Trajectory

I can't wait to see the ruckus over this one from the left. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense and all-around whipping boy of the left, has dared to write an op-ed in the Washington Post. One that is lucid, clear and makes sense.

That ought to make all hell break loose.

Yet from halfway around the world — with but a few weeks' notice — coalition forces were charged with securing a landlocked, mountainous country that history had dubbed the "graveyard" of great powers.

Given the circumstances, it is not surprising that military experts and columnists raised the specter of Vietnam and "quagmires" — both before and during combat operations. They cited the forbidding terrain, brutal weather and the Soviet Union's total failure.

Within weeks of our launching combat operations, however, the Taliban regime had been defeated, consigning yet another cruel regime to the dustbin of history. Coalition forces took control of Kabul, and since then the Afghan people have fashioned a new constitution and successfully held the first democratic presidential election in their long history.

Now, five years after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, another signpost has been marked on Afghanistan's long, difficult road to stability: NATO took control of security operations for the entire country on Thursday, as well as the 24 Provincial Reconstruction Teams that are strengthening infrastructure across the nation.

This is an unprecedented moment for the NATO alliance. In 2001 NATO forces were for the first time deployed beyond their traditional European borders. Today the number of troops in Afghanistan from nations besides the United States has reached more than 20,000 — to add to the approximately 21,000 American troops serving there.

Rumsfeld also points out the warts that Afghanistan has in this piece. It is by no means a rosy picture - there are challenges. But he also points out that there is more than the day to day headlines:

· Economy: The size of Afghanistan's economy has tripled in the past five years and is projected to increase another 20 percent next year. Between 2003 and 2004, government revenue increased 70 percent, to $300 million. Coca-Cola recently opened a $25 million bottling plant in Kabul, and other large multinational companies are considering opportunities in Afghanistan.

· Education: In the past five years, more than 42 million school textbooks have been printed and distributed, and some 50,000 Afghan teachers have been trained. Almost 600 schools have been built, and now more than 5 million children attend school, a 500 percent increase from 2001.

· Health care: In 2001 only 8 percent of Afghans had access to at least basic health care; at least 80 percent do today. Some 5 million Afghan children have been vaccinated.

· Infrastructure: Thousands of kilometers of roads have been built or improved since the Taliban fell. Since 2004, 25 provincial courthouses have been built and hundreds of judges trained.

Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday — or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?

The Democrats right now are trying to flog the administration for not doing enough in Afghanistan. But if we abandon Iraqis to their fate as many cut and run types want and put all the troops into Afghanistan, how long until the voices on the left begin demanding that we leave those people to their fate?

I'd bet no more than a few weeks, if that. There is a trajectory here. It really is in a positive direction. But it is hard. Which is the real problem with the left. They don't do "hard" very well.

A Hint Of Movement

Reports are saying that the six nations involved in trying to rein in Iran have actually agreed to start talking about sanctions at last. There may be a possibility that the Axis of Egos™ has finally strained the good will of even their tacit allies, Russia and China. With North Korea going right over the top with their manic midget's all but declaration of war on the US, it may be that it is reaching even Russia and China that these guys are dangerous to the world economy.

Top diplomats from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia said in a joint statement after talks in London that they were "deeply disappointed" by Tehran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a key step toward making nuclear weapons.

Apparently divided about how quickly to move, the envoys stopped short of explicitly declaring European negotiations with Iran a failure, as some had expected them to do.

Their statement also shied away from demanding Tehran be punished by the U.N. Security Council, but said they would discuss sanctions in talks at the U.N.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns went further.

"The decision has been made that we'll go for sanctions, the question is what the sanctions will be," he said after the meeting. "In the view of the United States, we have to move for sanctions to raise the stakes for Iran."

Reading the diplomats' joint statement, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Iran had two choices when the United Nations demanded it halt enrichment activities.

"We regret that Iran has not yet taken the positive one," she said.

Beckett said the six powers "will now consult on measures under Article 41 of Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter." Article 41 authorizes the Security Council to impose nonmilitary sanctions such as completely or partially severing diplomatic and economic relations, transportation and communications links.

Let's face it, a nuclear arms race in both the mid and far East will be a drain on the world's economy. Not to mention the fact that many of the countries who would ostensibly be involved in the races are so unstable that they are a danger to themselves. The miniature madman of Pyongyang has amply displayed his proclivity for starving his own people to acquire nukes. Do we really want this spreading globally? Pull together people.

All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

Oh hell, the peer pressure is too great. I can't help myself. First it was Roger Simon, that evil and twisted man who writes. For a living.

…although I cannot say I am really a Republican. I only voted for Republicans twice in my lifetime (once each for Bush and Schwarzenegger). Still… despite the fact that I have been married three times (to women) and have three children (of my own seed, as far as I know), I cannot cover up any longer. This dual life has become intolerable. I am gay! There. I’ve said it. Doesn’t that make you feel better, David? (Can we get back to serious issues now?)

Then Gerard Vanderleun had to go and up the ante. Big time.

For decades I have been a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I can’t help it. I have this deep need to pursue every beautiful woman I see. What can this be other than latent lesbianism? As my two wives will, if they were speaking to me, attest, I have in the past performed lesbian acts on them. I couldn’t help it because it was in my genes and also part of their special request.

But The Anchoress topped them all and has thrown down the gauntlet to boot:

I like sex in various positions! With the lights on and off! In the daytime and the nighttime! In the ocean and in the windowseat! I like sex on Sunday mornings! Can I get an “AMEN” for Cunnilingus? AMEN for cunnilingus! Can I get a “You know how to whistle, don’t you” for Fellatio? “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” Can I get a “Ride’em Cowboy” for my husband? Yippeekayae! Can I get an “arghghghghg” for Readi Whip and maraschino cherries? Arghghghghghg! What, no brownies?

And so with the irresistible pressure now bearing down on the humble Crabitat, I have no choice but to come out as well. I have voted for Democrats. Sometimes repeatedly. (I would have also admitted the lesbian thing, but Vanderleun already beat me too it). But the big one, the one that just kills me to have to admit: I make a mean quiche. And fritattas, too. And I enjoy them. Damn you all.

UPDATE: Sigmund, Carl and Alfred didn't come out, (Dare ya! Double dare ya!) but still makes a lot of sense out of all this.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse, always worth reading is right on point with this post. She also being attacked by winged monkeys, so you know she's spot on. They only come out when you're right.

UPDATE: Bruce Kesler is on the exact same page as Ann Althouse. Robin at Chickenhawk Express has seen all the Billy Jack Movies. And liked them. (A brave outing indeed). March Hare has a fondness for men bearing claymores. (I shouldn't admit I have one with a python skin handle, should I? I call him Monty for obvous reasons. No kilt, though, sorry). Fausta has a rather pointed question for the "gay politicos" who sent the "list" to other people.

A Big Time In A Small Place

In small Midwestern towns there is a ritual that comes every fall. Sometimes it happens earlier in the first days of the school year; sometimes a bit later. But it comes around at some point when the summer has waned and the leaves are just beginning to turn color or they are already past their prime and starting to fall. The smaller the town, it seems, the bigger a deal the ritual is.

Homecoming is the holy of holies of the football season. Even if your town’s high school has not had a winning season in living memory. The town’s alumni come back, some from far away and from graduating classes long, long ago. There are parties and balls all over town; cookouts and the formal high school coronation ball. Class reunions and some of the local bars set up beer gardens. In the town I live in there is even a special ball for the people who did not graduate from our high school, so they will not feel left out.

The big event is the game itself, of course. For it is the entire reason for all the hoopla in the first place. But there is another event that is looked forward to by everyone, even if they are not planning on watching the local team get beaten again. That event is the Homecoming parade, of course.

The town goes all out for the event. The storefronts are decorated with various colorful exhortations to the football team to go out and win. They do this every year even though nobody can remember the team ever having actually taken any of the advice. There is a whirl of activity as floats are built and decorated. Every, single grade in the school system has its own float. So do many local businesses. Signs go up all over town providing further exhortations to the team. None of that advice has ever been listened to, either, but the signs are colorful and plentiful nonetheless.

As the time for the parade approaches on the big day, people begin arriving at the town square. A few people here and there plant their lawn chairs to stake out the best spots. Then a trickle more arrives, likewise staking their claims. Soon there are a lot of lawn chairs and the ranks of people swell. Many of the older people in town have already arrived, for they do love their parade and they are pretty picky about where they watch it from. The crowd grows until it is shoulder to shoulder, and then continues to increase as more come in behind them.

It is a beautiful fall day; a lucky year. Sunny and mild with enough of a breeze so it does not get too hot standing in the sun; it is just about perfect. People wait patiently and the noise level grows. Children play and run, old friends chat and laugh. Some people haven’t seen one another in years but pick up conversations where they left off all those years ago. It is Homecoming, after all. Then suddenly there is the sound of wailing sirens. The parade is starting young children rush to the front of the crowd to sit at the curbs between their parents legs or clamber onto a father’s shoulders.

The county Sheriff leads off with his car all flashing lights and blaring siren; an earsplitting opening to the parade. The city police follow and see if they can cause hearing loss as well. Then the local American Legion post color guard marches up with the colors. And every single person on the square rises to their feet and presses their hand over their heart (veterans salute instead) as the national anthem is played.

Then marching band after marching band passes in review. The floats, beautiful in their amateurish enthusiasm carrying scads of school children, reunion classes, local politicians, local political hopefuls and just about anyone who wants to ride on one of them. Waves and smiles are exchanged; candy is thrown out to small children. Halfway through the parade the announcer’s microphone dies and we have to guess or strain or eyes to see who is on the floats as they pass.

Then it is all over. The crowd disperses talking with one another, waving goodbye to friends and acquaintances. For all the crush of people it does not take long for the crowd to disperse. After all the work and bustle and anticipation, the event is over in an hour or so. But that is the beauty of Homecoming and the annual parade. It happens every year. And we will do this all again.

© 2006, Gaius

Pretty Ironic

Here's an ironic development: Human Rights Watch is calling the UN Human Rights Council a "huge disappointment". They note that the body essentially debated a lot of the world's problems and accomplished nothing at all.

The Council, launched earlier this year to replace the much maligned Human Rights Commission, was struggling for agreement on a closing statement to include the Middle East and Sudan's Darfur after three weeks of work at its Geneva headquarters.

"There is an urgent need for the Council to change course and address in an effective and active way the human rights violations that ought to occupy its time," said Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

Although there was good and detailed debate at the session on many of the world's most problematic human rights situations, the 47-state body ended up taking no action on any, she said.

The proposed final statement mentions Darfur, Lebanon, occupied Palestinian territory, defamation of religion and the right to development.

Faced with some 44 different resolutions, and with no time to debate them all, Council chairman Luis Alfonso de Alba proposed covering just a few in a final consensus text, but Human Rights Watch said the wording was too mild.

"That statement will not be the sort of action we are looking for," Hicks told a news conference.

"The session is a huge disappointment," she said, adding it had not strengthened human rights protections.

The UN "cleans itself up" with the "reform" of the Human Rights Council. Yeah. That'll work. Notice what got addressed at all? All subjects of interest to Islamists. Nothing else got touched. Anyone still believe the UN is useful?

A Quiet Heroism

I would rather not write this post. I did not write it yesterday when the story broke because of that reluctance. But there are names that must be remembered and one that must be forgotten. And so I will write this for the ones who should be remembered.

On Monday, a monstrous evil was visited on a quiet and gentle place in Pennsylvania. By now everyone knows that. Everyone knows that a man entered an Amish school and took the little girls hostage at gunpoint and released the boys. Everyone knows the horror that followed. There are five dead already, another five hospitalized and one is in very grave condition and has been removed from life support. But before the murders commenced there was an act that must not be forgotten.

The oldest girl to be murdered that day, 13 year old Marian Fisher, stepped forward and asked her killer to shoot her first. She tried to buy time for the others. Then Marian's 11 year old sister, Barbie, stepped forward and asked that she be shot second. Barbie survived, wounded in the hip and shoulder.

When the monster finally turned the gun on himself, he asked the survivors to pray for him before he took his own life. He did not complete all of the evil he set out to do that day. Something stopped him. I suspect he must have measured himself against the quiet heroism of Marian and Barbie Fisher and saw how very lacking he was.

The Amish community buried 13 year old Marian Fisher, 7 year old Naomi Rose Ebersole and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7 yesterday. Today they buried 12 year old Anna Mae Stoltzfus. They invited the wife of the man who killed their children to the funeral. They invited her to supper along with her children.

There is a quiet heroism that I cannot even begin to understand here.

Please read the post The Anchoress wrote about this. She has linked others who wrote about this as well.

UPDATE: "Shoot me and leave the other ones loose". Her name is Marian Fisher. Please remember her.

Greeks Recovery WWII Dive Bomber

Greek military divers have successfully recovered the wreckage of a World War Two German Junkers 87 "Stuka" dive bomber. The bomber is believed to have been shot down in 1943 and was part of a German squadron operating from the Island of Rhodes.

The Junkers-87 dive-bomber was shot down in 1943 and will be conserved and displayed at the air force museum at an airport near Athens, air force spokesman Col. Ioannis Papageorgiou said.

Papageorgiou said there was no trace of the two airmen's bodies.

"The plane was raised a couple of hours ago, and I don't know yet whether there are any remains inside," he told The Associated Press.

He said part of the plane's tail section appeared to be missing.

The two-seater's wreckage was located two years ago by a trawler, which caught it in its nets seven miles offshore at a depth of 492 feet, and dragged it close to the island's southern coast.

Air force experts believe the plane was part of a Luftwaffe squadron operating from Rhodes that lost several Stukas to allied ships and aircraft on Oct. 9, 1943.

"Once we locate the serial number, we will be able to identify the plane, what squadron it belonged to and the crew," Papageorgiou said.

Over 6,000 of the bombers were built between 1936 and 1944. Only two survive in museums while the wreckage of three more have been recovered. The Stuka was a slow and ungainly aircraft and was no match for more modern fighters but was used to devastating psychological effect by fitting it with a siren that made an unearthly howl when it dove in. It was also used later in the war as a "tank buster" on the Eastern Front and was actually very good at it. The most highly decorated German pilot of the war, Hans Ulrich Rudel, destroyed 519 Russian tanks with the Stuka tank killer.

NASA Mars Teams High Five

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE imaging system to take an unprecedented photograph of the Mars rover Opportunity at the rim of Victoria Crater. An absolutely fabulous photograph, too. Isn't technology wonderful?

This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity near the rim of "Victoria Crater." Victoria is an impact crater about 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter at Meridiani Planum near the equator of Mars. Opportunity has been operating on Mars since January, 2004. Five days before this image was taken, Opportunity arrived at the rim of Victoria, after a drive of more than 9 kilometers (over 5 miles). It then drove to the position where it is seen in this image.

Shown in the image are "Duck Bay," the eroded segment of the crater rim where Opportunity first arrived at the crater; "Cabo Frio," a sharp promontory to the south of Duck Bay; and "Cape Verde," another promontory to the north. When viewed at the highest resolution, this image shows the rover itself, wheel tracks in the soil behind it, and the rover's shadow, including the shadow of the camera mast. After this image was taken, Opportunity moved to the very tip of Cape Verde to perform more imaging of the interior of the crater.

NASA also released a series of images taken by the Opportunity showing the dramatic layering of many of the terrain features in Victoria. Have you noticed that NASA is doing a much better job of public relations of late? I have. They are getting a lot more good press about the various programs. I think the new director is doing a pretty job on that front.

Betting The House On A Pair Of Deuces

According to David Corn, that is what the left has just done. The "list" that Corn wrote about the other day has, according to Corn, been forwarded to organizations on the religious right by "gay people of a non-Republican bent".

Copies of The List (see below) have been sent by gay politicos to a variety of social conservative groups that look to the Republican Party to make their religious right dreams come true. The recipients include the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance for Marriage, Concerned Women of America, the Eagle Forum, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Officials at most of these groups have had something to say about homosexuality and gay rights in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal.

What's the point? The senders–gay people of a non-Republican bent–seem to be hoping to set off a civil war within the GOP, to turn the anti-gay social cons against the GOP's Velvet Mafia.

And so the Foley matter is the spark that sets off this whole chain of events. I believe it is a gross overplay of the hand that has been dealt here. I do not think the result will be - even remotely - what the left assumes it will be. They are, I think, victims of their own rhetoric. They have charged for so long that Republicans and Conservatives loathe gays that they really believe it. While there are some who do, they are a minority. Many on the right who oppose gay marriage hold no animosity toward gays on an individual basis. Many religious individuals who hate what they perceive as the sin of homosexuality nonetheless love the sinner.

They just bet their whole house on a pair of deuces. I think they made a bad bet. We'll see.

“Yes, We Were Stupid”

Admits one of the budding young storm troopers who helped along the little brawl at Columbia that silenced the speech by Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist. He said it regarding the decision by Columbia University administrators to examine Facebook records of the various students involved in the thuggish merrymaking.

"I don't [agree with the decision], but there's nothing we can do about it," Patric Prado, SEAS '09 and creator of the group, said. "I was there, and it's fine that they want to incriminate people who actually started violence. … Yes, we were stupid, but we got our message across that we weren't going to accept this on campus."

Well, besides the obviously criminal thuggishness, which is stupid to begin with, there is also the limited intellectual capacity of people dumb enough to join Facebook groups admitting they were part of the violence. But it will make it ever so much easier for Columbia to come down on the analog brownshirts.

Columbia will review information and images posted on students' Facebook profiles as part of its investigation into Wednesday night's Minutemen brawl, a University spokesman confirmed Thursday evening.

Though this marks the first public acknowledgement (sic) that Columbia administrators would use the social networking Web site to conduct a security probe, it follows a trend set by peer institutions over the past year of monitoring Facebook content for enforcement purposes.

"Facebook is a public thing," Robert Hornsby, a University spokesman, said. "It's on the World Wide Web, and it's not exempt as a resource. … Students may disagree with that, but they also have a prerogative to take down their Facebook entries."

The investigation comes after a violent protest broke out in Roone Arledge Auditorium during a speech by Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, an organization that patrols the U.S.-Mexican border for illegal immigrants. Shortly after the speaker took the stage, several audience members rushed onto the stage with banners, sparking a physical conflict and prompting the early cancellation of the speech.

According to Facebook, it is the top location for Internet photo-sharing, with over 10 million users uploading about 1.5 million photos daily. The average U.S. college student spends 18 minutes per day on the site, according to a report by comScore, a company that monitors Internet traffic.

As of late Thursday night, 13 Columbia students and alumni had joined a Facebook group titled, "YES, I was there when Gilchrist was rushed faster than CUFT's Quarterback."

We have to say we agree with you completely, Patric. You were, and still are. Moreover, it seems evident that you always will be.

Sideshows And Carnival Barkers

There are real dangers in the world today. There are self-declared enemies of the United States in the Middle East, the Far East and even right here in the Western Hemisphere. We have nations that are engaged in the pursuit of nuclear weapons. We have others that have vowed to test their bombs and all but declared open war against the US. We have troops in combat in Iraq. We have torrents of illegal immigrants flooding into the country. We have terrorists who have sworn to attack the United States. We have murderers and monsters among us that kill little girls. We have an economy that is the envy of the world with record highs in the stock market for three straight days now. We have rising tax revenues despite tax cuts. We have falling unemployment and rising consumer confidence.

And we have sideshows that dominate all media coverage and political debate. And we have carnival barkers who make sure that those sideshows are well attended.

We have a Former Republican Congressman who deservedly resigned his office when emails and text messages came to light that prove that he acted improperly with underage Congressional Pages. There has not been one single charge yet that he did anything other than the emails and texts. No actual sexual contact has been alleged. But that is the dominant theme in the political debate leading up to a national election. The barkers make sure of it by drowning out any other topic of discussion.

We have scurrilous accusations made against sitting Senators which do not pass even the most basic rules of journalism. No fact checking, no verifiable multiple sourcing. No police records to back up the most lurid charges. Yet the stories saw print anyway. And the barkers and the hucksters were there to make sure of it.

We have opportunistic hypocrites who cannot address the real issues facing this country in a meaningful way. Which is why we have sideshows and carnival barkers. 

UPDATE: Daniel Henninger at the Opinion Journal wonders if this is really happening.

It's hard to believe that the Foley/instant message/congressional-page/GOP meltdown story has run for a week. Other than the slaughter in Amish country, is anyone aware of anything else of note in the world that happened the past seven days? Dive deep enough beneath the Foley flotsam and you discover reports that North Korea may be preparing to conduct an underground nuclear test. China and South Korea are at this hour trying to forestall the Hermit Kingdom's nuke test and no doubt could use an expression of support and outrage from the American political establishment. Sorry, they're busy reading Congressman Foley's 1995 email traffic.

We see also where Europe's envoy to Iran, Javier Solana, threw in the towel after "endless hours" of talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on Wednesday told a crowd screaming "Death to America" that sanctions wouldn't stop Iran from enriching uranium. Whatever. The big news in Washington yesterday morning was that the House Ethics Committee sat down "behind closed doors" to think about Mark Foley.

We know when we're beaten. Bowing to the gods of the news cycle, let us undertake the great questions of the moment. Where does post-modern American ethics place Mark Foley's homosexuality on a scale of 1 to 10–a 1 being just another gay guy and a 10 being a compulsive, predatory sex offender? What might fall in between seems to have confused Denny Hastert, two newspapers, one TV network and the FBI. In the event, Mr. Hastert, as the point man, is being driven from office for having failed, in hindsight, to recognize the obvious.

Please read it for a good analysis of how we got to this place. This sideshow with all the carnival barkers.

Nancy Takes Another Victory Lap

Nancy Pelosi is doing it again. She's counting chickens and taking a victory lap before the elections. She's now talking up what she will accomplish in the first 100 hours after taking over as Speaker of the House. Not 100 days. 100 hours.

As in the first 100 hours the House meets after Democrats — in her fondest wish — win control in the Nov. 7 midterm elections and Pelosi takes the gavel as the first Madam Speaker in history.

Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."

Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Time remaining until 100 hours: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step. Cut the interest rate on student loans in half. Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds — "I hope with a veto-proof majority," she added in an Associated Press interview Thursday.

All the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no increasing the deficit, whether the issue is middle class tax relief, health care or some other priority.

To do that, she said, Bush-era tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above "a certain level." She mentioned annual incomes of $250,000 or $300,000 a year and higher, and said tax rates for those individuals might revert to those of the Clinton era. Details will have to be worked out, she emphasized.

"We believe in the marketplace," Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. "They have only rewarded wealth, not work."

"We must share the benefits of our wealth" beyond the privileged few, she added.

Priority one, raise taxes. What is much more important here is not what Pelosi says she will accomplish in her first "100 hours". What's really important here is what isn't important at all to Pelosi.

There is no mention of the war on terror, no mention of the situation in the world, not mention of North Korea or Iran. Other than a vague promise to enact the 9/11 commission's recommendations, there is nothing about keeping this country safe. Only about redistributing wealth in accordance with her beliefs of what is fair.

More About The Silencing Of Speech At Columbia

Tigerhawk has more about the incident at Columbia University that I commented on yesterday. Tigerhawk point out that the stifling of free speech at colleges is not even remotely a new tactic and has been used reliably by the left at those institutions for decades.

This business of leftist university students interdicting mainstream but politically incorrect speakers is not, unfortunately, new. It is a tried and true tactic that my father, who was a professor of history at the University of Iowa, had to confront in 1972, when leftists shouted down Harvard professor Richard Herrnstein (whose theories about the inheritability of intelligence were most decidedly un-PC). My father's actions in connection with that episode taught me a lesson that university bureaucrats would do well to adopt today. While refusing to endorse Herrnstein's opinions, he cancelled a class to protest Iowa's failure to secure Professor Herrnstein's speech, saying this to his students:

Before you start writing, there is one matter which I feel I must talk to you about, even though you are probably sick of hearing about it. The deliberate and successful attack on academic freedom which occurred here a week ago was the most tragic and upsetting thing which has happened in the three years I have been here. I feel that I can’t continue to perform my duties here without saying or doing something to make public my sorrow and my sense of outrage.

Because there is such pressure for conformity in a large industrial society, a university has to promote diversity more than ever before. But it cannot offer you diversity of opinion or provide anything more than mere indoctrination unless every faculty member has the fully guaranteed right to say what he thinks is the truth, not simply what one political group wants him to say. This right is academic freedom. Without it, I could not remain in this profession and your prospects for a broad and diversified educational experience would be gone ….

I think that neither you nor I can afford to have this issue swept under the rug. As a means of symbolizing my protest at the administration’s failure in this case, I am canceling Monday’s lecture in this course. I hope that you will take a few moments during that hour to reflect on the fact that freedom is very hard to win and very easy to lose.

Tigerhawk also points out that colleges have a proven track record for giving a speaking venue to just about any self described sworn enemy of the United States. It does kind of tell you that there is a massive problem in higher education. As if we did not already know that.

A Voice In The Wilderness

Charles Krauthammer tries to remind us that there are other things in the world than the Foley scandal. Not that there is much chance of him being heard at the moment. Yet he continues to try to point out the flaws in the leaked NIE (remember that?). A voice in the wilderness that petty partisan politics has become reminding us that there is a world outside of the slimy 2006 political campaigns.

Ah, but those seers in the U.S. "intelligence community," speaking through a leaked National Intelligence Estimate — the most famous previous NIE, mind you, concluded that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, slam-dunk — have peered deep into the hypothetical past and found the answer. As spun by Iraq war critics, the conclusion is that Iraq has made us less safe because it has become a "cause celebre" and a rallying cry for jihad.

Become? Everyone seems to have forgotten that Iraq was already an Islamist cause celebre and rallying cry long before 2003. When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war against America in 1998, his two principal justifications for the jihad that exploded upon us on Sept. 11, 2001, centered on Iraq: America's alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions and, even worse, the desecration of Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Hussein).

The irony is that the overthrow of Hussein eliminated these two rallying cries: Iraqi sanctions were lifted and U.S. troops were withdrawn from the no-longer-threatened Saudi Arabia. But grievances cured are easily replaced. The jihadists wasted no time in finding new justifications for fury and reviving old ones. The supply is endless: Danish cartoons, papal pronouncements, the liberation of women, the existence of Israel, the licentiousness of Western culture, the war in Afghanistan. And, of course, Iraq — again.

It is worth reading the entire article. Because there are other things in the world. And there are enemies watching the disintegrating American political scene who grow bold enough to issue thinly veiled declarations of war. It is worthwhile to remember we are already at war.

Feeling Down Since Your Abduction?

Feeling depressed or distressed since you were released by the kidnappers? Is it hard to concentrate since they implanted the electrodes in your brain? Feel like there's nothing you can do about it since it's impossible to serve legal papers on aliens? The UFOs never stay in one place long enough to get a process server to them.

Never fear! You can sue the government! And there is a law firm specializing in just that.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German lawyer hopes to drum up more business by pursuing state compensation claims for people who believe they were abducted by aliens.

"There's quite obviously demand for legal advice here," Jens Lorek told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court."

Lorek, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Dresden who specializes in social and labor law, said he hoped to expand his client base by taking on the unusual work.

He has yet to win any abduction claims, but says there are plenty of potential clients, noting that extra-terrestrial watchdogs report scores of alien assaults every year.

"These people could appeal for therapies or cures," he said.

Why does this really not surprise us? Come to think of it, why does it not surprise us that the media is picking this story up? We would also not be surprised to find out that Mr. Lorek's phone is ringing off the hook at the moment. That whole PT Barnum thing applies here, after all.