The Miami Herald | 03/23/2002 | Carter to visit Cuba; he'll be 1st ex-president there since '59

No comment.

Bush Vows to Help Peru Fight Rebels and Keep Andes Region Stable

Good. I hope we don't decide this is the stupid Drug War again. But freaking Shining Path... I thought we'd seen the last of those bozos. The way this article goes on, it seems like they're tying this in with the war against the narco-terrorists in Colombia -- and we all know how well that's gone.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo appears to be a tiny person. Actually, he looks like President Bush's vent figure.

BUSH: Hi, I'm George W. Bush, and this is my friend Alex. Say hello to the nice folks, Alex.

TOLEDO: Hi, folks! Hey, check out the tomato in the third row!

BUSH: Now, Alex, that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about stabilizing democracy and capitalism in South America.

TOLEDO: Aw, I never get to have any fun. You're just going to put me back into my box when we're done.

A Secret Iran-Arafat Connection Is Seen Fueling the Mideast Fire

I don't see this as news. Everybody knew the Iranians were involved in the Karine-A situation, the Palestinian attempt to smuggle arms in. But they've long been involved in Palestine, mostly through Hezbollah. The change is that they're now working with Arafat, rather than the "more extreme" elements.

What I'm saying is that they belong in the Axis of Evil.

But at the same time, we're not going to take action against Iran. The situation is very delicate, and right now the secular authorities -- who might ultimately be friendly to the US -- are still on the rise. If we take action, it might drive popular support to the Ayatollahs, and we don't want that. At the same time, they're meddling in Afghanistan and Palestine, and I expect they're also involved in extremist Islamic movements in the former USSR; much of those areas were once under Persian control and many of the people are distantly related to the Iranians. It's complicated. No wonder we're concentrating on Iraq instead.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Electrolite points out that Tom Tomorrow lives in Brooklyn. I figured he was a Californian (hey, he's in Salon!) and I would have fixed it, but the East is full already and somebody else would have gotten kicked to the wrong region. So he stays in the West for associating with Californians.

Really, I could do two East regionals very easily.

Policy Study Is Modifying U.S. Nuclear Arms Stance
Preemptive Strike Becomes an Option

Except that it always was. Ignoring that President Clinton had already expanded the posture to include retaliation against forces deploying chemical or biological weapons, the US never has ruled out a first strike. In fact, for a long time the US was the most likely to go nuclear in a potential World War III against the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact's conventional forces in Europe were stronger than NATO's for many years. If the Soviets had invaded West Germany and thing looked bad, we would have at least considered using nukes.

Senate Panel Says Enron Must Detail Policy Role (washingtonpost.com)

"This certainly isn't an attempt to create a scandal to boost my Presidential bid," Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman didn't add.

You know what I think? Judging from the behavior of the Congressional Republicans back in the Gingrich Era, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Enron helped set energy policy. At the same time, I doubt that Cheney did anything illegal or even technically unethical. Even if he did...

Congress no longer has any moral authority. (And yes, it did once.) The two parties behaved so badly during the Clinton administration -- not simply in the Monica/Impeachment mess, but across the board -- that they can't realistically use the old "Appearance of Impropriety" dodge to go fishing anymore. Unless actual crimes have been committed -- and I think Cheney is too smart to do that, and too smart to get caught even if he did -- there's not much Congress can do.

Why am I up so late? Well, I came home from work and fell asleep, that's why. Now, I can't get back to sleep and have all this energy.

I finally got around to organizing the links, completely arbitrarily, of course. I don't suppose anyone but me cares, but notes:

Seedings other than the top two or three are completely arbitrary and mostly reflect the prior, completely haphazard, order.
Britons have been (arbitrarily) placed in the Midwest to balance the regions. Norwegians, however, are in the East. Australians are in the West because you fly out of California to get to Australia.
Texas is undefinable, but for the purposes of this has been placed in the Midwest.
All members of the Axis of Weevil, no matter their current location, have been placed in the South.

Jesus of Nazareth, Dental Assistant

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Hasselhoff's 'Knight Rider' movie moving ahead

As if that wasn't terrifying enough, the link I followed to the article says he's working on a "Knight Ridder" movie.

I switched the colors around, because some people were having trouble reading the off white-on-blue. I based the color scheme on WordPerfect 5.0, so I was used to it, but that's me. I can always change it back.

And the fonts, too.

"I Am Not A Plagiarist"

Convicted felon Charles Colson has a column in Christianity Today. This month, the column dealt with the Stephen Ambrose situation. It decries the "Post-truth society", and says Ambrose "dealt in deceit".

Colson didn't write it. Someone named Anne Morse did, but Colson's byline and picture still appeared. Oh, well. Ambrose doesn't write his stuff either.

(Second item. From Romenesko.)

"Hi, I'm Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban, and I'm the fifth Beatle!"

Russia May Intervene in Georgia

One of the side effects of our war on terror is that the Russians get to have their own war on "terror", mostly defined as "any former Soviet Republic or client state that gets uppity".

Andy Ihnatko Picks On Oscar 2002

Always worth a look.

With Carrots and Sticks, China Quiets Protesters (washingtonpost.com)

"First, we hit them over the heads with the sticks. Then, we take the carrots and jam them up their..."

OK, I made that up, too. What China in fact has done is (a) pay off some people fired from factories, who had been organizing in protest, and (b) arrest their leaders. Who presumably won't ever have to worry about jobs again, what with the booming slave labor market.

washingtonpost.com: Former USSR

In an effort to make our coverage more logical and useful, washingtonpost.com is abandoning the increasingly anachronistic category of "Former USSR."

Articles about Russia and the new nations bordering Europe are now collected in the Europe section. Stories about the Central Asian republics are found in the Asia section. Coverage of the Caucasus nations is collected in the Middle East section.

"However, we fired all the tech people last year, and nobody knows how to update the index. So there will always be a "Former USSR" category sitting over on the left."

Mideast Truce Meeting Ends Without Agreement (washingtonpost.com)

There are two types of peace conferences in the Mideast: Failures, and Utter Failures. This was a Utter Failure. Surprise!

Storm over teaching of creationism at school

It's nice to see that the Brits have to put up with this crap, too... One of the oddities of the American educational system is that oftentimes it's only religious institutions -- which are under less state supervision than public schools -- that can actually teach the truth. I went to a Catholic high school where they taught evolution; in the public schools like where my brother went, evolution is a "controversial theory" and "you might want to explore other ideas" and the usual horse pucky. The Church recognizes the fact of evolution, while the supposedly secular school boards are dominated by religious ideologues from the more extreme Protestant congregations.

I just realized that any British people reading this might be confused. Maybe not; my knowledge of British English is dated about 1970. But in the US, "public schools" are the institutions set up by the government; the traditional British public school would be what we'd call a "private school". Two nations divided by a common language, and all that.

Postal Rate Commission Approves Higher Rates (washingtonpost.com)

"USPS to continue to drive customers to FedEx, UPS, and email." Sorry, that wasn't part of the headline, I made that up.

I actually like the post office. I buy a lot of books and live in a city without a decent bookstore, so I mostly buy from Amazon and Powell's. And I'm always happy when they ship by USPS instead of UPS, because I always get it faster -- I've had Amazon ship two packages in the same day, one on each service, and get the USPS package two days earlier. Also, half the time with UPS I wind up having to go across town to the depot to pick up the package.

But I'm thinking that the postal service isn't really necessary anymore -- even if they are better than the private companies. My philosophy of government is that they should only do the things that (a) need doing, and (b) can't be done, or can't be done efficiently, by private enterprise. We can argue about what comes under those headings another time, but increasingly I don't think that the USPS qualifies.

Md., Angelos Reach Tobacco Fee Deal (washingtonpost.com)

Oh, no, Peter will have to settle for only $150 million. (He had been asking for a cool $1 billion.) First Cal Ripken retires, now this.

As I've mentioned, my family is mostly made up of trial lawyers, so I'm hardly one to be complaining about contingency fees. But I seriously doubt that Angelos really did $1 billion worth of work.

Democrats weigh moves vs. Romney

Dirty tricks time!

Looks like the whole Gray Davis arsenal; attacks on abortion and guns, proactive attack ads (if they can afford them), and attacks on his record. I assume the whole Salt Lake Olympic bribery scandal will come into play.

Convention plan likely dead

Why I Am Not A Libertarian, reason no. 178: I hate my local elected representatives so much, I love that there's a higher authority to come in and give them the what-for every so often.

There has been an ongoing attempt to do something about the Alabama Constitution. The current version is a Jim Crow-era document that has been emended more times than whatever it is Salinger's been working on all this time, and which makes day-to-day lawmaking nearly impossible. Basically, you need a constitutional amendment to do anything, so every election you go into the booth to vote on whether Barbour County can allow white shoes after Labor Day, even if Barbour County is on the other side of the state, and the amendments are all written in legalese so you can't really tell what you're voting for.

So we could get a new constitution, where that sort of thing could be decided by the County commissioners, and where the legislators could get on with the important business of arguing about the Confederate flag and taking junkets. But we can't have that, so the legislators cut off debate -- on a voice vote, of all things.

One of the ways to tell if a proposal is good or bad is the Footloose method. Just think of what the preacher played by John Lithgow in Footloose would have done, and choose the opposite. Well, this time we don't even need to think about it.

But John Giles, president of the Christian Coalition of Alabama, praised House members for rejecting the resolution.

He and other opponents warned that a convention could propose a much worse constitution that could raise state taxes, legalize casino gambling and give county commissions greater power to raise local property taxes. [Also, hippies would roam the streets raping, looting, and burning, and Communists would take over the State House, and the UN will come in and take away all our guns and make us worship Belial. -- MT]

"We consider this a great victory for the people of this state," Giles said.

[UPDATE 12.21 PM: Terry Oglesby has more on the legislature's naked denial of a popular idea. And I'd just like to add that -- at least in public -- the crooked Democratic Governor and the probably Satanic Republican Lieutenant Governor have both supported a new Constitution.]

Medical Privacy Changes Proposed (washingtonpost.com)

You have got to be kidding me. Hey, let's take a look at who's for and against this!

For: Insurance companies.

Against: Doctors, privacy advocates, and, oh, Democrats.

Well, if insurance companies are for it, then it has to be all right. Oh, and there's an abortion angle, of course, though it's not spelled out:

[T]he administration wants to enable more parents to find out what medical services their teenagers seek and make it easier for researchers to gain access to patients' records.

If you came from Quasipundit or Instapundit and are looking for the "War Liberal Manifesto", here it is.

ESPN.com - NCB - Recap - Indiana at Duke - 20020321

One of life's little joys: Watching Duke get beat, and looking at the "This can't be happening to us! We're Duke!" looks on their faces.

Cathedral organ meets master in Trenney

Great Moments In Headline Writing

Mar. 21, 2002: The Birmingham News headlines a story about a museum with something that sounds very disturbing.

Sorry, sorry, I won't do it again.

Panel faults NASA audit, Andersen
Agency's ex-accountant hit for previous 'clean bill of health' reports

NASA's accounts are screwed up; PriceWaterhouseCoopers can't even give an opinion on them because the documentation is so bad. And guess who preceded PWC as the agency's accountants?

Calif. Couple Found Guilty in Dog Mauling Case (washingtonpost.com)

Great Moments In Headline Writing II

Mar. 21, 2002, but later: The online edition of the Post makes it seem like two people were found guilty of mutilating their dogs, not allowing them to roam free and kill someone.

The Ole Miss Conservative

The hell? I may have an archenemy.

Pope Denounces 'Grave' Sex Scandal (washingtonpost.com)

Great Moments In Headline Writing

March 21, 2002: The Washington Post makes it sound like Pope John Paul II is angry about there being a scandal, not that the American Catholic Church is apparently crawling with pedophile priests.

Wall St. Giants Offered Grants for Staying Put

"We believe in the power of the free market. Government should never interfere in the workings of private businesses; only by pure competition can we truly be successful. Is that a check?"

ajc.com | Opinion | Commandments' foes miss point

Sigh...

Once again:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Whatever the Bible's history, whatever its relationship to jurisprudence in the West, it all fails when you read the Constitution. The United States Government is secular, and must be secular. That is the lesson of 1500 years of history in Christian Europe; that is the lesson we see every day on the streets of Israel and the mountains of Afghanistan.

It's not about Liberal and Conservative, Democrat and Republican, Left and Right. It's about Freedom and Tyranny. The Bible endorses a rule by God. Nice in theory, I suppose, but God apparently has better uses for His time and lets His representatives do the actual administration. In Biblical times, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing; rule by anointed kings, under the watchful eye of the priesthood, was probably preferable to rule by a God-King like in Mesopotamia, or by whoever the toughest guy in the room was like in less civilized areas. But we've got a better way.

Hi, I'm Kid Rock. What?

"Hi, I'm Pamela Anderson, and I have hepatitis C! I know, I'm as surprised as you are! And can you believe it, I got it from Tommy Lee! By sharing a "tattoo needle"! Who would have thought he was infected with anything?"

Marion Barry's Oscar Picks (washingtonpost.com)

He's still upset that "Blow" wasn't nominated for anything.

Explosion Rips Downtown Jerusalem (washingtonpost.com)

I suppose I'm supposed to write about this, but I can't. I'm falling into despair about Israel, and I don't see any way out. I know that the cease-fire talks are no great loss.

NBC Puts Hard-Liquor Commercials on Ice (washingtonpost.com)

Another win for the Puritans... This is just stupid. Congress makes veiled threats to NBC, NBC caves. NBC would easily have won in court, but Congress has its ways. I find it difficult to believe that anyone was actually going to drink hard liquor simply because they saw it on TV. If you're going to allow beer advertising all over the tube, I don't see how you can say that vodka is too evil to contemplate.

Bush Still Going to Peru After Car Bombing Kills 9 (washingtonpost.com)

Obviously, he can't just back off. And obviously, he'll be careful. It appears that this was less about us than about Peruvian internal politics. The last thing the world needs is for flipping Shining Path to make a comeback.

Herman Talmadge, Former Governor of Georgia, Dies at 88

Only the good die young.

In Long Battle, Small Victories Added Up (washingtonpost.com)

Hey, conservatives who think Enron is overblown, guess what put Campaign Finance Reform over the top? Yep.

I think I've said this before, but I feel about CFR about the same way I felt about Welfare Reform. It's not the bill I would have chosen, and I have some problems with it, but the system is busted to the degree that any reform is better than no reform. CFR has the added benefit that the Supremes will get rid of anything that goes too far.

You're watching TV Barn

Kansas City is also completely insane. (Perhaps this is because it's in Missouri.) There has been so much interest in Michael Moore's appearance next week that they've added another show.

United Nations Meeting Puts Mexico Center Stage

Yes, even in Mexico, anti-globalization protestors look stupid.

I wish President Fox all the luck in the world. He didn't exactly get dealt the best hand, but I think he's doing the best with what he has... Of course, immigration is always a big issue when Mexico and the US are involved, even if there are a lot of other countries around. And there isn't a lot of support for immigration in the US right now, but wouldn't increasing legal immigration help combat illegal immigration? Maybe I'm being naive, but would increasing the chance for Mexicans to make it over the border legally make them less willing to risk doing it the other way?

Of course, that might run counter to what people actually want. The whispered secret of the US economy -- what everyone knows but doesn't want to talk about -- is the extent to which it's dependent on cheap immigrant -- meaning largely illegal and Mexican -- labor. If the flow of illegal immigrants slows, some businesses would have to spend more money on labor, with no guarantee that they could find Americans to do the jobs even at legal wages. I prefer to think that people are honest until they prove otherwise, but I can't help thinking of that.

Glenn Kinen

When I started this site, I wanted to talk about -- among other things -- liberalism, and its relationship with "the left". I had it in mind to have a "This I Believe" sort of statement; for all my rambling on, I don't know if I ever expressed quite what I wanted.

But Glenn has. Here, this is it, exactly.

Most American liberals—I like to think of myself as one—want more money for the poor. We want more foreign aid for discouraged countries. We want a more tolerant set of drug laws. Most of us want a Palestinian state. We want these things, rightly or wrongly, because we think the world needs less misery and more freedom. And the liberals I know are the most hawkish people around. This is not, as some on the right might think, a case of ideological schizophrenia, but rather a consequence of our values. We are utterly confident that America, with all its faults, rests upon a superior set of principles. We don’t think that democracy, fairness, and freedom are just words, and so we bitch and criticize when those values are ignored at home. When those values are affronted by the murder of 6,000 people, it’s no accident that we rush to beat the war drums. But we beat the drums with a clear mind: innocents, Afghans and Americans alike, will die. Yet a martial response is nevertheless needed to save even more Americans, and we hope eventually Afghans, from fear and death.

Michael Moore has gone completely insane.

I figure he's a big fan of the "Neverending Pasta Bowl" at the Olive Garden.

I used to like Michael Moore. Roger & Me is propaganda, of course, but it's very good propaganda, and very funny. TV Nation, at least in its first season, was about as good. That doesn't make Moore's essentially nativist politics (which at times are scarcely indistinguishable from Pat Buchanan's) any more reasonable. But I always saw him as an entertainer, and considering the political leanings of most TV pundits it was OK to see someone on the far left every so often. (For that matter, I never missed a chance to see Buchanan back in the eighties; he was easily one of the most entertaining men on TV as long as you didn't get worked up about what he was actually saying. He lost it when he started running for President.)

I actually own a Michael Moore book, by the way. Not the new one, but Downsize This! from a few years ago. It's not very good. Whatever Moore's talents, prose writing is not one of them, and things that can be very funny when you see them on the TV screen don't work in print.

(Via Damien Penny.)

"Hi, I'm Ron Howard. Is it OK if I wear a baseball cap to the Oscars?"

Supreme Court Hears Age Discrimination Case

Is it me, or is there something wonderfully ironic about the Supreme Court hearing an age discrimination case?

Midwest Conservative Journal

The MCJ takes issue with a Lileks Bleat from yesterday, when Lileks acted like an ass in a library... It's pretty much what I was planning to write, but better, so I'll just make one addition.

We librarians tend to reinforce this sort of behavior. If we weren't so often willing to back off and let people get their way, maybe they wouldn't act like animals. I was actually trained this way: If someone is particularly insistent, we will violate the rules for them.

Yahoo! News - 'Star Trek' Supremo Targets New Galaxies

Because he's done such a fine job with Trek -- really, Rick, we all loved Voyager -- Rick Berman is getting an "eight-figure" deal. I assume that doesn't include decimal points.

Large Ice Shelf in Antarctica Disintegrates at Great Speed

Yikes... I know this will annoy people, but from everything I can see, world temperatures are rising. Of course, we don't know what all the effects of that would be, but if the ice caps melt, I suggest investing in scuba gear. Of course, the ice caps might not melt. The interior of Antarctica is actually cooling. The global climate is chaotic, and a global trend towards warmer temperatures can result in cooler temperatures in some places. The whole point is that we don't know.

CNN.com - North Magnetic Pole could be leaving Canada - March 20, 2002

"Damn you, Americans! First you steal our hockey teams, now the Magnetic North Pole! What will you take next, Barenaked Ladies?"

Actually, the NMP will just make a brief stop near Alaska, then head on over to Russia.

CNN.com - Turkey 'close' to peace force deal - March 20, 2002

We'd really like for the Turks to keep an eye on Afghanistan. They're Muslim, but secularized, and an ally. They're willing to take over peacekeeping from the Brits, but they don't want to be drawn into the fighting.

Again, I expect Cheney actually talked a lot about Iraq. The report just says that Cheney said action wasn't "imminent". But if it were, we wouldn't say it was, so that's not a big deal.

Vulcan to get outside elevator

"Vulcan", to the unitiated, is a great big statue of the Roman god of the fire, volcanos, and the forge. At one stage, it was the third-biggest statue in the world, but several larger have been built since then. He used to stand atop Red Mountain (Australian naming rules having been in force in Alabama at the time), overlooking the city of Birmingham, but currently he's under repair. Good-government types have decided that Richard "Elected as a Democrat" Shelby's work to get some federal funding for the project is some particularly horrible example of pork. Me, I don't see how a couple million to repair a hundred-year-old statue is worse than a couple dozen million to keep open military bases that the Pentagon neither wants nor needs, but there you go.

Vulcan is most remarkable for being probably the largest statue in the world with a completely uncoverered butt. He just wears an apron, that's all.

R-rated movie costs Gwinnett teachers their jobs
Mel Brooks film was shown to high school students

These teachers forgot rule number one of filmgoing: Never see a Mel Brooks movie that doesn't feature Gene Wilder.

Possumblog

How bad is your FTP with Geocities when you have to change to Blogspot?

Letters voice support for Rudolph

The letters were found in Cherokee County, NC; Rudolph was last seen in North Carolina. The letters probably aren't directly tied to him; letters of this type have been found before to have no connection to him. But any sick bastard who thinks this terrorist is a folk hero... words can't express my contempt.

Spanish funeral home worker charged after bodies found in yard

Uh-oh... it's spread to Europe, now. Though maybe this guy was meaning to bury the corpses, he just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

FTC Threatened With Budget Cuts Over Antitrust Plan (washingtonpost.com)

Fritz Hollings (D-Hollywood) is threatening to cut the FTC budget. Okay, Democrat, budget cutting, unusual but not unprecedented. The thing is, he's threatening these cuts if a plan to let Justice, rather than the FTC, examine some mergers -- basically, the ones his employers in Anaheim, Hollywood, and Burbank are involved in -- is approved. In other words, to preserve the FTC's power and independence, he's going to cut its budget. All right...

I'm a big believer in antitrust law. It's one of the rulers that the Invisible Hand needs to be smacked with every so often. You have to have competition to have innovation, and innovation drives the economy.

Donald Trump and partners agree to sell Empire State Building for $57.5 million

Is it just me, or does that seem kind of light to buy the Empire State Building?

Swift to drop out of governor's race

Now that's a surprise. And presumably puts the kibosh on the Democratic plans to attack Mitt Romney to get a less attractive GOP candidate.

'Reality' TV Is Marching to the Military's Tune (washingtonpost.com)

Introducing "Militainment"! In cooperation with the Pentagon, CBS, ABC, and VH1 are planning to bring you TV series focusing on the everyday lives of American troops.

Prosecutors Seek a Death Sentence in Terrorism Case

Question: If you seek martyrdom by flying a plane into a building, but you're too incompetent to do it, and later wind up getting caught, and they put you to death, do you still get the 72 virgins?

New looks pull kids into libraries

I just noticed this in the line I quoted before: "upper class? Libraries?

I wonder if this author has ever been into a public library -- one without a coffee bar, anyway. If there's a more populist institution than the public library -- you know, the place where anybody can come in and read any book they have, for free -- I'm not familiar with it. Upper-class people can buy their own books. Hardcovers, even.

No Watermelons Allowed

J Bowen wants me to give examples of Clinton nominees whose nominations were blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate. The following two are so famous I didn't think I even had to mention them:

Judge Ronnie White's appointment to the Federal Bench in 1998 was blocked, largely by John Ashcroft. The suspicion was that this was because White is African-American.

Jesse Helms refused to allow William Weld's appointment as Ambassador to Mexico to even come to a vote.

I've said before that I don't know enough about the Pickering situation to judge if he was an appropriate nominee.

Now, do you want my list of Republican Senators who used to be Democrats?

Remember the Shatt-al-Arab

John Braue takes exception to my use of "Gulf War I" for the war against Iraq in 1991, because of the long war between Iraq and Iran that proceeded it. It's a good point. Of course, if you take it back far enough, Mesopotamia and Persia have been fighting since well before recorded history. But I think that the war between the modern states of Iraq and Iran represents the starting point. Henceforth, that war is Gulf War I, Bush-41's war Gulf War II, and the upcoming event Gulf War III.

New looks pull kids into libraries

No longer stodgy institutions of upper class learning, American libraries are using coffee bars, neon lights and wireless technology to draw a younger, more diverse crowd.

Personally, I don't like it. I didn't become a librarian to work in a damn Starbucks.

Snails' survival on slippery slope

Alabama's "plicate rocksnails" are endangered. Do the French know about this? But I kid the escargot eaters.

Slipping into environmentalist mode... Remember the law of unintended consequences. Nobody cares much if a species of snail goes extinct. But people around here would care a lot if their extinction causes a chain reaction that wipes out the fish and turtles in Alabama's rivers. Or if it causes the algae in the Black Warrior to turn the river from its usual mud-brown to mud-green. (The river's not black; "Black Warrior" is the supposed literal translation of "Tuscaloosa".)

Environmentalists can be awfully annoying, I know. And our concern for say, plicate rock snails, can seem stupid when confronted by the loss of mining jobs. But most environmentalists are not the stereotypical hippie tree-hugger anti-development types. We live here, too; we have jobs and families too. The most successful environmentalists in our nation's history are probably hunters and fishermen.

Kausfiles Has Seen Bill Clinton's Future! - Campaign finance reform could turn him into a kingmaker. By Mickey Kaus

OK, Bill Clinton.

President Clinton is, as I've said, a repugnant human being. Even if you (like me) disregard the wilder claims of his enemies, he is for certain a serial sexual harasser. He's continually shown a willingness to sacrifice his principles, and worse, his subordinates and friends, on the altar of short-term gain.

And yet, I voted for him twice, once when it was pretty clear what he was. (I voted for Tsongas in the 1992 primaries, but the nomination was already wrapped up; if it had been in doubt, I don't know what I would have done.) And if he were eligible, I'd vote for him again. Because most of the time, I agree with his politics.

Mickey Kaus isn't a Clinton fan, but he demonstrates here Clinton's value to those of us of a slightly leftish persuasion: he's the balance to the special-interest groups farther to the left.

The If Game... If Bill Clinton had not been the kind of person (as opposed to politician) he is, the Democratic Party would probably not only control the White House now, it probably would be on the verge of long-term dominance. It's not just sex -- though I think that probably cost Gore the election. (In the sense that he lost at least some votes in Florida that way. There are probably dozens of things Gore himself could have done to win Florida. It was a coin flip.)

1) Clinton wasn't the only Boomer politician who dodged the draft. He was the only one to so mismanage the situation, both during the Vietnam era and in 1992 campaign, that he couldn't function as Commander in Chief. Remember, then-Governor Clinton, like Al Gore, supported the Gulf War. But by the time he was President Clinton, his relationship with the Pentagon -- difficult enough for a Democrat -- was hopelessly poisoned.

(Slightly off-topic: I don't think Al Gore would have managed the current situation any differently than GW Bush; American foreign policy generally hasn't changed much since '91. There are two reasons to think it might have been worse, however. One is that the Democratic Party simply doesn't have the military policy people that the GOP has. Second, I don't trust the Republicans in Congress to allow a Democratic President to do his job.)

2) President Clinton had a need to gather all power onto himself. Maybe it was just because he didn't trust the national Party, maybe it's because of his personality flaws. There are two results from this, both of which are causing the party grief. One is that there was no "bench strength". Gore was the nominee simply because there wasn't anyone else, except Bill Bradley, who was even worse as a campaigner. Second, once the White House was removed as a center of centrism, the party started to drift back to the left. If a group of Clintonists had existed in Congress and in the various State Houses, they would have acted as a brake on this. But the party's Congressional representation is mostly controlled by the left -- I think Daschle's OK, but the majority are old-style Democrats of the type that dominated 1968-1992. You remember, the ones that couldn't get a Democrat elected to the White House, despite controlling both houses of Congress, without a major scandal? And the only Democratic big-state governor is Gray Davis, who is pretty much a centrist, I guess, but also Pure Evil.

It pains me to say this, but what the Democrats needed in 1992 was a Reagan. Not politically, obviously, or a mirror image as far to the left as Reagan was to the right. But someone who had some moral authority -- which Clinton never had -- and moreover, a party builder. The seeds of 1994 were laid in 1980. There's an obvious joke about getting laid to be made here, but I will forbear it.

Amazon.com: buying info: Racist America : Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations

Mac Thomason, White Male Oppressor

This happened, I guess four weeks ago today, but I'm finally able to write about it coherently. I was pretty upset at the time.

I'm at a book review for this book. The speaker decides to turn the program into (a) a frontal attack on the Founding Fathers, and (b) an attempt to make a case for slavery reparations. I'm opposed to reparations on philosophical grounds; to me, the idea of the US Government compensating African-Americans for slavery is a declaration that African-Americans are not, in fact, part of the nation. But that's me; I think a case for slavery reparations could be made, I'm just opposed to it. Also, it's politically impossible. (An argument that the southern states that imposed Jim Crow regulations, within living memory, owe something to their victims seems a better bet, but that won't happen either.)

Anyway, the speaker is about half an hour in and he's foaming at the mouth when he really pisses me off by heading into anti-Semitic territory: the US Government backed "the Jews" in their attempts to get Holocaust reparations from Germany, even though most Germans alive today had nothing to do with the Holocaust. His description wasn't exactly accurate, and I'm pretty sure the the US Government didn't back payments to Holocaust survivors. But it was the tone that got me; you really had to be there.

So when he opens to questions, I, in my reasonable voice, say that the situations are not parallel, that there is a fundamental difference between Germany (and Swiss banks) settling with individuals who actually suffered at German hands, and a generalized complaint by people whose ancestors suffered enslavement. So the speaker, who makes at least twice my salary and must have a 100 times my net worth, says (this may not be his exact words, but it was along these lines):

"It's always the white man, keeping us down." [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]

Dogs poisoned

Only the lowest of the low would poison a dog. Over leash laws, yet. Scumbags.

British Store Gives Women Emergency Pill, Igniting Debate

LONDON, MARCH 17 -- A decision by Britain's largest supermarket chain to hand out free morning-after pills to teenagers has sharpened a national debate over efforts to curb the country's rate of youth pregnancies, the highest in Western Europe.

Let's see... Ireland, no abortion at all. England, free morning-after pills for teens! Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Bloggers slam Europe (sometimes including Britain, sometimes not) a whole lot. But for all their economic and geopolitical follies, sometimes we Americans could stand to take a page from their book.

Glenn Kinen

Ever since he said he'd be taking a break to work on his thesis, Glenn II: Electric Blogaloo has been posting more than ever. Today he does a much better job on Argentina than I was ever able to do. I agree with him, for what it's worth; Argentina's problems were mainly caused by monetary policy.

You're the Dr. (washingtonpost.com)

These days, PhDs are like opinions and pie holes -- pretty much everybody's got one.

Jeez, I only have a Master's. I feel inferior.

EPA Will Ease Coal Plant Rules (washingtonpost.com)

The question, for me, is if "ease" is really the right word. You can do this, pushing for "voluntary" emission controls in place of mandatory ones, without actually increasing emissions. My guess is that the incentives for voluntary controls won't be strong enough to do that.

I do not accept that power companies have the right to pollute the atmosphere. I take breathing pretty seriously.

City Pages: Off Beat

Some people have dirty minds.

Jurors say Yates knew right from wrong

A couple of the jurors wanted to give her the death sentence, but backed down. PDQ, since it took less than an hour. I get the idea they mostly wanted to get home for the weekend.

Andersen Misread Depths of the Government's Anger

Why? Because in the past, Andersen's mistakes (giving them the benefit of the doubt) had only resulted in fines. So, even if they did something even worse, all they'd expect would be a really big fine. No dice.

Companies are very good at planning, really. As long as they know the worst that can happen, they can have a plan for it. But Andersen didn't know what the worst really was.

Bush Invites Top Saudi to Texas for Talks

Oh, for fun!

I don't know why Abdullah has been appointed Kaliph all the sudden -- did I miss that? I mean, he's the real ruler of Saudi Arabia, but my recollection has been that the larger Arab countries haven't necessarily been willing to follow the Saudi lead in the past.

It could be that what this is really about is clearing Saudi airspace, and the use of Saudi airports, for Gulf War II.

I'm younger today.

It's my 31st birthday. The way I see it, 31 is younger than 30; at least it feels that way. 30 is one of the oldest years there is.