboard.

Secondly, French women tend to live in France, which is distressingly rife with French men. There's a huge downside right there. With their pathetic, girlie little 35-hour work week, French men have lots of idol time to dream up spectacularly stupid political ideas and watch lots of bad French movies. Why don't they spend more time with those newly-admirable smoking Pez dispensers they call femmes? To do so would likely mean spending lots of time waiting outside the women's bathroom listening to the toilets flush. No thanks.

Finally, if French women were so great, we'd be importing them instead of Russian and Czech women. The mail order bride services are a pretty good indicator of where America's collective head is at regarding the merits of foreign babes. We figured out sometime during WWII that French women were much too high-maintenance to bother with, particularly since having those "Fritz" tattoos removed for them would cost a mint and take an awful lot of 35-hour work weeks to recoup the expense.

French women may not get fat, but they don't get American men, either. Why American women would wish to emulate the Parisian doyennes is beyond me, but then again, so is the timeless allure of starving oneself or treating retching as recreation.

Why not simply enjoy life and worry less? If the men you're dating aren't into that, go find some who are.

Just make sure they're not Frenchmen. ; )

Robble Robble

What was Sandy Berger, secret shoplifter, up to?

Dick Morris has some speculation that's a real toe-, I mean, thumb-sucker:

The documents were an "after-action review" by Richard Clarke, then the National Security Council's terrorism expert, discussing and analyzing our efforts to stop attacks during the Millennium celebrations. They were so secret, the Washington Times reports, that anyone seeking to remove the documents would have had to do so in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. And, it seems, they were so critical of the former administration that Berger felt he needed to steal them. But why did Berger steal them?

The most obvious reason would be to stop the 9/11 commission from including embarrassing revelations in its report.

Yes, the documents Berger purloined were not the only copies, but it's not clear that Berger knew that. Or there may have been handwritten notes in the margins of the copies Berger destroyed — written by the president, Berger or others.

Berger's "explanation" stinks: He claims he was too tired to review the documents in their secure venue, that eye fatigue moved him to stash them in his pocket for later comparison in the leisure of his home and office.

That's nonsense. After all, he went back a week later and helped himself to more documents.

Berger would also have us believe he "inadvertently" cut up and "inadvertently" destroyed the documents — that he had no intention of concealing anything from the commission. And then, I suppose, he inadvertently lied about what he'd done.

Come on. With a shabby explanation like that, Berger invites speculation that he is covering for himself or for the Clintons.

Why on Earth did DOJ cut a deal with him? Do they honestly believe a former NSA doesn't know the rules for handling or identifying classified documents?

Acts of Commission, Sins of Omission

The Silbermann-Robb Commission, which was apparently NOT a 70s prog-rock supergroup, released its report on intelligence failures. Michael Ledeen has this analysis:

All of which leads to two conclusions that the commission could not reach, even though, reading between the lines, it seems pretty clear they would have if they could have: First, there must be accountability, and this means that lots of people should be fired (and should have been fired long since, especially after 9/11). And second, that, instead of expanding personnel — as the president requested and Congress obliged after the terrorist attacks three and a half years ago, and as the president again requested and Congress again obliged following the dreadful recommendations of the 9/11 Commission just before last year’s elections — we should drastically reduce manpower, and then, if necessary, slowly rebuild.

If talent and accountability are indeed the crucial issues — and, to repeat, the great strength of the report is its recognition that these are the crux of the matter — then it is impossible to get a good intelligence community by shuffling the failed bureaucrats around in new configurations, and then providing them with lots of new bodies to badly train and educate. It is a guaranteed formula for worse intelligence because it produces more and more bad analysts and ineffective case officers. The intelligence community needs a big-time purge, not a brainless expansion accompanied by a monster reshuffle of boxes, connections, and interagency groups.

The commission couldn’t say these things, because they were not part of its mandate. Instead, they occasionally hint at these conclusions — I can’t imagine such a great talent as Larry Silberman (who should be sitting on the Supreme Court) submitting to total censorship on such an important matter — and probably raised the matter, verbally, when they briefed the top congressional and executive-branch officials.

How about having an intelligence community made up of people who would actually like to see America win the War on Terror, for a start?

Might be a good template for cleaning out the Augean Stables of moral equivalence at Foggy Bottom, too.

Where Have All The Good Guys Gone?

They're on the front lines of the War on Terror---the MSM simply doesn't want you to know about them:

The public image of the military is shaped by the press. No matter how laudatory the actions of a soldier, if the press ignores them, the public is not aware of them. Today's battlefield elites are given scant focus by media elites. On Monday, Sgt 1st Class Paul Ray Smith was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, with little fanfare and media coverage that burned out in 24 hours. So whom are we celebrating?

In World War II, the press were cheerleaders who shared a symbiotic relationship with the military. Gutsy warriors like Audie Murphy and "Pappy" Boyington were famous for their high kill totals. In Vietnam, the press soured on the effort, tied the troops to the policymakers and refused to laud aggressive soldiers. Instead, victims were accentuated. American prisoners of war — who were certainly brave — were the only acclaimed heroes. Rugged commando-types — just as brave — were ignored.

This was reflected in the wave of Vietnam movies that proliferated in the 1980s. In the four most popular movies — Rambo: First Blood Part II, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Casualties of War — two themes emerged: soldier as victim and soldier as criminal.

In Iraq, the most famous soldiers to emerge are PFC Jessica Lynch and PFC Lynndie England, a victim and criminal, respectively. Their public images are the offspring of Vietnam. Celebrity and cynicism have trumped achievement.

Habits die hard, for the press as well as for the rest of us. The disproportionate coverage of seven guards at Abu Ghraib and one quick-acting Marine in a mosque trumped the extraordinary victory won by thousands of Marines and soldiers in Fallujah, now one of the safest cities in the Sunni Triangle. The obsessive spotlight damaged the image of the American soldier at home while failing to assuage our detractors abroad. America is proud of its collective conscience, but self-flagellation has a deteriorating effect.

A nation's selection of its heroes is a reflection of its values. Jihadists like Zarqawi are not idealistic agrarian reformers. We are not a nation of victims. The press ought to make a real effort to show the tough guys who fight for us.

And All This Time I Thought the Patriot Act Was Designed To Stop the New England NFL Juggernaut

Now I find it's anti-terrorism legislation, and the incomparably silly Fox News "senior judicial analyst" is firmly against it:

Where to begin? First, leaving aside how silly it obviously is to compare agents executing a court-authorized search warrant to burglars, a sneak-and-peek search is, in fact, the polar opposite of a common burglary. A burglar enters your home to rob you. In stark contrast, the warrant here is called "sneak-and-peek" because, just as O'Reilly implied, agents sneak into a home (rather than loudly announcing their presence or even breaking in, as they do with regular search warrants), and peek around — that is, they generally don't take anything (unlike the execution of a regular search warrant, during which lots of a person's belongings are often seized).

The whole point of sneak-and-peek is to gather information without letting the bad guys know FBI agents were there. If important items that a subject is likely to miss — like his checkbook — are removed, then the aim of the sneak-and-peek technique is destroyed. Furthermore, agents may not unilaterally "plant a chip in your computer" (by which I assume Napolitano means a device that allows future computer use to be monitored or existing computer data to be seized). Federal agents need a warrant, pre-authorized by a court finding of probable cause, to do that.

It may be news to the senior judicial analyst, but the Patriot Act did not give us sneak-and-peek warrants. They have been around for decades. Another newsflash: Such techniques are exactly how the FBI goes about proving the existence of a criminal or terrorist enterprise.

What a horrible intrusion upon civil liberties! Who came up with this "search warrant" business anyway?

Passing Notes Always Gets You In Trouble

More on the revelation that some clown working for Republican freshman Senator Mel Martinez wrote the Schiavo "GOP talking points" memo:

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night.

Brian H. Darling, 39, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Martinez, the GOP's Senate point man on the issue, said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue."

A couple of points:

1. Speculation that the Democrats wrote the memo was clearly off the mark. I believed this speculation and was clearly in the wrong. The Senate GOP has a long tradition of abject stupidity which this incident clearly extends.

2. It appears that Democrat Senator Tom Harkin was the person who obtained this memo and gave it to The Washington Post. That isn't a dirty trick in my book---if somebody's dumb enough to write it, dumb enough to hand it out, and even dumb enough to give it to somebody who'd be dumb enough to give it to a scuzzy little partisan weasel like Harkin, then they deserve what they get---period. The GOP deserved this black eye.

3. The Washington Post is awfully cozy with the Democrat senators.

Thanks to Word Girl for breaking this on the site while I was unavoidably detained by the people who pay my salary who expect that I, well, work for it.

Finally, A Place to Put My Shaun Cassidy LPs

If only they'd drill a bit deeper:

Scientist said this week they had drilled into the lower section of Earth's crust for the first time and were poised to break through to the mantle in coming years.

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) seeks the elusive "Moho," a boundary formally known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity. It marks the division between Earth's brittle outer crust and the hotter, softer mantle.

The depth of the Moho varies. This latest effort, which drilled 4,644 feet (1,416 meters) below the ocean seafloor, appears to have been 1,000 feet off to the side of where it needed to be to pierce the Moho, according to one reading of seismic data used to map the crust's varying thickness.

The new hole, which took nearly eight weeks to drill, is the third deepest ever made. The rock collection brought back to the surface is providing new information about the planet's composition.

When asked for comment, seven-year-old Billy Watkins said, "Darn!" and ran into his house, forever abandoning the Backyard-to-China digging project well before reaching mantle.

Martinez: Turncoat?

Something's rotten in Denmark:

WASHINGTON — A one-page unsigned memo that became part of the debate preceding Congress' vote ordering a federal court review of the Terri Schiavo case originated in Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez' office, Martinez said Wednesday.

The memo — first reported by ABC News on March 18 and by The Washington Post and The Associated Press two days later — said the fight over removing Schiavo's feeding tube "is a great political issue ... and a tough issue for Democrats."

"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was described at the time as being circulated among Senate Republicans.

Martinez said in a written statement he discovered Wednesday that the memo had been written by an aide in his office. "It is with profound disappointment and regret that I learned today that a senior member of my staff was unilaterally responsible for this document," Martinez said.

He said he accepted the resignation of the staffer, whom he did not identify, who drafted and circulated the memo. "This type of behavior and sentiment will not be tolerated in my office," he said.

"Until this afternoon, I had never seen it and had no idea a copy of it had ever been in my possession," Martinez said of the document. He had previously denied knowing anything about the memo and condemned its sentiments.

The memo had been disavowed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, both primary forces behind Congress passing the bill and sending it to President Bush on March 21.

Democrats had pounced on the document as evidence that Republicans were seeking a political advantage in the fight between Schiavo's husband and her parents over removing her feeding tube 15 years after she incurred severe brain damage that left her incapacitated.
...
Martinez, in his statement, said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, had asked for background information on the bill ordering a federal court to review the Schiavo case.

He said he pulled a one-page document from his coat pocket and handed to Harkin. "Unbeknownst to me ... I had given him a copy of the now infamous memo."

He said Harkin had called him earlier Wednesday to say he believes the memo had been given to him by Martinez. The Florida senator said he then ordered an internal investigation in his office.

Allison Dobson, a spokeswoman for Harkin, said the Iowa Democrat had received the memo from Martinez in the days leading up to passage of the bill.

Martinez said he also had apologized to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who is up for re-election in 2006 and was cited in the memo because he had declined to become a sponsor of the bill.

Two, no three, questions:
1) If this was such a big deal to the Democrats, why, Why, WHY would Harkin NOT have outed Martinez as the source? He's got everything to gain by pointing fingers, right? (And when has Harkin ever shut up about anything, let alone something this big?)
2) What's Martinez up to, making the Republican Party leadership look like a bunch of conspiratorial liars?
3) What kind of idiot doesn't know what's in his own COAT POCKET? For the love of all that's holy! Did the little magic people put that in your coat? And do you honestly think we'll believe you when you say you didn't know what you were handing to Harkin?

Sounds like a Democrat buy-out, blackmail or power grabbing. In any case, it's rotten.

Update: As usual, Michelle Malkin has this one covered, too.

Why Am I Not Surprised...

Former Presidents Bush and Clinton, on the viewing of the Pope. Their thoughts:

The former President Bush told reporters traveling with the delegation aboard Air Force One that the pope "was unforgettable."

He said he had met the pope for the first time when he was vice president, bringing his son, Jeb, a converted Catholic, along for the visit. Though he and the pope had disagreed sharply on the Persian Gulf War, with the pope sending him a cable opposing the invasion of Kuwait, the elder Bush said he wished he had had time to discuss with the pope the notion of a "just war" which the pope had supported.

Clinton, talking separately with reporters on the plane, said the pope had demonstrated support for NATO actions to end genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo.

He said he had met "two great popes" in his lifetime, John Paul II and John XXIII. Clinton said he recognized that John Paul "may have had a mixed legacy," but he called him a man with a great feel for human dignity.

And, Clinton said, noting the throngs the pope would consistently draw, said, "The man knows how to build a crowd."

Lemme' get this straight: Though former President Bush disagreed with John Paul II, he respected him and wanted to engage him on deeper inquiries, with something to be gained by both sides.

Clinton simply admired his apparent publicity machine. Oh, yeah, and we're supposed to infer that the Pope was a Clinton supporter (or that Clinton was correct in his handling of Bosnia) because the Pope "demonstrated support for NATO actions to end genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo." What?

Clinton then speaks in astoundingly narcissistic terms of the Pope's "mixed legacy" and that he had "a great feel for human dignity." Are you kidding me? As if the Pope was aiming toward higher poll numbers when he stood out against communism, abortion, premarital sex and divorce. And a "mixed legacy" he will not have. John Paul II will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most influential and courageous men in the 20th century.

Clinton's rabid focus on "legacy building" is obvious. As is his opportunistic nature to take ANY media event and make it all about himself.

But this is perhaps the richest part:

Some of Congress' best known Catholics also will attend, although not as part of the official U.S. delegation. Among them are Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Kennedy and Pelosi, good Catholics? With their voting histories, political views (Terri Schiavo notwithstanding), and outright hatred of everything the Pope stood for, it's a wonder he's not spinning.

It's All About the Benjamins

GREENSBURG, Ind., 04.07.2005
Smelly Money Lands Indiana Man in Jail

A man who went to the sheriff's department to bond out his brother-in-law also ended up in jail when police realized the money he handed them reeked of marijuana.

Timothy Richards, 45, of Columbus, went to the Decatur County Sheriff's Department and when he handed dispatcher Julie Meyers $400, she counted it and then noticed something unusual.

"When I walked back toward the jail I noticed the money was damp and smelled funny," Meyers said.

A jailer who sniffed the money told her it smelled like marijuana, she said.

Indiana State Trooper Chip Ayers was nearby and asked for the money, she said. He smelled it and then asked Richards for consent to search him and his car, Meyers said.

Ayers found a pipe and a small amount of marijuana and charged Richards with possession. If convicted, he could face six months to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Richards remained in jail for several hours Tuesday - until his brother-in-law made bail and came back to pay his own $250 bond.

Idiot.

Looks Like a Job For The MythBusters

PERTH, Australia, 04.07.2005
Overzealous Owner Blows Eatery Apart

An overzealous attempt to rid a Thai restaurant of cockroaches sparked an explosion that blew the eatery apart, emergency services said Thursday.

Three men were hospitalized with burns after they set off 36 cockroach fumigation devices - aerosol cans filled with chemicals - which apparently exploded after their contents came into contact with an oven pilot light.

Duncraig fire station officer Kieran Cooper said the blast wrecked the restaurant.

John McMillan, manager of Western Australia state's fire investigations unit, said the huge blast lifted the roof off the Tamarind restaurant in the state capital, Perth.

I saw this episode on the Discovery Channel. Apparently, this happens around the world about 100 times a year, give or take. Although, according to the Myth-meisters, you'd have to be using incredibly shoddy appliances and (like this guy) about 36 aerosol cans of fumigator. They actually had to modify the experiment to get the desired result because this is incredibly difficult to pull off -- unless, of course, you're a blinking idiot.

Still, it was cool to watch the house go "kaboom".

What? I like explosives. No one got hurt... Adam and Jamie like explosives! They get paid for it...

*And by the way, Teflon has a secret crush on Carrie. Yeah, don't tell. It's just between us.*

Can You Uncover The Secret Code?

I've gleaned yet another goodie from the Snopes archives. This one was way too good not to pass on.

You won't win anything, but you'll certainly get a little chuckle. See if you can spot the acrostic.



The actual text:
Free your body and soul
Unfold your powerful wings
Climb up the highest mountains
Kick your feet up in the air
You may now live forever
Or return to this earth
Unless you feel good where you are

Missed by your friends

This is indeed a photograph of the headstone marking the spot where John Laird McCaffery (15 October 1940 - 14 August 1995) lies buried in Section C, Plot #01369 of Montreal's Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. (The headstone is not, as claimed in the message quoted above, in Mount Royal Cemetery -- Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges and Mount Royal Cemetery are adjacent but separate facilities.) Like most cemeteries, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges has rules regarding what may or may not be engraved on tombstones displayed there, so a pejorative sentiment such as the one shown here could only be expressed in surreptitious fashion.

Who penned Mr. McCaffery's unusual epitaph, and why, is something of a mystery. The Montreal Mirror found the man who engraved the headstone but were only able to determine that:

The cryptic message occurred to the monument maker after he finished sandblasting it into stone. "Afterwards, as I'm done, I'm looking at it and I’m like, 'Wow.' I noticed it just like that," says John, whose full name won’t be published here for professional reasons. "This guy's ex-wife and mistress came in together and ordered the stone. They said the message represented him. It was a thing between the three of them," says John, who notes that the only other such hardy-har headstone he's been hired to write says: "I'd rather be in Boston but my wife buried me here."

S.O.S.

Another Snopes gem.(You GOTTA' love this guy):

Military history includes many instances when soldiers who fell into the hands of the enemy were trotted out before photographers or television cameras by their captors for purposes of propaganda: — to create false images intended to trick audiences into believing that the prisoners were actually well-cared for, sympathized with their captors, or were voluntarily denouncing the political policies of their home countries. Likewise, military history includes many instances in which such captured soldiers managed to inserted subtle and furtive signs into propagandistic images to express their defiance, to indicate that the information they were relaying was false, or to signal that they were acting under duress. (One of the most well-known examples of this phenomenon is the infamous middle finger gesture (employed by the crew of the USS Pueblo in photographs after their ship was captured by North Korea in 1968.)

The gesture of crossing one's fingers is not unique to the military, of course; it is an ages-old symbol used to indicate that the finger-crosser does not mean what he is saying or is being compelled to act through coercion. (A typical kiddie trick is to surreptitiously cross one's fingers behind one's back while making a promise, a token that supposedly shields the finger-crosser from the obligation of upholding the terms of his oath.) The implication of the photograph shown above (which began circulating on the Internet in early 2004 and was taken at one of the military facilities New York senator Hillary Clinton visited in Iraq during the Thanksgiving 2003 holidays), then, is that despite the smiling faces and friendly hand-shaking captured in the picture, the soldier is communicating that he is not really all that pleased to be meeting Senator Clinton.

The "not really all that pleased" assessment is evidently accurate... as the soldier pictured with Senator Clinton... employed the gesture to indicate that he was not a fan of the senator's and was not as appreciative of having the opportunity to meet (and pose with) her as it might otherwise appear.

Why We Fight III

A picture IS worth a thousand words. Or maybe just one:

The occasion of this photograph was a Veterans Day Commemoration at Dallas City Hall on 11 November 2004. The veteran pictured is Houston James, a survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the Marine is Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr., a member of an ordnance-disposal team who lost his left hand, one leg, and an eye while defusing a bomb in Iraq in July 2003.

You Can Have All the Academic Freedom You Like---So Long As You're A Bolshevik Idiot

More on Ward Churchill:

OF COURSE, THE IDEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY, cloaked in the magic armor of academic freedom, engendering a free and open search for truth is, at least outside of the physical sciences, a myth. Core curricula have been sacrificed on the altar of the anti-intellectual deity of political correctness, and the promise of a free and open exchange of ideas is too often a hollow one -- especially if you are a political conservative. Indeed, in America, the exchange of ideas is demonstrably more free and open outside of universities than in them. Nonetheless, university professors and administrators continue to find success in peddling the charms of "academic freedom" to the American public.

Are we forever condemned to suffering a system of higher education with an increasingly left-wing, anti-American, and indeed anti-intellectual bent, perpetuated by a culture of academe where to be critical of Western values (except for some strains such as Marxism), and particularly American values, is the key to acceptance and the key to be regarded as intelligent? If Americans continue to buy in to the sanctity of "academic freedom" and to deny themselves any role in shaping university standards and policies, the answer is "yes." Can serious efforts by concerned citizens, alumni, and governments (in the case of state schools) curb some academic excesses? That is yet to be seen.

I graduated from a federal service academy. There was more academic freedom in a military university than there has ever been at the politically-correct civilian versions. I should know---I took an "A" in an Airpower History course writing a final thesis about how General Curtis LeMay ought to have been tried as a war criminal for indiscriminate firebombing.

Sure, I was wrong, but my much-wiser instructor aced me anyway, despite vehemently disagreeing with me. THAT's academic freedom.

And I Thought Qaddafi Was Our New Best Friend

Not A Friend Always, by the looks of it, blaming Bulgarian nurses for a Libyan pediatric AIDS epidemic and sentencing them to death:

TO THE NON-ARAB WORLD, the cause of the outbreak seems obvious. Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, has twice investigated the outbreak and twice concluded that the infection began up to four years before the arrival of the Bulgarians, probably after the 1997 hospitalization of a child from sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Montagnier and several of his colleagues, including experts from the World Health Organization, have repeatedly insisted that the infection was spread through the reuse of disposable syringes.

Everyone seems to have his own explanation why the Libyans are pressing forward with the death sentences. Some say Libya wants the Bulgarian government to forgive its massive debt. Libya has asked Sofia for compensation, $10 million for each infected child, which coincidentally is what Libya paid to each of the families of the 270 mostly American victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. A Libyan, Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was convicted of the terrorist bombing. Following the outcome of that trial Libya's foreign ministry spokesman Hassouna Chaouch dismissed the verdict as "a serious affront and a clear condemnation of the Scottish judiciary." Chaouch declared that "Libya reiterates to the whole world that Abdel Basset al-Megrahi is the Jesus Christ of the modern time." Al-Megrahi was sentenced to 20 years and is serving his sentence in Scotland.

Can A Christian School Survive in New York City?

It remains to be seen:

As soon as the question of King’s College’s accreditation came before the Regents, Brademas began to throw up a series of patently bogus objections, all of which were answered in the written material prepared by the Regents own Advisory Council. Brademas harped on the college’s small library — yet neglected to note that King’s is across the street from the Science and Business Branch of the New York Public Library, and seven short blocks from the library’s main building. That gives King’s a better library than all but a handful of colleges and universities in New York State.

But the silliest objection of all was the claim that the college has a misleading name. After all, said Brademas, King’s College was the original name of Columbia University. Wouldn’t that mislead prospective students into thinking they’re attending Columbia, instead of an evangelical Christian school? Trouble is, Columbia University changed its name from King’s to Columbia over 200 years ago — after the Revolution broke our ties with England’s king. And, of course, the King honored in King’s College’s name is God. New York’s Regents have accredited this college for over 50 years under the name of King’s. So why the problem now?

Maybe John Brademas can come up with a persuasive explanation for his objections to King’s College that does not involve anti-Christian bias. Yet so far, all signs point to the worst sort of blue-state bigotry. I