Petrified Truth

Terri Schiavo, RIP

Here is President Bush's statement today following the tragc death of Terri Schiavo.

Today millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo. Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's families. I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life.

The Catholic Church reacted strongly as well.

A spokesman for the Vatican criticized the manner in which Terri Schiavo died Thursday.

"The circumstances of the death of Mrs. Terri Schiavo have rightly disturbed consciences," Joachin Navarro-Valls said. "Her death was arbitrarily hastened, because feeding a person can never be considered excessive therapy."

"There are no doubts that exceptions cannot be allowed to the principle of the sacredness of life, from its conception to its natural death. Besides being a principle of Christian ethics, this is also a principle of human civilization," Navarro-Valls said.

"One would hope, from this dramatic experience, a greater awareness of human dignity could mature in public opinion and that it would bring greater protection for life, even from the legal point of view."

Navarro-Valls' comments came shortly after Cardinal Renato Martino, prefect for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican, made stronger comments.

"It is nothing else but murder," he said. "It is a victory of the culture of death over life. This is not a natural death, it is an imposed death."

Shoulder-fired trouble

NBC News reports on new evidence that al Qaeda wants to shoot down civilian aircraft in the U.S.

An Internet posting obtained by NBC News — written mostly in Arabic — details how to fire a shoulder-fired missile and how to overcome security measures.

NBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann says it was posted five days ago on an Internet location used by Iraq's top terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"We've seen plenty of material on radical Islamic Web sites dealing with shooting down military aircraft in combat zones," says Kohlmann. "However, this is the first time I've ever seen the deliberate targeting of civilian aircraft leaving U.S. airports."

NBC News will not reveal many of the details. There's a sketch of a terrorist on a rooftop shooting a missile at a plane, and information on possible evasive tactics. Much of the information appears to have been taken from the Web site of a U.S. magazine. There are also maps showing flight paths and new security perimeters from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

They've tried before in Kenya and elsewhere. It's probably only a matter of time before they try again.

Kofi Annan escapes

Watching the UN: the Wall Street Journal has read Paul Volcker's report on Kofi Annan and the now infamous "Oil for Food" scandal, and reaches a verdict.

In the narrowest sense, Mr. Volcker's Committee found "no evidence" that the Secretary General influenced the U.N.'s 1998 selection of Swiss inspections company Cotecna for an Oil for Food contract. It also found that "the evidence is not reasonably sufficient to show that the Secretary-General knew that Cotecna had submitted a bid on the humanitarian inspection contract in 1998."

In a broader sense, however, what Mr. Volcker's report reveals is an "adverse finding" against the Secretary General: That is, patterns of willful neglect, conflict of interest and incompetence that would have any business CEO out on his ear.

John Bolton can't arrive soon enough as our new UN ambassador. Surely he will help to expose further the systemic failures of these globe-trotting, diplomatic grifters.

The other woman

Who is Jodi Centonze? For better or worse, she's in the middle of the struggle over Terri Schiavo's fate. Here's a sympathetic portrait from the St. Petersburg Times.

Jodi Centonze, 40, is Michael Schiavo's live-in girlfriend, mother of their two children, 1 and 21/2 years old.

Centonze occupies a peculiar role in the national debate over Terri Schiavo - in the middle of it, but never a public part of it.

"She wants to stay out of it," said her brother, John Centonze. "She says this is not about her, it's about Terri."

Yet she has been anathematized, her name invoked as a key reason why Schiavo, 41, should not control his wife's fate. Outside Terri's hospice, protesters hold signs that say, "Michael don't plan the wedding yet, we still have hope!" and "Arrest Mike for bigamy."

Related:

Marital obligations

Remembering

James Taranto examines the political implications of the controversy over the fate of Terri Schiavo and points out a lesser-known interest group.

The important question is not what most Americans today think of the case, but who is likely to have a long memory about it. It seems to us there are two such groups. The first is obvious: pro-lifers. Mrs. Schiavo's death doubtless will spur them to greater political activism. Whether this will help Democrats or Republicans is hard to predict, since it depends on the extent to which each party seems to be catering to extremists.

But the second group is more interesting, and seems likely to hurt the Democrats. We refer to advocates for the disabled, who, as the Boston Globe says, "have struck an uneasy alliance with Christian conservatives." Some of the most passionate commentary on the Schiavo case has come from people with severe disabilities.

[T]heir perspective is worth considering. An able-bodied person may look at Terri Schiavo and think: I wouldn't want to live like that. Someone with a severe disability is probably more apt to hear the talk of Mrs. Schiavo's "poor quality of life" and think: I don't want to be killed like that.

To be sure, a distinction can be drawn between those, like Mrs. Schiavo, whose higher brain functions are irreversibly gone and those whose cognitive abilities are undamaged (or less damaged) despite other severe disabilities. But if you were in the latter group, would Terri Schiavo's death bolster your faith in physicians, politicians and judges to look out for your interests?

Old-school leftie Nat Hentoff, champion of human rights, is outraged.

On March 23, outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo was growing steadily weaker, her mother, Mary, said to the courts and to anyone who would listen and maybe somehow save her daughter:

"Please stop this cruelty!"

While this cruelty was going on in the hospice, Michael Schiavo's serpentine lawyer, George Felos, said to one and all: "Terri is stable, peaceful, and calm. . . . She looked beautiful."

During the March 21 hearing before Federal Judge James D. Whittemore, who was soon to be another accomplice in the dehydration of Terri, the relentless Mr. Felos, anticipating the end of the deathwatch, said to the judge:

"Yes, life is sacred, but so is liberty, your honor, especially in this country."

It would be useless, but nonetheless, I would like to inform George Felos that, as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said: "The history of liberty is the history of due process"—fundamental fairness.

Contrary to what you've read and seen in most of the media, due process has been lethally absent in Terri Schiavo's long merciless journey through the American court system.

In this country, even condemned serial killers are not executed in this way.

Persistent

Al Qaeda is working to rejuvenate the Taliban in Afghanistan, reports the AFP news service. That's persistent devilry.

Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network is making fresh efforts to stage a comeback by the Taleban and regain a foothold of its own in Afghanistan, the commander of US forces in the country said on Tuesday. Lieutenant General David Barno said the US believed both Bin Laden and fugitive Taleban leader Mullah Omar were probably still in the region, possibly on the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Al Qaeda clearly still wants to see the Taleban stage some kind of a comeback in Afghanistan,” Barno told AFP.

“They’re still providing financing, with guidance, training, support and selected individuals that help lead and motivate the operations here in Afghanistan.”

However Barno said positive political and economic developments in the war-torn nation had made it “less and less attractive for the Taleban”.

“The Taleban realize that the future doesn’t lead to a path that includes Al Qaeda and Talebans... it’s a democratic path that people have voted for and chosen right now,” he said.

Early risers

President Bush and his family attended Easter Sunday services at Fort Hood.

It was the third Easter in a row the president has left his Crawford ranch to visit Fort Hood, home to the 1st Cavalry Division, now returning from duty in Iraq. At least 90 1st Cavalry soldiers have died in combat and noncombat incidents in Iraq.

The president was accompanied by his wife, Laura; his parents, former President Bush and Barbara Bush; twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara; and a young man identified as a friend of the family.

The Bush family attended the 10 a.m. service at the 4th Infantry Division Memorial Chapel with about 200 other congregants, some dressed in Army uniforms or fatigues.

"We appreciate you waking your son up and getting him to church," assisting Pastor Thomas Preston told the elder Barbara Bush. "He may go somewhere one of these days."

Balance

Arthur Chrenkoff has published Part 24 of his bi-weekly series, "Good News from Iraq," including a story so astonishing that "even the New York Times had to sit up and take notice."

As the old saying goes, one swallow does not make a spring... but the indications are that in the new, postelection environment, more ordinary Iraqis are standing up to be counted in the fight for the future of their country.

Easter Day

He is Risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

- The Collect for Easter-Day, The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

Great Escape? Not this time

Here's a report about a surprising security discovery in Iraq.

U.S. troops believe they have thwarted a massive escape from one of the coalition's main prison camps in Iraq, Pentagon officials have said.

A 600-foot-long (183-meter) escape tunnel with an exit point outside the prison camp walls was discovered Thursday at Camp Bucca in southeastern Iraq.

The tunnel is believed to have been dug with improvised tools. Military authorities discovered it after a tip initiated a campwide search. The tunnel is about 10 feet below ground and 2 to 3 feet wide.

Gunner at Target Centermass tips us to the story and is thinking fondly of Hogan's Heroes. True enough and fun, but this incident also recalls The Great Escape, which was both a classic movie and a true story of great ingenuity and gritty determination. NOVA on PBS presented a fascinating program re-visiting the actual location of the real German POW camp.

Sixty years after the event, NOVA follows a team of archeologists as they search the site of Stalag Luft III for new evidence of the clandestine operation, which involved 600 prisoners digging three highly sophisticated tunnels, code-named Tom, Dick, and Harry. Each tunnel was made with railways, electric lights, and underground air pumps—all under the noses of German guards.

Incredibly, the tunnels were 30 feet deep—the height of a three-story house—a measure taken to evade German listening devices planted in the ground to detect tunneling activity. Another challenge was the nearly pure sand through which tunnelers had to dig; the airmen used wooden supports to keep the passages from collapsing. Wood was in short supply at the camp and had to be scrounged from bed slats and by cannibalizing the barracks. "Those poor barracks: I wondered why they didn't fall down, because all the bracing in the attics was practically taken out," recalls Charles Huppert, a U.S. airman from Indiana.

Although Stalag Luft III was located in eastern Germany, in what is now Poland, hundreds of miles from friendly territory, three men managed to cross most of Europe and make it to freedom.... As for the 73 who were recaptured, 23 were returned to German camps, and tragically, 50 were summarily shot in violation of the Geneva Convention as Hitler's revenge against those who dared to break out of his "escape proof" prison.

WGBH built a fine website to accompany the program and the DVD is well worth your time.

Taiwan protests

There was a massive protest today in Taiwan against the newest anti-democratic verbosity of mainland China's Communist rulers.

Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese have marched on their capital to protest Beijing's new law sanctioning the use of force if Taipei moves toward formal independence.

"China is a violent country. We want nothing to do with it," said protester Wu Chao-hsiung, a carpenter from Taipei. "We have to insist on the freedom to determine our own fate."

Thousands of tour buses from all over the island arrived in Taipei filled with protesters, who assembled in 10 different areas -- each route representing one of the articles of the anti-secession law.

The marchers then converged on the wide boulevard in front of the president's office. Police estimated the crowd at about a million, The Associated Press reported. Taiwan's population is 23 million.

China's state-controlled Xinhua news service spun the story this way:

Saturday's protest in Taipei initiated by the Democratic Progressive Party and other secessionist groups has aroused complaints among Taiwanese, who blame the politicians for blowing the people's money on a "political carnival" that "makes no sense."

Some participants in the march shouted themselves hoarse to fan hostility against the mainland. Leading figures of Taiwan authorities and "Taiwan independence" secessionists, including former Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui, were among the marchers.

The Taiwanese may not insist on independence, but clearly they do insist on freedom, and rightly so.

Prose Poem

What could make a veteran USMC gunnery sergeant get all sentimental? Why, his shoulder-fired Javelin weapon system of course, in the aftermath of the battle for Fallujah. Read his admiring letter to the manufacturer via The Braden Files:

As I activated the BCU, I felt the nervousness set in as I was worried the missile would be unable to fly through the seemingly impenetrable mess downrange. Just as I triggered the launch, an insurgent ran out into view, looked up at me, and then attempted to run back into the position. Situation resolved.

I have to tell you, Sir, that the missile came out, ignited its flight motor, began its ascent and rose to the point where I thought, "There is no way this missile will be able to make that dive." The missile traveled to an altitude higher than my fourth story position, and then dove like a Stuka, beautifully weaving its way though the mess of power lines as if it could see them, and impacted on the EXACT center of the track gate solution. At that moment I was sure that there were some men and women (all of you) whose brilliance, incomprehensible to me, would have to be honored. It took the Marine Corps hours upon hours to make me proficient with the simple old M16 rifle. It took all of about two hours to make me combat effective with the Javelin. I watched my Marines fire the missiles from enclosed positions, from atop HMMWV's, with track gate solutions that would surely cause the BST to notify us to "Seek other employment" and that magnificent missile made one Super bowl touchdown after another.

We are grateful to you for this fine weapon system and for a Marine Corps that would care about us so much that it would go without somewhere else so that we, the infantrymen, could bring this weapon to battle against the enemies of the United States. Imagine the effect on morale when during the worst combat conditions and things don't appear to be going so well, for every Marine to look up to see a Javelin on its merry way toward the hardest enemy position around with full knowledge that they do not have to worry about that anymore. More.

Heroes

We noted earlier an ass-kicking delivered by warrior MPs of the Kentucky National Guard to insurgents in Iraq who made the unfortunate decision to ambush a truck convoy. Now Blackfive, Winds of Change and others have more details, including an insurgent video. Review it all - there are lots of details.

From an officer reviewing the incident:

It is a testimony to the professionalism of the soldiers our army continues to field. Bear in mind as you read this, these are support troops, Military Police and Medics, who normally occupy rear areas and provide logistics and route security to tactical forces.

Here is one further comment that may explain why they were so successful...and deadly. Army doctrine and training teaches that, when ambushed, move directly into the ambush. Never away, always into it. Believe me, only highly trained and disciplined troops will do that. These are some remarkable soldiers. Their discipline and ability to use their weapons speaks volumes for the officers and NCO's who trained them.

You may wish to pray for those who were wounded in the engagement.

Note the victory was indeed not without cost: several soldiers were wounded seriously. Note also that one of the NCOs who led the counterattack was female. Training, discipline, teamwork and courage paid off.

Hope

March 25 is Tolkien Reading Day every year, when afficionados of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien are called on to pause and read aloud their favorite passages.

One of mine that also seems appropriate on this Good Friday is the brief passage from The Lord of the Rings when Frodo departs MiddleEarth from the Grey Havens and then finds himself on the very edge of bliss following his long suffering and sacrifice.

Why?

Peggy Noonan has profound questions and concerns about those who insist that Terri Schiavo must be euthanized.

Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

What does Terri Schiavo's life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them?

Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.

I do not understand their certainty. I don't "know" that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can "err on the side of life." How do the pro-death forces "know" there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: "vegetative state," "brain dead," "liquefied cortex."

She is rightly alarmed by what it may mean.

Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous. And those who are still learning--our children--oh, what terrible lessons they're learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They're witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society--their society, their people--on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life.

Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.

Once you "know" that--that human life is not so special after all--then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.

Read the whole thing. Now.

Amateurs vs. professionals

Here's some good news from Iraq, courtesy of the warriors of the Kentucky National Guard.

U.S. soldiers, ambushed by dozens of Iraqi militants near the infamous "Triangle of Death," responded by killing 26 guerrillas in the largest single insurgent death toll since last fall's battle for Fallujah, the U.S. military said Monday.

The high number of deaths in Sunday's daylight battle south of Baghdad was attributed to the large number of attackers, unusual in a country where most clashes are carried out by small bands of gunmen or suicide bombers.

"I was surprised at the numbers," said Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein, a squad leader for the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., and a native of Henryville, Ind., involved in the firefight. "Usually we can usually expect seven to 10."

Reporting on Sunday's big firefight, the U.S. military said MPs and artillery units from the Kentucky National Guard were traveling along a road 20 miles southeast of Baghdad around noon when 40 to 50 militants emerged from a grove of trees and a roadside canal firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

The soldiers returned fire, killing or wounding all the insurgents in a field and driving away those attacking from the canal. Seven Americans were reported wounded, but no details were given on their conditions. Commanders said seven wounded insurgents and one unwounded attacker were captured.

French Jews under siege

Here's more news of burgeoning anti-Semitism in worldly and wise France, apparently carried out largely by Muslim residents.

Interestingly, there's no indication that an accompanying rise in anti-Muslim incidents was perpetrated by Jews. French society is being corroded from within.

A French human rights commission reports the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts has almost doubled in France over a single year. The acts not only target Jews, but also Muslims living in France.

The report published Monday by the National Consultative Human Rights Commission, a government-affiliated group, found the worrying rise in racist acts registered over the last five years is continuing.

Indeed, the group found anti-Semitic and other racist acts reached an unprecedented high in 2004, with 1,565 threats or acts of violence registered. Thats almost twice the number of similar acts recorded in 2003, according to the commission - which used figures provided by the French Interior Ministry.

Moreover, the commission noted the attacks are becoming increasingly violent, with 36 people injured because of anti-Semitic acts in 2004, compared to 22 the year before. Many of the attacks are directed at Jews in France, and experts say the perpetrators are often disenfranchised French Muslim youths.

But nearly 600 acts of aggression or threats targeted Muslims. The commission suggested many were carried out by by far-right groups.

With estimated 600,000 Jews and five million Muslims living here, France has Western Europe's largest communities of both faiths.

Ruger Cukierman is head of the CRIF, the umbrella group of Jewish institutions in France. He says he's not very surprised by the results of the new report. After all, he says, attacks against Jews here have been rising steadily in recent years.

"We see that this wave, which at the beginning could appear as episodical, seems to become a permanent structural feature of the life in France, and even in Europe," he said. "It's worrisome. It shows that the various components of this anti-Semitism and of this racism are developing in parallel and contributing to the general atmosphere where anti-Semitism and racism are becoming opinions - and not crimes."

Marital obligations

Other outlets are providing exemplary coverage of the Terri Schiavo travesty, but James Taranto's comment today seems worth noting for all the husbands out there.

[W]hy do those of us who aren't right-to-life absolutists side with Mrs. Schiavo's parents, who want to keep her alive, over her husband, who wants her dead? It's a fair question, and it raises another one: What kind of husband is Michael Schiavo?

According to news reports, Mr. Schiavo lives with a woman named Jodi Centonze, and they have two children together. Surely any court would consider this prima facie evidence of adultery. And this is no mere fling; a sympathetic 2003 profile in the Orlando Sentinel described Centonze as Mr. Schiavo's "fiancée." Mr. Schiavo, in other words, has virtually remarried. Short of outright bigamy, his relationship with Centonze is as thoroughgoing a violation of his marriage vows as it is possible to imagine.

The point here is not to castigate Mr. Schiavo for behaving badly. It would require a heroic degree of self-sacrifice for a man to forgo love and sex in order to remain faithful to an incapacitated wife, and it would be unreasonable to hold an ordinary man to a heroic standard.

But it is equally unreasonable to let Mr. Schiavo have it both ways. If he wishes to assert his marital authority to do his wife in, the least society can expect in return is that he refrain from making a mockery of his marital obligations. The grimmest irony in this tragic case is that those who want Terri Schiavo dead are resting their argument on the fiction that her marriage is still alive.

Fickle adoration of the crowd

Today is Palm Sunday. Unfortunately, we did not make it to church services. Instead, youngest daughter got to wait two hours to be examined in a clinic and informed she has both bronchitis and sinusitis. Not fun.

But the Rev. Donald Sensing has posted his Palm Sunday sermon and that's food for thought, as always. Read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt.

We should pause today as we wave palm branches, to remember that our faith is often fickle, too. We also tend to impute to Jesus a reputation he doesn't deserve and motives he doesn't have. It's all too easy to decide Jesus will affirm our fallen desires and fulfill our fallen wishes. Our praise can be both sincere and erroneous unless we remember that once we've stopped clapping our duty is to take up a cross and follow him as he carries his.

Jesus will no more turn aside for our misgiven acclaim than for that of a Jerusalem crowd two millennia ago. Nothing so trivial as public adulation can lead him away from his mission. For that we should be humbled, for Jesus does not need our praise and is not swayed by it anyway. And we should be thankful that he's not, for where would that put us? A King Jesus, twenty centuries ago, would do us no good today.

Passion week is the central part of the Jesus story. It begins with joy but proceeds to fear, despair and grieving. This week is a time of life and death, a time of love and hate, joy and sorrow, honor and betrayal, affirmation and denial. Every human emotion plays out: happiness, disappointment, joy, fear, despondency, disbelief, love, anger, bitterness. We retell this story because it rings so true with what we live and know today.

Laura Bush - class act

The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services handed out awards to six libraries and museums for "Extraordinary Service to Communities" last week, and First Lady Laura Bush (MLS-University of Texas) was on hand. Here's part of what she said:

[C]ongratulations to this year's award winners. Everyone here knows how important libraries are to me. Some of my happiest memories from my childhood were the times I spent reading books with my mother that we'd checked out of the Midland Public Library. As an only child, I learned a long time ago that as long as you enjoy reading, you'll always have a friend by your side. So like many of you, I loved reading so much I decided to make a career of it.

Museums take stories off the page and give people a three-dimensional image of our world. Museums feature everything from dinosaurs to Degas. Many children feel their heart flutter for the first time when they wander wide-eyed through a museum.

The libraries and museums we honor today fuel the imagination and the intellect. The Flint Public Library, the Mayaguez Children's Library, and the Medical Library of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are using education and outreach to improve the lives of people in their communities. The Chicago Botanic Garden, the Western Folklife Center, and the Zoological Society of San Diego educate their visitors about how the world works and how it has evolved over time.

The young people who are here today, and countless others, are enriched by the libraries and the museums we honor. Children and adults are drawn to each of these institutions because, quite simply, they're fun.

Thank you all, each one of you, for opening eyes and minds to the wonders of reading and exploration. And congratulations on your success. Thank you all so much. Congratulations.

Very classy remarks. The nation's librarians are proud to have one of their own in the White House offering such recognition for their skills and service, right? Well, not so fast.

In a pleasantly benign scene at the Hotel Washington last week, first lady Laura Bush, in a cream-colored suit, was smiling and handing out awards to libraries of distinction.

Her background as a teacher and librarian has proven a durable political asset for the president. During the last presidential campaign, he made frequent mention of it, and she tends to highlight that aspect of her long-ago professional life.

But what do some of the nation's librarians think of the first lady?

"She needs to give her husband the smack-down," said Andrea Mercado, a library consultant in Massachusetts in town for the librarians' conference. "She should have spoken up on the Patriot Act."

Many librarians believe provisions of the Patriot Act, which allow government access to library records, run counter to their views on privacy, and on this point, Laura Bush has let them down by not opposing the law.

Since coming to Washington, the first lady has helped secure federal funding for librarian training and curriculum, and her intervention saved a bill funding the expansion of Internet access at public libraries. In 2001, she created the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries, a grant program to help libraries buy books.

Just the same, some librarians said they feel the first lady perpetuates an incomplete and outdated stereotype of their profession, which is increasingly high-tech and specialized.

Said Blake Carver, a New York librarian and Web site operator, "We are not all gentle creatures who read books to children."

But wait — aren't the stereotypical librarians buttoned-up shushers who let their hair down and get wild after-hours? Actually, the librarians agreed, that cliche is largely true.

Leaving aside for now the ongoing paranoia of the library community about the Patriot Act, this thought occurs: it takes a deep insecurity to single out reading books to children as an example of lack of status or professionalism. Perhaps Blake Carver is more comfortable being compared to peers among "Web site operators," like porn magnates or even, God forbid, bloggers.

In a related note, observe also what else she has to endure:

Even so, students of Bush's many moods can't help notice the president's sustained high spirits since beginning his second term. He's in big-time swagger, pitching his Social Security plan around the country and taking weekly mountain bike rides, his new favorite exercise.

One recent Sunday in church, after standing to greet his neighbors in the traditional sign of peace [emphasis added], the president patted his wife's behind.

"She's obviously a patient woman, to be married to me," Bush said.

Anglicans know the significance of this. Gee whiz.

Calling the shots

Savvy Jim Hoagland warns political observers not to misunderstand President Bush's recent nominations to key administration positions.

President Bush's second-term appointments confirm how important individual loyalty is to him. Even more than most, this president treats personnel matters as personal matters.

But Bush's new choices for top-tier jobs in foreign policy and at the World Bank reveal another overriding priority that gets less attention. The other "L" word — legacy — goes unspoken by Bush but already shapes a hugely ambitious agenda for global change that he wants set in concrete by 2009.

The president has hidden this enormous ambition and the tools for achieving it in plain sight. He built his second inaugural address around repetitive emphasis on the word "freedom," and now is sending trusted aides out to design or modify specific policies and institutions to make the speech a conceptual blueprint for the next four years.

The nominations last week of Karen Hughes to run the State Department's public diplomacy effort and of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank should be seen in that longer-term light. So should the less publicized but equally revealing decision by Bush to give his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, a significant role in planning policies pegged to turning the lofty rhetoric on the Middle East into reality.

Judgments about the desirability or realism of Bush's grand designs for change must await future columns. But as his nominations move forward, it is important to understand that they do not represent random or unconnected choices made simply to reward loyalists. Be relieved or terrified, but realize that there is a plan at work here.

Bush himself never talks about legacy and does not encourage conversations in which the word might figure, say officials who meet with him.

Nor does he seem to mind that there is little public awareness that he is developing methods to pursue what the president's critics call madness — his obsession with spreading freedom.

Could other Bush motives account for these nominations? A perverse sense of humor? A desire to punish or destroy the World Bank or the United Nations? A taste for poetic justice slaked by condemning the talented wordsmith Gerson to try to bring his rhetoric to life?

Maybe. But count on that, and you run the risk of "misunderestimating" George W. Bush and his ambition once again.

Mark Steyn has a related take on President Bush's nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.: a shot of truth-telling, not pandering to woolly-headed notions of transnational "diplomacy."

I've never been to Davos, but I've sat next to the hot-looking Eurototty in the Alpine bar and tried to wangle me a little après-ski action and there comes a point in the evening when she says, 'Zat George Boosh. What an idiot, hein!' And you start to bristle, but then you realise that America and Old Europe are riven by as deep a divide as the magnificent plunging cleavage beckoning from her low-cut Fahrenheit 9/11 T-shirt and maybe now would be a good time for some transatlantic outreach in a very real sense, so you say, 'Yeah, Bush. What a chump. Not like that Ruud Lubbers, eh?' And you stare down her cleavage and catch your creepy sweaty face reflected in her shoes and feel momentarily ashamed, but not for long. My guess is that that's what Bill Clinton and Eason Jordan were up to when they respectively hailed the progressivism of Iranian politics and defamed the entire US military. You're with a bunch of foreigners and you want them to like you and it's easy to get carried away.

That's what was so stunning about Bolton. In a roomful of Euro-grandees, he was perfectly relaxed, a genial fellow with a rather Mitteleuropean moustache, but he thwacked every ball they served back down their gullets with amazing precision. He was the absolute antithesis of Schmoozer Bill and Pandering Eason: he seemed to relish their hostility. At one event, a startled British cabinet minister said to me afterwards, 'He doesn't mean all that, does he?'

But he does. And that's why the Bolton flap is very revealing about conventional wisdom on transnationalism.

Tip via LGF.

Nazism that won't go away

The murderous legacy of Adolf Hitler and Nazism seems to be in the air over the past few days. Why can people not learn?

Here's news from Turkey, which ostensibly wants to modernize itself enough to be admitted to the European Union, that the new bestselling book is... Mein Kampf.

Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf", analysts here say.

The book was first published here in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey's soul as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II. But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the DetR bookstore chain.

"'Mein Kampf' has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller," said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925. "We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons."

His company's sole aim, he stressed, was "to make money," which they did by slashing the cover price.

"This book, which does not contain a single ounce of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country," political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in a recent newspaper interview.

He agreed that the unexpected popularity of "Mein Kampf" in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism resulting from Israel's Palestinian policy.

"Nazism, buried in the dustbin of history in Europe, is beginning to re-emerge in Turkey," he warned.

Then via Jan Herman's Straight Up blog we're tipped to an act of intellectual sophistry by the (usually) straight arrows at C-SPAN's Book TV, as exposed by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

You will not be seeing Deborah Lipstadt on C-SPAN. The Holocaust scholar at Emory University has a new book out ("History on Trial"), and an upcoming lecture of hers at Harvard was scheduled to be televised on the public affairs cable outlet. The book is about a libel case brought against her in Britain by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, trivializer and prevaricator who is, by solemn ruling of the very court that heard his lawsuit, "anti-Semitic and racist." No matter. C-SPAN wanted Irving to "balance" Lipstadt.

The word balance is not in quotes for emphasis. It was invoked repeatedly by C-SPAN producers who seemed convinced that they had chosen the most noble of all journalistic causes: fairness. "We want to balance it [Lipstadt's lecture] by covering him," said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. "You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN," she told me. "We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?' "

C-SPAN's cockeyed version of fairness -- it told Lipstadt that it had bent over backward to ensure its coverage of the presidential election was fair and balanced -- is so mindless that I thought for a moment its producers and I could not be talking about the same thing. This is the "Crossfire" mentality reduced to absurdity, if that's possible. For a book on the evils of slavery, would it counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution? Why does it feel there is another side to the Holocaust or to Irving's assertion that he was libeled? He was not. He was described to a T.

In the end, Lipstadt had to choose between promoting her own book -- a terrific read, by the way -- and giving Irving the audience of his dreams and a status equal to her own. C-SPAN said it was only seeking fairness, but it was asking Lipstadt to balance truth with a lie or history with fiction. On this occasion, at least, Irving did what he could not do with his libel suit: silence Lipstadt. He may still appear on C-SPAN, but Lipstadt will not -- a victory for "balance" that only the truly unbalanced could applaud.

Thankfully, Lipstadt has quickly garnered support from hundreds of prominent historians through a petition organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

As historians and social scientists, we strongly oppose your reported decision to broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving, to "balance" your intended broadcast of a lecture by Holocaust historian Prof. Deborah Lipstadt.

We support Prof. Lipstadt's refusal to participate in this project. Falsifiers of history cannot "balance" historians. Falsehoods cannot "balance" the truth. Justice Charles Gray of the British Royal High Court of Justice, in his verdict on April 11, 2000 dismissing Irving's libel suit against Prof. Lipstadt, concluded that Irving "is antisemitic and racist" and ruled: "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."

Just a few weeks ago, we concluded Black History Month. Presumably
C-SPAN did not consider broadcasting a program about Black history that would be "balanced" by a program featuring someone denying that African-Americans were enslaved. C-SPAN should not broadcast statements that it knows to be false, nor provide a platform for falsifiers of history, whether about the Holocaust, African-American history, or any other subject.

C-SPAN should be smart enough to realize on what thin ice it is standing. Brian Lamb, wake up!

Meanwhile, indispensable scholar Victor Davis Hanson examines why the Hitler/Nazi slurs have been flying at George W. Bush and others.

So what gives with this crazy popular analogy — one that on a typical Internet Google search of “Bush” + “Hitler” yields about 1,350,000 matches?

One explanation is simply the ignorance of the icons of our popular culture. A Linda Ronstadt, Garrison Keillor, or Harold Pinter knows nothing much of the encompassing evil of Hitler’s regime, its execution of the mentally ill and disabled, the systematic cleansing of the non-Aryans from Europe, or mass executions and starvation of Soviet prisoners. Like Prince Harry parading around in his ridiculous Nazi costume, quarter-educated celebrities who have some talent for song or verse know only that name-dropping “Hitler” or his associates gets them some shock value that their pedestrian rants otherwise would not warrant.

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

There is something profoundly immoral for a latte-sipping, upscale Westerner of the postmodern age flippantly evoking Hitler when we think of the countless souls lost to the historical record who were systematically starved and gassed in the factories of death of the Third Reich.

Read the whole brilliant thing. Given recidivist anti-Semitism in Europe and even here, shallow thinking and loose talk, even by the loony left, is risky -- the stakes are far too high.

KPFT sputters

Houston's Pacifica radio station KPFT is hitting hard times, according to today's Houston Chronicle.

Faced with a "stupendous drop" in listenership and a troubling inability to meet fund-raising goals, Houston's listener-supported KPFT-FM (90.1) — long an iconoclastic voice in a radio market dominated by corporate giants — is planning a series of programming and scheduling changes that could dramatically reshape its offerings.

"There's a possibility we could shake this whole thing up," General Manager Duane Bradley said this week. "I think that right now all programming considerations are on the table. I don't think we have any options that we're not willing to discuss."

Well, that's apparently any options except de-emphasizing their loony leftist ravings.

Bradley, 50, stressed that despite the expected changes, the station, which celebrated its 35th anniversary March 1, will remain true to the peace-and-justice philosophy of its parent, Pacifica Foundation.

Bradley's first change, which became effective March 10, was to add a second weekday broadcast of commentator Amy Goodman's news and opinion program Democracy Now! at 7 a.m. The previous 9 a.m. airing, which brought the station a fourth of its listener-generated income, will be retained for the immediate future, Bradley said.

"There is still a need for KPFT," Bradley said. "If Pacifica's mission had been achieved, we wouldn't be in places like Iraq, we wouldn't be basing the largest part of our global economy on weapons manufacture, people wouldn't be starving to death in the Congo, they would be fed.

"There's still an awful need for peace and social justice."

Over the last several years KPFT's airtime has been given over largely to leftist/ethnic splinter groups who have in common only their virulent hatred of George W. Bush and everything this side of outright socialism. This station devoted to "peace and justice" is a spigot of vitriol. It's no surprise they can't raise money just by peddling rhetoric about "war profiteers."

Gnawing weaknesses

The Washington Post reports the increasing strain on the U.S. Army, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard.

Two years after the United States launched a war in Iraq with a crushing display of power, a guerrilla conflict is grinding away at the resources of the U.S. military and casting uncertainty over the fitness of the all-volunteer force, according to senior military leaders, lawmakers and defense experts.

The unexpectedly heavy demands of sustained ground combat are depleting military manpower and gear faster than they can be fully replenished. Shortfalls in recruiting and backlogs in needed equipment are taking a toll, and growing numbers of units have been broken apart or taxed by repeated deployments, particularly in the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve.

"What keeps me awake at night is, what will this all-volunteer force look like in 2007?" Gen. Richard A. Cody, Army vice chief of staff, said at a Senate hearing this week.

The Iraq war has also led to a drop in the overall readiness of U.S. ground forces to handle threats at home and abroad, forcing the Pentagon to accept new risks -- even as military planners prepare for a global anti-terrorism campaign that administration officials say could last for a generation.

To be sure, the military has also benefited from two years of war-zone rotations, and from a historical perspective it is holding up better than many analysts expected. U.S. troops are the most combat-hardened the nation has had for decades, and reenlistment levels have generally remained high. The war has also spurred technological innovation while providing momentum for a reorganization of a military that in many ways is still designed for the Cold War.

Moreover, military leaders are taking steps to ease stress on the troops by temporarily boosting ranks; rebalancing forces to add badly needed infantry, military police and civil affairs troops; and employing civilians where possible. Yesterday, defense officials worried about recruiting announced that they will raise the age limit, from 34 to 40, for enlistment in the Army Guard and Reserve. The Pentagon is spending billions to repair and replace battle-worn equipment and buy extra armor, radios, weapons and other gear.

Yet such remedies take time, and no one, including senior officials, can predict how long the all-volunteer force can sustain this accelerated wartime pace. Recruiting troubles, especially, threaten the force at its core. But with a return to the draft widely viewed as economically and politically untenable, senior military leaders say the nation's security depends on drumming up broader public support for service.

"If we don't get this thing right, the risk is off the scale," said Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, director of the Army National Guard, the military's most stressed branch.

Likewise, retired major general Robert Scales, widely known as an expert commentator on Fox News, recognizes the same challenges and worries about the decisions being made for the future.

[H]e makes a compelling case that the U.S. government is misdirecting funds to "the wars we want to fight" - air, sea and space battles - rather than "the wars we have to fight," on the ground in the Middle East.

"Since the end of World War II," he said in an interview, "four out of five Americans killed in action have been infantrymen. Yet the Army gets only 23 percent of the regular military budget, and the top 10 items in the Pentagon procurement budget are five airplanes, four ships and the missile-defense system."

Scales thinks that the United States faces "generations" of smaller wars in the Mideast. And to fight them, it needs 100,000 more Army combat troops, 30,000 more Marines and 20,000 more Special Forces, plus a modernization of their equipment, a reorganization of their units and a much better training regime for small-scale urban combat and intimate contact with foreign cultures.

Right now, he says, "we essentially have two services at war, the Army and the Marines, and two services at peace, the Air Force and the Navy. You can't dispute that.

"We have the Army stretched to the absolute limit. Both the Army and the Marine Corps are tired beyond belief. We're beginning to see cracks in recruiting for the National Guard and the Army Reserve. And we're beginning to see bits and pieces of that in the active Army."

Scales is encouraged that Rumsfeld favors more "special operations" capability. But he's worried that, overall, "transformation" will emphasize expensive high technology when America's real enemies are fighting with rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.

One of the immediate causes of this situation is the utterly irresponsible dismantling of half our military after the fall of the Berlin Wall, urged on with callous disregard by both political parties. Our military should be vastly larger and stronger in every way, a force of overwhelming strength in every way.

Mark Helprin said it best last year.

When soldiers are killed because they do not have equipment (in the words of a returning officer, "not enough vehicles, not enough munitions, not enough medical supplies, not enough water"), when reservists are retained for years, and rotations canceled, it is the consequence of a fiscal policy that seems more attuned to the electoral landscape of 2004 than to the national security of the United States. Were the U.S. to devote the same percentage of its GNP to defense as it did during the peacetime years of the last half-century, and the military budget return to this unremarkable level, we would be spending (apart from the purely operational costs of the war) almost twice what we are spending now.

The military must be reconstituted so that it has a surplus of power without having to choose between transformation and tradition, quality and numbers, heavy and light: All are necessary. This is expensive, and would require more plain speaking and less condescending manipulation from those who govern, but would allow for the quick and overwhelming application of force, unambiguous staying power, coverage of multiple contingencies, and, most importantly, deterrence. It is always better to deter an enemy than, by showing weakness, to encourage him to take the field.

Tony Snow calls in

Fox News radio host Tony Snow had his surgery for colon cancer earlier, and is apparently on the mend. He called into his show this week and said he might be back on the air once chemotherapy starts in 3-4 weeks. That's really good news.

Not shamed, just worried

Here are tough words by columnist Gerard Baker in The Times (UK) on this week's shunning of IRA/Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams by politicians here in the U.S.

Why does it take the killing of an Irish Catholic outside a Belfast pub to open your perceptive eyes to the reality of Irish republicanism? Where were you when it was a couple of dozen innocent British — Protestants and Catholics alike — in a Birmingham pub? Why were you not similarly outraged when off-duty soldiers and their families were the targets in Woolwich and Guildford? What exactly were you doing and saying when they tried to wipe out half the British Cabinet as they lay sleeping in their hotel beds? Don’t get me wrong. The murder of Robert McCartney is no less heinous than any of the IRA’s other offences. It is as much a study in murderous infamy as the remarkable response of his heroic sisters is a lesson in courage for all who love peace and justice.

But that surely is the point. The McCartney horror is not, as the word now has it on the streets of New York and Boston, some startling revelation of the way these men behave, not some grisly departure from the honourable Irish fight for freedom. It merely confirms what most decent Irish have known about the IRA for years.

So let me answer my own questions. The tragedy heaped on the McCartney family and the brave stand of the McCartney sisters have not opened the eyes of Irish-American leaders to the horror of the IRA. They have not even shamed these leaders.

They have merely made them start to worry about the political expediency of being seen alongside men whose own standing has suddenly dropped sharply. Where the McCartney sisters display true leadership, in the face of the gravest peril, the Irish American chiefs step heroically into line.

So in many ways yesterday’s spectacle of Adams being snubbed at the White House and on parts of Capitol Hill, being sternly lectured to by Ted Kennedy and Representative Peter King (a longstanding apologist for Sinn Fein) and others, is even more nauseating than the one we used to watch at the White House each year.

Irish America’s leaders, in other words, are showing exactly the same level of courage as they demonstrated when they looked away for 20 years or more as their supporters dropped $100 bills into the collection buckets so that the IRA could buy the guns and the Semtex that would kill and maim thousands of innocents at a nice safe distance of thousands of miles away.

Tip via NRO's The Corner.

The apologists for terror -- Ward Churchill and Islamic terror, Pat Buchanan and Irish terror, whoever -- have a lot to answer for, both in this life and the next. Clear thinking helps in the here and now. God won't need help later.

Terrorists in Europe

Newsweek examines the ongoing challenge of Islamic terrorism in Europe in a series of articles. Scary stuff here.

Europe's counter-terrorism forces are falling behind badly, thanks to insufficient resources and pathetic legal frameworks.

While U.S. officials tout their success in disrupting suspected Al Qaeda plots inside the United States, a growing cadre of Islamic militants across Europe is overwhelming the resources of security agencies and raising concerns about the threat of more major attacks on the Continent, European officials tell NEWSWEEK.

More than a year after the Madrid railway bombings that killed 191 people, European security agents and counterterrorism experts estimate there may now be more than 1,000 suspected militants with known connections to Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in their territory—and many are not being monitored because of a lack of manpower and legal constraints.

“The situation in Europe is very tense right now,” says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French counterterrorism researcher who tracks militant groups in Europe. “We are seeing more and more of these groups because the war in Iraq and the Madrid bombings gave them a signal.” Brisard puts the numbers of violent extremist groups in Europe at between 1,000 and 1,500.

When terrorists are caught, some are being released by France and Great Britain, "despite frantic warnings from intelligence agencies." The cause? Lack of a legal structure appropriate to the challenge of terrorism, even after an attack.

In fact, Europe has become an ongoing breeding ground for terrorists.

Over the last three years, starting even before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and groups close to him developed a sort of underground railroad to smuggle zealous fighters from Europe through Turkey and Syria into Iraq—and home again, if they survived. Now those recruits have been joined by a stream of young Islamists from Western Europe who are making their own way to the battlefield. Some are looking for Paradise as "martyrs," some just for street cred back home and some for serious combat experience in urban warfare. "Those who don't die and come back will be the future chiefs of Al Qaeda or Zarqawi [groups] in Europe," says French terrorism authority Roland Jacquard.

At a conference marking the anniversary of the Madrid atrocity last week, Robert Leiken of Washington's Nixon Center presented a provocative study of 373 radical Muslim terrorists arrested or killed in Europe and the United States from 1993 through 2004. His conclusion: some 87 percent are from immigrant backgrounds, but 41 percent are Western nationals, either naturalized, second generation or converts to Islam. "More French nationals were arrested than nationals of Pakistan and Yemen combined," says Leiken. While homegrown Muslim terrorists have so far been rare in the United States, in Europe they virtually recruit themselves, and Leiken points out that those who have European passports have almost open access to American territory through an ongoing visa-waiver program.

If the Eurocrats don't wise up, the next big strike may hit "over there" instead of here at home. Or they will hit us from their European bases.

Andre Norton dead

Sadness: science fiction master Andre Norton has died at age 93. She was a wonderful writer, especially for teens.

Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died Thursday of congestive heart failure at her home in Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb. Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service, but instead asked to be cremated along with a copy of her first and last novels.

Born Alice Mary Norton on Feb. 17, 1912, in Cleveland, she wrote more than 130 books in many genres during her career of nearly 70 years. She used a pen name - which she made her legal name in 1934 - because she expected to be writing mostly for young boys and thought a male name would help sales.

Her last complete novel, Three Hands of Scorpio, is set to be released in April. Norton's publisher, Tor Books, rushed to have one copy printed so that the author, who had been sick for almost a year, could see it.

"She was able to hold it on Friday," Jewell said. "She took it and said, 'What a pretty cobalt blue for the cover.' "

Norton spent most of her life in Cleveland, where she worked as a librarian from 1932 to 1950, except for a brief stint in the 1940s when she ran her own bookstore in Mount Ranier, Md., and worked at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. More.

Tip via the omniscient InstaPundit.

There'll be lots more commentary over the next few days as the word spreads, but she was one of my favorites in junior high when I was just discovering real science fiction. Her works, along with those of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, were accessible, satisfying, and thought-provoking. Rest in peace, old friend.

• Earlier this year, a new literary award was started in her honor.
• Andre Norton official site

Wearing the green

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Check out fair Eire from far above, in high-resolution imagery courtesy of NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

President Bush met instead with the courageous McCartney sisters.

President Bush welcomed the family of slain Belfast man Robert McCartney to the White House on Thursday in a St. Patrick's Day event at which he also shunned Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA.

The five sisters and fiancee of McCartney went into a White House reception planning to tell Bush how they think the killers are eluding justice under the cloak of the Irish Republican Army. McCartney, a Roman Catholic, was stabbed to death in January outside a bar by a gang that included known IRA members.

Savvy Jim Hoagland sizes up the situation and finds value in the act of shunning Adams:

The savage acts by IRA members -- and the organization's open "contempt for the rule of law," in the words of a Kennedy spokesman -- should not be portrayed as a failure of the Northern Ireland process. This eruption of lawlessness underlines the importance of such talks -- when they are managed with clear-eyed realism and a willingness to call a killer a killer.

As in daily journalism, timing is everything in the peace-process business.

Violent "revolutionary" movements attract criminals and psychopaths as well as idealistic justice-seekers and sincere nationalists. The longer the revolt continues the more likely it is to become a criminal enterprise essentially devoted to self-perpetuation. That clearly has happened to the IRA, as it did to the Palestinian movement under Arafat.

Too big to be understood, too beautiful to be ignored

Wise Peggy Noonan is almost, but fortunately not quite, speechless at the amazing tale of how single mom Ashley Smith stopped Atlanta murderer Brian Nichols.

It's too big. There is nothing newspaper-eloquent to say. We have entered Flannery O'Connor country, and only geniuses need apply.

Here are mere facts. They were together seven hours and each emerged transformed. He gave himself up without a fight and is now in prison. She reported to police all that had transpired, the police told the press, and now she is famous.

Tuesday evening on the news a "hostage rescue expert" explained that she "negotiated like a pro." Actually what she did is give Christian witness. It wasn't negotiation. It had to do with being human.

It is an amazing and beautiful story. And for all its unlikeliness you know it happened as Smith said. You know she told the truth. It's funny how we all know this.

As always, read the whole thing.

China on the move

Are we missing the strategic implications of trying to "partner" with still-Communist China over both North Korea and counter-terrorism? If so, the tiny island of Taiwan may be the first casualty.

[E]ven as proliferation mania distorts U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula, it also fuzzes our China strategy beyond recognition. The combination of September 11 and North Korean nukes puts us in the position of begging for Chinese help on two fronts where they can't or won't do much and diverts our attention from those issues where China is of greatest concern; we've taken Chinese priorities as our own. Little wonder that Beijing wants to string out the Six Party Talks to eternity and has been trying to portray its repression of Turkic Uighurs in western China as actions against Islamic terrorists.

In short, the United States continues to look through the wrong end of the telescope. We're thus blinded to a whole host of worrying developments that reveal China's progress as a geopolitical--and increasingly global--competitor.

For the children

Wiseguy P.J. O'Rourke has been pondering what should be done with mass transit. As usual, he has some innovative ideas.

The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

We don't want minimum-wage workers driving BMW X-5s. That's unfair. They're already poor, and now they're enemies of the environment? So we must find a way to save mass transit--get people to ride it, be eager to pay for it, no matter what the cold-blooded free-market types at Heritage say. We must do it for the sake of future generations, for our children.

That's it! The children. The solution to the problems of mass transit is staring us in the face. Or, in the case of my rather short children, staring us in the sternum. All over America men and women, at the behest of their children, are getting on board various light-rail systems that don't even go anywhere. And these trips--if you factor in the price of cotton candy, snow cones and trademarked plush toys--cost considerably more than $19. Yet we're willing to stand in line for ages to utilize this type of mass transit. All we have to do is equip Hiawatha with a slow climb, a steep, sudden plunge, several sharply banked curves, and maybe a loop-the-loop over by St. Paul.

Cedar Revolution? maybe...

Savvy Jim Hoagland, observing Lebanon closely for 30 years, is (very) cautiously optimistic about democratic stirrings there. But he knows the old ways will die hard.

[This is] a moment to keep expectations from racing too far ahead of Lebanon's complex reality and the differing views that its troubles still provoke from outside powers, principally France and the United States.

The best way to aid Lebanon's rebirth as a nation is to keep the focus on the intricate set of political negotiations over power-sharing that the Lebanese themselves must initiate, manage and make succeed once the Syrian boot is off their collective neck....

France and the United States have found common cause to press Syria's Bashar Assad to withdraw troops first sent to Beirut in 1976, with the approval of both powers. "Paris wants to stabilize Lebanon, and Washington wants to destabilize Syria," a diplomat in Europe said to me recently. "There's something for everyone."

The hard work lies ahead, as Assad predictably tries to buy time with vague promises and muscle-flexing through his Hezbollah allies.

But the key judgment made by the Bush administration in the spring of 2002 — that the political status quo could not and should not be maintained in the Middle East — is being proved prescient and worth pursuing through this Beirut Spring.

Compare and contrast his careful realism with this pontification from the editors of The New York Times, who seem to think there is some possibility that Hezbollah would "disarm."

[To] be a real political party, Hezbollah has to confirm that it intends to engage exclusively in peaceful politics. Refraining from all paramilitary activities would be a good first step toward proving that Hezbollah can truly transform itself from a heavily armed Islamist terrorist organization and engage in Lebanon's future as an independent political force.

Hezbollah, entirely financed and supported by both Iran and Syria, has no other reason to exist besides terrorism, and will never "disarm." To even dream otherwise is a futile fantasy.

Geography fun

Here's an au courant timewaster making its way around the blogosphere (tip via Winds of Change):

Bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Losing the antidote

Historian Victor Davis Hanson contemplates the state of agrarian life in America with trepidation.

America was created by rural people. Perhaps 95 percent of its citizens were farmers when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Now, despite all the talk of a "rural renaissance," fewer than 1 percent are -- even as we are awash in food and next year will become a net food importer for the first time in our history.

Industrialization, mechanization and suburbanization did away with the agrarian culture of the traditional family farm. The latest "-zation" comes as globalization. Almost every acre of our farmland -- because of instant communications, easy transportation and free trade -- is in competition with its counterpart abroad.

So here we are in 2005 with most traditional farmers gone and our cropland either vertically integrated or subsidized by commuting part-timers. Are there any dangers in our post-modern agriculture?

...

[T]here is an insidious cultural cost to the end of agrarianism that we hardly appreciate. The family on its own land, using craft to work with nature, was a model practical steward of the environment.

Anyone who loses a crop to rain or hail hours before harvest can offer a needed tragic perspective to an increasingly therapeutic society. Public shame, not easy private guilt, was the agrarians' benchmark -- and why not, when they were rooted for life among wide-eyed neighbors?

Words meant little if not backed by action -- as if anyone cared to listen to grand talk of profits to come from an orchard never quite planted. In short, sober American farmers were a calming antidote to almost everything that makes us uneasy with popular culture, from gangsta rap and Martha Stewart to Enron and the hyped trial of Scott Peterson.

No, we will not starve without these crusty farmers, but we will sure miss them.

Reverb

Intrepid reporter Claudia Rosett asks: will Vietnam be the next Iraq?

[A] message reached me last weekend from within one of the world's most repressive states: Vietnam. Word came that the Sharansky of Saigon, democratic dissident Nguyen Dan Que, had been released from his latest stretch in Vietnam's prisons. Though Dr. Que, as he prefers to be called, is now dogged by state security agents around the clock and allowed no phone or computer of his own, he could arrange to be on the receiving end of a phone call.

He got straight to the point: "What I want is liberty for my people." The question now, he said, "is how to make regime change in Vietnam." For democratization of his country, he added, "support from the rest of the world is important." Specifically, he wants Hanoi's decaying communist party to "put forward a timetable for free and fair elections."

Dr. Que does not have access to the daily diet of news that feeds the free world. But given the feats of modern technology to spread information, he knows enough about what is now happening in the Middle East so that he wished to share his views on how America's intervention in Iraq is like the war in Vietnam, and how it isn't. The similarity, he says, "is the same fighting spirit for freedom." The difference, he adds, is that in the fight for freedom, the side America is on "will triumph this time."

Why?

"The world is changing," says Dr. Que. "There are more opportunities than ever."

He is right, and if the world is changing, it is because the U.S. is hardly alone in prizing freedom. In every country are people who care about liberty--and in most places there are a few willing to pay dearly and take extraordinary risks to lead the way. Dr. Que is one, and as we watch the Middle East, it bears remembering, as he says, that these are "universal values," that in many places there are people who given any chance at all will answer freedom's call.

Felons rights

Hillary Clinton and John Kerry want to force states to allow felons to vote. John Fund explains why.

The Constitution grants states the authority to determine "the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections," but Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are pushing a Count Every Vote Act that would, among other things, force states to allow voters to register at the polls and declaring Election Day a federal holiday. And then they want to force every state to let felons vote--even though the 14th Amendment specifically permits states to disfranchise citizens convicted of "participation in rebellion, or other crime."

Forty-eight states deny the vote to at least some felons; only Vermont and Maine let jailbirds vote. Thirty-three states withhold the right to vote from those on parole. Eight deny felons the vote for life, unless they petition to have their rights restored, and the Clinton-Kerry proposal would force them to enfranchise felons (or "ex-felons," as Mrs. Clinton misleadingly calls them) once they've completed parole.

Mrs. Clinton says she is pushing her bill because she is opposed to "disenfranchisement of legitimate American voters." But it's hard not to suspect partisan motives. In a 2003 study, sociologists Chistopher Uggen and Jeff Manza found that roughly 4.2 million had been disfranchised nationwide, a third of whom had completed their prison time or parole. Taking into account the lower voter turnout of felons, they concluded that about one-third of them would vote in presidential races, and that would have overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates. Participation by felons, Messrs. Uggen and Manza estimated, also would have allowed Democrats to win a series of key U.S. Senate elections, thus allowing the party to control the Senate continuously from 1986 until at least this January.