A Missile Shield for Europe?

It hasn't gotten much play in the US media, but it's huge in Europe and Russia.

NYT reports:

WASHINGTON, May 21 — The Bush administration is moving to establish a new antimissile site in Europe that would be designed to stop attacks by Iran against the United States and its European allies.

The administration's proposal, which comes amid rising concerns about Iran's suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, calls for installing 10 antimissile interceptors at a European site by 2011. Poland and the Czech Republic are among the nations under consideration.

A recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials say.

Read it here.

Russia, of course, sees this as an unwelcome intrustion of US military power into its backyard, and there are Congressional critics, but the move is popular in Eastern and Southern Europe [which is where Iran's missiles might land].

Meanwhile the Bush administration is pushing forward with a missile shield to guard against Korean missiles.

It's clear that Bush has concluded that diplomatic pressure will not halt, but might impede a bit, nuclear proliferation, and Democrats have ruled out military intervention, so he has begun to harden our defenses against a nuclearlized world.

[T]he Bush administration is proceeding with a limited antimissile system, one that is no longer intended to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," as Mr. Reagan famously put it. Instead, it is designed to counter prospective dangers from nations like North Korea and Iran.

President Bush made the program a top priority soon after taking office and cleared the way for antimissile deployments by withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

Nine interceptors have already been installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as part of a broader, multilayered system planned by the Pentagon.

It's clear that Bush is constantly thinking of the long-term results of current policies. I'm glad someone is.

The Upside of Katrina

Lou Dolinar over at RCP has a nice piece on "What the Media Missed" in Katrina.

The key point:

[B]y focusing on the part of the glass that was half-empty, the national media imposed a near total blackout on the nerve center of what may have been the largest, most successful aerial search and rescue operation in history.

"The Coast Guard, the National Guard, the military in general performed heroically,"

Read the whole thing here.

If the media reporting had been fair and balanced, if the enormously successful rescue effort had been reported, Bush would probably today be remembered as the hero of Katrina instead of the goat. Instead we got relentless negativity and a host of false stories that became fixed in the public mind.

And the idiot journalists go around giving themselves plaudits and awards for their "courageous" Katrina coverage which was almost entirely a lie.

Faugh!

The Anchoress Understands -- Bush Is One Of the Great Ones

I have been trying to tell people for a long time now just why Dubya is one of the great presidents. Here's "The Anchoress" on the subject. I reprint most of it here -- you can find the whole thing [illustrated] here.

Perhaps I am a dim bulb, but President Bush has never surprised me, and that is probably why I have never felt let down or “betrayed” by him. He is, in essentials, precisely whom he has ever been. He did not surprise me when he managed, in August of 2001, to find a morally workable solution in the matter of Embryonic Stem Cells. He did not surprise me when, a month later, he stood on a pile of rubble and lifted a broken city from its knees. When my NYFD friends told me of the enormous consolation and strength he brought to his meetings with grieving families, I was not surprised. When the World Series opened in New York City and the President was invited to throw the first pitch, there was no surprise in his throwing (while wearing body armor) a perfect strike.

He did not surprise me when he spoke eloquently from the National Cathedral, or again before the Joint Houses of Congress, when he laid out the Bush Doctrine. He did not surprise me when he did it again at West Point, or when he went visionary at Whitehall (don’t try to find a tape of it, honey, that was ONE SPEECH C-Span never re-ran and the press quickly tried to move along from).

There were no surprises in President Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan to battle AlQaeda. There were no surprises when he went after an Iraq which everyone believed had WMD, an Iraq that had tried to assassinate an American President, an Iraq whose NYC consul did not lower its flag to half-mast after 9/11.

Actually, there was one surprise. He did surprise me by going back to the UN, and back to the UN, in that mythical “rush to war” we heard so much about. But then again, the effort in Iraq was never as “unilateral” as it had been painted.

President Bush did not surprise me when, faced with the scorn of “the world community” and those ever-ready A.N.S.W.E.R. marches which sprang up condemning him and Tony Blair, he stood firm. A lesser man, a mere politician, would have folded under such enormous pressure. I was not surprised when Bush did not. (Aside - it’s funny how they just can’t get a good-sized crowd together for those protests these days, innit? Everything about Iraq was “wrong” and everything about Iraq is “failure and quagmire” and yet, somehow, we all breathe a sigh of relief that the job is done, that Saddam is out of power and that Iraq, save a very small piece of troubled land, is - in remarkably short order (and despite the wild pronouncements of John Murtha) - tasting its first morsels of democracy and liberty, and showing promise.)

It never surprised me that Yassar Arafat, formerly the “most welcomed” foreign “Head of State” in the Clinton White House was not welcomed - ever - to the Bush White House.

I wasn’t surprised by the, not one, but two tax cuts he got passed through congress, or the roaring economy - and jobs - those tax cuts created. I wasn’t surprised when he killed the unending farce that is the Kyoto treaty (remember, the thing Al Gore and the Senate unanimously voted down under Clinton?), or when he killed U.S. involvement in the International Criminal Court, or when he told the UN they risked becoming irrelevent, or when he told the Congress and the world, “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.” Not surprising.

I wasn’t surprised at all to watch him - in a foreign and hostile land - go rescue the Secret Service agent who was being detained and kept from protecting him. Or to see him shoot his cuffs, afterwards, and greet his host with a smile.

I was never surprised that he tried to “change the tone” or tried reaching across the aisle to invite onesuch as Ted Kennedy to help draft education reform, something none of his predecessors dared touch. Just as they never dared to try to reform social security or our energy policies. The feckless ones in Congress wouldn’t get the jobs done, unfortunately, but he is a president who at least tried to get something going on those “dangerous” issues. His senior prescription plan was unsurprising and it is helping lots of people.

I was not at all to surprised to see President Bush forego the “trembling lip photo-op” moment in which most world-leaders indulged after the Christmas Tsunami of 2004 in order to get real work done, to bring immediate help to that area by co-ordinating our own military (particularly our Naval support) with Australia and Japan. Stupid, stingy American. I was surprised, actually, to see him dance with free Georgians. I didn’t think he danced.

There's much, much more. Read the whole thing here.

Another Conspiracy Theory Down the Drain

The NYT reports:

WASHINGTON, May 22 — A federal investigation concluded today that rapidly rising gasoline prices over the last year have not been the result of unlawful price manipulation by the industry.

In a report that Congress ordered last summer after price spikes following the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast, the Federal Trade Commission said that the sharp jump at the pump was attributable to market forces — namely big drops in supply and production as well as runs on inventories after major damage to refineries, ports and pipelines. The commission found no evidence of price collusion, or improper reductions of inventory or supplies to increase company profits. [emphasis mine]

"The evidence collected in this investigation indicated that firms behaved competitively," the commission said.

Read it here.

McCain On War -- He Understands

I supported the decision to go to war in Iraq. Many Americans did not. My patriotism and my conscience required me to support it and to engage in the debate over whether and how to fight it. I stand that ground not to chase vainglorious dreams of empire; not for a noxious sense of racial superiority over a subject people; not for cheap oil--we could have purchased oil from the former dictator at a price far less expensive than the blood and treasure we've paid to secure those resources for the people of that nation; not for the allure of chauvinism, to wreak destruction in the world in order to feel superior to it; not for a foolishly romantic conception of war. I stand that ground because I believed, rightly or wrongly, that my country's interests and values required it.

War is an awful business. The lives of the nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer. Commerce is disrupted, economies damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of statecraft are endangered as the demands of war and diplomacy conflict. Whether the cause was necessary or not, whether it was just or not, we should all shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us. However just or false the cause, however proud and noble the service, it is loss--the loss of friends, the loss of innocent life, the loss of innocence--that the veteran feels most keenly forever more. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes war.

But war is sometimes necessary.

Pointing to the genocide in Darfur, McCain notes that the West has, at last, begun to act to halt the slaughter [on the latest effort see here]. But,

Osama bin Laden and his followers, ready, as always, to sacrifice anything and anyone to their hatred of the West and our ideals, have called on Muslims to rise up against any Westerner who dares intervene to stop the genocide [in Darfur], even though Muslims, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, are its victims. Now that, my friends, is a difference, a cause, worth taking up arms against.
....

This is a clash of ideals, a profound and terrible clash of ideals. It is a fight between right and wrong. Relativism has no place in this confrontation. We're not defending an idea that every human being should eat corn flakes, play baseball or watch MTV. We're not insisting that all societies be governed by a bicameral legislature and a term-limited chief executive. We are insisting that all people have a right to be free, and that right is not subject to the whims and interests and authority of another person, government or culture. Relativism, in this contest, is most certainly not a sign of our humility or ecumenism; it is a mask for arrogance and selfishness. It is, and I mean this sincerely and with all humility, not worthy of us. We are a better people than that.

Indeed.

Read the whole thing here.

He gets it, Unfortunately the ignoramuses who jeered and heckled him at Columbia and the New School [here] don't, and probably never will.

Sigh.

John McCain on Bloggers

When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so, because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It's a pity that there wasn't a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.

Read it here.

Latest on Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- Putting a Face on Oppression

Suzanne Fields fills in some of the details of this courageous woman's life and what she means. [here]

And Christopher Hitchens weighs in again here.

Der Spiegel interviews her about her plans here. While at the American Enterprise Institute she plans to write a book titled "Shortcut to Enlightenment" in which the Prophet Mohammed visits the New York Public Library and there meets and has dialogues with Karl Popper, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich August von Hayek.

Sounds interesting. The ultimate theocrat encounters the enlightenment.

Uganda Stands Up to the EU Crazies

At last, a third world nation is willing to stand up to the monstrous demands of the environmental crazies in the EU.

The African nation of Uganda has announced it will defy European Union threats and begin indoor spraying of DDT to battle rampant malaria.

Malaria kills more people in Uganda each year than any other disease, including AIDS and tuberculosis, which typically receive more media attention. Malaria accounts for 40 percent of all illnesses and 21 percent of deaths in Uganda's hospitals. Every year the disease kills approximately 100,000 children under five years old in the country.

"We have to kill malaria using DDT, and the matter has been settled that DDT is not harmful to humans and if used for indoor-insecticide spraying," Uganda Health Minister Jim Muhwezi told the East African on April 4. "It's the most effective and cheapest way to fight malaria."

....

"The result of the DDT ban has been an unspeakable death toll," observed film producer and preventive medicine doctor D. Rutledge Taylor in the March 20 issue of American Daily. "It is about the greatest human death toll in the known history of man, far greater than the holocaust and all the wars combined. It is time that we as generations of humans wake up and do what is right for humanity."

That's right -- the posthumanist tree huggers have been responsible for the deaths of more innocents than Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. The DDT ban resulted from a confluence of junk science, environmentalist madness, and liberal internationalist arrogance. It stands as perhaps the greatest crime against humanity of all time, and it is the most horrific reminder of what can happen when we allow "scientific" authority to dictate public policy.

Rachael Carson's acolytes have one hell of a lot to answer for.

Is It Time for The Return of Booker T.?

Mark Bauerline, writing in the Chicago Sun Times, urges "Bring Back Booker T." [Washington, for those of you who attended public schools and may not have heard of him.]

He writes:

Too many young black men are not sharing in the progress of American society. It is estimated that only 48 percent of black men earn a high school diploma. In 2003, the illegitimacy rate for African Americans was 68 percent. The prisons and unemployment rolls show similar patterns.

These problems stem less from racism and politics than from prevailing attitudes toward family, school and work. The solution comes from a change in culture, a different ethos: Washington's ethos.

Damaging and unrealistic images and poses surround young people: the hip-hop posture that turns anger and incivility into justified conditions; the press conference that sees racism behind every calamity; the school curriculum that emphasizes past injustice. Washington counters with an affirmative recipe for life, a plan of economic behavior that envisions a better future, not an adverse past.

Let's have fewer assignments of The Autobiography of Malcolm X in the classroom and more of Up from Slavery.

Read the whole thing here.

Maryland Politics -- Shakeup In O'Malley's Campaign

First Steele, now O'Malley!

As the national party leaderships veer ever farther away from the interests of common people in an attempt try to placate their lunatic activist bases, State and local candidates are declaring their independence. First Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, candidate for Senate, fired representatives of the Republican National Committee from his staff. Now Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, Democrat candidate for governor, has done the same.

The WaPo reports:

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley announced a shakeup in the senior staff of his campaign for governor last night, naming a former leader of the Maryland Democratic Party to replace a national Democratic operative as his campaign manager.

The campaign said Josh White, former executive director of the state party, would replace Jonathan Epstein, who was tapped to lead O'Malley's campaign last year. Epstein's résumé included leading field operations in Democratic presidential contender John F. Kerry's win in the 2004 Iowa caucuses.

Read it here.

The disconnect between the Beltway denizens and the nation has never been greater than it is today, and there is real anger building. There is really very little that the party national leadership can provide to local and State candidates except money. Their advice is worse than useless. Steele and O'Malley have been wise to sever their ties to the national leadership.

There is a dynamic here that affects both parties. The national party organization listens not to voters, but to people who will write big checks, and increasingly those check-writers represent the lunatic fringe of our political culture. What people like Steele and O'Malley are affirming is what Tip O'Neill said long ago -- "All politics is local" and that is even more true in an off-year election cycle.

Good Morning Baltimore

It's a gorgeous morning here at the post-Preakness Inner Harbor.

Temp in the mid-forties, gonna need a light sweater. Time to head out for my morning "constitutional."

It's days like these that I really like being in the big ...,well..., medium sized city.

Michael Barone -- "The Best of Times"

Listen carefully children. Michael Barone is going to explain something important to you. Please try to keep focused.

Things are better than you think. Yes, I know, most Americans are in a sour mood these days, convinced that the struggle in Iraq is an endless cycle of bloodshed, certain that our economy is in dismal shape, lamenting that the nation and the world are off on the wrong track. That's what polls tell us. But if we look at some other numbers, we'll find that we are living not in the worst of times but in something much closer to the best....

"Ha!", you say. "what's he mean by that?"

Well...,

In 2005, as in 2004, the world economy grew by about 5 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the IMF projects similar growth for several years to come.... The great engine of this growth is, of course, the United States, which produces more than one fifth of world economic product and whose gross domestic product has been growing at around 4 percent--4.8 percent in the latest quarter.

And there's this:

Free-market economic growth is enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty every year, even more than the experts expect. As the IMF writes, "The momentum and resilience of the global economy in 2005 continued to exceed expectations."

And this:

[T]he number of genocides and violent conflicts dropped rapidly after the end of the Cold War and in 2005 the number of armed conflicts was down 40 percent from 1992. Wars have also become less deadly: The average number of people killed per conflict per year in 1950 was 38,000; in 2002 it was just 600. The conflict in Iraq has not significantly changed that picture. American casualties are orders of magnitude lower than in the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, and precision weapons have enabled us to vastly reduce the civilian death toll.

Read it here.

Global peace and prosperity -- not bad. The big picture is as benign and hope-filled as it possibly could be. So why are you guys sweating the small stuff?

Let the Screaming Start

AP reports:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.

The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

Read it here.

What's that I hear in the distance? The squealing of stuck pigs?

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she presumed that Gonzales was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which she said has never been interpreted to prosecute journalists who were providing information to the public.

"I can't imagine a bigger chill on free speech and the public's right to know what it's government is up to — both hallmarks of a democracy — than prosecuting reporters," Dalglish said.

And so it starts....

A Skirmish In the Culture Wars

The Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

A human inside an injured-chicken costume, hobbling in protest on the sidewalk Wednesday in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, didn’t achieve the desired effect, according to many who dined there.

Brad Steig called Wednesday’s protest in Grand Junction by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals good advertising for KFC.

The protest consisted of four adults and one child holding signs in front of the restaurant, handing out fliers and DVDs and urging people to not eat at KFC until the restaurant buys chickens from humane vendors.

Steig, a manager for Halliburton, said he heard about the PETA protest on the radio and decided right then to eat at KFC on Wednesday, the day of the protest.

Not only that, but he bought seven of the biggest buckets of chicken and all the side dishes and used four trips to load them into his Halliburton pickup to treat his co-workers.

“I detest that organization,” Steig said, adding PETA tries to harm the economy because of personal agendas.

Jim Shults dined at KFC with his wife, Deb, on Wednesday just because of the PETA protest, he said. Shults called his lunch a preemptive strike, he said.

“I’m going to kill chickens before they kill me with bird flu,” said Shults. He called PETA “People Eating Tasty Animals.”

When he heard about the protest, he decided “instantaneously this is where we were going to eat today,” he said.

Deb Shults ate chicken strips, and said, “I’m killing one of their pot pies.”

A group of Grand Junction High School students brought their chicken to the curb to eat in front of the costume chicken and the protesters.

A big man in a big pickup rolled by, growling out his open window, “I eat chicken ... lots of chicken.”

Read more about the American heroes here.

I Wonder How the MSM Missed This One

The Mayor of Tel Afar (in Iraq) visited the 3rd Armored Cav regiment at Ft. Carson to personally thank them for what they had done for his city.

Read about it here.

Now THIS Is Scary!

TAMPA - Two Saudi men were arrested Friday after they boarded a school bus and rode to Wharton High School in New Tampa.

Students on the bus became alarmed, as did the bus driver, who called ahead. Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies met the bus at the school and detained the men....

"Both defendants gave several versions of the reason they took a school bus to a high school," said Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway.

"They said they wanted to go to Wharton to look around, and then they said they wanted to go there to have some fun, and then they said they wanted to enroll in the English classes there," Callaway said....

Almanajam and Alsidran at first told deputies they were from Morocco, but later admitted being from Saudi Arabia, deputies said. They said they were enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida.

Both arrived in the United States about six months ago and have student visas....

Read it here.

Can you say "Beslan"?

Pictures of the two men here. They are definitely not kids.

Michelle Malkin is on it here.

Mirabile Dictu -- Joe Klein Gets It (at least, on this)

I never thought I'd be agreeing wholeheartedly with Joe ("Anonymous") Klein, but this time he's right on. He writes:

George W. Bush's position on immigration has been consistent and honorable, even when he was clawing his way toward the Republican nomination in 2000, facing conservative audiences who inevitably asked hostile questions about the Mexicans coming across the border. "They just want the same thing for their families as you want for yours," Bush would say—and his empathy paid off in the general elections, in which he won 35% of the Latino vote in 2000 and 40% in 2004. He stood by his principles again last week in his prime-time speech, promising to make a greater effort to protect the border while refusing to cave to conservative pressure against a pathway toward citizenship for the 12 million illegals already here. It can be argued that the position Bush took wasn't very courageous: vast majorities of Americans support it. About 65% favor either a guest-worker program or simple legalization of current illegals, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. But it is never easy going against your party's base. For a Democrat, the equivalent would be opposition to affirmative action.

Read it here.

That's Bush all right -- compassionate, empathetic, consistent, honorable, courageous. Even a Clinton lackey like Klein can recognize it. I have nothing but admiration for our President who has had the intelligence, courage and good sense to stand firm against the ideological nutters on both the antiwar Left and the nativist Right.

Unskilled Immigration is A Win-Win Phenomenon

And while we're on the subject of Tyler Cowen, here's an op-ed he and Daniel Rothschild did for the LA Times.

Recent public discourse would have us believe that they poach American jobs, lower wages and sponge off welfare. Yet economic research suggests a different picture: Unskilled immigrants are good for the U.S., and the U.S. is good for them.

Until the late 1990s, when a boom in native-born self-employment occurred, immigrants were more likely than natives to work for themselves. Immigrant small businesses, from the Korean corner market to the Mexican landscaping service, are, well, as American as apple pie. The labor market is not a zero-sum game with a finite number of jobs; immigrants create their own work.

A key question for economists has been whether the influx raises or lowers "native" American wages. UC Berkeley's David Card, who studied patterns in different U.S. cities, concludes that immigration has not lowered wages for American workers. George Borjas of Harvard counters that immigration reduced the wages of high school dropouts by 7.4% between 1980 and 2000.

Most economists have sided with Card. For one thing, his studies better capture the notion that immigrant labor makes work easier for all of us and brings new skills to the table. Additionally, as Card points out, the percentage of native-born high school dropouts has fallen sharply over the previous decades, creating a shortage of unskilled laborers that immigrants fill. In 1980, one in three American adults had less than a high school education; by 2000, this figure had fallen to less than one in five.

Gianmarco Ottaviano of the University of Bologna and Giovanni Peri of the National Bureau of Economic Research have shown that immigrants and low-skilled American workers fulfill very different roles in the economy. For instance, 54% of tailors in the U.S. are foreign-born, compared with less than 1% of crane operators. A similar discrepancy exists between plaster-stucco masons (44% immigrant) and sewer-pipe cleaners (less than 1% foreign-born). Immigrants come to the United States with different skills, inclinations and ideas; they are not looking to simply copy the behavior of American workers.

New arrivals, by producing more goods and services, also keep prices down across the economy. Even Borjas — the favorite economist of immigration restrictionists — admits that the net gain to the U.S. from immigration is about $7 billion annually.

And over the coming decades, the need for immigrant labor will increase, according to demographers. The baby boom generation will need more healthcare and more nursing homes. The forthcoming Medicare fiscal crunch will require more and younger laborers to finance the program.

Read the whole thing here.

It is a scary thing to see the political system stampeded into adopting disastrous policies like immigration restriction. At least President Bush is smart and informed enough to understand the costs and consequences of what Congress is doing and we can hope that he has the courage to take action to prevent the Congressional lemmings from stampeding over the cliff.

On this issue, as on so many others, Bush is far more perceptive and intelligent than his critics.

Immigration Stereotypes Exploded -- Assimilation

It is argued that Mexican immigrants, unlike those from overseas, are reluctant to assimilate because their homeland is so accessible. Well, the historical statistics just don't support that allegation.

Walter A. Ewing and Benjamin Johnson examined historical long-series data on Mexican immigrant assimilation as measured by educational and economic status. They conclude:

Despite the formidable obstacles confronting Latin American immigrants, Latinos are in fact experiencing a process of socioeconomic advancement across generations. Those born in the United States achieve average levels of education, income and English proficiency far greater than their immigrant parents and grandparents. However, because a large percentage of contemporary Latinos are first-generation immigrants, these advances across generations are often lost in aggregate statistics that analyze the Latino population as if it were an undifferentiated whole. This calls into question the rhetorical excesses of immigration restrictionists who claim that Latinos are unable or unwilling to replicate the upward mobility of their European predecessors. Moreover, this rhetoric does little to constructively address the important social problems confronting native-born Latinos who already have overcome many of the obstacles faced by their parents and grandparents.

Read the whole thing here.

Here's another, more detailed study of the same phenomenon by James P. Smith.

The conventional view regarding Hispanic immigrants’ ability to secure a better life for their children and grandchildren has been pessimistic. They have been seen as not sharing in the successful European experience, perhaps due to a reluctance to assimilate into American culture. These fears are unwarranted: 2nd and 3rd-generation Hispanic men have made great strides in closing their economic gaps with native whites. The reason is simple: each successive generation has been able to close the schooling gap with native whites which then has been translated into generational progress in incomes. Each new Latino generation not only has had higher incomes than their forefathers, but their economic status converged toward the white men with whom they competed. The methodological problems that have marred interpretation of immigrants’ generational progress in schooling and earnings would apply equally to health, where it is alleged that the descendants of immigrants lose their initial health advantage.

Read it here.

If you stop and think about it for a second it makes sense. There are plenty of immigrants who don't want to assimilate, but those are the ones who are most likely to return to Mexico. Those who stay are most likely to be the ones who want to assimilate and who push their children to achieve.

Hat tip Tyler Cowen

Now Here's Something I Thought I Knew But Didn't

How economics came to be called the "dismal science."

Everyone knows that economics is the dismal science. And almost everyone knows that it was given this description by Thomas Carlyle, who was inspired to coin the phrase by T. R. Malthus's gloomy prediction that population would always grow faster than food, dooming mankind to unending poverty and hardship.

While this story is well-known, it is also wrong, so wrong that it is hard to imagine a story that is farther from the truth. At the most trivial level, Carlyle's target was not Malthus, but economists such as John Stuart Mill, who argued that it was institutions, not race, that explained why some nations were rich and others poor. Carlyle attacked Mill, not for supporting Malthus's predictions about the dire consequences of population growth, but for supporting the emancipation of slaves. It was this fact—that economics assumed that people were basically all the same, and thus all entitled to liberty—that led Carlyle to label economics "the dismal science."

Carlyle was not alone in denouncing economics for making its radical claims about the equality of all men. Others who joined him included Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. The connection was so well known throughout the 19th century, that even cartoonists could refer to it, knowing that their audience would get the reference.¹

Read it here.

Verrrry interrrresting -- I had always admired Carlyle's literary talents but considered him to be an atrocious historian. Now I have come to also consider him an atrocious person. And as for Ruskin..., I had always been put off by his anti-capitalist diatribes, but now...., well..., just look at the cartoon. I know historians are supposed to view their subjects objectively, but these guys are just plain repulsive.

Pennsylvania Politics -- The Primary Post-Mortem

Terry Madonna and Michael Young take a look at the results of Pennsylvania's Primary elections in which a number of luminaries were forced into early retirement. What does it mean?

Well, for one thing, the voters are really pissed. [duh!]

The Republican Party is split between moderates and conservative. [double duh!!]

A small, but very committed reform coalition is taking shape.

Yet to congeal into a coordinated platform, its elements include reducing the size of the legislature, term limits, lobbyist registration, campaign finance reform, reigning in the power, pay and perks of lawmakers, and calling a state constitutional convention to overhaul dramatically the entire state government.

(interesting, but at this point not very important).

The reform movement is geographically localized in rural areas of the mid-state and southeast and is concentrated in the Republican electorate. [This I can testify to from personal experience. I live in that region and the anger against both the Democrats and the Republican leadership is palpable.]

The Pennsylvania legislature is going to swing rightward after the fall elections. [Yep! Most of the successful challengers are conservative Republicans and that's going to have an impact.]

Read it here.

To add my own personal prediction. At long last we will get some property tax relief [YAY!]. Now if we could only get Maryland to do the same.

Open Letter on Immigration

Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution is soliciting signatures from economists and social scientists for an open letter on immigration. It reports the scholarly consensus on the economic benefits and costs of the current policy [or lack of one]. Here's the text.

Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:

People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.

Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally. The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.

Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.

Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.

We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid..

America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

If you are an economist or social scientist with an expertise in the area of migration studies, and you feel like signing the letter, go here. I did.

Another small step for Iraq

So now Iraq has a democratically elected government -- sort of. The two crucial posts of interior and the military are not yet filled, and until they are, the government is more or less a sham. Why aren't they filled yet? The Sunnis are playing hardball.

Read about it here.

More "Scientific" Follies -- The Flores Hobbit

The Geology Society reports:

Palaeontologists rebut claims that the so-called "Hobbit" fossil from Flores, Indonesia, is a new species, amid recrimination over hype and poor science.

When scientists found 18,000-year-old bones of a small, humanlike creature on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, they concluded that the bones represented a new species in the human family tree that they named Homo floresiensis. Their interpretation was widely accepted by the scientific community and reported in the popular press worldwide. Because of its very short stature, H. floresiensis was soon dubbed the "Hobbit...."

Increasingly, however, this controversial conclusion is being questioned. In a Technical Comment published topday (19 May 2006) in Science magazine, scientists led by Dr Robert D Martin, Provost of the Chicago Field Museum and world-renowned primatologist, say that the bones in question do not represent a new species at all. A far more likely explanation is that the bones belonged to a modern human who suffered from microcephaly, a pathological condition that causes small brain size, often associated with short stature.

There follows a long exposition of the problems associated with the fossil and the way in which it has been presented and analyzed.

The concluding paragraph is particularly damning.

"There has been … too little critical scientific evaluation surrounding this discovery and it is simply unacceptable that papers should be published without providing proper details of the specimens examined" Martin says. "The principle of replicability is fundamental to good science, and it has not been respected in this case."

Read the whole thing here.

Alas, this is true of far too much that appears in the popular press, and as we have noted before, even peer-reviewed professional journals are not immune to hype and fraud. And every time something like this happens the credibility of the entire scientific enterprise suffers.

UPDATE:

Carl Zimmer comments on Martin's charges and the response to them here.

For links to both sides of the controversy go here.

And John Hawks comments here.

The Continuing Collapse of Scientific Authority -- Environmental Scientists Speak Out

Leaving aside the social sciences, which are riddled with fraud and misrepresentation, the two "real" areas of scientific inquiry most susceptible to abuse are medical and environmental science. This has come to the attention of the BBC, no less, and was the subject of a documentary they broadcast a couple of weeks ago. Their focus was environmental hype, and they elicited some very interesting admissions from climate "scientists". They note that the scare stories that appear regularly in the media are almost always wrong or only partially correct. To solicit opinions on the matter they asked for comments on one particularly egregious report, widely disseminated in the idiot press, to the effect that "scientists" were predicting an 11 degree rise in world temperatures.

Dr Myles Allen, principal investigator at Climateprediction.net, blames the media.

"If journalists decide to embroider on a press release without referring to the paper which the press release is about, then that's really the journalists' problem. We can't as scientists guard against that."

But is the media solely to blame? We asked several climate scientists to read the paper and the press release publicising it. All were critical of the prominence given to the prediction that the world could heat up by 11C.

"I agree the 11C figure was unreasonably hyped. It's a difficult line for all scientists to tread, as we need something 'exciting' to have any chance of publishing... to justify our funding," one scientist wrote us. [emphasis mine]

Read it here.

Now that's a striking admission. "Scientists" claim to be dispensers of objective, reliable, information -- but deep down, many of them are just grubbers after funding and are willing to say or do anything to get it. Yes, the idiot journalists are somewhat to blame, but the "scientists" who feed them extravagant quotes to gain attention and money are the real culprits here.

So Which Is It?

Reuters reports:

Bush opposes English as national language: Gonzales

But AP reports:

Bush Wants Newcomers to Learn English

Actually Bush has a nuanced approach: he wants immigrants to learn English, but sees little need to proclaim it the "official" language, althrough if Congress insists, he'll go along with that, too. He seems to favor a proclamation noting that English is the "unifying" language. That, apparently, is too difficult for the MSM to digest.

Maryland Politics -- Steele Attacks Bush

With the President's poll ratings down Democrats are trying to tie Steele to Bush, but he has other ideas. This week he lashed out at Bush's education policies:

The Washington Times reports:

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele yesterday announced his U.S. Senate campaign's education platform by criticizing the federal government's implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and President Bush's recommendation of cutting financial aid for low-income college students.

Mr. Steele, a Republican, said the No Child Left Behind Act "has fallen short of expectations," saying teachers are forced to "teach to the test" so students can keep up with standards intended to make low-performing schools more accountable.

"You neglect teaching to the student," he said.

Of course Ben Cardin, and Kweisi Mfume, the potential Democratic nominees, hold true to form. Both called for more money for education, more money..., more money..., more money....

Read it here.

“Democracy is Succeeding” in Iraq.

Amir Taheri has an important article on the state of Iraq today. He writes:

Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various fundamental mistakes committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the carnage and chaos in the streets as signs of the countrys impending or undeclared civil war. Add to all this the days alleged scandal or revelationan outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessmentand it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles.

It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institutions much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground.

To make matters worse, many of the newsmen, pundits, and commentators on whom American viewers and readers rely to describe the situation have been contaminated by the increasing bitterness of American politics. Clearly there are those in the media and the think tanks who wish the Iraq enterprise to end in tragedy, as a just comeuppance for George W. Bush. Others, prompted by noble sentiment, so abhor the idea of war that they would banish it from human discourse before admitting that, in some circumstances, military power can be used in support of a good cause. But whatever the reason, the half-truths and outright misinformation that now function as conventional wisdom have gravely disserved the American people.

He goes on to cite four important indicies of progress.

1 There has been no major exodus of refugees.

2 Millions of Iraqis and other Musims have been making pilgrimages to religious shrines – something that doesn’t happen during times of troubles.

3 The value of the Iraqi dinar has been rising and it is now accepted as a stable medium of exchange, not only in Iraq but in other countries in the region.

4. There is a private-sector business boom going on throughout Iraq, especially in small to medium sized businesses.

5, In times of troubles Iraqis fall silent. Today, though, they are extremely voluble, speaking out on all matter of things via all available media. This speaks to a political confidence that was missing before.

He concludes:

[S]ober observers should understand the real balance sheet in Iraq. Democracy is succeeding. Moreover, thanks to its success in Iraq, there are stirrings elsewhere in the region. Beyond the much-publicized electoral concessions wrung from authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, there is a new democratic discourse to be heard. Nationalism and pan-Arabism, yesterdays hollow rallying cries, have given way to a big idea of a very different kind. Debate and dissent are in the air where there was none beforea development owing, in significant measure, to the U.S. campaign in Iraq and the brilliant if still checkered Iraqi response.

The stakes, in short, could not be higher. This is all the more reason to celebrate, to build on, and to consolidate what has already been accomplished. Instead of railing against the Bush administration, Americas elites would do better, and incidentally display greater self-respect, to direct their wrath where it properly belongs: at those violent and unrestrained enemies of democracy in Iraq who are, in truth, the enemies of democracy in America as well, and of everything America has ever stood for.

Is Iraq a quagmire, a disaster, a failure? Certainly not; none of the above. Of all the adjectives used by skeptics and critics to describe todays Iraq, the only one that has a ring of truth is messy. Yes, the situation in Iraq today is messy. Births always are. Since when is that a reason to declare a baby unworthy of life?

Read it here.

RELATED: Gateway Pundit reports on millions of refugees returning to their homes in Afghanistan. Most had fled the Taliban. [here].

Bush and Immigration

The guys down on the Corner are currently debating just why President Bush is so strongly resisting restrictive and punitive measures on immigration. The reasons they and their correspondents raise are many and include:

Let’s start with the kooks. Left wing websites are saying that,

It’s all about Mexican oil.

Bush hires illegals at his ranch.

Bush has a secret plan to unify North America, modeled on the EU.

-----------

Now for some more considered perspectives:

Bush is a Texan and has witnessed there the successful creation of a stable, peaceful, multiethnic society. He is convinced that with sufficient tolerance and goodwill the Texas experience can be replicated nationally.

Bush is a Christian and sincerely believes that immigration restriction would be an inhumane and anti-Christian thing to implement.

Bush worries about offending the Mexican electorate with national elections looming this July. There is a real possibility that a left-wing government will take office south of the border and that would be disastrous to American interests. Anti-immigrant legislation would just play into the Leftists’ hands.

Bush is seriously committed to attracting Hispanic voters into the Republican Party.

Bush subscribes to an elitist, policy wonky, perspective that holds that the free exchange of labor, capital, and goods across national borders is in the best interests of all concerned.

Bush sees Mexico as a “cousin nation” like Britain, Canada or Israel to be accorded special status.

---------

Actually, when you think about it, these are some very good reasons for opposing immigration restriction. Immigration restriction would hurt the economies of two or more nations; would cast Republicans as restrictionist and exclusive, costing them votes and validating Democrat charge that they are mean spirited; would play into the hands of radicals south of the border and threatens the political stability of one of our closest neighbors; and would seriously damage America's image in the world.

Remember all those movement conservatives who were yelping about the politics of principle and demanding a President who would stand by his convictions. Well they got one – and he’s a great one too – and now they’re complaining because he doesn’t jump through hoops every time they snap their fingers.

Once again I repeat – Bush is a far greater man than his critics, both left and right.

Read the comments here. Scroll down because there are a lot of them.

Turkey in Turmoil

Really important things are taking place in Turkey; but you probably haven’t heard much about it.

Four years ago the “Justice and Development Party,” benefiting from Turkey’s bizarre election rules and a divided opposition, came to power with about one third of the vote. Since then it has followed a generally anti-Western, pro-Islamist agenda, and has used its power to brutally suppress dissent. [here]

Opposition to the government has been building over the past several months. This week it erupted in massive demonstrations.

Michael Rubin describes the current situation:

What is happening in Ankara is amazing. Crowds booed Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul—the ruling party's representative at the funeral—and police corridors had to protect the ruling AKP ministers from the crowds. Journalists are also saying people screamed "Murderer" at the Prime Minister. The crowd even booed former AKP politicians who had defected from the party in recent months. Tens of thousands of Turks are rallying spontaneously in favor of secularism and liberalism. Some Turkish journalists are beginning to describe the events of the last couple days as Turkey's 9/11. It has certainly been a wake-up call….

This is really important stuff. Turkey is an important ally and a major trading partner of Western states, the USA included. But it has gotten almost no play in the MSM.

Rubin notes:

[I]t seems that when Islamists threaten to make inroads, U.S. media is all over the story. But when liberals fight back, there is silence. This is not only true in Turkey, but extends to general media sympathy toward Islamism.

Even Turks are beginning to complain about the inattention of the US Media. The name of the game in protest these days is to attract the attention and the sympathy of the MSM. But, they seem to be interested only in anti-Western, anti-liberal protest.

Read him here and here.

Pennsylvania Politics: The Voters Revolt – What Does it Mean?

Conservatives in Pennsylvania are predicting that discontent in the Republican rank and file will spell electoral doom this fall. Others , though, argue that anti-incumbent sentiment will damage both parties equally.

Read about it here.

The real problem here is the Reagan conservatives. They’re mightily pissed. They feel that the Republican leadership both at the State and national level have betrayed their principles – especially their emphasis on limited government. Democrats I have talked to aren’t nearly as upset and are far less likely to stay home this fall. This is an off year election where turnout is the name of the game. The Republicans have disaffected a significant number of their core voters and will probably pay for having done so.

An Immigration Tragedy

Here's a side of the immigration situation you don't hear much about.

A 3-year-old boy from Mexico died while crossing the desert southwest of Tucson with his mother, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The boy's body was left behind by the unidentified woman, who later told border agents about his death, authorities said Tuesday. Authorities are waiting for an autopsy to be conducted to determine the cause of death and whether any charges will be filed against the mother, said Jesus Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector. Agents apprehended the woman early Monday about six miles west of Sells and she later told authorities that she had left her son in the desert and he was dead. The body was found about 3 a.m. Tuesday on the Tohono Oodham reservation southwest of Tucson, Rodriguez said. The woman is in Border Patrol custody and the Mexican Consulate has been notified of the incident, authorities said.

Read it here.

In many ways the current situation is a humanitarian nightmare and it must be regularized, but the punitive systems demanded by many on the right would only make things worse. Attempts to restrict immigration severely will be counterproductive, but a generous policy that allows free movement of labor while registering individuals and providing a path to citizenship is the best possible solution, but in today's highly charged political atmosphere a rational and humane policy is probably too much to ask.

"The Dream That Other People Dream"

America
An ode to immigrants.

BY RAY BRADBURY
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

We are the dream that other people dream.
The land where other people land
When late at night
They think on flight
And, flying, here arrive
Where we fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see
We be what all the world would like to be.
Because we hive within this scheme
The obvious dream is blind to us.
We do not mind the miracle we are,
So stop our mouths with curses.
While all the world rehearses
Coming here to stay.
We busily make plans to go away.

How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.
You're mad! Iraqis shout,
We'd sell our souls if we could be you.
How come you cannot see the way we see you?
You tread a freedom forest as you please.
But, damn! you miss the forest for the trees.
Ten thousand wanderers a week
Engulf your shore,
You wonder what their shouting's for,
And why so glad?

Run warm those souls: America is bad?
Sit down, stare in their faces, see!
You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.
In tides of immigrants that this year flow
You still remain the beckoning hearth they'd know.
In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme
You are the dream that other people dream.

From the WSJ, here.

The CIA -- If You Can't Mend It, End It!

For some time now I have been arguing that the CIA, like much of the permanent government, has to be severely reined in, taken down several pegs, or perhaps abolished. Victor Davis Hanson makes a similar point. He writes:

The problem is not just that the CIA consumes too much money, has too many employees and gathers too much superfluous intelligence while missing the landmark events of the age. Or that too many analysts can't do their own assigned disinterested jobs. Or even that both Democrats and Republicans periodically try to rein the CIA in with their own political appointees when they suspect it has become openly hostile and insubordinate.

No, the deeper worry is that there has grown up at the CIA an entrenched enclave and an arrogant "we know best" attitude in which self-appointed moralists are often convinced that they can make up their own rules and code of conduct. Gen. Hayden will have to end that culture - or end the agency as we know it.

Read it here.

One of the great glories of Bush's administration has been his willingness, indeed eagerness, to take on the permanent government and bring it to heel. One of the most extravagently uncontrollable and institutionally corrupt elements of the bureaucracy has been the CIA. It has long been overdue for top to bottom reform. As VDH points out, liberals used to support the idea of reforming the CIA..., before Dubya actually tried to do it, that is.

Pennsylvania Politics -- Reaping the Whirlwind

I've been saying for some time that Pennsylvania voters are really, really pissed. They showed it yesterday when..., well, here's the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review account:

Angry taxpayers on Tuesday tossed out the two Republican Senate leaders who helped engineer last year's legislative pay raise, an issue that apparently cost 15 House members their jobs, too.

Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer of Altoona, and Senate Majority Leader David Brightbill of Lebanon County conceded to their challengers, becoming the first lawmakers in major leadership posts to lose a primary election in 42 years. The House defeats would be the most since 1980.

"We have had a dramatic earthquake in Pennsylvania," said Jubelirer, a 32-year legislator.

The defeats of Jubelirer and Brightbill "will send shock waves throughout he political establishment for years to come," said Mike Young, a retired Penn State University political science professor.

Read it here.

This does not bode well. Conservatives have essentially displaced the Republican Party's corrupt, moderate leadership and are now ascendant. The Democrats, meanwhile, have marginalized their radicals and are sitting squarely in the middle of the political spectrum. The fall elections will pit principled conservative candidates against corrupt Democrat moderates. It's not going to be pretty.

Stay tuned....

UPDATE:

Ed Morrissy is jubilant. He writes:

The existing Republican leadership in Pennsylvania outraged fiscal conservatives with their pay raises and spending habits. However, instead of declaring defeat and retreating to their homes, these conservatives organized and found candidates for primaries -- especially those for the leadership that betrayed them. They donated, raised more funds, campaigned, and ensured a strong turnout to counter the incumbent advantage.

And they succeeded.

Without a doubt, the Pennsylvania Republican Party got the message....

The political story of this year in Pennsylvania will be the housecleaning performed on the state legislature, and it puts candidates of both parties on notice that conservatives have grabbed the momentum. Don't be surprised if that changes the entire tenor of the debate on Pennsylvania public policy

Well, hold on there. These guys still have to win in the general elections this fall, and right now it looks as though the Democrats are going to clean their clocks.

He is right in one way, though. This fall's elections will be a crucial test of the oft-stated Republican litany that principled conservatives will inevitably triumph over the mushy middle.

We'll see.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes I get the feeling that these guys, like the radical lefties, are more interested in gaining control of the Party than in winning elections.

Ayaan Update

• 
• Der Spiegel reports:
  

• 
  

• Holland's most famous immigrant -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- has been stripped of her citizenship overnight following television revelations about news that's long been public: she lied a little on her application for asylum years ago. The controversial decision by the country's immigration minister has sparked outrage, and many are calling it a dark day for Dutch democracy.

Read about it here.

Leon deWinter says it is "A sad, sad day for Holland."

Read it here.

What to Do About Iran?

Bret Stephens notes that the diplomatic efforts to dissuade Iran from gaining nuclear weaponry over the past three years have been spectacularly ineffective and show no promise of ever being anything else. At the same time the military option is impractical. So what is to be done? He offers three possibilities:

1) Negotiate directly with the puppet masters. Ignore Ahmadinejad and deal directly with his clerical overlords.

2) Target Iranian financial interests which are widespread and vulnerable.

3) Threaten to cut off their gasoline supplies. Iran has oil but can’t refine it. They have to import gasoline.

Interesting…. Read it here. We have to find something, neither endless talking nor the military option seems to be reasonable, and the much hoped for revolt against the mullahs just ain't gonna happen.

Richard Posner on Domestic Intelligence

Richard Posner, a really smart guy, argues that the US needs a domestic spy agency, much like the British MI-5.

He makes the salient point thus:

The British understand that a criminal-investigation culture and an intelligence culture don't mix. A crime occurs at a definite time and place, enabling a focused investigation likely to culminate in an arrest and conviction. Intelligence seeks to identify enemies and their plans before any crime occurs. It searches for terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. with no assurance of finding any. Hunting needles in a haystack is uncongenial work for FBI special agents. And so at the same time that the attorney general was testifying before Congress that the National Security Agency's intercepting some communications of U.S. citizens is essential to national security, leaks from inside the FBI revealed that special agents are disgruntled at having to chase down the leads furnished to them by NSA. FBI special agents--the bureau's only operations officers--want to make arrests, and so they zero in on animal-rights terrorists and ecoterrorists--people known to be committing crimes and therefore relatively easy to nail. These people are criminals and should be prosecuted, but as they do not endanger national security, prosecuting them should not be an intelligence priority.

Read it here.

This is the essential point that Bush’s critics just don’t understand. They approach security and intelligence from a law-enforcement perspective and don’t realize the limitations of that course. But then, most of them see the war as a mere political inconvenience, maybe even something cooked up by Karl Rove, not as something that justifies wartime measures.

Zimbabwe Update -- A Great Awakening?

Things have gotten so bad in Mad Bobby Mugabe's racist, Maoist dystopia that even thugs and socialists are finding God.

Gateway Pundit is all over the story. [here]

The Hill -- Casey is Starting to Sweat

The Hill reports that Bob Casey's spinners are desperately trying to downplay the significance of several polls showing that Santorum is gaining on him.

The main reason is not that the race is tightening so much as the fact that Santorum's gains are threatening to obviate the main reason for Casey's candidacy -- the idea that only a moderate like him can win in November.

I have recently received several communications from supporters of Casey's rivals for the Democratic nomination arguing that the only winning strategy will be to sharpen the distinctions between Santorum and his opponent. Casey is, as I have pointed out several times, really a Republican moderate who agrees with Santorum on almost everything except the minimum wage. Close polls only strengthen their argument for a more left-wing candidate and this is why the Casey spinners are going into overdrive.

Read the Hill report here.

Relax guys, Casey has the nomination in the bag -- in fact, he just won. Now it's just Bobby vs. Rickey.

US-Libya Relations Normalized

Yet another smart diplomatic move for the Bush administration. The United States has finally normalized relations with Libya.

The WaPo reports:

The United States restored full diplomatic relations with Libya yesterday, marking the end of a quarter-century of enmity and signaling to Iran and North Korea that similar rewards await countries that scrap their weapons of mass destruction.

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi agreed to end his nation's nascent chemical and nuclear weapons programs in late 2003, capping years of talks between Tripoli and Washington over how Libya could end two decades of international isolation. Libya also took responsibility that year for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to pay as much as $10 million to the family of each of the 270 dead.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would reopen its embassy, shuttered after a mob set fire to it in 1979, and remove Libya from the list of state sponsors of terrorism within 45 days. "Just as 2003 marked a turning point for the Libyan people, so too could 2006 mark turning points for the peoples of Iran and North Korea," Rice said, calling Libya "an important model" for resolving the disputes with Tehran and Pyongyang.

Read it here.

This is a great move all around. Not only is it a carrot dangled in front of recalcitrant regimes, but it also opens opportunities for expoiting Libya's vast oil reserves. Just two months ago Shell Oil signed a pact to develop Libyan oil fields. [here] So this counts as a twofer.

Nice goin' Dubya!

Securing the Border

Chris Muir has a suggestion. Since Americans don't seem to want to do the job of securing the border, hire Mexican illegal immigrants to do it.