Is Romney not Christian enough?

Anyone who meets Mitt Romney comes away with a good feeling. He's a very decent man and the people of Massachusetts chose wisely in 2002. Governor Romney is certainly playing coy with his presidential ambitions, opting not to run for re-election in 2006. But the early wordis that Romney faces problems with the religous right not an insignificant force in Republican circles. A resolute chaste man who refuses to indulge in so much as foul language, Governor Romney's problem appears to be that he is a Mormon. In today's excellent profile of Romney, James Taranto of theWall Street Journal notes

The trouble is that much of today's anti-Mormon sentiment is found on the religious right, a constituency that looms much larger in the GOP now than it did in 1968, or than it ever has in Massachusetts. Ask a conservative Christian what he thinks of Mormonism, and there's a good chance he'll call it a "cult" or say Mormons "aren't Christian."

I am not a congenial basher of the "religious right" but I do think religious conservatives who hold such views on Mormonism behind their lace curtains are an increasing threat to the Republican party. It would be a shame if they foreclose opportunities for "non-Chrisitians" like Romney.

What's happening to the party of Goldwater?

The slow triumph of hope

There's good news. Some things are actually getting better for humanity. Brian McCartan is an optimist.

Judging from the headlines, 2005 was a gloomy year, indeed. Gulf Coast hurricanes, the devastating earthquake in Kashmir, ongoing war in Iraq, civil war in Sudan, renewed famine in central Africa, and the threat of a worldwide pandemic flu darkened the news. These headlines, however, obscure a far brighter underlying trend: On average, people across the planet are living longer, healthier lives, with greater opportunities for education and political freedom than ever before.

We unavoidably view our world through news articles that break up an otherwise overwhelming stream of information into digestible bites. As a result, we often "lose the forest for the trees" by focusing on sensational short-term stories that impact relatively few people. It is difficult to place these singular events in context and it is all too easy to lose sight of more fundamental developments. If we step back from daily headlines and examine broader global trends in human progress, an encouraging picture for 2005 emerges.

Let us build, then, upon the successes lost in the forest.

SoxBlog takes a swing at the Globe's coverage of controversial Roxbury mosque

The Globe takes a belated peek at the controversy surrounding a new mosque in Roxbury. Why has it taken the Globe this long? It might have to do with political correctness or just laziness or just the inability to grasp the issue's importance says SoxBlog.

SoxBlog's Dean Barnett published a detailed piece in the Weekly Standard recently highlighting some of the unsavory characters associated with the Islamic Society of Boston's $22 million mosque in Roxbury. Moreover Barnett zooms into the cozy real estate deal worked out by ISB and the City of Boston.

When I labeled the question of why the Globe hadn?t covered this story in its own backyard as only a ?pretty good? one, the reason I gave it relatively low marks is because we all know the answer as to why the Globe ignored the story. The Globe would be incapable of covering such a matter without its trademark slavish adherence to political correctness. There?s no way the Globe could cover the controversy either honestly or accurately.

Does C.A.I.R care about its image?

Stephen Schwartz laments radical Wahhabi's inroads into moderate American Islam.

Steve Chapman remembers the late William Proxmire

Sen. William Proxmire died this past week. He was a great Senator and a Democrat with guts. Proxmire railed against mindless government spending even when it benefited his own state. They certainly don't make them like Bill Proxmire anymore as Stephen Chapman notes:

He was a philosophical anomaly, voting like a Kennedy on civil rights, the Vietnam War, the environment and the death penalty, but often expressing skepticism about federal programs. "Government has gotten too big too fast," he said in 1979. "The burden of proof ought always to be on those who want to extend government."

Those who want to extend government have had a far easier time since Proxmire left the Senate 17 years ago. Everyone would agree they don't make senators like that anymore. In truth, they never made more than one.

Kayne West call your office

Ever wonder why newspaper readership is plummeting? And why journalists are held in low esteem? Try this and this.

But perhaps some of the reason why we get slanted news is this.

The march of the nanny state

This latest push for the busy-bodies is done, of course, "for the children." While the nannycrats have their foot in the front door why don't they just head for the pantry where they can clean out the Cheez-its and other snacks in the name of fighting obesity. There may be some efficiency to the effort. Then maybe they, of all people, can work their way into the bedroom, perhaps mandating condom use for the public good of curbing overpopulation.

The perils of the prediction business

Econbrowser reminds us of just how difficult it is to get a handle on how high oil prices might go.

Oil 'will hit $100 by winter'
Worst-ever crisis looms, says analyst · Surging demand to keep prices high
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday July 3, 2005
The Observer

Oil prices could rocket to $100 within six months, plunging the world into an unprecedented fuel crisis, controversial Texan oil analyst Matt Simmons has warned.
After crude surged through $60 a barrel last week, nervous investors were pinning their hopes on a build-up in US oil-stocks to depress prices in the coming months.

But Simmons believes surging demand will keep prices bubbling well above $50. 'We could be at $100 by this winter. We have the biggest risk we have ever had of demand exceeding supply. We are now just about to face up to the biggest crisis we have ever had,' he said.

Opec producers held emergency talks last week to consider making their second 500,000 a barrel increase in production quotas in a fortnight: but the discussions were suspended last Thursday after prices dipped back below $60.

Blogger Angry Bear does us a favor

The federal budget: read the chart and weep. Or maybe it isn't so bad if you take Angry Bear's perspective.

We want your money and our cake too

Robert Musil takes on the opposition to the Solomon Amendment.

Don't bet against Robert Fogel

A contributor to Arnold Kling's EconLog says you shouldn't bet against the insight of economic historian Robert Fogel. Fogel, the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Economics, thinks long-term economic growth could prop up the social security system rather easily. He's an optimist to say the least -- thinking that economic growth is often underestimated.

Kurt Vonnegut senile and stuck on stupid

Oh yes yet another antiBush screed in the works this one from none other than Kurt Vonnegut, a real chesnut from the 1960s. What's the redeeming value in Vonnegut's work anyway as we approach the 21st century? Unlike Saul Bellow, Vonnegut's value diminishes over time. He sounded cool in high school but that's about it. It takes a grown up to figure out that Vonnegut is a fool. But the adversary culture admires him more particlarly when he sticks his foot in his mouth. James Lileks brilliantly calls out Vonnegut for appreciating ultimate high of suicide bombing. This from a man who made us uncomfortable about the bombing of Dresden. Vonnegut has certainly come full circle when it comes to indiscrimate death.

Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."Mr. Vonnegut ? again, a patriot whose dissent is being cruelly ground into the nurturing earth before your eyes ? seems to think that suicide bombings literally happen in a vacuum, an unpopulated space where the bombers just pop like soap bubbles. It may be painless for them ? alas ? but it is not painless for the victims. You?d think such an obvious observation would go without saying, but we are dealing with an intellectual. What Vonnegut calls brave ? blowing yourself up so you can fly up to the great Bunny Ranch in the sky and rut with fragrant houris blessed with self-regenerating hymens ? does not exactly compare to the bravery required of the survivors.

Read the whole dressing down at Lilek's haunt, the ScreedBlog.

Ah those pangs, get me a phone

If this cretin with a conscience ever gets caught will this enter in to a plea for clemency?

"In my 21 years as a police officer, this is the first time I've ever heard of a crook with a conscience," said Detective Larry Ellison, who is investigating the case.

PJ Buchanan sees history repeating itself for the Democrats

Patrick Buchanan, hardly a Bush booster, finds the Democrats' case against the President lacking. They tread on murky waters.

With his poll ratings at rock bottom and little to lose, Bush has just escalated the war politics. Democrats who have had it all their way since Cindy Sheehan set up Camp Casey would do well to wonder whether they have not ridden out a little too far into Indian country and are heading for the Little Big Horn where their daddies disappeared long ago.

In the late 1940s, the Party of Truman and FDR was shredded by Nixon, Bill Jenner and Joe McCarthy for having sold out Eastern Europe at Yalta, lost China, and coddled communists and Stalinist spies like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. And there was a reason the attacks stuck. They had the ancillary benefit of being true.

The media may have rewritten history to make the Edward R. Murrow Left look
like the heroes of the era, but the Democratic Party never recovered from the charge its leaders had groveled to Stalin. JFK knew it, and ran and won the presidency as an anti-communist hawk.

A generation later, Nixon and Agnew charged the Democratic Party with having marched us into Vietnam and then, when the going got tough, of having turned tail, cut and run, and gone over the hill to march with the children against the war into which they had themselves led the United States. Those charges stuck for the same reason: They were true.

Between 1961 and 1969, when America was plunged into Vietnam, Washington was Democratic, from the White House to the Capitol to the pro-war Washington Post. When Nixon arrived in 1969, Democrats started calling it "Nixon's War," but the country knew it was a Democratic war. And when the liberals turned on Nixon, America turned on them and gave him a 49-state landslide. Vietnam was the wheel on which liberalism was broken and the FDR New Deal coalition shattered forever.

Now, Democrats have maneuvered themselves onto the same risky terrain once
again.

A new take on tradition, what exactly are we conserving?

There has been much talk about the great conservative crack-up. Here's an attempt from Lexington Green over at the the ChicagoBoyz blog to recast the tension between dynamist libertarianism and traditional conservativism. He thinks the answer lies in the exploration of what's called the Anglosphere developed by author Jim Bennet

The critical contribution that Jim Bennett is making is providing a unifying framework to do re-found both conservatism and libertarianism. He is taking [traditionalists'] insights and a bunch of other stuff, identifying a genuine tradition which really is ancient, common to us all, at the core of what makes us what we are, that has caused the freedom and prosperity we value. These ideas are not really new, but they needed to be repackaged and re-presented.

This means that the question of "what do conservatives want to conserve" can be coherently answered, finally. The question ?what liberties do libertarians value? can be answered better, by showing where the liberties they value came from, and how they they got here.

Derrick Jackson unloads on gangsta rap.

Derrick Jackson and I have very little in common. On most issues I find myself vehemently disagreeing with this reflexes.

But we apparently agree on the corporate exploitation of young black males by corporate America. The hip hop industry is a con. I laugh everytime Rebbock throws out its human rights awards. The corporation is a study in object hypocrisy.

It is tragic enough that black rappers and hip-hop moguls prostitute themselves to the Fortune 500 with the very stereotypes about violence, stupidity, and sexual drive that white society used to justify slavery, colonization, segregation, and lynching. After slave rebellions, the Underground Railroad, patriotism in world wars, marches on Washington, and murders of civil rights workers, Jay-Z makes millions saying, ''I take and rape villages."

African-Americans can no longer afford to coddle these people. The black czars of gutter hip-hop are the new house slaves. And Reebok's promotion of this material, along with Comcast and other media giants, is just as reprehensible.

In his second-quarter 2005 conference call, Reebok CEO Paul Fireman said that Jay-Z has ''been a great assistance in connecting us to the right people culturally, connecting us, working with athletes . . . Jay-Z is an inspirational person in that community."

Moguls like Jay-Z may be wearing pinstripes these days and Russell Simmons may be urging youth of color to vote, but as long as their foundation is rotten, they are a corrosive force in black culture. If the civil rights establishment is looking for a new crusade, it needs to summon the guts to ignore the billions that flow through the hip-hop industry. At the close of 2004 all top-10 rap singles ranked by Billboard used
the ''n" word in their uncensored versions.

Read the whole column.

Courage

Bravo for Maria Friedman!

Some people should be ashamed of themselves

Maryland Democrats become unhinged. In the polarizing world of racial politics only the Trent Lotts get punished.

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.

Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.

Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted. But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with "pointing out the obvious."

"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

This is nasty stuff.

Michael Barone highlights the Italian American factor; In opposing Alito, Dems face big risks

Michael Barone has a word of advice for Democrats threatening to filibuster nomine Sam Alito. Don't mess with the Italians. They have clout politically all over the Northeast.

But if they[the Senate Democrats] filibuster, they risk alienating another constituency, Italian-Americans. To understand the risk, consider the number of votes cast against the confirmation of Antonin Scalia in 1986. That number was zero. Democrats knew Scalia was a judicial conservative?he had a paper trail as an academic?but they also knew that Italian-Americans very much wanted to see a fellow Italian-American on the Supreme Court.

For many years I have attended events sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, an organization established in the 1970s in large part to dispel the Mafia stereotype. NIAF has been proud to seat the director of the FBI at the head table as its annual dinner. It was proud that in 1984 the four Democratic and Republican nominees for president and vice president (including Geraldine Ferraro, remember) attended its dinner?the only time in American history, I believe, that four nominees attended a single event.

The late Peter Rodino, longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a liberal Democrat on most issues, once told me with tears in his eyes that one of his greatest regrets in life is that his father did not live long enough to see the first Italian-American on the United States Supreme Court. In 1987 I spent a day in Wilmington, Del., with Joseph Biden, who was running for president. He took me around the town, introduced me to his mother and father, and took me to lunch at a little restaurant in Wilmington's Little Italy. He knew everyone there very well and was very warmly received. The thought later occurred to me: There was no way this guy was ever going to vote against the first Italian-American on the Supreme Court. And no way any senators from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts were, either. They all had their friends in their state's Little Italy, and they weren't going to disappoint them. Scalia seems aware of this. He's reportedly willing to speak to any Italian-American organization that invites him.

What ever happened to free speech on campus?

Sounds like a politically correct Catholic kangeroo court at Duquesne University doesn't like the idea of free speech. Fair enough, the Catholic college is clearly within its bounds to write the obnoxious rules. But does such a stifling attitude extend to a student online and off campus? I don't know the details of any implied contractual arrangements between school and student at Duquesne. Meanwhile, Duquesne should do all of us a favor: don't pass yourself off as a citadel of liberal learning dedicated to free inquiry.

A Duquesne University sophomore who is in trouble for online comments said he's not backing down -- that he'd rather be thrown out of school than take back what he said.

"I'm stubborn. I stand up for what I believe in," said Ryan Miner. Miner, a political science major, wrote against the forming of a gay-straight student alliance at his college.

He posted his thoughts at Facebook.com, a private Web site popular with students from across the country.

A complaint was filed against Miner because he used the word "subhuman" when writing about gay people.

The university's Judicial Affairs panel found that those remarks violated the school's university code of conduct.

Where have all the issue oriented talk shows gone?

Barbara Anderson laments the passing of the good old days of talk radio.

Hat tip to Boston Radio Watch one of my favorite web sites.

Enough is enough; the fiscal conservative boots on the ground fight back

Tom DeLay who never saw a budget he couldn't coddle should be worried. The fiscal conservatives are fighting back. Good for our side.

A planned conservative agenda of tax cutting, a permanent end to the estate tax, and the first cuts in Medicaid and other entitlement programs in nearly a decade appeared lost. Some Republicans were even suggesting it might be time to raise taxes, joining a chorus of Democrats pressing to roll back some of Bush's tax cuts.

"There was an element of the last straw in this," Pence said.

By Sept. 7, Congress had already enacted a $10.5 billion hurricane-relief measure, with a $52 billion bill pending. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) went to the House Rules Committee with an amendment to pay for the next installment with a one-time, 3 percent cut to all federal programs subject to Congress's annual spending bills, outside of defense, homeland security and veterans affairs.

The move was crushed. Instead, House leaders put the Katrina funding up for a vote under the rules reserved for non-controversial bills -- such as the renaming of a courthouse -- with no amendments
allowed.

Conservatives were furious, Flake said, but not nearly as furious as they would become Sept. 13. The RSC was created in the early 1970s by conservative gadfly Paul Weyrich and other outside activists to watch over the House GOP leadership, but its power has waxed and waned, largely according to the dictates of the leadership it was supposed to be watching over.

Now, under Pence, the group was flexing its muscles. He had announced a news conference for Sept. 14 to unveil "Operation Offset," a menu of spending cuts that would more than pay for hurricane relief.

On Sept. 13, DeLay suggested that "after 11 years of Republican majority, we've pared [the government] down pretty good." Then he issued what conservatives took as a challenge.

"My answer to those that want to offset the spending is, 'Sure, bring me the offsets,' " he said. "I will be glad to do it, but no one has been able to come up with any yet."

That afternoon, Pence attended a leadership meeting in Hastert's conference room, where he would get an earful, according to several leadership aides. It was one thing to suggest that Republicans consider budget cuts to pay for Katrina relief, but it was quite another to call a news conference, the leaders told Pence. And to suggest that the RSC was reining in a free-spending party was out of bounds. The deficit for 2005 was coming in nearly $100 billion below initial forecasts, they said, and GOP leaders that spring had
muscled through Congress a budget blueprint that ordered up $35 billion in entitlement cuts over five years, the first such effort since 1997.

The appeals appeared only to harden the conservatives' resolve. And DeLay, for so long a symbol of conservative power, found himself an object of ridicule. One member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Republicans joked that one of the cuts could not be the president's proposed mission to Mars, because DeLay was already up
there.

When Republicans start acting like Democrats they deserve to lose. It may prove that the DeLay indictment is the best thing to happen to principled Republicans.

More here.

There's something unsettling about this move by Teradyne

The Boston Business Journal (via MSNBC) is reporting that one of the last high tech bastions in the city of Boston is set to move its headquarters to the suburbs.

Teradyne's long history has led to scattered operations and a high cost structure, said San Francisco-based analyst Bill Ong of Greenwich, Conn.-headquartered American Technology Research Inc.

"It's weird to see a (semiconductor) company have a corporate headquarters in a big metropolitan area," Ong said. "Teradyne is one of the few to have corporate headquarters in an expensive city."

Reached at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, Teradyne founder Alexander d'Arbeloff said the company acquired the Lincoln Street site in the late 1960s. The Harrison Avenue site became part of the company's portfolio in the late 1970s, but the company didn't move there until the late 1980s, he said.

Although Teradyne's Newman said the real estate move is "part of a larger plan to focus the company more on our core test business," he wouldn't say whether the company intends to sell its non-semiconductor test business.

In June, Teradyne sold its printed circuit board manufacturing business in North Reading to a subsidiary of Milpitas, Calif.-based Solectron Corp. (NYSE: SLR).

Teradyne has cut its work force from about 10,200 workers at the end of 2000 to 5,700 last month. For the quarter that ended on July 3, Teradyne's sales plunged to $320.2 million, down from $526.5 million during the comparable 2004 period. Teradyne's second-quarter net loss widened to $45.5 million, compared with its $80.5 million profit during the second quarter of 2004.

It's always sad to see a major high tech firm leave the city. Obviously Teradyne's commitment to the city is over. It spent a lot of time in the heart of Chinatown and the city's Leather District and at great cost. If these valuable properties are converted into residential units, the loss of such commericial/light industrial space will be forever.

The wrong Italian?

In praise of the first explorer to the New World from the Anglosphere, Giovanni Caboto. (a.k.a John Cabot.)

Adam Smith gets flubbed

The fruits of a socialist education in Britain.

STUDENTS at a college where Gordon Brown has been appointed chancellor are refusing to use the name Adam Smith because they claim the Scottish economist is synonymous with “exploitation and greed�.

The students’ association at Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, renamed following the merger of Fife and Glenrothes colleges last year, has voted unanimously to drop the title.

Instead it will be known as the Jennie Lee Students’ Association after the Lochgelly-born socialist firebrand MP and wife of Nye Bevan.

“We didn’t feel that Adam Smith represented the values a student association should stand for,� said student leader Paul Muirhead.

“He is associated with socio-economic policies that work against the people, that were synonymous with Thatcherite and Reaganite governments. "

Are the British getting anything useful out of their education system? I guess not.

Stumbing and Mumbling has great commentary on this bunch of jackasses.

(Hat tip to Knowledge Problem.)

Broadband over Power Lines takes a hit;

I suppose that the utilities are afraid of some serious sunk costs.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) - A promising technology to deliver high-speed Internet
access over power lines has suffered its first major outage.

Earlier this week, a major utility in Pennsylvania canceled a pilot program that offers fast
Internet connections to customers. The company, PPL Corp. (PPL) (PPL) of Allentown, Pa., cited stiff competition and the likelihood that the size of its potential market would not justify the cost.

PPL's decision represents the first major retreat in a technology that has been gathering
momentum over the past year. The end of PPL's project has also fueled further skepticism over whether "broadband over power lines" is a feasible alternative to high-speed service offered by big cable or phone companies.

"Economically, it's very hard for a third provider to break into a market like this," said Bruce Leichtman, whose firm tracks growth in the high-speed market. Phone and cable companies, with around 40 million customers, have gotten a huge head start, he noted.
"Timing is everything."

Creating a third competitor in the high-speed Internet market is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission hoped to accomplish when it passed new rules in October 2004 to make it easier for utilities to develop BPL, or broadband over power lines.

Indeed, then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell touted the technology as a means of reaching millions of consumers who don't have access to fast cable or phone Internet onnections.

So at best we are stuck with a duopoly.

Oh the misery! Red Sox go down

Here comes the return of the fellowship of the miserable.

Recriminations everywhere. The Sox are out of the playoffs; it certainly didn't have to be that way. They ran out of gas bereft of a pitching staff. The White Sox were hot, seriously hot. Final score 5-3. El Duque was fabulous. A very big sixth inning among the finest pitching exhibitions in recent memory.

Now Red Sox Nation will pick the carcass for the ultimate autopsy. Talk radio is our collective couch. We have returned to the equilibrium, a cauldron of second guessing the manager, letting Manny be Manny and cursing the hapless Foulke.

Trust me we won't be talking about the Patriots for weeks. Sox fans need a lot of time to punish the innocent and consider the horrors of horros Johnny Damon as a Yankee.

For my fellow citizens in Red Sox Nation, I leave the following from one of the greatest baseball fans of all time A. Bartlett Giamatti:

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

Wait until next year!

Of interest

Here's an iconoclastic view on Rove/Libby/Plame from the libertarian isolationist Independent Institute. Karl Rove must go.

For an administration that accuses critics of the Iraq war of being “unpatriotic,� the cynical exposure of a U.S. covert intelligence officer by administration officials is the pinnacle of hypocrisy. Given my opposition to the war, I am reluctant to impugn anyone’s patriotism. But what Rove and Libby perpetrated was not a mere disagreement on policy. Government officials who were truly patriotic would never undermine the nation’s intelligence efforts and endanger the lives of people who take great risks to help protect this country.

The conventional wisdom is that President Bush never fires anyone. That is not true. Unfortunately, he usually fires truth tellers that stray from official White House spin—for example, Gen. Edward Shinseki, the Chief of Staff of the Army, for saying that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, and Larry Lindsey, the president’s chief economist, for his estimate that the war in Iraq would cost $200 billion. This time the president should fire some of the liars who have been loyal to the White House but disloyal to the nation.

I'm not sure Lindsey was fired for speaking the "truth" on the cost of the Iraq war. He was cut essentially because the Bush economic team was stagnant. But Eland, accepting Joseph Wilson-Plame's version of the events, is certainly bold. Cracks in the libertarian-conservative coalition are beginning to widen.

Look who's intolerant now

We've been told over and over again by self-conscious, American-hating intellectuals that Canada is far more progressive in its social policy. But when it comes to science they are hardly worthy of the term. Virginia Postrel explains:

U.S. scientists and their supporters tend to assume biomedical research is hreatened by know-nothings on religious crusades. But as the Canadian law illustrates, the long-term threat to genetic research comes less from the religious right than from the secular left. Canada's law forbids all sorts of genetic manipulations, many of them currently theoretical.

It's a crime, for instance, to alter inheritable genes. And the law has provisions the fabled religious right never even talks about. It's a crime to pay a surrogate mother or to make or accept payment for arranging a surrogate. It's a crime to pay egg or sperm donors anything more than "receipted expenses," like taxi fares. Since eggs are used not just in fertility treatments but in research, this prohibition stifles both.

Meanwhile, in backward, intolerant America objections to embryonic stem-cell research and therapeutic cloning are less politically persuasive than they were a few years ago. With the support of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Congress is close to a veto-proof majority to expand federal subsidies for embryonic stem-cell research. Many conservative leaders are uncomfortable opposing potentially lifesaving research.

And a few scientists are beginning to explore ideas for producing embryonic stem cells while respecting religious scruples. It might someday be possible to clone embryonic stem cells without creating and destroying otherwise viable embryos.

That's not an argument for banning embryonic research. But it's a promising route toward a nonpolitical solution to the dispute. As long as religious conservatives object to a specific procedure--destroying embryos--rather than to genetic research or life extension in general, it's possible to treat their concerns as a technical problem. You can't say the same for the antibiotech left. In liberal Canada, in fact, the law defines cloning expansively. Future procedures that might avoid religious objections would still be illegal. The goal is to stop certain research altogether.

Blood in the streets: Here's something for the tax and spend crowd to consider

There is fat in the budget. We could cut and save billions if Congress had the will. The Republicans have the excuses, ChicagoBoyz has the list. Needless to say ChicagoBoyz have balls.

If we all agreed what "pork" was, there wouldn't be any of it in the budget. The "pork-busting" idea needs to be backed up by its backers with specifics on what should be cut and why.

With the National Budget Simulation, one can specify exactly where cutting should be - and see what the outcome is.

It's a static model, but it's a good starting point.

As one who thinks that taxes are plenty high enough, on the rich as well as on everyone else, and that budgetary problems should be solved by budget cutting, it's time to go to work.

It's baaack! Inflation's ugly head

David Malpass says that gold is rising; so is scrap metal. He expects moderate inflation, in part a consequence of Katrina.

Read it here thanks to Econpundit.

What will Queen Noor say?

The Jordanians have a problem with Jewish people. You don't say!

According to a recent poll 100 percent of all Jordanians have an unfavorable view of Jewish people. Mostly Christian Lebanon is only slightly worse.

Jordan leads the Islamic world in its antipathy for Jews according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

The poll, which surveyed 17,000 people in 17 countries, said 100 percent of Jordanians viewed Jews unfavorably. The majority of Jordanians are Palestinians, but the late King Hussein and his son and successor, King Abdullah have been known for their pro-American stances. Russia led all other countries with favorable views of Christians (92 percent) while Turkey (63 percent) had the most unfavorable view of Christians.

The Netherlands led all nations surveyed both in positive views of Jews (85 percent) and negative views of Muslims (51 percent).

Jordan has become a fever swamp for Bin-Ladenism. Lebanon isn't a friendly place either. Force is all the more appealing since some people will hate you regardless of what your offer them.

Rumble in the Big Apple; Galloway v. Hitchens

Oh what it would have been like to be there and an enthusiastic minority plug for Hitch. Outnumbered by the left wing crowd but not outwitted by the sinister fraud from Bethnal Green and Bow in London: George Galloway. The MP has been not only a friend of Syria's Assad and a convenient antiSemite, he has been to this day a useful idiot in service to the enemies of the West. I bet Hitchens held his own. The London Independent reports. Here's the WSJ take. Kimberley A. Strassel thinks it would be a waste of time if Hitchens asks for a rematch with a vile name-caller. Wretchard has his version of the events here as well as a link to audio. Rocco DiPippo at FrontPageMagazine has the guts to call out Galloway and his friends.

Sounds like a plan. Let's hope failure is written all over it.

For those who want to treat the war on terror as a police action, please take note. Al-Qaeda has a nasty long term plan including cyber terror. But beyond the asymmetrical warfare tactics, AQ believes it has allies in the Arab world who will rise up. Over the course of this war on terror which will demonstrate shock and awe capabilities of a different, we shall see just how extensively moderate Islam will be tested against the temptations of world domination. A religion of peace? We shall see.

[Jordanian Journalist Fouad] Hussein writes that in the terrorists' eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the "One-and-a-half billion Muslims", the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war should not last longer than two years.

Read it here.

Tip of the hat goes to Sine Qua Non

More incoherence coming out of the Marxist midst - Eric Raymond takes on another idiot

You have to hand it to Eric Raymond, the Linux evangelicalist and suberb theorist of our time. He does not suffer Marxist fools gladly particulary those who think he's "right-wing."

Poor impotent radicals. After all their theorizing, they can’trecognize a real revolution even when its goals and actualachievements strongly parallel what they’ve been saying theywant since 1860. But it’s 2005 as I write; by historical definition,these are the same people who didn’t get the lesson the Soviet Union taught about collectivist economics and the actual consequences oftaking Marxism seriously. Expecting them to have any moreintelligence than a pile of broken cinderblocks might be a bitmuch.

But let’s be charitable and assume some of them can string together two thoughts without drooling uncontrollably. After what I’ve doneand written, how the hell can they mistake me for any kind of conservative?

The easy, cheap shot would be to say they’re too busy masturbating infront of their Che Guevara posters to notice what asuccessful revolutionary looks like. And there’d be lot oftruth in that cheap shot; Western Marxists, in my experience, are moreabout self-congratulation on their own moral superiority and radical hipness than they are about actually changing the world they livein.

They’d rather mouth the right slogans than do the hard workneeded to actually realize the revolution they want.

Read the whole thing.

Bill Easterly -the anti-Jeffrey Sachs -- needs a rock star

Tim Worstall thinks that Easterly is about to rain on Bono's parade.

The Fallacy of the Poverty Trap

A new working paper by economist William Easterly shows us what is actually the problem. First, the current proposals are based on the following analysis:

The UN Millennium Project and Jeffrey Sachs argue that it is the poverty trap rather than bad government that explains poor growth of low income countries and the failure to make progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Sachs says "the claim that Africa's corruption is the basic source of the problem {the poverty trap} does not withstand practical experience or serious scrutiny." Likewise the Millennium Project says "Many reasonably well governed countries are too poor to make the investments to climb the first steps of the ladder."

If this were true then the plans would have merit, so the question becomes, is this true? Easterly looks at a number of items to check:

We can check further on some of the intermediate steps in the Big Push. Sachs said that large aid increases would finance "…a 'big push' in public investments to produce a rapid "step" increase in Africa's underlying productivity, both rural and urban." Over 1970-94, there is good data on public investment for 22 African countries. These countries' governments spent $342 billion on public investment. The donors gave these same countries' governments $187 billion in aid over this period. Unfortunately, the corresponding "step" increase in productivity, measured as per capita growth over this period, was zero.

Not looking all that good, eh?

I think of this as a simple descriptive exercise to compare two alternative hypotheses: (1) Divergence Big Time was due to a savings/technology poverty trap or (2) it was due to bad government/institutions. The stylized facts emerging from this exercise support (2) strongly over (1), confirming previous literature on institutions and development.

I use three widely used measures of institutions: (1) the Polity IV measure again, now averaged over 1960-2002, (2) the Freedom House measure of political liberties (with the sign reversed, since an increase in this measure means less liberty), averaged over all available years, which are 1972-2002, and (3) Economic Freedom in the World from the Fraser Institute, averaged over all available years, which are 1970-2002. All measures of institutions are strongly significant predictors of growth 1960-2002, and make initial income negative in the regressions (significantly so in the IV regressions). The institutions story makes Divergence go away in the more recent data as well.

So which is it, bad government or the poverty trap? When we control for both initial poverty and bad government, it is bad government that explains the slower growth. We cannot statistically discern any effect of initial poverty on subsequent growth once we control for bad government. This is still true if we limit the definition of bad government to corruption alone. The recent stagnation of the poorest countries appears to have more to do with awful government than with a poverty trap, contrary to the Sachs hypothesis.

No, it really isn't looking all that good. We seem to be locking ourselves into an argument over how much we should spend on a particular type of aid when the basic problem has been misdiagnosed. As the paper concludes:

The classic narrative -- poor countries caught in poverty traps, out of which they need a Big Push involving increased aid and investment, leading to a takeoff in per capita income -- has been very influential in development economics. This was the original justification for foreign aid. The narrative became less popular during the market-oriented 80s and 90s (even then the idea of the "takeoff" remained widely accepted, as it still is), but has made a big comeback in the new millennium. Once again it is invoked as a rationale for large foreign aid programs.

However, the description of poverty traps, Big Pushes, and takeoffs as a justification for foreign aid receives scarce support in the actual experiences of economic development. The paper instead finds support for democratic institutions and economic freedom as determinants of growth that explain the occasions under which poor countries grow more slowly than rich countries.

There are various ways you can take this finding (and do remember, it is a working paper, others will no doubt wish to verify or contest the workings and conclusions), a call for more research perhaps, a vindication of pre-existing prejudices (I wrote something on the subject back here and Easterly uses similar markers for political and economic freedom as I did) or perhaps ignore it and suggest that the political capital invested in the process so far means that to rethink now is impossible.

Myself, I'm afraid I'm rather gloomy about the prospects, for once a bureaucratic bandwagon gets rolling it's almost impossible to stop it, even if it is on entirely the wrong track. I don't argue that there should be no aid, but I would take this paper as suggesting that we are about to do the wrong things with the money we have raised. If only we could get the UN, in its grand meeting this coming week, to understand two of the things about which Keynes was undoubtedly correct:

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Perhaps madmen is a little cruel for those who wish to make the world a better place and perhaps practical men is a little kind for those at the UN, but could I urge upon them this (possibly apocryphal) comment from the same late great economist?

"When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?"

If Easterly is correct in his paper then we're just about to waste $175 billion a year (roughly that 0.7% of GDP that the rich countries are pledged to) having misidentified the situation. I don't begrudge the spending (much) but I would like it spend on the correct problem.

For the last few years, Jeffrey Sachs has been given a free ride courtesy of gullible rockers like Bono. Easterly needs his own impresario. Maybe Ted Nugent is available.

Have the insurgents played out their hand?

Are the insurgents consolidating their power for a counter-attack? Not likely but the bold taking of Qaim should raise a few eyebrows. Perhaps they noticed that they were in the recent new cycle domianted by Katrina. In the meantime Zarqawi and Al Qaeda are making life hell for the local residents.

The Washington Post reports:

The report from Qaim, about 200 miles west of Baghdad, marked one of insurgents' boldest moves in their cat-and-mouse duels with U.S. Marines along the Euphrates River. U.S. forces have described border towns in the area as a funnel for foreign fighters, arms and money into Iraq from Syria.

Insurgents have occasionally made similar shows of force, such as the takeover of a Baghdad neighborhood for a few hours late last month by dozens of gunmen. They then
slipped away, having made the point that they can muster men as well as plant bombs. The weekend takeover of Qaim extended already heavy insurgent pressure on the people there and came after the U.S. military said it had inflicted heavy bombing losses on foreign-led fighters.

Marines conducted heavy airstrikes in the past week on suspected insurgent safe houses in the area. Ground fighting has also been reported between Zarqawi's group and Sunni Arab tribes more open to the Iraqi government and U.S. military.

Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a Marine spokesman in Ramadi, capital of the western province that includes Qaim, said he had no word of unusual activity in Qaim. Marines are stationed just outside the town, and no Iraqi government forces are posted inside, Pool said.

Witnesses in Qaim said Zarqawi's fighters were killing officials and civilians whom they
consider to be allied with the Iraqi and U.S. governments or anti-Islamic. On Sunday, the bullet-riddled body of a young woman dressed in her nightclothes lay in a street of Qaim. A sign left on her corpse declared, "A prostitute who was punished."

They care little for human life.

Fr. Sirico takes Rev. Robertson to task

Fr. Sirico of the Acton Institute gets it right on Robertson's dumb ass remarks about Hugo Chavez.

Ann Rice Unloads

Ann Rice writes sincerely about the city of her birth. She has a right to be angry.

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

A bit over the top but worth reading.

Blaming PowerPoint for NASA disasters

This is slightly bizarre but I can see the point Tufte is making.

Did PowerPoint make the space shuttle crash? Could it doom another mission?

Preposterous as this may sound, the ubiquitous Microsoft "presentation software" has twice been singled out for special criticism by task forces reviewing the space shuttle disaster.

Perhaps I've sat through too many PowerPoint presentations lately, but I think the trouble with these critics is that they don't go far enough: The software may be as much of a mind-numbing menace to those of us who intend to remain earthbound as it is to astronauts.

Did PowerPoint make the space shuttle crash? Could it doom another mission? Preposterous as this may sound, the ubiquitous Microsoft "presentation software"
has twice been singled out for special criticism by task forces reviewing the space shuttle disaster.'

PowerPoint's failings have been outlined most vividly by Yale political scientist Edward Tufte, a specialist in the visual display of information. In a 2003 Wired magazine article headlined "PowerPoint Is Evil" and a less dramatically titled pamphlet, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," Tufte argued that the program encourages "faux-analytical" thinking that favors the slickly produced "sales pitch" over the sober exchange of information.

Exhibit A in Tufte's analysis is a PowerPoint slide presented to NASA senior managers in January 2003, while the space shuttle Columbia was in the air and the agency was weighing the risk posed by tile damage on the shuttle wings. Key information was so buried and condensed in the rigid PowerPoint format as to be useless.

"It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation," the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded, citing Tufte's work. The board devoted a full page of its 2003 report to the issue, criticizing a space agency culture in which, it said, "the endemic use of PowerPoint" substituted for rigorous technical analysis.

Politicians never learn; price controls do not work

Once again politicians are looking to easy but pernicious "solutions" to high gasoline prices. They woiuld be making a mistake as history and economic theory demonstrates. High prices serve as signals to the consumer to alter behaviour or seek alternatives. Intervention would make things worse. It's sending the wrong signals.

Mass. pols eyeing Hawaiian-style gas cap
By Jay Fitzgerald
Saturday, August 27, 2005

Gov. Mitt Romney and top legislative leaders are refusing to rule out the possibility of a gas-price cap in Massachusetts - just days after Hawaii announced price
controls in reaction to skyrocketing fuel costs.

"If the Legislature proposes one, we would carefully review it,'' said Romney communications chief Eric Fehrnstrom.

And at least one key Bay State lawmaker, Sen. Michael Morrissey (D-Quincy), thinks lawmakers should consider a cap to ``send a signal'' to oil companies and the federal government that states are fed up with spiking gas prices.

"Even if (a local cap) was pre-empted by federal law, so what? Let them take us to court,'' said Morrissey, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Energy, Utilities and
Telecommunications.

Other legislators said they've neither ruled in nor ruled out a gas cap, patterned after Hawaii's move to set a $3-a-gallon limit next month on wholesale prices on the isolated island paradise.

Ann Dufresne, a spokeswoman for Senate President Robert Travaglini (D-East Boston), said lawmakers are exploring a number of different short-term options to deal with high prices - including a possible cap or a cut in the state's 21 cent per gallon gas tax.

She emphasized discussions are preliminary and lawmakers aren't even sure if they have the power to impose a cap, possibly violating interstate commerce laws or other regulations.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi (D-Boston) suggested similar caveats.

"We would take a closer look at the Hawaii legislation,'' said DiMasi aide Kim Haberlin.

The refusal of free-market advocate Romney to rule out a cap would be particularly significant if lawmakers were to begin debate on the issue.

But in a twist, the liberal Rep. James Marzilli (D-Arlington) said a cap would distort market forces that are largely driven by national and overseas events. Marzilli, who owns two Toyota hybrid cars, said high prices are forcing people to reassess energy use.

Ron Planting, economist with the American Petroleum Institute, said any cap would harken back to failed energy policies of the 1970s, when fuel shortages occurred.

For once I agree with Jim Marzilli.

Meanwhile Jane Galt has a good primer on price controls and the Hawaii experiment.

RIP Bob Moog

Bob Moog, innovator and technical genius and an inspiration to every progressive rock geek died yesterday in his home in Asheville, North Carolina. Moog invented the airy sounding keyboard that bore his name.

"I can feel what's going on inside a piece of electronic equipment," he says in the Hans Fjellestad-directed documentary, Moog, "It would be egotistical to say 'I thought of it.' I opened my mind and the idea came through. It's something between discovering and witnessing."

Godspeed Bob.

More information here and here from his hometown paper

Elizabeth Blair's report for NPR is worth a listen.

Way DJ Kool: You'll never think of dominoes in the same way!

This really is a cool video. Check it out.

(Hat tip to Michele Catalano at A Small Victory)

Robert Samuelson makes us feel better about our dis-saving

Do Americans "save" enough. It depends on how you count. Robert Samuelson explains.

... economic statistics also distort what's happened. The outlook isn't as dire as the zero personal savings rate implies. One common error is to confuse personal with national savings. Along with consumers, businesses and governments can save, too. In 2004 companies saved about $1.4 trillion in retained profits and depreciation allowances. If you own stock, your companies are saving for you. But federal budget deficits, a form of dis-saving, erase some of that. The overall result: Although our national savings rate has declined, it's nowhere near zero.

The personal savings rate is derived by subtracting Americans' total consumption spending from their total after-tax income (i.e. "disposable income''). By definition, the rest is "saving." In 1984 the personal savings rate -- savings as a share of disposable income -- was 10.8 percent. It's drifted down ever since. It was 4.6 percent in 1995 and 1.8 percent in 2004. It hit zero in June.

These low figures are not inconsistent with huge 401(k) and IRA contributions. Suppose you put $4,000 into a 401(k) account. You think you've "saved." But then you borrow $4,000 to go to Vegas or pay college tuition. Now your savings rate is zero. Ditto if you'd sold $4,000 of stock. Borrowings and stock sales offset much retirement saving.

The trouble with the official savings rate is that it excludes some items that people intuitively count as savings, notes Susan Sterne of Economic Analysis Associates. A big omission is the capital gains -- aka profits -- on housing or stocks, both realized (if you sell) or on paper (if you don't). If your home or stocks increase $10,000, you may feel comfortable borrowing $4,000 to spend. You've still got an extra $6,000 in savings. But the savings statistics ignore these value changes; all they show is that you've saved less by spending another $4,000.

No room at the inn for faith; "Darwin's Rottweiler" Sir Richard Dawkins

How to influence people and not make many friends. Sir Richard Dawkins, Darwin's premier explicator is an atheist. This is obvious to everyone keeping tabs on the culture war. Stephen Hall in Discover magazine (reg req'd) gives us a good impression on why Sir Dawkins isn't the right person to speak for rationalism in this grand debate between science and faith. One only hopes that the folks who tie themselves up in their underwear over the alleged lack of John Bolton's diplomatic and anger management skills will also find Dawkins to be a real ass and a political loser. He tried to induce Ohioans to vote against Bush suggesting if the incumbent were to win "properly" the cue to Canada would be long. Thus far scientific evidence on the Canadian exodus is scant. Must be something to do with those genes in Columbus.

Hall's profile is worth reading only because the more Dawkins speaks the more he does damage to his cause, something he even agrees with. What's so smart about that?

Summer reading review

Just finished reading Ron Bailey's LIBERATION BIOLOGY. I'm not overwhelmed by this polemic on the virtues of liberating biotechnology as others in the blogosphere. In fact, I find the author a little smug and dismissive of some genuine philosophical issues.

Kenneth Silber at TechCentralStation likes the book overall.

Under-reported news: Harvard's corruption

David Warsh, to his credit, won't let go of this story. He shouldn't, for the integrity of the economics profession is on the line. How Harvard President Larry Summers ultimately handles this case is as important as controversy over women and science.

The last great financial scandal of the 1990s wrapped up in court last week when Harvard University agreed to pay the US government $26.5 million to settle charges that its star economics professor Andrei Shliefer had sought to gain a personal fortune while leading Harvard's government-sponsored mission to Moscow.

The settlement put an end to eight years of legal wrangling. US Attorney Michael Sullivan said in a statement, "The defendants were entrusted with the important task of assisting in the creation of a post-Communist Russian open-market economy and instead took the opportunity to enrich themselves."

Shleifer and his wife, hedge fund operator Nancy Zimmerman, will pay $2 million and $1.5 million respectively, according to the settlement (the latter sum having been previously announced). Shleifer's deputy, Jonathan Hay, will pay as much as $2 million over ten years, if he can earn it as a lawyer in London.

Altogether, it adds up to around $31 million, or most of the roughly $40 million that the government paid Harvard to provide disinterested advice to the Russian government.

One would think that the meting out of punishment would attract the news media. The story has a lot of intrigue. However as Warsh points out:

The Harvard case is a major story in Russia, where privatization of state-owned assets to the oligarchs is regarded as something less than a complete success. But the Financial Times last week ignored the settlement, The New York Times and Washington Post ran Associated Press accounts, and The Boston Globe buried the story at the bottom of its metro page. Such is the power of money to obscure. Only The Wall Street Journal gave the story any ink -- the redoubtable Carla Anne Robbins has followed it from the beginning.

Read the entire column.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority hasn't learned the sad history of eminent domain

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is apparently leery of a move by Republican Minority Leader Brad Jones to rein in the powers of eminent domain in the aftermath of the SCOTUS Kelo v. New London. Tis' a pity.

State Rep. Bradley Jones, R-North Reading, is spearheading the effort. The House Republican leader has filed a petition, a bill, and a proposed state constitutional amendment all aimed at limiting the use of eminent domain.

The bill would bar cities and towns from seizing private property solely for economic development.

Allowing governments to seize private property and transfer it to another private developer simply because they can generate higher taxes is wrong, he said.

"It's quickly devolving into a mathematical calculation," he said. "The logical extension of this is scary."Defenders of the state's eminent domain law say it is already restrictive enough. They say the use of eminent domain to seize blighted properties has helped improve neighborhoods and spur the creation of affordable housing.

"We are wary of any further restrictions on the Massachusetts law," said Susan Elsbree, spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. "Eminent domain is a very important tool for cities and towns across the commonwealth."

For Bostonians with long memories, the ruling inspired painful memories about the loss of the West End.

In the years after the World War II many cities fell on hard times as middle class residents fled to burgeoning suburbs. Boston, like many cities, responded by launching an aggressive urban renewal program. For those in power, the West End was a perfect example of "blight."

Those who called the West End home saw something very different -- a neighborhood with the invisible web of family and friends that knitted together the sturdy, if sometimes shabby brick buildings and corner stores.

That invisible but vital society was the subject of a classic study by famed sociologist Herbert Gans, who moved into the neighborhood in its twilight years. His 1962 book, "The Urban Villagers," painted a picture of a community in sharp contrast to the official designation as a "slum."

In the decades since the demolition, the West End has become one of the nation's most infamous examples of urban folly. Former residents who still feel the sting of
loss have their own spin on the sales pitch for the new West End: "If you lived
here, you'd be homeless now."

The BRA has a short memory. Does not Ms. Elsbree not remember the West End, the classic textbook case that illustrates how not to do urban renewal? This kind of ignorance could either be a farce or a tragedy.

When liberals were interested in human rights for all.

Christopher Hitchens asks a very important question.

.. Why have several large American cities not already announced that they are going to become sister cities with Baghdad and help raise money and awareness to aid Dr. Tamimi? When I put this question to a number of serious anti-war friends, their answer was to the effect that it's the job of the administration to allocate the money, so that there's little room or need for civic action. I find this difficult to credit: For day after day last month I could not escape the news of the gigantic "Live 8" enterprise, which urged
governments to do more along existing lines by way of debt relief and aid for Africa. Isn't there a single drop of solidarity and compassion left over for the people of Iraq, after three decades of tyranny, war, and sanctions and now an assault from the vilest movement on the face of the planet? Unless someone gives me a persuasive reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that the human rights and charitable "communities" have taken a pass on Iraq for political reasons that are not very creditable. And so we watch with detached curiosity, from dry land, to see whether the Iraqis will sink or swim. For shame.

More Irshad Manji please

Someday when antiwar liberals wake up out of their delusions, they will thank Irshad Manji.

But if these anti-terror measures feel like an overreaction to the London bombings, that's only because Britons, like so many in the West, have been avoiding a vigorous debate about what values are most worth defending in our societies.

As Westerners bow down before multiculturalism, we anesthetize ourselves into believing that anything goes. We see our readiness to accommodate as a strength - even a form of cultural superiority (though few will admit that). Radical Muslims, on the other hand, see our inclusive instincts as a form of corruption that makes us soft and rudderless. They believe the weak deserve to be vanquished.

Paradoxically, then, the more we accommodate to placate, the more their contempt for our "weakness" grows. And ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we'll need to be less tolerant. Or, at the very least, more vigilant. And this vigilance demands more than new antiterror laws. It requires asking: What guiding values can most of us live with?

Given the panoply of ideologies and faiths out there, what filter will distill almost everybody's right to free expression? Neither the watery word "tolerance" nor the
slippery phrase "mutual respect" will cut it as a guiding value. Why tolerate violent bigotry? Where's the "mutual" in that version of mutual respect? Amin Maalouf, a French-Arab novelist, nailed this point when he wrote that "traditions deserve respect only insofar as they are respectable - that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women."

Allow me to invoke a real-life example of what can't be tolerated if we're going to maintain freedom of expression for as many people as possible. In 1999, an uproar surrounded the play "Corpus Christi" by Terrence McNally, in which Jesus was depicted as a gay man. Christians protested the show and picketed its European debut in Edinburgh, a reasonable exercise in free expression. But Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Muslim preacher and a judge on the self-appointed Sharia Court of the United Kingdom, went further: he signed a fatwa calling for Mr. McNally to be killed, on the grounds that Jesus is considered a prophet by Muslims. (Compassion overflowed in the clause that stated Mr. McNally "could be buried in a Muslim graveyard" if he repented.) Mr. Bakri then had the fatwa distributed throughout London.

Since then, Mr. Bakri has promoted violent struggle from various London meeting halls. He has even lionized the July 7 bombers as the "fantastic four." He is a counselor of death, and should not have been allowed to remain in Britain. And thanks to Mr. Blair's newfound fortitude, he has reportedly fled England for Lebanon.

Taking a page from Milton Friedman, Landsburg says government is the problem not the solution to the housing problem

Steven Landsburg is one of my favorite economist/writers. As he sees it, the housing supply problem has been created by government. This might not go over well in Cambridge and Berkeley but Landsburg's on solid ground. It's the zoning laws stupid.

... Housing prices must be driven by something other than fundamentals. Speculators, of either the rational or the irrational variety, are the obvious culprits.

Here's what's wrong with that analysis: Housing prices have to make sense on both the demand side and the supply side. No matter what you do or don't believe about the ability of crazed demanders to bid up prices, you still have to explain why competitive suppliers don't bid those prices right back down. In other words, if the housing market is so tight that builders are making a fortune, they ought to be flooding the market with
new houses—and driving down prices.

In fact, buyers' behavior is relatively easy to explain. Most of the recent explosion in housing prices has been in cities like San Francisco and Santa Barbara—in other words, in really nice places to live. It's not unreasonable to believe that, as Americans grow richer, and as technology makes us more mobile, more and more of us want to move to California.

And it's not unreasonable to expect that this trend will continue, so that even a very expensive house in the Bay Area can look like a good investment.

The great mystery is on the supply side. Instead of the traditional formula "housing price equals land price + construction costs + reasonable profit," we seem to be seeing something more like "housing price equals land price + constructions costs plus reasonable profit + mystery component." And, most interestingly, the mystery component varies a lot from city to city.

Even in cities like San Francisco, where there's little room to build and land is consequently dear (on the order of $85,000 per quarter acre, compared with $2,200 for Dallas), you can't use land prices to explain away housing prices. The mystery component in San Francisco housing—that is, the amount left over when you subtract land prices and construction costs from house prices—is the highest in the country.

Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Joe Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania have computed these mystery components for about two dozen American cities. They speculate that the mystery component is essentially a "zoning tax." That is, zoning and other restrictions put a brake on competitive forces and keep housing prices up. (Read one of their papers here.)

When you buy a house, you're not just paying for the land and construction costs; you're also paying for a building permit and other costs of compliance. You've got to get the permits, pass the zoning and historic preservation boards, ace the environmental impact statement, win over the neighborhood commission, etc. If Glaeser and Gyourko are right, that's the mystery component right there.

Rusdie asks for a Muslim Reformation, is he asking for too much?

Before proposing for a renewal in Islamic though, Salmon Rushdie thinks little of Tony Blair's outreach to the Muslim community in Britian.

[Sir Iqbal] Sacranie is a strong advocate of Blair's much-criticized new religious-hatred bill, which will make it harder to criticize religion, and he actually expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as Jan. 13, "There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would
be covered [i.e., banned] by this provision." Two weeks later his organization boycotted a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in London commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz 60 years ago. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie is the best Blair can offer in the way of a good Muslim, we have a problem.

Rusdie thinks the world of Islam is due for a Reformation. We can only hope.

Brining home the bacon, Republican style

The Republicans have morphed into another spending party. But what I'm also noticing is that the Democrats have been strangely silent on this pork barrel extravaganza. That's because they've been taken care of as well. Every congressional district is slated to receive special funding. This is quite an accomplishment. Check out this chart from the Washington Post.

To those who say, "Socialism has never been tried," see North Korea

The economic and political basket case that is North Korea. A rogue state with nuclear weapon capability unable to feed its own people. What did the bumper sticker say about "SOCIALISM KILLS"?

The biggest irony for the "great socialist society" is that people have to pay for textbooks and teachers' salaries, Lee said. Teachers have long been unpaid by the state and cannot leave the school because they have to teach the children. So the school collects money from the students to pay the teachers.

"I made about 80,000 Won a month selling things in the market," Lee said "The authorities take half of the money as tax and dues. Sure, I can live with 40,000 Won, but not enough to send my two boys to school."

She shrugged and added, "That's why I bribed the border guard and crossed the river to come here."

Read the whole article.

Another case of Congressional Republican (and Democrat) overreach

The big spenders in Congress know no shame. Only John McCain had the courage of his convictions of voting against the omnibus transportation bond bill last week. We thought President Bush was going to veto the spending bill; we were wrong. One thing appears to be more certain as each Congressional session passes. These Republicans are far different than Reagan Republicans, the appear to be in favor of make work projects and mass transit. Anything to get re-elected, we suppose.

"Egregious and remarkable," exclaimed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about the estimated $24 billion in the bill set aside for highways, bus stops, parking lots and bike trails requested by lawmakers.

McCain, one of only four senators to oppose the bill, listed several dozen "interesting" projects, including $480,000 to rehabilitate a historic warehouse on the Erie Canal and $3 million for dust control mitigation on Arkansas rural roads. His favorite, he said, was $2.3
million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California. "I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say."

Reagan, in fact, vetoed a highway bill over what he said were spending excesses, only to be overridden by Congress. Meanwhile, according to a Cato Institute analysis, special projects or "earmarks" numbered 10 in 1982, 152 in 1987, 538 in 1991 and 1,850 in 1998. The 1998 highway act set aside some $9 billion for earmarks, well under half the newest plan.

With this vote, the gimmicky accounting of the costs of the war on terror and just plain stupidity the Republicans are saying "We are all free spending liberals now!"

Moral hazard and the volunteer army; asking a tough question

The economist Uwe E. Reinhardt in a very tough column laments the lack of sacrifice broadly shared in the War on Terror.

Last year kind-hearted folks in New Jersey collected $12,000 at a pancake feed to help stock pantries for financially hard-pressed families of the National Guard. Food pantries for American military families? The state of Illinois now allows taxpayers to donate their tax refunds to such families. For the entire year 2004, slightly more than $400,000 was collected in this way, or 3 cents per capita. It is the equivalent of about 100,000 cups of Starbucks coffee. With a similar program Rhode Island collected about 1 cent per capita. Is this what we mean by "supporting our troops"?

Read the whole thing even though it's not comforting to read.

Sorry Governor Dean your Kelo story is eminently without legs

Simply put Howard Dean's spin on the Kelo decision won't fly. It has no legs. None. The Kelo decision that expanded the powers of eminent domain "to expand the tax base" of a municipality by town fathers is a corporate liberal's dream. Kelo makes it easier to take the property of the powerless and deed it to another private party. The coalition of government planners and private developers is a threat to private property. This has long been the critique made by libertarian conservatives. Dean should know better. Patterico calls out the Governor.

Dean’s reference to the “right-wing� court was also erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the fourth dissenter.

The court’s liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer combined with Justice Anthony Kennedy to form the majority opinion, allowing the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize private properties for commercial development.

"We think that eminent domain does not belong in the private sector. It is for public use only,� Dean said.

He really is destroying his party. Should we be Napoleonic and let him?