The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog

Sarah Surprises Again

Robert Stacy McCain — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:09:00 -0400

Anyone who previously doubted Sarah Palin's celebrity status need no longer doubt. The surprise announcement of her decision to resign the Alaska governorship effective July 26 -- fully 18 months before the end of her first term -- generated a reaction nearly powerful enough to bump Michael Jackson's funeral from the headlines.

In addition to the usual sources of political news, People magazine weighed in with a report quoting gubernatorial father-in-law Jim Palin's reaction: "Wow.…We had no idea it was coming." The elder Palin reported that "Sarah and Todd had thought it through," but their planning had been unreported -- and their decision clearly unexpected -- by Palin-haters in both parties, who rushed to interpret Friday's resignation in light of their own prejudices.

Perhaps the most deranged reaction was the rumor -- immediately, officially and emphatically denied -- that Palin was the target of an FBI investigation. Without merit of evidence, logic or any on-the-record source, this rumor quickly escalated into a frenzy of baseless speculation reminiscent of the left-wing blogosphere's mid-2006 fantasies of "Fitzmas," when the indictment of Karl Rove by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was regarded as an accomplished fact.

The political sources and political purposes of the Palin investigation rumor were as obvious as the rumor's lack of any factual basis, as Palin's attorney made clear in his rebuttal.

"This canard was first floated by Democrat operatives in September 2008 during the national campaign and followed up by sympathetic Democratic writers," said Thomas Van Flein, the governor's legal counsel. "It was easily rebutted then as one of many fabrications about Sarah Palin. Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact."

That Palin's enemies would recycle this discredited falsehood, and that unscrupulous reporters would rush to repeat the rumor, was as predictable as the luridly breathless tabloid headlines that followed news of Michael Jackson's death.

However, unlike the tabloid editors inventing juicy tidbits about Jacko -- eagerly exploiting the legal convenience that dead men don't file libel suits -- reporters who jumped on the bogus Palin rumors were aiming at a live and potentially dangerous target. Liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore was named as a source of these "scurrilous allegations" by Van Flein, who warned that repetition by mainstream news organizations was "actionable."

She's not the target of federal investigators, but Palin has been a favorite target of Democratic enemies and envious Republicans for nearly 10 months, ever since her announcement as the GOP vice-presidential selection injected instant excitement into Sen. John McCain's previously lackluster campaign.

She quickly put the Republican ticket ahead in the polls, but Palin paid the price for her popularity. As she said in her speech Friday, "Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt."

Even after the election, they kept digging, determined to bury her political career. Her gubernatorial office made her a fixed target, with enemies filing frivolous ethics complaints that made Palin's every move a potential legal action that burdened Alaska taxpayers.

This at least partly explains her enemies' rage over her unexpected decision to resign on short notice. She thereby eludes the trap they had laid for her. She returns to the status of private citizen, where malevolent rumormongers can't cloak their slander in bogus expressions of concern about "ethics."

There were, of course, many other important factors behind her decision. She's working on her biography (with my Donkey Cons co-author Lynn Vincent as her collaborator) for a contract reportedly worth $11 million. And the refusal of her enemies to spare her children from attack -- from David Letterman's smutty snark at her teenage daughter, to the Internet vermin who've chosen to target her year-old son Trig -- certainly weighed in her considerations.

Palin's maternal concern about the "pretty mean-spirited adults" who have "mocked" her Down Syndrome infant was dismissed by her enemies -- CNN's Anderson Cooper could scarcely disguise his doubt of her sincerity -- while others rushed to declare that, by resigning as governor, she was in effect abandoning any prospect of a political future.

"Her national political career is done," NBC's David Shuster declared, even before reports of her plans to resign had been confirmed. Other media types joined the rush to write Palin's political obituary, with a Greek chorus of "conservative" commentators transparently eager to agree that her resignation represented proof that Palin is both unelectable to and unfit for higher office.

Of course, she had just exposed as fraudulent the pretended omniscience of the commentariat. None of them had predicted Palin's resignation, and yet their latest oracular pronouncements -- Ed Rollins told CNN she looked "terribly inept" -- were treated as authoritative.

The punditocracy can't predict Palin because she shares neither their perspective nor their assumptions. Her ascent to political stardom has been treated as a fluke by most of the GOP establishment for the simple reason that she doesn't slavishly follow the standard script of Republican politicians.

Of course, in recent years this script usually has ended with "…and then the Democrats won," suggesting the need for a re-write. The next version of the story may yet have a surprise ending -- at least, surprising to the pundits whom Sarah Palin has surprised so often before.

Markey's Moment

John Carlisle — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:08:00 -0400

Congressional advocates of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that narrowly passed the House by a vote of 219-212 on June 26 employed bribery to build support for this legislation when they co-opted several corporations by giving them free carbon dioxide emission credits. However, many businesses still balked at lending support to a bill that will impose a crushing energy tax on the American people and cost the economy trillions of dollars. Since bribery didn't work with these recalcitrant companies, Waxman-Markey supporters tried intimidation.

On June 9, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing to hear testimony on the Waxman-Markey bill, called the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would increase the cost of emitting carbon dioxide through an onerous cap on emissions. One of the witnesses was David Sokol, CEO of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company. Sokol criticized the Waxman-Markey bill because it would result in higher electricity rates for his customers. At the same time the hearing was taking place, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the subcommittee chairman and bill co-sponsor, sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asking the agency to investigate the business dealings of MidAmerican. Sokol and committee Republicans charged Markey with trying to intimidate him. Markey apologized for the letter and said intimidation was not his intention.

MidAmerican is a $41 billion Iowa-based holding company of seven subsidiaries that own many coal-fired power plants and a growing fleet of wind generation. Warren Buffett is a major investor. Sokol actually endorses a cap on greenhouse gas emissions to combat the unproven global warming threat. However, he opposes the Waxman-Markey bill's trading mechanism because it would impose "a huge and unacceptable double cost on customers." He said consumers first will have to pay for emission allowances, "which will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one ounce." Then, consumers will have to pay for new low- or zero-carbon power plants.

Under Waxman-Markey, the electricity sector will get 35 percent of the free emission allowances. Sokol says that even with those allowances, MidAmerican would still have to raise rates on customers by 12 to 28 percent for a cumulative cost of $800 million. And that is just the first year that the cap goes into effect. The caps will get increasingly stricter over time and the free emission allowances will be phased out. Sokol says the cost of compliance could possibly increase market prices by two to four times.

Prior to the hearing, Sokol also stated that a cap-and-trade system will add at least $120 per month to the average family's electric bill.

Obviously, this is not the kind of information Markey wants to hear. Halfway through the question-and-answer period of the hearing, Markey's office sent a letter to FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff asking FERC to investigate the business activities of MidAmerican. Specifically, the letter requested Wellinghoff to determine if MidAmerican followed up on promises to invest $15 billion in electric transmission expansion following the repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) in 2005.

Sokol was one of the proponents of the repeal, arguing that regulations were preventing utilities from making needed investments in the power transmission infrastructure. In his letter, Markey, who opposed the repeal of PUHCA, included six general questions about how effective the repeal had been in boosting transmission investment and whether FERC was protecting consumers. In two of those questions, Markey singled out MidAmerican's investments in California and what FERC has done to protect consumers against the company's losses from non-utility investments, including MidAmerican's real estate brokerage subsidiary that was seriously impacted by the financial crisis:

The repeal of PUHCA has also freed large multi-state public utility companies to diversify into other potentially risky business, to the potential detriment of utility investors and consumers. For example, MidAmerican Holdings has acquired the second largest real estate brokerage company in the country. What protections have been put in place to prevent utility shareholders, such as those of MidAmerican Holdings' regulated utilities, to prevent them from rate increases, higher costs for borrowing, or other risks that might be associated with unsuccessful or failed diversifications?

Sokol was not aware of the letter until a reporter asked him about it after his testimony. He calls the letter a flagrant case of witness intimidation. "Anytime a congressman sends a letter to a regulator of your company it is obviously concerning. It is hard to believe it was done for any reason other than to intimidate," said Sokol. He added that the letter did not intimidate him and will not change his negative views of the stiff energy taxes in the Waxman-Markey bill.

Republicans were furious when they learned that the letter was sent the same day that Sokol was testifying as a Republican witness before the subcommittee. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) said, "There's systematic intimidation going on, and bullying of individuals by a party that preaches tolerance and it must stop."

According to GOP sources, Republicans on the Energy Committee, including ranking member Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), confronted Markey about the letter. The results of that meeting could not be learned.

But the day after the hearing, June 10, Markey sent a second letter to Wellinghoff to "clarify questions contained in my June 9, 2009 letter." Markey wrote, "[M]y intent was for the Commission to analyze the activities of all investor-owned utilities with respect to their investments in transmission lines since PUHCA was (sic) revealed, and their investments in enterprises outside their core business." Markey said the two questions about MidAmerican were meant to be answered as it relates to the industry's transmission investments "as a whole."

Neither Republicans nor Sokol were mollified. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) said, "I am deeply troubled by the message this sends, whether it was accidental or intentional. If I had gotten that letter, I would have gotten the message that it was sent to intimidate me." Rep. Barton said, "How can that not be perceived as an attempt to intimidate."

Markey called Sokol on Friday, June 12, to say he was unaware that the letter was being sent on the same day as the hearing. Sokol said Markey told him that once it was brought to his attention he "immediately recognized how inappropriate it was" and sent the clarification letter.

Sokol said that it was still disturbing because then it was a case of a committee staff member trying to intimidate a witness. Sokol said he asked for the name of the responsible staff member and if there would be consequences. Markey did not respond. Sokol says if no one is being held accountable then Markey's "apology rings hollow."

The same day that Markey apologized to Sokol, Barton and 19 other Republicans sent a letter to Markey and Henry Waxman (D-CA), the chairman of the Energy Committee, stating that such intimidation was unacceptable. "If a pattern of intimidation and bullying is being created by the majority party it is a sad thing," the letter said. "As members of the minority party we will do everything possible to stop this emerging pattern." They demanded that Waxman "take whatever actions necessary to make sure that witnesses are not subjected to sanction, retribution and vengeance simply because the facts and opinions they offer do not square with those of the Committee's members."

The Republican letter also cited an incident in which staff for Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) warned Democratic lobbyists not to let their clients meet with Republicans about health care legislation.

A spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "This is another indication that Democrats on Capitol Hill are creating a culture of intimidation to pass bills that are unpopular with the American people."

Markey claims that there was no effort being made to intimidate witnesses hostile to his cap-and-trade bill and publicly apologized at a June 12 subcommittee hearing. "I would never seek to intimidate or retaliate against a person from having to come in and having to testify before this subcommittee."

However, Republicans were not satisfied with Markey's "mea culpa." GOP lawmakers are mulling over the option of charging Markey with violating House ethics rules for "intimidating a witness." Republicans said they would try to avoid calling for an ethics investigation if Democrats were able to satisfy the concerns they laid out in their letter to Markey and Waxman. Republicans are requesting a meeting with Waxman to air their grievances. If Waxman agrees to the meeting and Republicans still aren't satisfied, then they may file an ethics complaint.

The heavy-handed tactics used by Markey and other advocates for the cap-and-trade bill showed just how desperate they were in the closing stretch of the House debate. The Waxman-Markey bill would drastically increase what Americans pay for electricity, gas and other energy-intensive products and services. The more that fact is revealed, the more unpopular the legislation will be. And it is not just Republicans. At least 50 House Democrats representing districts with substantial agricultural, rural and manufacturing refused to commit to supporting the legislation down to the final week before the vote. In the end, 44 Democrats voted against the Waxman-Markey national energy tax.

While the House vote represents a victory, it was so narrow that Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership do not have time to rejoice. There is every indication that the Senate battle over cap-and-trade, expected to take place in the fall, will be even more brutal.

Given public distrust and congressional discomfort over the political implications of Waxman-Markey's tax increases, the only way its backers can seem to build support is through bribery or intimidation.

Roger and Roddick

Roger Kaplan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:07:00 -0400

Among his many athletic virtues, Roger Federer is not the Alex Rodriguez of big time tennis. New York fans complain with some justification that the MVP slugger chokes at crucial moments, is not, as sportsmen say, a clutch player. There will be runners on second and third and two outs in the ninth inning with the Yankees trailing the Cleveland Indians -- or any other team -- by one run and the game needs winning because it's the playoffs and what does the mighty Alex do?

Now of course, there are those, like that fine if overly cerebral writer who used to cover baseball for the New York Sun, who argue that this is a lot of hooey because the Yankees would not be in the playoffs against Cleveland or whoever without A-Rod's astonishing performance during the regular season. However, in the tennis equivalent of the clutch moment, at the end of a closely played set, Federer has an ability to come through that is very nearly unprecedented. This resilience, this come-from behind willpower, this endurance and stamina and courage, this, in short, focus on what matters now, came out very clearly in the tiebreaker at the end of the second set of the gentlemen's singles final at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club, located at Wimbledon, England.

Federer's opponent, the powerful Andy Roddick, won the first set fairly handily, 7-5, and seemed in a position to take the second by the same score. Instead he faltered under Federer's relentless aces in the 12^th game. The ability to keep hitting aces at such a critical moment is, of course, itself an example of clutch play. Federer has one of the most consistent first serves in the game, and he almost never double faults. His first serve is at once strong and tactical, hitting the receiver where he least expects it. Still, when you are serving to save the set, you are under some pressure and may be excused for preferring to get the ball in play and take your chances. Not Roger.

But, having forced a tie-breaker, he somehow fell behind and let Roddick get to 6-2 (7 points win a tiebreaker.) Two sets up, the comeback kid (Roddick had not made the finals at Wimbledon since 2005), playing as well as he ever has in his life, would be, of course, in an advantageous position to close out the match. Federer stayed calm and let Roddick lose control, notably on the last point when he sent a fairly easy (for players at this level, mind) net shot sailing out of bounds instead of blocking it downward away from his opponent.

Federer, of course, is not only a clutch player. He is also a fine player -- the finest of his generation. He encountered no serious opposition at Wimbledon this year until the final, even if in the semi a tough and talented Tommy Haas gave him a serious workout.

On the ladies' side the Championships were comparably one-sided, though the dominating side was composed of two parts. The Williams sisters made it to the final almost effortlessly. The one dramatic moment was in the semi-final match between Serena and Elena Dementieva, who took the first set and played very hard through the end. Clutch play -- saving points when she absolutely had to -- is where Serena Williams showed her skill. It is a talent more valuable to her than her sheer strength, which players at her level, even her sister and frail Russians, can get used to and indeed learn to use against her, letting her make unforced errors.

After that, the match between the two best players since Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova was anti-climatic. They know each other too well to pull any fast strategic ploys, and the issue was whether Serena's powerful game would overcome Venus's tactical cross-court hitting and elegant net game. It did. Venus, who won the Championship in the previous two years, may at last be falling to her sister's irresistible self-confidence and, a talent she shares with Federer, refusal to ever concede a point, let alone a set of a match.

However, where resilience is concerned, Roddick demonstrated no less determination. After letting Federer out-steel him in the second set and fight through a tight third (also going to a tiebreaker), Roddick fought back, dominating the fourth set 6-3. The scene was now set, if I may put it this way, for a classic that, in fact, turned into exactly that, the longest fifth set in Wimbledon history. (There are no tie breakers in fifth sets at Wimbledon, a rule that also applies to Davis Cup play and the French Open, apologies for the error on this point in my last dispatch and thanks to alert reader Frank Stieber of Arlington, Virginia, for the correction; Mr. Stieber, be it said in passing, has a determined forehand crosscourt shot.)

Andy Roddick played a brilliant tournament, showing a tactical intelligence that surprised many observers, including me. A marvelous athlete and a gentleman, Roddick has been known for poor judgment, often going to the net while giving his opponent an open shot. He made several such errors in the match against Federer, probably a reflection of the pressure he was under, also underscored by double faults. (Federer only made two.) But he never lost heart.

The key to not losing heart in tennis, instructors always tell you, is to play the point, not the game or the set. Focus on the immediate task and nothing else, and the immediate task is to keep control, as the great Bill Tilden said in one of these deceptively obvious insights of genius, of the ball.

Federer plays a Tildenesque game as well as anyone since Pete Sampras, in the sense that once he gets the ball in play, which of course he always does, he determines what kind of point it is going to be. Playing a relatively restrained net game -- he got almost all his net shots but they were rare -- he drove his opponents to the sidelines and then whipped winners to the opposite corner. Roddick was able to blunt this by his own excellent backcourt play. However, in the 29th game of the fifth set, he finally slowed down and Federer made shots from side to side and took the game handily. Roddick still was not quitting. He aced his way through half the thirtieth game, but Federer got the ball in play often enough to watch him make unforced errors, and that was that.

Britain's great white hope, the ebullient Andy Murray, fought his way brilliantly to the semifinal, overcoming Stanislas Wawrinka in the round of 16 in an exhausting five-setter, but stumbling two rounds later. He and Roddick are Federer's most likely challengers during the rest of the season, as it appears last year's winner, Rafael Nadal, must remain attend to his knees. Lleyton Hewitt and Wawrinka and Hass remain dark horses.

The Championships at Wimbledon remain, thankfully, a reminder that good manners matter, on the part of fans no less than players. In a world like ours, that is no small thing. I personally dislike the instant video-review rule, wherein a player can challenge an umpire's call. The players as often as not get it wrong and the umpires and linesmen are pretty well trained to watch where the balls bounce. The point is that you are supposed to accept the rules and the arbiters of the rules. A delirious umpire would not be allowed to officiate very long. What happens with player challenges is that you introduce a kind of litigiousness on the court. Clean, white-outfitted spectators dressed (for the most part) in at least casual-formal clothes that even George Will would find acceptable, with players accepting the breaks of the close calls and carrying on, Wimbledon was the quintessence of good sportsmanship. I do not think the instant review gizmo subverts this, any more than does the stupid and stupidly expensive roof they finally installed after talking about it for years. (Murray and Wawrinka played under it, to the latest hour, about 10 p.m., in Wimbledon history.) You can worry about these things, I suppose.

He's Zelaya and a Cheat

Jay D. Homnick — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:07:00 -0400

If you are stunned at the response of the United States to the scenario in Honduras, we are here today to help you understand. Logic does not apply in this case, making it necessary to explore cultural clues rather than intellectual ideas.

The facts are fairly straightforward. Honduras has constitutional term limits, one four-year term per President. The last election, in 2006, was won by Mister Zelaya. In a quest to extend his reign beyond 2010, he advanced a referendum to change the law. The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled such a vote would be unconstitutional, as the constitution cannot be amended by this process. Zelaya refused to accept their ruling. They instructed the military to arrest him and deport him. The Honduran Congress picked his successor from his own party. The successor is only interim President until the close of Zelaya's term.

Obama has condemned the process as undemocratic, and demanded the reinstatement of Zelaya under threat of sanctions. In none of his public utterances on the subject has he acknowledged the verdict of the Honduran Supreme Court. More amazingly, no American envoy of any kind has made any effort to have a discussion on the subject with the Court, the Congress, or the new President. This behavior is purportedly an effort to save democracy.

To get a handle on this, I suggest we return to the notorious Cairo speech by our President. In that address he assayed an apology for the untoward CIA role in deposing President Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 and replacing him with General Zahedi, who was friendlier to the Shah. There ensued a debate between right and left if it was appropriate for later Presidents to issue condemnations of earlier administrations. What no one remembered to ask was this: who told Obama the CIA toppled Mossadegh?

We all heard about the CIA papers Leon Panetta provided to the White House and Congress about the extent of briefings to Nancy Pelosi about waterboarding. Yet we never heard that Obama had requested files about Mossadegh. Even Bill Clinton thought to ask Webster Hubbell to check archives in Justice to see if any goodies lurked about the Kennedy assassination or aliens in Roswell, New Mexico. Barack Obama does not need to ask; he knows.

How does he know? The accusations of a CIA role in Iran's coup of 56 years ago are vague, mostly based on anonymous leaks by retired agents to New York Times reporters. There is no definitive evidence of this, and even if individual CIA guys claim to have moved mountains with their machinations, the odds are that those are mostly cocktail-party bravado. A dose of healthy skepticism would seem to be the sensible thing. It might be worth reading the website maintained by Zahedi's son, where he makes a strong case against this conventional wisdom.

It is not important here to get into this Iranian debate. My point is that Obama has no way of knowing the truth any more than you or I do. His apology was not based on research or government Eyes-Only files. It was based on standard collegiate peacenik rhetoric, nothing more profound or more complicated. Scowling professorial types in faculty lounges have been grumbling about this for half a century, and that is good enough for our commander-in-chief.

Which brings us to the oldiest, rustiest saw of all, the story of the CIA and Salvador Allende in Chile. Anyone who wears his quiver on the left reaches for this arrow first. I shudder to recall innumerable tiresome lectures about the horror of the CIA unseating of Allende, always with a supercilious flourish in pronouncing his name I-end-ay. Somehow the supposal of CIA disposal in the Allende deposal trumps any alternate proposal. The many wonderful articles in these pages by James Whelan debunking most of this bunk are either ignored or derided.

So for Obama there is no choice based on realpolitik, pragmatism, common sense or justice. The bottom line is Allende is back in the person of Zelaya. Right, wrong or indifferent, this crowd cannot leave a legacy evoking the ghost of Allende.

Funnily enough, the Honduran Foreign Minister thought to bolster the case against Zelaya by mentioning his complicity in drug-running. Oops! Now we are channeling Noriega.

But there is hope yet of turning Obama around on this one. If only we can figure a way of comparing Zelaya to Ferdinand Marcos or the Shah or Botha or Pinochet or even Jerry Falwell…

GOP Not Alone in Hypocrisy

David N. Bass — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:06:00 -0400

"He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first," Jesus said when confronted by an angry mob intent on executing a woman caught in the act of adultery.

Democrats should take that advice when it comes to Mark Sanford. The party isn't crucifying the Republican South Carolina governor for being an adulterer, but for being an adulterer and a social conservative. In other words, for being a hypocrite.

From a public relations standpoint, that's an effective approach. Democrats will get plenty of mileage out of snickering over the righteous Republicans who can't keep their pants zipped. And they were eager for any opportunity to take down Sanford, who was becoming increasingly popular as a conservative mainstay and could have proven a decent threat to Obama in 2012.

There's only one problem -- Democrats have built their political house on politicians who make a habit of saying one thing and doing another, so their indignation at Sanford's hypocrisy rings hallow. In fact, it's downright hypocritical.

Recall that Bill Clinton was the president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law in 1996. The act defined marriage in federal law as the union of one man and one woman, which is the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding. Less than two years later, news broke that Clinton had violated his own marriage vows (not for the first time, or the last) with a White House intern.

Admittedly, Clinton was reluctant to sign the law, and did so more out of political necessity than principle. But if consistency between a politician's lifestyle and actions is the goal, how can Democrats square Clinton's support for the most sweeping federal marriage-protection law ever passed with his disdain for his own marriage vows?

More recently, John Edwards has assumed the Democratic Party's hypocrisy mantle. The former North Carolina senator, renowned for his fight against poverty, often uses a "two Americas" refrain to draw a contrast between the haves and the have-nots. His personal lifestyle, however, doesn't match his rhetoric.

Edwards owns a multi-million dollar, 28,200-square-foot home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. During his second bid for the Democrats' nomination for president, it was revealed that he enjoys $400 haircuts.

Now, federal investigators are probing whether Edwards skirted the law by diverting campaign funds to pay his mistress hefty sums for her videography work, which might have included more than campaign publicity material.

Using the same standard that Democrats have applied to Sanford, is it reasonable to view Edwards as a champion for the underprivileged while he maintains such an opulent lifestyle?

Or take Al Gore as another example. The Democrats' go-to-guy for all things eco-friendly is known for leaving the lights on. He doesn't say no to some private air travel, either. But he's in good company, since America's first green president enjoys polluting the skies as well (and on Earth Day, no less).

The point of highlighting these Democratic dalliances is not to dismiss Sanford's sins. He should be forgiven, but actions have consequences, especially when a public figure is involved. If for no other reason than to devote time to rebuilding his marriage and family, Sanford should resign from office.

But if Democrats are intent on lambasting Sanford because his talk didn't match his walk, they should acknowledge the same behavior among their own. Anything else would be, for lack of a better word, hypocritical.

The Land of Narcissus

Peter Hannaford — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:06:00 -0400

She was complaining in print about the fact that 437 "friends" were following her on Facebook or MySpace as she described her eventful walk to the refrigerator to make a sandwich. Her complaint was that these people were not really friends, but faceless voyeurs with only a glancing interest in the important details of her daily life. It reminded one of those Hollywood celebrities who rail against the paparazzi, but crave their attention.

Welcome to the Me-Myself-and-I Generation. It is not made entirely of teenagers desperate to be in constant contact with their friends. It's them, but also many who glide into young adulthood addicted to "texting," Twitter messages and the aforementioned "social network" web sites. These are people who think the world--or at least their acquaintances-- is itching to know the quotidian aspects of their lives. Perusing MySpace and Facebook one wonders how anyone could be interested in this stuff. Apparently, though, millions are.

There is even a new online service that let's users tell their friends exactly where they are. The user can peg this global tracking to the moment of transmission or keep it active for hours. So, one's adoring "friends" may keep one in their sights for extended periods. Just the ticket for those Hollywood celebrates.

Columnist Cheryl Wetzstein says that all this self-absorption emanates from the generation born to the "Me Generation" of the 1970s. She worries that too many teenagers and young adults try to emulate the faux celebrities who till our television screens and YouTube snippets, people obsessed with their bodies, sexuality, drugs and outrageous behavior.

Granted the celebrities seem to care only for themselves, like the legendary Narcissus who spurned all advances because he had fallen in love with a reflection in a pool--his own. Now, they seem to have millions of mimics.

To be self-absorbed is to care little for others, even to exploit them. Certainly more than a few are addicted to social networks and seek self-reinforcement by collecting large numbers of "friends" who will admire whatever it is they describe or any photos they may post to glorify themselves. They also rattle off their tastes in this or that.

Along with all this craving for attention from others is a short attention span. Short, monosyllabic text messages on cell phones take the place of conversations or letters. Running comments on one's social networking slot are stream-of-consciousness, not requiring advance thought or writing in coherent sentences and paragraphs.

Is rampant self-absorption related to the ongoing coarsening of the culture? Social scientists will have to decide that. Some already have. In 2001, Charles Murray, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, mused on Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History (1961) in which he said that a healthy civilization is led by a creative minority, setting society's behavioral standards. Conversely, in a "disintegrating" society, Murray says, "the upper levels degenerate and abandon the role of leadership...This leads to a behavioral code that rejects the values of being 'brave, loyal and true'--one that rejects acceptance of responsibility and blame, when appropriate...one that rejects beings modest and gracious in victory and a good sport in defeat...Many of the accepted 'rules' collapse and are viewed as old-fashioned, out of touch...Peer pressure expands exponentially to enforce strict adherence to 'political correctness.'"

Murray summarizes Toynbee's conclusion of 48 years ago this way: "To recognize a disintegrating society, look for a culture that is in the process of being shattered, riven, torn apart. Those who sound wake-up calls of alarm and try to invoke the 'old norms' are shouted down, ridiculed, marginalized and censured."

Sound familiar?

The Prince of Philadelphia

Jeremy Lott — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:05:00 -0400

Closing Time: A Memoir
By Joe Queenan
(Viking, 338 pages, $26.95)

"Books," says Joe Queenan in his masterstroke of a memoir, are "the wealth of the poor’s children." On this point, the man is unyielding. He renders it “without question” that serious literacy opens new, paradisiacal vistas for those in “straitened circumstances.” “Books are a guiding light out of the underworld, a secret passageway, an escape hatch,” he argues. The well-off take this for granted—at their great peril: “To the affluent, books are ornaments. To the poor, books are siege weapons.” All of those assertions are open to serious challenge, and Queenan gives us the raw materials to do just this. However, the literary merits of the book in which they appear should be beyond dispute. Closing Time is far and away the most ambitious thing Queenan has ever written. Most of his previous nine volumes felt learned yet lacking, well executed yet dashed off. This one doesn’t. It took him four years to write but, really, a lifetime. That doesn’t make it a life well spent, necessarily, but one that has clearly paid dividends.

In the recession of 1958-1959, Queenan’s father lost the only white-collar job he ever held. He also fell behind on payments and lost the television, lost the house, and lost what little self- respect he had left. The family of six—a mum, a dad, a son, and three daughters—was relocated to Philadelphia’s god-awful housing projects that would eventually be dynamited. They lived there for four years, but the old man never left, mentally. He held a series of odd jobs, few for very long; hit the bottle with Irish enthusiasm; and terrorized his family until they all deserted him, one by one.

Queenan explains the reason for their desertion. At some point, his father had “decided that if he could not cast a shadow over the whole world, he would cast one over his family. And so he did. He beat us often and he beat us savagely.” He used his leather belt, which might not have been so bad except that whenever he came home “spectacularly bombed,” he tended to forget which end was which. The result was not pleasant. The “metal flange” would wrap around Queenan’s thighs and “flail against” his naughty bits. There was utterly “no use protesting that the punishment was not being meted out in strict accordance with Marquess of Queensberry rules.” That would only make the old man more belligerent and court lasting damage. Walls, chairs, and windows, were no match for Queenan père in a blind rage.

For many years, Queenan’s mum averted her eyes. She stayed in her bedroom and reread stacks of newspapers, tried to ride out her mild mood swings, or occasionally put her minimal culinary skills to use to make something awful. Queenan’s parents never technically divorced. They were Catholics, from a time when Catholics didn’t do that sort of thing. However, “emboldened by the moral flaccidity that swept through the society in the 1970s, she finally did work up the nerve to pull the plug on their marriage.” Without a massive cultural shift, writes Queenan, “she would never have had the courage to leave him. But by the late 1970s, everybody was leaving everybody.”

Most of Closing Time’s portraits feel spot on, but not this one. Agnes Queenan had the moxie to tell her new husband on their wedding night that she didn’t love him. She came from a more upscale family and when it became clear that Joe Sr. wasn’t going to be able to support his charges, she mustered her connections and skills and went to back to work to support them. She forced her husband to find intermittent employment and dragged the family through a series of successively less scummy neighborhoods to somewhere on the outskirts of respectability. Agnes could bring them near respectability because she had been there before and knew what it looked like. Her husband had no experience with these things and thus no idea that his being poor was anything other than his bad Irish luck. Queenan calls any attempts to romanticize this poverty “a mythology concocted by those who were never poor” and tries to set the record straight:

Poverty is not simply a matter of being unable to buy certain things. It’s about buying the wrong things, or the things that nobody else wants.…It’s about having sneakers that fall apart the third time you drive to the basket, shoes held together with adhesive tape, shirts that start out as XLS but end up as Mediums the first time they’re laundered.…It’s about bad diets, bad teeth, bad feet, bad playgrounds, bad parents, bad attitudes.…Poverty is a lifestyle, a philosophy, a modus vivendi, an agglomeration of bad habits, which is why nobody who has ever been poor physically stops being poor emotionally.

Queenan doesn’t exempt himself from this judgment. Though he has made it financially and as a writer, he doesn’t believe poverty made him stronger but rather more uncaring and vicious than he otherwise should have been. That viciousness has made him a very effective critic if sometimes not a very lovable one. He attributes his survival as a youth and his success later in life to the Catholic Church, to a few oddball heroic shopkeepers who decided to hire the lad, and to his love of literature—while conceding rather backhandedly that his mum managed to keep the family out of even worse circumstances. Queenan’s intelligence was obvious from an early age and Philadelphia’s Catholic schools kept him out of the violent hellholes that were the city’s public schools. His faith didn’t last but its impact has.

Once Queenan finished college, he left Philadelphia for Paris and New York, but came back to the Quaker City when his father was hospitalized with malignant cancer. He tries to understand why he did this and finally admits that it “was rooted in the sense of Christian duty I had learned as a child, for even as I stopped believing in God, I did not stop believing in Christ…” He attempts to end the book with one of the blackest sign-offs in the history of literature—“My father was dead, and I didn’t miss him”—but it doesn’t take. He tacks a feel-good epilogue on the end of the book, so that it begins and ends with fond, warm memories of the one man that Joe Queenan will forever be powerless to forget.

California Nightmarin'

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:01:00 -0400

LAWS MADE TO BE BROKEN
Re: Eric Peters's Magical Thinking in California:

Agriculture + Semiconductors + Software + Movies + Television + Aerospace + Biotech + Nanotech + Universities + Tourism + Democrats = Bankruptcy.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

"Magical Thinking In California" is a bulls-eye. In its July issue, Car & Driver ran a three-way comparison test: '09 Honda Insight vs. '10 Toyota Prius vs. '99 Chevrolet Metro. The 10 year-old Metro managed better average fuel mileage (42 mpg) than the new Insight and tied the Prius. Plus, the rear suspension of the Metro was rated as being "more sophisticated" than either of its hybrid competitors. The Metro's price when new was about $9900, vs. nearly $24,000 for the Insight and nearly $32,000 for the Prius. To leftist elites this may represent progress, but in the real world going back to the future would be a good idea.
-- Mark Nahmias
San Tan Valley, Arizona

As Ayn Rand noted long ago, laws such as these aren't meant to be obeyed. They are composed precisely so that NOT breaking them is impossible .

The proponents then cash in. It's a protection racket. To survive, the ordinary person or business has to buy
indulgences from the new orthodoxy- a waiver here, a regulation change there, "and by the way, I'm having a fundraiser next week..."

Still waiting for the "Sopranos" movie? It's already playing at a legislature near you.
-- Martin Owens
Sacramento, California

AWARDED, NOT WON
Re: George H. Wittman's An Enlisted Man's Point of View:

Corrections on Bob Kerrey if you do not mind? He did not "win" the Medal of Honor, but was awarded it, and he is a recipient of it. As an ex-PFC, am sure you know that no combat medal is ever "won." Second item is the name of the award as the word congressional has never been a part of its official name. It is the Medal of Honor presented in the name of congress (I refuse to capitalize it any more!).
-- David Menard
Dayton, Ohio

SHORT JOKE
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s Al Franken's Blue Ball:

I hope Franken enjoys his single term as U.S. Senator...
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

Yes, increasingly, the Democratic Party is the party of personalities and Al Frankton is not a consistent thinker. I suspect you would conclude that emotion unconstrained by reason is a formula for ill-advised decisions, whereas emotion effectively controlled by reason is a formula for successful achievement.

Fabricated addresses and pop singers' names are indeed indelicate, but the most effective defense against such tactics would be landslide victories. Democrats often have an advantage in winning voters' sympathy, so Republicans will ordinarily lose if they don’t dominate the battle of ideas -- and win if they do.

That imperative, I suspect, accounts for last November's outcome. It also, I believe, accounts for your victory in your little skirmish with Frankton.
-- William Best

Tell it to your Ben Stein. Along with him, how many of your contributors gave the max to Frankenfraud's campaign.
-- Alfred Stanbury
Stanbury Law Firm P.A.

FRIGHTENED BY A HOCKEY MOM
Re: Philip Klein's What Happened to Sarah Barracuda?

Philip Klein's blog post reflects very poorly on The American Spectator.

Another little man with an inferiority complex heard from. Good grief...who knew The American Spectator, Fox News, Washington Times, etc. were populated by a bunch of spiteful little boys who felt threatened by Sarah?

Is this the new Republican Party speaking...the one that is moving as quickly as it can to kill the conservative base once and for all ?

The only people who hate her more than the DNC is the Brie and Chablis Avant Guard Republicans.

Remind me to remember that The American Spectator works for Rahm Emanuel.
-- Ron B.

PUT YOUR HEALTH CARE WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS
Re: Jay Molyneaux's letter (under "The Will Care When They Get the Care") in Reader Mail's Cap-and-Taxed to Death:

I would like to go on record as being 100% in favor of the messiah's health care fiasco, if and only if:

(1) the congress is forced to give up their current health plan and use messiah care and be banned from exempting themselves from their own laws as is the usual procedure,

(2) federal government workers (whoops, employees -- government workers is an oxymoron) are forced to do the same,

(3) union bosses at all levels are also forced into the program like the rest of us, and

(4) the aforementioned groups are forced to use messiah care in their retirement packages instead of their current gravy train.

It seems to me that it is only fair that we share the messiah's benevolence with the Washington elites, their employees, and their cronies. Of course, the messiah and Bubba Biden should also be forced to partake of the fruits of such benevolence.

Finally, the current congressional healthcare program should be transferred unchanged to the military and military retirees. They (unlike the congress) have contributed enough blood, sweat and tears to merit such lavish care.

Just an idea -- don't hold your breath.
-- C.D. Lueders
Melbourne, Florida

BREAKING AWAY
Re: Rev. Canon Richard T. Nolan's letter (under "Splitsville -- Not Yet") in Reader Mail's Cap-and-Taxed to Death:

It is quite amusing to read Rev. Nolan’s sanguine notions concerning the “split that is not a split” within the Episcopal Church. It is especially entertaining when he is dismissive of the ACNA as just another breakaway group in a long list of breakaway groups from a number of larger religious bodies.

What, pray tell, is the Episcopal (Anglican) Church but a breakaway assemblage? What is the worst excuse in the world for separating from the Roman Catholic Church than switching allegiance from the Pope to the King so that King can divorce and/or murder his wife in order to marry another?

At least some new religious bodies come about because of honest disagreements over doctrine and the meaning of the Word of God.

The good Reverend is certainly right in his comments that the Christian Churches are constantly “engaged in doctrinal/moral self-examination.” But he is a little too glib in looking down his nose at those who are less than game for participating in the perpetual seminar for every “wind of doctrine” that comes down the pike. He seems to have little empathy or imagination by describing their motives as nothing more than “prefer[ing] final certainties in all matters.”

Rev. Nolan admits he himself is “dissatisfied with a number of matters of belief and practice in the contemporary Episcopal Church.” But he also counters: “However, it is within the life of the Church that effective remedies can emerge -- after much discussion, debate, and discernment.” What Rev. Nolan leaves out is that these Christian-Socratic symposiums can get it wrong. In fact these exercises in “discerning the movement of the Holy Ghost” have got it catastrophically wrong hundreds of times in the past two thousand years.

Among Christians, there can be genuine disagreements yet the fellowship holds them together. But there are decisions in doctrine which are deal breakers. Some of our divines have construed the plain sense of Scripture into enthusiastic blessings for what it actually condemns. Clearly what is at the bottom is a deeper disagreement over how Scripture is read and used. What is troubling to “conservatives” is that if our theologians, seminaries and leadership can see their way to permit practicing homosexuals into the ministry and bless “same sex” unions, what will they see their way to do in the future? Worse, our theologians, seminaries and leadership may find the next “development” distasteful, but they will find they have no principle against it.
-- Mike Dooley

NO COMMENTS
Re: The July 2 edition of Reader Mail:

Good for you! At last, a 8-page reader mail. As a subscriber and donating reader, we were about to move on to other sites. I understand the costs involved but what are the costs of almost eliminating this well loved feature? Also missing is the interplay between various contributors in the mail. Hopefully today is the start of the "return of mail."
-- Dick Grogan
Yorba Linda, California

The Editor replies: We appreciate Mr. Grogan's loyalty to Reader Mail. Most readers, alas, prefer to respond in the Comments section of individual pieces, which wasn't available back in Reader Mail's heyday. We do what we can, but Reader Mail depends on you, the reader -- and letter writer.

Miracles All Around Us

Patrick O'Hannigan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:29:00 -0400

On the bottles of its signature drinks, the Boston Beer Company describes Samuel Adams as a brewer and patriot. Although he was instrumental in forming the Boston-area "Committee of Correspondence" that helped spark the American Revolution and was copied by other colonial towns, the beer bottle labels do not identify Mr. Adams as a "community organizer." Like other heroes of our founding generation including Paul Revere the silversmith, William Dawes the tanner, and Joseph Warren the doctor, Adams never thought of organizing as a full-time occupation; he just lent a hand where he thought it was needed.

This July 4th weekend, my heart is filled with gratitude for the men and women who, like Adams, are untitled community organizers. What they do in their spare time makes our lives better than they would otherwise be.

The lack of title in this context is important. Any card-carrying "community organizer" has yoked him- or herself to assumptions that owe more to Marx than to Jesus, in apparent (if not always conscious) homage to the saying that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Untitled community organizers, however, are simply people who help others in need. They are part of the remedy for the social ills described eloquently by Elizabeth Scalia, who wrote from a Catholic perspective about how cheaply we often give ourselves away, and "how thoughtlessly we toss our valuables to those who will trash them."

With the infidelities of a governor and the racy photos of a beauty pageant winner in mind, Scalia wrote that "we allow breeching and encroaching without understanding that our natural or learned boundaries are not prisons but safety zones, the places reserved for ourselves and God and those most beloved to us." From that thought, she went on to observe that "All are guilty, from time-to-time, of throwing away our Holy Things."

And why would that be? Because, as Scalia wrote in a subsequent meditation, "We forget we are Royal children." It's a fair point. As contemporary philosopher Peter Kreeft once observed, from a Christian point of view, the problem is almost never that we ask too much of God, but that we ask too little.

Fortunately for anyone depressed by the thought of our demonstrably fallen condition, all is not lost. The world is also full of Good Samaritans.

For every Christian denomination that throws evangelization into the slag heap of a study group or gives missionary work the old heave-ho, there are fair-minded people who defend the good names of others, or acknowledge God in unexpected places.

For every partisan hack who trades on the reputation of one of the giants of antiquity by calling Paul of Tarsus a community organizer, there are others who point out that he was, in fact, a tent maker who gloried in the gospel.

That said, there is no need to thank God for those who love their neighbors as themselves by name-checking apostles or American patriots of the Revolutionary era. Past is prologue, and (as friends and neighbors continue to show me) the same point can be made with what songwriter Townes van Zandt once called the "live and obscure."

If my experience in the aftermath of a recent car accident that could have claimed two family members but did not is anything to go by, those who rally around others in time of need are animated by love rather than economics. They may never give a thought to community organizing as such, but it doesn't matter. There are people who coordinate meal deliveries for others; people who shop or do laundry for friends who can't; people who send teddy bears or lend shoulders to cry on; people who pray for strangers in need just because that helps, too.

Scalia is right to say that we often fail to esteem holy things as we should. Begging her pardon for a pun on a fine old lullaby, I think of that problem in Catholic and Latin-infused terms: it seems to me a clear case of "when the wind blows, the credo will rock."

And yet I want to suggest that there is no need to despair, not only because we are now in a position to answer the apostles' question ("Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"), but also because while we all have occasion to repent of having cast pearls before swine, we also have a confident call to dignity implicit in what Ignatius of Loyola used tp pray when he asked for the grace "to give, and not to count the cost."

Three weeks ago, I could agree with the idea that every visit from a friend is a kind of benediction, but now I know that as a matter of experience. There are miracles all around us, and living when and where we do is only one of them.

Help Me

Philip Klein — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:10:00 -0400

During an otherwise dull health care town hall meeting on Wednesday, a woman identifying herself as Debby fought back tears as she described her health predicament to President Obama.

In 1998, Debby said, she underwent radiation treatment to kill a tumor -- but the radiation caused other health problems, making it impossible for her to work. Now, she has another tumor, but cannot get it taken care of because she doesn’t have health insurance or qualify for government programs.

“Well, here, come on over here,” Obama implored her, motioning Debby toward him. “We're going to find out what -- we'll get your information and we'll see what we can do to help you.”

Embracing her, Obama reassured, “I don't want you to feel all -- like you're alone.”

He then used her situation to illustrate a broader point. “Debby is a perfect example of somebody who we should, in a country this wealthy, be able to provide coverage for her health care problems,” he said.

The town hall meeting itself was highly orchestrated -- with a small number in attendance and online questions being screened by the White House. Even none other than Helen Thomas complained to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the event being staged.

During the session, Obama received questions from an advocate of a socialized, or single-payer health care, a representative of the liberal activist group Health Care for Americans Now, and a member of the Service Employees International Union. “What can I do, as a member of the union, to help you with your reform bill?” the woman asked.

But the moment with Debby stood out. It was the sort of human touch that Bill Clinton mastered and that Obama, though at times emotionally distant as a candidate, has grown more comfortable with as president. Back at a February town hall meeting, one woman -- Henrietta Hughes -- asked Obama for a home while 19-year old Julio Osegueda wanted the president to help him get better benefits at his job at McDonald’s.

No politician wants to tell those who are facing hardships that the government cannot do anything to help, but the result is a populace that looks to elected officials to take care of them. There’s no polite way of telling somebody who is suffering that government cannot insulate everybody from the vicissitudes of life.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings," Winston Churchill once said, adding, "the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." And nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to health care.

Government-run health care systems might guarantee coverage to everybody in theory, but in practice they do not. "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care," the chief justice of the Canadian Supreme Court wrote in a 2005 decision. The ruling came in a case brought by a Quebec man who was told he would have to wait a year for hip surgery in the country’s single-payer system, which rations care to save costs.

Shona Holmes, an Ontario woman, was forced to travel to the United States to seek urgent treatment for her brain tumor after she was told she would have to wait 6 months in Canada, by which point she says she would have died. Of course, if Obama gets his way and government takes over health care in America, then stories of Canadians like Shona won’t have happy endings.

Obama dismisses the idea that he wants government to take over health care as a mere “scare tactic.” In reality, Obama has previously said he was a proponent of a single-payer system and he maintains that it would be the ideal system if we were starting from scratch. At the town hall meeting, he said that in other countries a “single-payer plan works pretty well” because if “you eliminate private insurers, you don't have the administrative costs and the bureaucracy and so forth.”

Instead of supporting single-payer outright, Obama has been pushing the idea of creating a new single-payer plan within the current system that people will migrate to over time. He calls this longer road to government-run health care a “uniquely American solution.”

But if Obama wants to expand coverage and reduce spending at the same time, the only solution is to ration care. There’s no way that the government can cut costs by eliminating “unnecessary” care without casting a wide enough net to prevent individuals from obtaining care they deem necessary. In the end, there is nothing more humane about a health care system run by the government. In acting to help the Debbys of the nation, Obama will create a new set of problems for many others.

UPDATE: The AP is reporting that Debby was a volunteer for Obama who received her ticket through the White House.

Al Franken's Blue Ball

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:09:00 -0400

WASHINGTON -- The Minnesota Supreme Court has now ended months of vote fraud and other assorted acts of skullduggery to pronounce Al Franken winner of the state's 2008 senatorial race over Republican Norm Coleman. The process was unseemly, and it is conceivable that the court's justices merely acted out of civic pride. They did not want Minnesota's U.S. Senate races to attain the sort of notoriety attached to aldermanic elections in Chicago or presidential elections in Iran.

Mr. Franken is an admitted clown. As such he will be the only admitted clown in the United States Senate, though he will be seated with such clownish figures as Senator John Kerry and Senator Harry Reid. Perhaps his desk will be near that vacated recently by Senator Larry Craig, the lavatorian-conservative now thankfully retired, perhaps to found an intellectual journal for his lavatorian movement. A good title might be, Bathroom Beautiful.

Upon hearing of the court's decision, Franken joked that he was "thrilled and honored by the faith that Minnesotans have placed in me." That is not a very funny joke, but Franken is not funny. By "Minnesotans" he is probably attempting irony in referring to his supporters on vote canvassing boards in several left-leaning counties who turned up a sufficient number of thitherto uncounted votes to give him the edge.

In the November 4 election Coleman won by 725 votes. After a recount he still won by 215. Then Franken's "Minnesotans" got busy canvassing. They demanded that votes once disqualified in their counties be counted. They found thousands of absentee ballots previously rejected for such indelicacies as fabricated addresses. Coleman cried foul and asked that one statewide standard be applied to all recounts. However, he got nowhere with this plea for equal protection of the law, and in the meantime Franken's larcenous operatives picked up 1,350 more absentee votes, some bearing the names of pop singers. Ultimately Franken's team managed a 312-vote victory from the 2.9 million votes cast.

The Wall Street Journal was not alone in its judgment that "Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election." The Journal reminded Republicans that this is not the first time in recent elections that Democrats overturned an apparent defeat by sending swarms of lawyers and operatives into a state to find once-discredited ballots and claim victory. They practiced the same trickery in 2004 in the state of Washington's gubernatorial race wherein the winning Republican had mysteriously come in second after a third "recount."

In the aftermath of the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision Franken deadpanned, "I won by 312 votes," and he went on to josh, "So I really have to earn the trust of the people… of Minnesota, and let them know -- not just by my saying so, but by my actions -- that I'm going to be working for every Minnesotan" -- another humorless joke. What work he will do he did not say. Possibly he will sweep the floors of the Capitol or pick up litter on its lawn. His service in government has been nil. Yet how much service in government has our president had? Increasingly the Democratic Party is the party of personalities, though Franken's personality is markedly weird.

He was weird on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s where he popularized a goof-ball character named Stuart Smalley, a self-help guru who repeated over and again, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." The audience laughed. Using lines not a lot more sophisticated than that, he campaigned for the Senate. My guess is that the Stuart Smalley character is the essential Al Franken, a weirdo.

I experienced his weirdness first hand when I appeared as his guest on a talk show he hosted for "Air America," the Liberals' feeble effort to create an alternative to conservative talk radio. At the time, he was an impassioned opponent of the 1990s' "Clinton-haters," so impassioned in fact that he could have been called a "Clinton-lover." Apparently aware of The American Spectator's role in exposing poor Bill Clinton, Franken asked me how I had passed the 1990s, obviously expecting me to boast of my crimes. I stepped around his loaded question, and with my trademark self-deprecating wit (reminiscent, I am told, of JFK) rolled a handball across the desk from my microphone to his, saying merely that I played a lot of handball during Clinton's years of public embarrassment.

Franken went ballistic. "What is this," he said holding the little blue ball in his hands and seething. I moved on to other subjects and not surprisingly he lost control of the show. After I departed he remained visibly perturbed. In fact three hours later a friend of mine observed his leaving the studio with the ball still in his hand as he snarled about it and my insouciance toward him. Do you remember the controversy created by Liberals with their unsubstantiated allegations of UN Ambassador John Bolton's temper? My prediction is that Franken will not get through his Senate term without anger management counseling, and the Liberals will cover for him.

From a review of his simple-minded utterances on the campaign trail with regard to issues, it is apparent that he is not a consistent thinker. He will disappoint the liberals. If they can keep him mad at Republicans, they will have his vote. But if he calms down, anything might happen.

Bear Market

Chris Horner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:50:00 -0400

Well, this is disturbing. As if all of the new age and marriage-counseling-style rhetoric trotted out by the administration to frame the President's visit to Moscow were not enough, we see the photo of Mevedev and Obama on Drudge adding to the compendium of snaps -- a la Chavez getting Obama to grin while gripping a bilious anti-American screed -- all assisting our plunge to Carter-esque levels faster than the most pessimistic of us expected (seriously...how do you take, well, seriously, a U.S. president who does this and the following?). Apparently, the image captures nicely what is already a disastrous enterprise.

Read the whole thing for yourself, but the Guardian reports that the Obama administration is - allow me to shorten it for you - asking to pay Russia to help keep the Kyoto process alive. Russia wasn't all that interested post-2012 when this particular five-year-plan expires, having cashed in already and sure the world would be on to them the second time around. But, apparently you won't go broke counting on our president to play down to every relevant stereotype of a post-radical lefty (BTW, the article's sub-head is "After success with China, US targets Russia in strategy to reach separate agreements with world's biggest polluters." Uh..."After success with China". Really? Who knew. Wait'll the details of that one emerge. Good thing we've got all this extra money lying around.)

From the Cap Weinberger, "if this [Detente'] is progress, we can't afford much more progress" school comes the following, also rather alarming for the "in" it reveals that Team Soros has with our erstwhile serious national security apparatus:

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and National Security Council have also been studying a report from the Centre for American Progress, an influential think tank, that called for looking at climate change as an economic issue, and for demonstrating clear benefits to Russia of action.

Yes! Let's convince the Russians that what they really need to worry about is global warming...Group Hug! And you thought President Bush's hopefulness when it came to the Bear was cute.

Ross Douthat Buries His Lede

Wlady Pleszczynski — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:37:00 -0400

Finally, at paragraphs 14 and 15 of an 18-paragraph column, he gingerly grows bold:

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

Re: Mitt Quit Too

Philip Klein — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:20:00 -0400

I agree with what Jim wrote about Romney's exit from the Massachusetts governor's mansion, and during the campaign, I had a problem with the way his supporters conflated his accomplishments as a business executive with his comparably weak record as governor to create an overall impression of managerial competence. It also bothers me to no end when Romney's boosters argue that he isn't really to blame for the failure of the big government health care legislation he championed because it was changed by Democrats -- even though he signed the damn thing knowing that he would be leaving office and allowing liberals to oversee its implementation.

That said, politically speaking, Romney's decision to leave office has not been as damaging as I believe Palin's decision to resign will prove. Serving out a full term is psychologically different to voters than headlines about a politician resigning before his or her term expires, and jumping off what Quin wrote last week, Romney could argue that at least he did his duty by sticking it out for four years. In addition, because Romney was a successful businessman and helped turnaround the Salt Lake City Olympics, he was able to convince most Republican primary voters last year that he was a competent executive. While there are a number of views on why Romney ended up losing the nomination (the flip flops, the inauthenticity, his thin conservative credentials, anti-Mormon bigotry, the MSM wanted McCain, etc.) he did not lose because voters doubted his qualifications as a manager.

By contrast, Palin has a connection to the Republican base that Romney could not manufacture, but her biggest obstacle is convincing skeptics that she is qualified enough to be president and can be an effective executive. Because she doesn't have similar private sector success to fall back on, her decision to leave office early will prove more politically damaging than Romney's decision to quit after just one term.

Mitt Quit Too

W. James Antle, III — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:01:00 -0400

A number of Palin defenders have argued that Mitt Romney similarly cut and run from Massachusetts. While there is an important distinction between resigning office and declining to run for reelection -- Romney served out the entire term to which he was elected -- I basically agree with this criticism. Romney's abandonment of Massachusetts during a critical juncture in fights over health care, the budget, and the definition of marriage was the single greatest factor that shifted me from a Romney-sympathetic commentator to a critic. (The spin of Romney's flip-flops by some of his overzealous supporters played a role too, as did his health care plan.)

It would have admittedly been difficult for Romney to have run for president after being reelected as governor of Massachusetts. In fact, given the political climate in 2006, particularly in blue states, it would have been exceedingly difficult for Romney to have been reelected at all. And none of this has any bearing on the merits of Sarah Palin's decision.

But watching Romney exit the field while so many of the issues he claimed to care about were in play, leaving the commonwealth to suffer one-party Democratic rule for the first time since the Dukakis years without any serious check or challenge, was too much to take. The man who rode back into the Bay State to save the GOP from a certain disaster at the hands of Jane Swift ended up merely delaying the inevitable for four years. Whatever his ambitions, that in my view represented a form of quitting too.

Time is Their Enemy

Philip Klein — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:38:00 -0400

Roll Call reports:

Senate Democratic leaders’ hopes of approving health care reform before adjourning for the August recess appear all but dead, with the prospect of meeting President Barack Obama’s demand for a bill on his desk by Oct. 15 looking increasingly difficult.

There's a reason why President Obama is trying to rush health care legislation through Congress and why he continues to make dire warnings that if it doesn't happen this year, it won't get done. The longer legislation stews in Congress, the more time there is for opponents to pick it apart. While Democrats had hoped to have bills passed in both chambers by the end of July, allowing them to come back from recess after Labor Day and merge the House and Senate bills together in the fall, now critics will have much more time to expose the problems with Democratic health care plans.

And there's a further complicating factor. Several more months of delay means several more bad unemployment reports that call into question the effectiveness of the economic stimulus package. In an interview on local television in Connecticut, Sen. Chris Dodd (who is one of the key players on health care) said that the stimulus legislation wasn't working and suggested there may have to be a second stimulus bill. So, Democrats may find themselves in a box in the fall assuming the economy continues to deteriorate. Take no further action and they'll face criticism from the left that they're not doing enough to help the economy and from the right that their policies have been ineffective. However, if they do push for a second stimulus package it will be a tacit admission that the first one was a failure, make their health care claims less credible, and divert a lot of oxygen from the health care fight.

I rise to recognize the gentleman from Illiteristan

Chris Horner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:31:00 -0400

So I'm out running this morning, listening to the radio, specifically to Glenn Beck's show. The guest host mentions how Katie Couric among other media grandees treated Sarah Palin as an illiterate pretender, asking for example with a whiff of disbelief and can-t-wait-to-hear-this what she reads in the morning. The show went to a commercial break, so I flipped to a local talk show (1070-AM, WINA...go there to see if they post the interview from early in the 9-o'clock hour!).

My Congressman, freshman Tom Periello (D-VA), was defending his vote for the Waxman-Markey global warming tax. Woof, would that he were named Palin, or Bush. The young man single-handedly provided the strongest argument I have encountered for adopting a system of parliamentary-style debate, as at least a means of improving the lot of our elected officials. Or, if you are unable to, ah, manage the issues on which you vote, then against such a system.

He stated that people who think this bill and its mandates will kill vs. create jobs aren't living in the real world. In the real world, we are already "hemorrhaging jobs" to (specifically) India and China because -- wait for it -- they've already done these things!

Still recovering from this one I was treated to a pirouette soon thereafter when he responded to a question by the co-host whether he really thinks China, for example, will follow a U.S. lead like this when the Chinese don't seem to believe in global warming. The Right Honorable explained that it wasn't so much a lack of believing, but a lack of caring, behind why they haven't done what they've already done which is stealing our jobs which, he then pivoted and said, were lost because people slammed our economy by buying things on credit (presumably "green" things from China and India after Bush told them to after 9/11... For fun, picture the Moonbats monitoring this site now feverishly nodding, if wondering so, what's the issue here?).

And so on. Defending whatever you do as right? Critical. Facts...not so much. Talk about "better to remain silent and be presumed...", but as I say, see if they post this gem (surely against the congressional office's protestations), you've got to listen to the whole thing. The Dems had better hope Sen.s Webb and Warner do a little better if they try to pull off the same vote against their constituents. The rules of the Senate are at least slightly more accommodating to drawing attention to such deep thought.

Why Obama May Lose in 2012

Hunter Baker — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:20:00 -0400

A very wise friend suggested to me that Obama's second term is an inevitability. I have to take issue with him because it seems all too clear to me that the president has abandoned the ironclad strategy for victory. What he should have done was to dedicate himself to fixing the banking/financial system, to restore its foundations, to bring about better rules, and to restore public confidence in the lifeblood of the system. Had he done that, eight years would have been a foregone conclusion.

Instead, he has made the financial system an interesting sideline to go along with his attempts to bring about the eschaton through salvific, wishing-makes-it-so public policy. His current path stands a decent chance of returning the nation to stagflation. And no politician can wear that millstone and make it look good.

Daily Must-Reads

Joseph Lawler — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:42:00 -0400

Economists need to read history books (Real Clear Markets)

If you cite the Founders, you risk having somebody look up how much they disagree with you (Cato@Liberty)

Angela Merkel, once again swimming against the economic tide (Think Markets)

Ross Douthat gets a little anti-intellectual with Palin (NY Times)

Robert McNamara, RIP

Matthew Vadum — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:32:00 -0400

Robert McNamara, the wunderkind who fascinated President John F. Kennedy with his intellectual gymnastics while serving as his secretary of defense, has died at the age of 93.

McNamara, who also went on to serve President Lyndon Johnson, was a key architect of the Vietnam War.

He was brilliant, the quintessential liberal do-gooder who sincerely believed he was doing the right thing but whose efforts almost invariably led to disaster.

His horrendous "Project 100,000" program was aimed at getting more black Americans serving in the military but was savaged as an attempt to use minorities as cannon fodder. Much like another liberal idealist a decade later, Jimmy Carter, the harder McNamara worked, the more he seemed to fail.

McNamara was a very interesting, tragic historical figure who in later life came to recognize the error of his ways.

We can learn from his mistakes.

Climate Change Consensus? What Consensus?

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:24:00 -0400

President Barack Obama assures us that the debate is over, but the very fervor with which he speaks suggests his fear that even his own party may not long be willing to vote for legislation wrecking the economy in the name of fighting warming temperatures that aren't warming. For the alarmist case is not closing, but seems to be blowing wide open again.

Reports Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Poor Al Gore. Just when he thought he had a winning role, the show is in danger of being canceled!

Going Private in Canada

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:07:00 -0400

Government-run health care in Canada is supposed to be wonderful. Tell that to the people who are turning to private clinics and doctors.

Reports Fox News:

Private for-profit clinics are a booming business in Canada -- a country often touted as a successful example of a universal health system.

Facing long waits and substandard care, private clinics are proving that Canadians are willing to pay for treatment.

"Any wait time was an enormous frustration for me and also pain. I just couldn't live my life the way I wanted to," says Canadian patient Christine Crossman, who was told she could wait up to a year for an MRI after injuring her hip during an exercise class. Warned she would have to wait for the scan, and then wait even longer for surgery, Crossman opted for a private clinic.

American medicine has problems. But our task is to address them while keeping the strengths of the present system. The actual experience in Canada shows just how much we have to lose.

Palin's Dismal Political Future

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:52:00 -0400

I've got to agree with Phil.

The Palin presidential campaign slogan that comes to mind: "Vote for me and I might serve three years, four if you're lucky!" Not exactly a winning appeal to the nation.

Palin Is No Reagan

Philip Klein — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:45:00 -0400

I have absolutely no problem with those who are arguing that Palin’s story is one of a citizen politician thrust into the national spotlight who left office to protect her family from merciless attacks. But for those still arguing that she can or should have a future as an elected political leader, let alone president, I’m baffled. And I think that Palin’s defenders do her absolutely no favors by consistently making excuses for her no matter the circumstances.

Over at the Corner, Steve Hayward posted a few examples of the media writing off Ronald Reagan at various points in his career, only to be proven wrong. But such comparisons do a disservice to Reagan, who not only served two full terms as governor of California, but also spent decades studying the issues and immersing himself in conservative philosophy. His writings and radio commentaries make this abundantly clear. He proved people wrong because they objectively were wrong. This does not mean that whenever the media writes off or attacks a conservative politician that he or she is the next Reagan. (For more, see: Bush, George W.)

Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson wrote that “it doesn't matter that much what critics say, but — should she pursue politics — only what she does with her newfound time, especially if she travels widely, studies foreign policy, and helps galvanize the party base.” He continued, “She's not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she's a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.”

The problem is that to win and govern effectively you have to do more than "galvanize the party base" and "convince conservatives" -- you also have to convince independents and even some Democrats, as Reagan did. Furthermore, what Hanson is suggesting now is the same sort of thing people were writing after last fall’s election. However, instead of going back to Alaska to gain more governing experience as many advised, Palin resigned after just two and a half years on the job. And there’s nothing to indicate that she has the slightest interest in boning up on policy. Honestly, what’s her incentive to study policy and do the boring task of governing? No matter what she does, her army of apologists will make excuses for her and lash out at those who dare to criticize her by accusing them of being liberal elitists who are threatened by her sheer awesomeness.

And again, none of this really matters if Palin intends to leave elective politics and become some sort of television or radio personality. My comments are only meant as a response to those who are still seriously suggesting her as a potential presidential candidate. Last October, an ABC/Washington Post poll found that only 35 percent of Americans thought Palin was qualified enough to be president, yet now her boosters expect us to believe that an additional nine months in office is all she needed to assauge Americans' concerns, allowing her to resign and prepare for a presidential run.

For an alternate take, you can read Robert Stacy McCain on our main site.

Time for South Korea to do More for Its Own Defense

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:10:00 -0400

The North Koreans are busy shooting off missiles again. And the South Koreans are worried.

Reports Associated Press:

The ballistic missiles that North Korea test-fired this weekend were likely capable of striking key government and military facilities in South Korea, a defense official said Sunday, amid growing concerns over Pyongyang's firepower.

North Korean state media did not mention the launches but boasted that the country's military could impose "merciless punishment" on those who provoke it.

Guess what? South Korea has upwards of 40 times the North's GDP. Maybe it's time for Seoul to spend a bit more on creating an ability to defend against missiles and to retaliate against any North Korean attack rather than continuing to rely on America to subsidize its defense. The South is a grown-up country now. "Real" countries defend themselves.

Questions to Ask the Democrats on Health Care

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:23:00 -0400

The Republican Study Committee has come up with ten good question to ask the Democrats on health care. For instance:

1)     During the debate on the so-called stimulus package, your estimates on future unemployment and economic recovery proved to be wildly off-base. Why should Americans now believe you that they will not be forced out of the private coverage they enjoy, as basic economics would dictate?

2)     Despite your assertions that health care reform will save money, the reality is that plans proposed by Democrats would cost taxpayers between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. How does this save money and how will you pay for this?

3)     If, as you claim, a government-run option is essential to maintaining honest competition in the health insurance market, why is it not also true that we need a government-run competitor in the fast food industry, neighborhood babysitting, or Major League Baseball?

Good questions all. People across America should ask their congressmen and Senators the same questions.