Bull

Absolute Bull. A "study" supposedly "shows" that 665,000 "excess" deaths occurred in Iraq since the US invasion. Thats almost 15,500 every month above the expected death rate. Bull. Throw the flag on this one, folks. That the media is even reporting this crap shows a venomous partisan slant. The Washington Post should be ashamed they even printed this hackery. This would be almost 400 (article says 500 - even higher than my back of the envelope calcs) people PER DAY. Over the normal death rate?

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.

This is utter and complete crap. Period. No thinking person can possibly believe these numbers. When have you EVER heard of that many people dying in one day in Iraq, much less every single day since the war began. For heaven's sake, think, people.

UPDATE: Others: Right Wing Nut House, OTB, Decision '08, Astute Bloggers, Gateway Pundit,

UPDATE: Political Pit Bull has some numbers that are even more pertinent to any discussion of this subject.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee:

To buy these conclusions, you have to swallow the impossibility that Reuters, the Associated Press, UPI, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, Robert Fisk, al Manar, al Jazeera, and every other news conglomeration in Iraq are a willful part of the largest cover-up in human history, hiding three times of the number of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (214,000 according to wikipedia) over the course of three-plus years.

It’s patently absurd.

UPDATE: Game, set, match. The Iraqi government rejects the "study" as exagerated.

“This figure, which in reality has no basis, is exaggerated,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali Debbagh.

“It is a figure which flies in the face of the most obvious truths,” he said, calling on research institutions to adopt precise and transparent criteria especially when the research concerns victim tolls.

Not that this will convince the TruthyTrolls™.

Gee, That’s A Surprise

Not. A former Clinton official, William Perry, Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997 argues Bush dropped the ball on North Korea. He dismisses the fact that North Korea was cheating on the "agreed framework" while Clinton was in office in one sentence. As for the rest, it's all Bush, all the time. Not a word about the Clinton administration paying to have all the North Korean spent fuel rods stabilized. So they would be all ready for reprocessing when the time came.

The most important such limit would have been on reprocessing spent fuel from North Korea's reactor to make plutonium. The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium. (Ed Note: The plutonium was "made" long before Bush took office. It was extracted later, after the Clinton administration paid to stabilize it, under IAEA supervision).

The administration also said early this summer that a North Korean test of long-range missiles was unacceptable. North Korea conducted a multiple-launch test of missiles on July 4. Most recently, the administration said a North Korean test of a nuclear bomb would be unacceptable. A week later North Korea conducted its first test.

It appears that the administration is deeply divided on how to deal with North Korea, with some favoring negotiation and others economic and political pressure to force a regime change. As a result, while the administration was willing to send a representative to the six-party talks organized by the Chinese in 2003, it had no apparent strategy for dealing with North Korea there or for providing leadership to the other parties. In the meantime, it increased economic pressure on Pyongyang. Certainly an argument can be made for such pressure, but it would be naive to think it could succeed without the support of the Chinese and South Korean governments, neither of which backs such action. North Korea, sensing the administration's paralysis, has moved ahead with an aggressive and dangerous nuclear program.

With North Korea, Bush tried what the left insisted he had to try, talks, talks and more talks. The administration got all the regional players involved. And they talked. Just what Clinton did. The only thing Bush didn't do was send Madeline Albright to drink champaign with the minimum leader. But Perry knows all that - he presided over the fiasco. The only red line here is the spin Perry is imparting. It's hitting the red line on the tach.

Addressing The Problem

I am no fan of John McCain and have said that repeatedly. I also have absolutely no intention of ever voting for the man, either in a primary or a general election. Nonetheless, I think he is spot on in his criticism of the Clinton administration's policy toward North Korea. I also think he's spot on about the need to slap the North Korean minimum leader with all the sanctions we can as soon as we can. We being the whole world right now. And China has to help.

They have missiles, and now they claim to have tested a nuclear device. Eventually they will have the technology to put warheads on missiles. That is a grave threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States that we cannot under any circumstances accept. North Korea also has a record of transferring weapons technology to other rogue nations, such as Iran and Syria.

The President is right to call on the Council to impose a military arms embargo, financial and trade sanctions, and, most importantly, the right to interdict and inspect all cargo in and out of North Korea. I hope the Council quickly adopts these sanctions, and that all members enforce them.

The worst thing we could do is accede to North Korea’s demand for bilateral talks. When has rewarding North Korea’s bad behavior ever gotten us anything more than worse behavior?

I would remind Senator Hillary Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush Administration policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure. The Koreans received millions in energy assistance. They diverted millions in food assistance to their military. And what did they do? They secretly enriched uranium.

Prior to the agreement, every single time the Clinton Administration warned the Koreans not to do something — not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor — they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton Administration with further talks. We had a carrots and no sticks policy that only encouraged bad behavior. When one carrot didn’t work, we offered another.

This isn’t just about North Korea. Iran is watching this test of the Council’s will, and our decisions will surely influence their response to demands that they cease their nuclear program. Now, we must, at long last, stop reinforcing failure with failure.

The talk, talk, talk response does not work with rogue regimes that do not negotiate in good faith. It is absolutely pointless to do so. It is also quite evident that Kim Jong Il is not playing with a full deck when he threatens to launch nuclear missile at the US expecting anything other than the total annihilation of his country to result. About half an hour after he launched such a weapon, South Korea would be an island nation. But what will happen if there is an Asian arms race is anyone's guess. Do you really want "brushfire" wars with nukes? That is where we are headed unless the world gets its collective act together. Do not negotiate. Clamp down. Make it untenable to be a rogue nation.

Or this will end very badly for all of us.

UPDATE: Others: Tigerhawk: Let the neighbors take out the trash. Hotline: Senator Clinton defends President Clinton. Winds of Change (Joe Katzman): North Korea is a sideshow. The real player here is China. (This is a fascinating read - highly recommended). Encourage Japan/South Korea/ Taiwan to enter nuclear arena unless Kim falls. (Katzman also places blame squarely on Clinton and his policies). Belmont Club: Interesting Choice of medium for McCain's guest blog. The blog comes of age - congrats, Captain Ed! Mac's Mind: A bit of suspicion on the choice of medium. The Marmot's Hole: Wrong time for politics.

Naked Justice

In Hamilton, Ohio not only is Justice blind, it's naked, too. Or at least their prosecutors are.

Scott Blauvelt, 35, was arrested Monday and charged with two counts of public indecency. He was released from the Butler County jail and is awaiting a hearing in Hamilton Municipal Court, where he usually works, sheriff's Maj. Anthony Dwyer said.

A guard monitoring a security camera spotted a nude man investigators identified as Blauvelt in a building that houses county offices Thursday night, Dwyer said. The night before, security video had captured Blauvelt naked in another area of the building, where city offices are located, he said.

Dwyer said investigators don't know why Blauvelt, who was alone, wasn't wearing clothes. The indecency charge carries a sentence of up to a month in jail and $250 fine if convicted.

Blauvelt forgot one thing. Justice is blind, but the security guards aren't.

The Worst Of The American Left

Ross Kaminsky explains that the behavior of the junior jackboots club at Columbia University when the stormed the stage to silence the founder of the Minuteman Project is nothing new to Columbia. It has been a pattern for a long time.

As a graduate of Columbia College ('87) and the son of a Columbia graduate, I have some perspective on the school and the history of student behavior there. Sadly, nothing has changed in the over 45 years which include my father's time at Columbia, my time there, and the recent "Minuteman protests."

Around 1960, Ayn Rand was invited to speak at Columbia. My father went to hear her. She was shouted down and, unable to address the crowd, left the podium after properly scolding the students for their bad manners. The protesters spent much of their time railing against the evils of capitalism and liberty.

In about 1985, there were protests and scuffles as students barricaded Hamilton Hall to demand the University divest itself of investments in companies which did business in South Africa. The protesters spent much of their time railing against the evils of capitalism and liberty, with somewhat more physical violence than had been seen 25 years earlier.

And now, 20 years after those protests, I see Columbia students act aggressively, irresponsibly, and disgustingly, trying to silence another invited speaker.

A letter to the editor of the Columbia Spectator on October 9th as well as the staff editorial on the same date are informative: The "message from the protesters", apparently written by a senior majoring in economics, goes out of its way to misstate the goals of the Minutemen (of whom I am not a huge fan, for the record). The writer also makes the typical leftist radical mistake of calling everything she disagrees with "fascist", a rather silly error for anyone but especially a senior economics major.

The writer tries to create a moral equivalence between the protesters' directly inciting violence against an invited speaker and what she considers to be offensive speech or policy goals of the Minutemen or some of its members. She misses the basic point of America: Political speech, even if you don't like it, is precisely what the First Amendment was written to protect. Violence against a speaker is unacceptable.

Everything you really need to know about the protesters is contained in this sentence: "Shame on the College Republicans for inviting this fascist thug and provoking such outrage on our campus." In other words, the act of inviting a controversial speaker is worse than violence against that speaker…oh, and the speaker must be a "fascist thug" because he doesn't agree with the writer's left-wing sensibilities which are typical of Columbia students.

Her protests that "this is not an issue of free speech" makes it all that much clearer that that is exactly what the issue is. The protesters do not have an "equal right" to shout down a speaker, much less to assault him or his entourage. The right answer…the only answer acceptable in our country…is to let him speak and then set up your own event to tell everyone why he was wrong.

Kaminsky is spot on here. Read the whole thing.

A View From Across The Pond

Con Coughlin in the Telegraph notes that the West has woken up to late to the danger of rogue states with nuclear weapons. He places the blame on the West and its endless bickering over how to deal with these threats to the whole world.

But it was not until yesterday, and the revelation that North Korea's decidedly eccentric president Kim Jong-il had joined the elite club of nuclear-armed powers, that anything like a broad consensus has emerged to confront arguably the world's most unstable dictatorship.

This, after all, is a country where the regime's leadership is prepared to let a tenth of the nation's 22 million people starve to death while they amuse themselves by arranging trips to visit Disneyland.

Not that "the Dear Leader", as Kim likes to be known, would himself look that out of place rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Pluto. With his Elvis hairstyle, oversized glasses and khaki pyjama suit, he looks more like an escapee from a North Korean lunatic asylum than a serving head of state.

It is said the reason he wears platform shoes and styles his hair with an exotic quiff is so that, on his rare public appearances, he appears taller than his 5ft 3in. The few diplomats who have had the pleasure of meeting him in person portray him as a vain, paranoid, cognac-guzzling hypochondriac. And to cap it all, Asia's very own Dr Strangelove now has a nuclear weapon at his disposal.

In these truly terrifying circumstances, the leaders of the world's major powers are to be applauded for agreeing that it is in no one's interests to allow such a man and such a regime to have access to such a devastating arsenal. The problem is that they have woken up too late to the threat posed by rogue states that seek to arm themselves with nuclear weapons.

In the four years since Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech, the constant bickering over how to handle rogue regimes has enabled the regimes themselves to proceed apace with their diabolical schemes. Apart from yesterday's test-firing of a nuclear warhead, the North Koreans have successfully developed a range of ballistic missiles that can hit targets throughout Asia, as they proved when they test-fired a missile over Japan.

The North Koreans have also made a significant contribution to the cause of nuclear weapons proliferation. Apart from providing the Iranians with versions of their Nodong ballistic missile, North Korean scientists have been assisting the Iranians with the development of their own nuclear military programme.

The Iranians, meanwhile, have taken advantage of international divisions over that programme to make significant technological progress, to the extent that most Western intelligence agencies believe the Iranians now have the technology to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

If the West has truly woken up, then maybe, just maybe, we can start dealing with this issue. But endless negotiation will not fix the problem. North Korea must be sanctioned - and sanctioned very strictly. Iran must be shown that defying the world will not bring rewards.

Will PETA Change Its Name?

I mean it's the only logical thing to do now that they are stamping their feet again - or still - over the theme park promotion stunt that Six Flags is running for Halloween. I posted about it earlier here and about PETA's earlier hissy fit here. The idea is that if someone eats a live Madagascar hissing cockroach, they get unlimited line-jumping privileges during the Halloween promotion. There's also an attempt to break the work record (that one uses cooked cockroaches, I believe). But PETA is peevish.

Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, is staging the contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it is also offering customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they eat a live Madagascar hissing cockroach.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it had been flooded with calls from children, adults and even anonymous employees of Six Flags opposing the record-breaking contest and the overall promotion.

"Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters.

The competition to beat the world cockroach eating record is being held on Friday at a Six Flags park in Gurnee, Illinois. Anyone who beats the record will win a season pass for four people for 2007 with VIP queue-jumping status.

Competitors will try to break the current world record, which is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England, who devoured 36 Madagascar hissing cockroaches in one minute in 2001.

However Six Flags spokesman James Taylor said the only complaints the company had received were from people who did not have the opportunity to sign up and eat a cockroach because only 12 of its 30 parks in the United States, Canada, and Mexico were participating in the promotion.

I think People for the Ethical Treatment of Vermin has a nice ring to it. But PETA has achieved cartoon status one way or the other.

US To Tighten Enforcement Of Cuba Embargo

The chief US attorney for Florida has announced formation of a special enforcement team to step up prosecutions of people violating the embargo of Cuba. The clampdown comes as the result of an assessment by a presidential committee formed to help speed the transition of Cuba to democracy.

Alexander Acosta, head of US prosecutors in Florida, promised "more vigorous investigations and more aggressive prosecutions" of anyone violating the four-decade-old US embargo.

US President George W. Bush has ratcheted up pressure on Cuba to speed the demise of its communist leaders, Fidel Castro and his brother, interim president Raul Castro.

In a press conference, Acosta announced creation of a task force made up of officials from several US agencies, which "will strengthen enforcement of sanctions against the Castro regime with the aim of hastening a transition to democracy in Cuba. We will do our part to effectuate president Bush's mandate to speed this transition".

Acosta promised to prosecute import and export of goods to and from Cuba, unapproved visits to the island and transfers of hard currency to and from Cuba.

Creation of the task force was recommended by a presidential Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which also backed the Cuba Fund for a Democratic Future, a two-year, 80-million-dollar program.

The commission is co-led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban-American.

The commission recommended tightening the embargo by better enforcing existing sanctions against the island, including those against companies that supply oil, nickel, tobacco and rum, and by better preventing avoidance of the embargo by those who operate through a third country.

Seems like the sensible thing to do. Castro appears to be dying and if pressure is kept up on the regime, it will likely collapse as have other cult of personality dictatorships over the years. Once the figurehead is gone, the whole rotten structure becomes unstable.

Australia Acts Unilaterally On NK Sanctions

Captain Ed notes that the Australian government has slapped sanctions on North Korea unilaterally in the wake of the miniature madman of Pyongyang's latest misadventure.

The Australians have stepped up to the plate, as they always do when tyrants threaten global security, in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. They didn't bother to wait for the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Kim Jong-Il regime, and told the UN that they had better snap to it themselves:

Australia will impose a range of measures on North Korea, including curtailing visas and supporting any U.N. sanctions, in response to the country's nuclear test, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday. …

"We were urging our friends and allies in the United Nations to pass a resolution imposing sanctions," Downer told reporters.

Downer said the nuclear test had made the region less secure, and that North Korea had "humiliated" its biggest ally, China.

Australia has diplomatic relations with North Korea, restoring them six years ago after Pyongyang insisted that it would behave itself and stop making nuclear weapons. After this test, Australia considered ending the relationship again, but decided that having the North Korean ambassador in Canberra to scold was a better idea. Downer did just that yesterday, calling Chon Jae-hong to express Australia's displeasure at the latest lunacy from Dear Leader.

You have got to love those guys.

Iran Says It Will Not Stop Nuclear Program

I'm surprised they didn't say this yesterday after Kim set off whatever exploded. Iran's leadership, both secular and religious have now said they will not stop their program. Period.

"Our policy is clear: Progress, offering transparent logic and insisting on the rights of the nation without retreat," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, according to state-run television.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said Iran will continue its nuclear program, which it says is for peaceful purposes.

"The Iranian nation will continue its path of dignity based on resistance, wisdom and without fear," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

So, as North Korea goes, so goes Iran. If the UN does not clamp down hard on North Korea, there is zero chance of stopping Iran before it detonates its first bomb. The test may well be staged over Tel Aviv.

A New Word

Bob Owens over at Confederate Yankee has just hit one million visitors. Congratulations, Bob! He's also used the occasion to coin a new word. Blegburst.

Put simply, a blegburst is when you beg for money or some other sort of assistance online, and other bloggers link your plea. And the coolest thing is this: as blegbursts are brand page-spanking new, you can participate in the very first one.

Isn't that exciting?

Wow! What do I need to do to participate?

It's actually quite simple. Simply link this post in one of your own blog posts. It really is that simple.

Bob's in rather dire need of a new computer as his current one uses stone tablets instead of floppy disks. So if you can help him out, I'm sure he'll be very appreciative. And you get to be in on a first if you link him! A twofer!

China And Russia Both Back Sanctions

Both Russia and China are backing sanctions against North Korea. There is a "but" in there, though. Neither one appears to be willing to back sanctions being issued under chapter 7 of the UN Charter. That could be a real problem, because an interdiction and inspection program will require the ability to use force if it is to be successful. Russia flat rules out the use of force and reminds the world that they share a border with North Korea.

China and Russia, which both border North Korea, met with other veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council to discuss a range of sanctions proposed by the United States and Japan to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.

China's U.N. Ambassador, Wang Guangya, told reporters: "I think that there has to be some punitive actions." He added: "We need to have a firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response to North Korea's nuclear threat."

In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called the reported test a "colossal blow" to the non-proliferation regime but, like China, insisted an eventual United Nations resolution on this issue should not involve the use of force.

"For us that is very important … imagine if there was military action on the territory of North Korea … North Korea has borders with three countries, and one of them is Russia," he told reporters.

The United States, France and Britain, the other Council permanent members, agreed that tough measures were needed fast, despite the fact that only one country — Russia — has said the evidence so far available confirms a nuclear blast actually occurred.

No vote has been scheduled but Japan's U.N. Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, this month's council president, said: "The general feeling of members is to get it done as early as possible."

In Beijing, China said it had no information about widespread speculation that North Korea might be ready to conduct a second test.

Asked what Beijing thought of the possibility of military action, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a news conference: "I think this is an unimaginable way."

A Hong Kong newspaper, Wen Wei Po, reported that China had canceled leave for troops along at least part of its border with North Korea and that some were conducting "anti-chemical" training exercises.

That last sentence is very troubling. What is China thinking here? Since not even Kim is nuts enough to attack the Chinese, there appears to be an implicit threat to North Korea with these actions by the Chinese. If I were Kim, I'd think very seriously about abandoning his plans and possibly transferring his plutonium to Chinese control.

Or they might just come over and take it.

Odor In The Court!

A judge in Blackpool, England demanded an apology from a defendant after the order of the court was disrupted by an odor in the court. It seems Joseph Wildy was sitting in the dock when he let fly a bit of flatulence. This made Wildy and his co-defendants giggle. The judge did not see the humor in the situation at all.

Joseph Wildy let rip and refused to apologise after he had a fit of the giggles with his co-defendants on Tuesday.

However, magistrate Simon Bridge, sitting in Blackpool, on the northwest coast of England, was not amused by his interruption. He found Wildy in contempt of court and ordered him to be locked up.

After cooling off in the cells, Wildy returned to court 90 minutes later and apologised to Bridge.

"He was laughing in court, that's why he was found in contempt," said a court spokeswoman.

"It was for interrupting the proceedings by laughing, and then refusing to apologise."

Something smells about that whole explanation.

Welcome To The Balkans

This is pretty disturbing. A new study by  Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam say that the more diverse a community is the less likely it is that anyone in the community will trust anyone else.

A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists.

His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.

This is a contentious finding in the current climate of concern about the benefits of immigration. Professor Putnam told the Financial Times he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it "would have been irresponsible to publish without that".

The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic".

At the risk of pointing out what I think is the obvious here, what this says to me is that encouraging separate ethnic/cultural/religious identities is counter-productive to a healthy society. The wages of multiculturalism is a destruction of the cultures involved all the way around. Putnam hints at this, but in a politically correct way.

Prof Putnam stressed, however, that immigration materially benefited both the "importing" and "exporting" societies, and that trends "have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed".

In an oblique criticism of Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, who revealed last week he prefers Muslim women not to wear a full veil, Prof Putnam said: "What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us."

Where America used to excel was in the melting pot, before the onset of multiculturalism. Was it perfect? Heck no. It took years for society to adapt to successive waves of immigrants. But it did so by encouraging an American identity over any other differences. I think we, as a nation, started to slip when people started calling themselves a [ethnic/cultural/religious]-American. That hyphenation began the slide. Putnam is right in a way. The new us we should construct is the old us we used to be.

Perfect Illustration

Barbara Streisand delivered an absolutely perfect example of the raging hypocrisy on the left these days. She was giving a concert and took a break from doing what people had paid to see her do - that is to sing - and went into a long-winded political "skit" with a George Bush impersonator. The skit apparently went on for 'way too long. Some people heckled. Babs took great exception to that.

Streisand effortlessly crooned through a select repertoire of the hits she's amassed during her four-decade-plus career. But night's most riveting moment came during what was perhaps the only unscripted _ and truly uncomfortable _ episode in the three-hour show.

There was Streisand, enduring a smattering of very loud jeers as she and "George Bush" _ a celebrity impersonator _ muddled through a skit that portrayed the president as a bumbling idiot.

Though most of the crowd offered polite applause during the slightly humorous routine, it got a bit too long, especially for a few in the audience who just wanted to hear Streisand sing like she had been doing for the past hour.

"Come on, be polite!" the well-known liberal implored during the sketch as she and "Bush" exchanged zingers. But one heckler wouldn't let up. And finally, Streisand let him have it.

"Shut the (expletive) up!" Streisand bellowed, drawing wild applause. "Shut up if you can't take a joke!"

With that one F-word, the jeers ended. And the message was delivered _ no one gets away with trying to upstage Barbra Streisand, especially not in her hometown.

Once the outburst (which Streisand later apologized for) was over, Streisand noted that "the artist's role is to disturb," and delivered a message of tolerance before launching into a serenely beautiful rendition of "Somewhere." That put the focus back on what the audience came for _ her voice, one of the greatest female instruments of her generation. (Emphasis added)

Contrast this behavior, if you will with the behavior of the budding young leftist stormtroopers at Columbia University. "They have no right to be able to speak here". It is perfectly acceptable to the left to shut down speech they disagree with. Try the same tactic on them and they tell you to "shut the (expletive) up". Then lecture you about tolerance. And the saddest thing is, they do not understand the irony of their actions. Or the rank hypocrisy.

(By the way, the heckler was out of line, but that's another discussion. So was Streisand, but again, that's another discussion).