Good question: Where are all the anti-communist movies?

Could it be that the Hollywood left is more sympathetic to socialism and opts to ignore the bad characters in its "ideal" system?

Anti-Nazi movies keep coming out, from Confessions of a Nazi Spy and Hitler, Beast of Berlin in 1939 and on through The Great Dictator, The Mortal Storm, The Diary of Anne Frank, Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, right up to the current Black Book. And many of these have included searing depictions of Nazi brutality, both physical and psychological.

But where are the anti-communist movies? Oh, sure, there have been some, from early Cold War propaganda films to such artistic achievements as The Red Danube, Ninotchka, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Killing Fields, East-West, and Before Night Falls. But considering that National Socialism lasted only 12 years in one country (and those it occupied), and Communism spanned half the globe for 75 years, you'd think there'd be lots more stories to tell about Communist rule.

No atrocities, maybe? Nazis and Brits were vicious, but Communists were just intellectually misguided? Well, that seems implausible. They murdered several times as many people. If screenwriters don't know the stories, they could start with the Black Book of Communism. It could introduce them to such episodes as Stalin's terror-famine in Ukraine, the Gulag, the deportation of the Kulaks, the Katyn Forest massacre, Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Hungarian revolution, Che Guevara's executions in Havana, the flight of the boat people from Vietnam, Pol Pot's mass slaughter—material enough for dozens of movies.

A thorough fisking of Lou Dobbs, protectionist blowhard

For anyone interested in rebutting the claims of protectionist Democrats, please read.

A can of legal worms

Did U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the "swing vote" on the high court, muddle legal affairs when he ruled in favor of a partial birth abortion ban passed by Congress? Charles Fried suspects that Kennedy may be incoherent.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California asked whether I thought a Justice Roberts would vote to overrule Roe v. Wade. I said I thought he would not, at least not in its later, less absolute version embodied in the 1992 Casey decision, which protected against governments imposing an "undue burden" on a woman’s right to choose abortion before the fetus’s viability. I told Senator Feinstein that the formulation, and the principles behind it, had become so deeply rooted - in the law relied on not only in abortion cases but by analogy in matters as widely disparate as the Texas homosexual sodomy case, compelled visiting rights for grandparents and the right to die - that its abandonment would produce the kind of violent unsettling of the law against which respect for precedent is meant to protect.

The next year, when I testified in support of Samuel Alito, Senator Feinstein asked me the same question. I gave the same answer.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision for the court in the abortion case last week does not change my mind, because the procedure that was banned, intact dilation and extraction, is too rarely used and its importance too dubious to make much difference.

Still, this most recent decision is disturbing, because in 2000, in a similar case, the Supreme Court struck down a Kansas partial birth abortion ban. The Kansas law was unacceptably vague, but the principal reason for the court’s earlier decision was that there was responsible medical opinion that sometimes the procedure was less risky for the mother, and therefore in such cases the ban posed an undue burden. The federal ban cured the vagueness, but sought to overcome the medical testimony by a legislative proclamation of a fact that is not a fact: that the procedure was never safer for the mother.

The decision is disturbing because the court has on numerous occasions refused to allow Congress to overturn constitutional law by bogus fact finding, notably in decisions invalidating the Violence Against Women Act (which Justice Kennedy joined) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which Justice Kennedy wrote).

It’s disturbing because Justice Kennedy fails to come to grips with his own jurisprudence, going so far as to say that because Congress was acting under its power to regulate interstate commerce, it needed only a rational basis to justify its decision. Where a fundamental right is involved, such an explanation is evidently wrong.

It’s also disturbing because Justice Kennedy was not quite willing to embrace his own conclusion. He suggested that perhaps as applied in a particular case in which there was an increased health risk the ban might be unconstitutional after all. What can that mean? The very complaint here was that the ban was unconstitutional because it applies in just such situations. Does the court contemplate a surgeon pausing in the midst of an operation in which he determines the banned procedure might be less risky, and seeking a court order?

Finally, the decision is disturbing for a more far-reaching reason: there are indeed cases where the court in the last few years had become truly incoherent, largely as a result of Justice O’Connor’s pragmatic and underexplained abandonment of positions she had earlier agreed to or even proclaimed on affirmative action and campaign finance. The first issue has been argued and will be decided this term of court; campaign finance is being argued this week.

If the justices eliminate the confusion and restore principle in those areas, the cry will go up that the court is simply reflecting its changed political complexion, not reasoning carefully and promoting stability and clarity in the law. And last week’s decision will lend plausibility to that charge.

Always one step ahead: WalMart

What will the antiWalMart crowd do now?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said on Tuesday that it will contract with local hospitals and other organizations to open as many as 400 in-store health clinics in the next two to three years.

Should current market forces continue, the world's largest retailer said up to 2,000 clinics could be in Wal-Mart stores over the next five to seven years.

Wal-Mart said the effort marks an expansion of a pilot program it started in 2005, when it leased space within its stores to medical clinics. Currently, it said 76 clinics are operating inside Wal-Mart stores in 12 states.

It has said the clinics are expected to boost the health of its shoppers and should also help sales by drawing consumers into its stores.

"We think the clinics will be a great opportunity for our business. But most importantly, they are going to provide something our customers and communities desperately need -- affordable access at the local level to quality health care," said Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott in a statement.

Wal-Mart has endured criticism over the years from labor unions that say it pays inadequate wages and pushes employees onto government aid programs.

The company has tried to counter such attacks, taking steps like selling generic drugs for $4 per prescription, and joining with the 1.8 million-member Service Employees International Union, one of its most vocal labor foes, to call for universal health-care coverage for all Americans by 2012.

The universe is amazing

Fruitful science reveals the wonders of the universe.

Immense coils of hot, electrified gas in the Sun's atmosphere behave like a musical instrument, scientists say.

These "coronal loops" carry acoustic waves in much the same way that sound is carried through a pipe organ.

Solar explosions called micro-flares generate sound booms which are then propagated along the coronal loops.

"The effect is much like plucking a guitar string," Professor Robert von Fay-Siebenbuergen told BBC News at the National Astronomy Meeting in Preston.

The corona is an atmosphere of hot, electrically-charged gas - or plasma - that surrounds the Sun. The temperature of the corona should drop the further one moves from the Sun.

But, in fact, the coronal temperature is up to 300 times hotter than the Sun's visible surface, or photosphere. And no one can explain why.

That's pretty cosmic don't you think?

What was the Pentagon thinking?

Months ago I heard former Pentagon flak Dorie Clark explain how the Jessica Lynch story got out hand as the press got carried away with several aspects of the story. I don't fault the Pentagon on what spiraled out of control with the Lynch story. However, there
is no excuse for the Pentagon's "cover-up" of the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death. It looks bad for everyone including the President.

Don Surber says heads should roll. Given government inertia, I don't think they will.

Oh it's only mercury

Mercury catches up with feel-good environmentalism. The Gaia crowd just doesn't understand the law of unintended consequences.

With all of the alarms raised about mercury, why are the moonbats advocating massive change to fluorescent lighting. The State of Vermont went through great lengths to rid the state of mercury thermometers and mercury batteries. Now the global warming loons want to swap all incandescent bulbs for mercury-based fluorescents.

The new way to save the planet is by poisoning it, yourself and Junior’s hamster. How you ask? Here’s how!

Fluorescent lamps work by exciting atoms of liquid mercury in an inert gas and having them excite a phosphor coating to produce visible light.

Thanks to Vermont Woodchuck for this one.

Update: Glenn Reynolds points to an article that says there isn't that much mercury in enviro-friendly lightbulbs. Still mercury isn't nice to have around if you keep listening to those public service ads warning about its disposal.

They keep thinking: Who needs men?

KAY HYMOWITZ gets one thinking about fatherhood. In the age of the sperm bank, a man can be the worst he can be and have it affirmed by women who should know better. I'm not sure what to make about this -- whether individual choice triumphs over nature and tradition. But Hymowitz's piece is thought-provoking.

There are multiple ironies in this unfolding revolution, not least that the technology that allows women to have a family without men reinforces the worst that women fear in men. Think of all the complaints you hear: Men can’t commit, they’re irresponsible, they don’t take care of the kids. By going to a sperm bank, women are unwittingly paying men to be exactly what they object to. But why expect anything different? The very premise of AI is that, apart from their liquid DNA, we can will men out of children’s lives.

It’s not a good idea for society to erect a wall between children and their biological fathers — nor to encourage men to disown their kids. In several nations, including Britain and Sweden, sperm donors must agree to be identified if the child wishes, typically as of age 18. It would be a good idea for America to follow suit.

But let’s not kid ourselves that such a rule would also put an end to fatherlessness — which is nourished by our cultural predilection for individual choice unconstrained by tradition, the needs of children, or nature itself.

Does a child conceived with the "help" of a sperm bank have a right to know her biological father?

Wish I could be there, today at Sanders Theatre: Barro on Friedman

Robert Barro lectures at Sanders Theatre on Milton Friedman. I hope someone records this.

Mankiw updates with a post to Barro's paper on MF.

Christians under attack in Turkey

Sad story. Why can't we just get along?

While I was away

Spring break brought us to Ogunquit, Maine only to be holed up in a resort because of the nasty weather. We made the best of it and took in a lot of television as the Virginia Tech massacre unfolded.

As the motto for Maine proclaims the state is "worth a visit, worth a lifetime." Nice place. If you are up in Ogunquit you have to get a burger from Wild Willie's.

Nikki is one tough woman

If Nikki Giovanni, the great American poet, had a problem with the nutcake Cho then you knew this madman was a real problem.

The mood in the basketball arena was defeated, funereal. Nikki Giovanni seemed an unlikely source of strength for a Virginia Tech campus reeling from the depravity of one of its own.

Tiny, almost elfin, her delivery blunted by the loss of a lung, Giovanni brought the crowd at the memorial service to its feet and whipped mourners into an almost evangelical fervor with her words: "We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech."

Nearly two years earlier, Giovanni had stood up to Cho Seung-Hui before he drenched the campus in blood. Her comments Tuesday showed that the man who had killed 32 students and teachers had not killed the school's spirit.

"We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid," the 63-year-old poet with the close-cropped, platinum hair told the grieving crowd. "We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness."

In September 2005, Cho was enrolled in Giovanni's introduction to creative writing class. From the beginning, he began building a wall between himself and the rest of the class.

He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class discussion, his answer was silence.

"Sometimes, students try to intimidate you," Giovanni told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. "And I just assumed that he was trying to assert himself."

But then female students began complaining about Cho.

About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. She told him to stop, but the damage was already done.

Female students refused to come to class, submitting their work by computer instead. As for Cho, he was not adding anything to the classroom atmosphere, only detracting.

Police asked Giovanni not to disclose the exact content or nature of Cho's poetry. But she said it was not violent like other writings that have been circulating.

It was more invasive.

"Violent is like, `I'm going to do this,'" said Giovanni, a three-time NAACP Image Award winner who is sometimes called "the princess of black poetry." This was more like a personal violation, as if Cho were objectifying his subjects, "doing thing to your body parts."

"It's not like, `I'll rip your heart out,'" she recalled. "It's that, `Your bra is torn,and I'm looking at your flesh.'"

His work had no meter or structure or rhyme scheme. To Giovanni, it was simply "a tirade."

Tax history as natural history

The morally discredited U.S. tax system has evolved taking with it a bit of the American character to question authority. Bit by bit, the tax system has made us a bit fatalistic, as the power of central government grows. Neo-socialists take note of Kevin Hassett's offering:

Today taxes eat up about 30 percent of income, a much heavier burden. And like our ancestors, we don't believe that our money is particularly well spent. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken last April found that Americans believe that 51 cents of every tax dollar is wasted. But where's the outrage? Most of us don't even own muskets, and the few of us who have revolted against the IRS are settled safely behind bars, to popular acclaim.

Which makes the U.S. tax system, ugly as it is, something of a marvel. It raises revenue without raising a ruckus. A simpler and more efficient system would undeniably serve everyone better, but the current hodgepodge is so entrenched as to have become a political third rail, and attempts to reform it almost always fail or are gradually reversed. Witness Ronald Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Like a finch in the Galapagos Islands, the tax code has gradually evolved in a manner that maximizes its chances for survival. So a natural history of our tax system provides an interesting mirror on ourselves and reveals some surprising facts.

Drew Bledsoe, Class Act, retires

Drew Bledsoe was a great quarterback and helped resurrect the Pats from the team's doormat status in the early 1990s. He set records, earned four Pro Bowl visits and won a superbowl in a supporting role. Not bad for the 14 year veteran. He wasn't always treated well in New England after Tom Brady took over but he never seemed to complain extensively.

Like most football stars Bledsoe credited his father for his upbrining. The Drew Bledsoe Foundation is a proud sponsor of Parenting with Dignity run by Mac Bledsoe. More on the program here.

Thank you Drew for allowing us to know you. Hold your head up high. You are a great role model. All the best.

Who is an American and who would want to be?

Must read: John McWhorter

I will never forget a conversation I had with two twentysomething Muslims not long after 9/11. One had been born and raised in the United States, the other had come here at a young age. It was clear from our conversation, though they gingerly avoided putting it explicitly, that neither of them entirely disapproved of what Osama bin Laden had done. There were, of course, multiple recitations of "I think what he did was terrible" - but delivered with a certain lack of emotional commitment. What came through was a sentiment that, in the end, something terrible had been necessary for bin Laden to get across a valuable message. . .

The killer quote however is this:

The urgency of defending the life we know, American life, against murderous barbarians would instantly wake us up to the value of what America, its flaws acknowledged, is, and what it has achieved.

To all the beautiful, one-worlders and postmodernists I have this to say:

I'm proud to be an American.

Got it?

The charlatans in full regalia: "White people suck"

Get a load of this! Racist Collectivists attack individuality and thus freedom. That's right individualism is a problem on the road to racially harmonic nirvana.

White people, you're privileged, and guilty, guilty, guilty of oppressing disadvantaged minorities. Denial only makes things worse.

This is the message currently emanating from the Seattle School District. Never mind that this dubious construct undercuts needed emphasis on minority student achievement.

District officials this month are sending students from four high schools to an annual "White Privilege Conference" in Colorado. The conference is billed as an "opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression" — "a challenging, empowering and educational experience."

The conference has little to do with mastering reading, writing, math and science; or with graduating from high school and keeping one's head above water in college. Those are the lessons high-school students should be learning, not that they will be given social promotions in the name of equity and inclusion.

The focus of Seattle Public Schools bureaucracy is clearly political indoctrination, not academics. The district is even planning an "equity summit" in the spring, which White Privilege Conference attendees are to help lead.

What's the thinking behind this theory of white privilege? For the 2006 conference, a paper by Tobin Miller Shearer (who is white) argued that white people could not enter the kingdom of God unless they confronted the way racism and white privilege shaped their lives and spirituality. He maintained that white people tend to be far too individualistic and need to acknowledge their membership in a group that is unavoidably racist.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor writing in the Kansas City Business Journal, echoed those sentiments. Breaking free of white privilege means "challenging the pathological individualism of this culture so we can see how our successes and our failures are always partly social, not strictly individual," Jensen asserted.

So, there you have it. Somehow, in 2007 in the United States, "society," racial bias and stereotyping are still controlling forces, oppressing minorities.

I have a different view. What we have here is an institutional evasion of personal responsibility. Why is it such a great bugaboo to think that actions have consequences?

The emphasis in Seattle Public Schools on "institutional racism" and "white privilege" flows from unpleasant outcomes that must be spun politically to explain such things as the district's most recent state achievement test scores.

In core academic subjects, whites and Asians still exceed blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. The disparity is not simply a matter of color: School District data indicate income, English-language proficiency and home stability are also important correlates to achievement.

Racial politics and white guilt at its worst. I trust that likes of Shearer and Jenson have never experienced working class life in an Italian or ethnic "ghetto". They are collectivist idiots who should never be placed near the levers of power never mind a classroom. I would never send my kid to this "seminar." After all what would it do to his or her "self-esteem?"

Dispatch from the Banana Republic addicted to oil

One good reason to pray for the emergence of alternative energy or a radical drop in oil prices. In Venezuela they never seem to learn and Little Castro is proof of that.

Dependence on one export has strapped the country’s financial fortunes to a roller coaster. When oil prices are high, many Venezuelans enjoy an enviable quality of life, particularly for a developing nation. The state doles out subsidies to domestic businesses, adds thousands of state jobs, and keeps the domestic currency artificially strong, which makes imports cheap. This state-dispensed bounty has helped create a carefree, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may mentality in Venezuelans and fostered a concomitant sense of entitlement. After all, with money seeping out of the ground, what incentive is there to work? Of course, government can only apportion handouts when the cash box is full. When oil prices fall, government revenue plummets, and the state is forced to curtail the spoils.

The prudent approach would be to leverage the country’s petroleum wealth to fortify other sectors of the economy. But Venezuelans gravitate to leaders who swear oil reserves can keep the party going indefinitely. Chávez is the latest in a long line of irresponsible, populist presidents, and if he has his way, his successor won’t emerge for many years. Chávez is demanding—and is expected to receive— authority to run for unlimited reelection. Still, even as he concentrates power, broader trends could determine how long his unlimited term in office lasts. Chávez’s standing—like so many things in this country—may depend more on the price of oil than he would like to believe.

Should latte liberals in NYC switch to Dunkin Donuts?

Oh the pity of it all and in New York City no less! It's bad enough Starbucks serves inferior coffee (burnt to taste)But to suffer the indignity of not being liberal enough in America's premier union town after all that "fair trade" blather. What is a liberal to do?

Judging by the lines at Starbucks stores in Manhattan, one of the most progressive and union-friendly towns in the country, the accusations of union-busting and poor pay may not matter a lot. New Yorkers will probably continue to queue up in the thousands for the privilege of shelling out $4 or so for a caffeine injection. (There are more than 200 Starbucks outlets in the five boroughs.)

Activists are asking consumers to sign petitions and send e-mail messages protesting Starbucks’ practices. But they may have a hard time matching the success of the campaign against Wal-Mart.

One could chalk it up to the nature of the product Starbucks peddles. Many customers feel they simply can’t get their day started without a caffeine-laden beverage. But some powerful, far-reaching trends — like consumers’ viewing their spending choices as political expression — may also help explain why a company can maintain its assiduously polished progressive reputation while also bitterly fighting unions.

A dream course for Classical Liberals

I'd love to dig into the reading list for this course.

Mario J. Rizzo Fall, 2007
New York University
Department of Economics

Description: Classical liberalism is the political philosophy that holds that society, within a legal framework of private property and liberty of contract, largely runs itself. This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the fundamental principles of liberalism and its application to issues of broad relevance to the law. These principles are developed through classical and contemporary sources from Marcus Tullius Cicero to Richard Epstein and Randy Barnett. The applications include eminent domain, religious toleration, the legal status of homosexuality, the war on terror, the market for parental rights, and the moral and economic status of profiting from the ignorance of others.

Farm subsidies are immoral

Let's get normative in our analysis. U.S. farm subsidies are hurting African farmers. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem poised to do much about it. This is immoral.

The cotton market, which provides nearly 70 per cent of impoverished Burkina Faso’s cash exports and income for more than a quarter of its 13 million people, has been brought to breaking point by factors known locally as “the monster with three heads”: a weak dollar, low world prices and US cotton subsidies.

This year will be crucial for the futures of 10 million West African farmers as the US rene-gotiates its Farm Bill, which has attracted international condemnation.

America’s 25,000 cotton farmers receive subsidies totalling some $4bn, allowing them to undercut their developing competitors. The subsidies were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organisation three years ago, yet only 10 per cent have been dropped so far, and Washington still pays many times more in subsidies to these farmers than it gives in aid to Africa each year. As a result, world cotton prices are now at the lowest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The answer isn't "fair trade," nor more foreign aid. The solution is more open, free trade.