Combining "ineptitude" with "inertia," herewith a new adjective to describe the federal bureaucracy--particularly, at the moment, the FAA, which, rather than revise its budget has chosen to respond to the sequester by delaying flights:

"Inerpt."

That's my neologism.  Yours?

Courtesy of a British friend, evidence that President Obama still has a fair bit of transformative change ahead of him to realize the European social welfare state ideal in the United States.

Monday dawned like any other except today I was off to Brussels, the capital of the great European experiment, so what could be better?  Eurostar train was fantastic, whizzing through the English countryside and diving into the channel tunnel.   Non-stop from London to Brussels in about 100 minutes.

This was going to be a good week. The hotel was in walking distance from the station so I could get something to eat, do my e-mail rituals and off to bed.  Only problem I had forgotten, this was Europe.  So it turned out that the station was the wrong station.  I was in the Eurostar station.  I will get a taxi. It can't be difficult.  However this was Monday.  Apparently Europe closes on a Monday so  I had to walk.  Only 6km?  So get to the hotel at 8.30pm slightly hot and at check-in I innocently ask what time the restaurant closes.   Monsieur it is Monday and the restaurant is closed. What about room service? Finishes at 9.00pm.  Lift not working  so walk up to floor 6 to find my key card does not work. Back down to reception get new key back up to floor six, ring room service and it is shut.   So I do my gorilla bit down the phone and the manager tells me I can use the mini bar as complimentary.  OK so at least I get a cold beer and some Pringles.   Open fridge and there are two small bottles of water; one still, one sparkling.    At least I can get something to eat the next day at breakfast?  But no.   As there are no staff  on duty on a Monday they are not able to prepare any breakfast on Tuesday.    

Is this real ?  Yes,  welcome to Europe.   At least now I understand why we are going bust.

Forward!

Mother Jones -- which these days seems to have a business model built entirely on the use of nanny cams -- has just released a surreptitiously acquired video of Frank Luntz, the GOP messaging guru, unloading on talk radio as the source of many of the Republican Party's image problems. An excerpt from the accompanying piece on Luntz's talk at the University of Pennsylvania:

Believing he was speaking privately to the dozens of students present, Luntz proceeded to gripe about conservative talk radio and its impact on political polarization:

"... And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic. And this is not on the Democratic side. It's only on the Republican side…[inaudible]. [Democrats have] got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That's what's causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy."

As he continued, Luntz, according to [Aakash] Abbi [who made the recording] and two other attendees (who wish to remain anonymous), asserted that it had been irresponsible (and bad for the GOP) for right-wing talkers to pontificate about women's bodies and birth control—an obvious reference to Limbaugh's attack last year on Sandra Fluke, a law student invited to testify before Congress on health insurance coverage of contraception. (Abbi didn't catch this part of Luntz's reply on his recording.)

Luntz was blaming polarization and the GOP's problems partly on conservative media, but he didn't want his criticism of Limbaugh, Levin, and the others to reach beyond this classroom. He was clear on this basic point: Right-wing media is not serving the national debate and not helping the GOP widen the party's appeal beyond its declining base. (Luntz declined to comment on his remarks at the event.)

What do you think? What role does conservative talk radio play in representing the movement? What role should it play? And our are biggest talk radio starts net positives or net negatives for conservatism?

I saw the trailer for the upcoming Superman movie for the first time last night. An ad for it popped up on my husband’s iPad while we were looking at an art exhibit. I got so excited, I told him to pause the show so I could see the trailer.

He waited patiently, rolling his eyes, while I watched it, the grey tones mixing with blue and red, the Celtic music setting the dramatic mood, the slick S of the Superman symbol growing large on the screen, the perfect face of Henry Cavill who is ideally cast as the Man of Steel making my heart beat a little faster. I clapped when it was done.

My husband just shook his head and asked if he could look at some real art now. You see, my extraordinary husband, who’s all cool, sports, and photography, thinks I’m the biggest nerd in the world. He doesn’t understand how I’ve watched every Marvel and DC Comics movie, every Star Trek episode (even Enterprise), and every B-rated sci fi show (including Flash Gordon and Man from Atlantis— who could forget Patrick Duffy with fins?). I won’t even get into my obsession with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter though I suspect many of you share it. So, last night, he didn’t understand why I left him to his art and rented the old Christopher Reeves’ Superman movie and watched it with all the excitement of a little girl on a ride at Disneyworld.

“Really, how can you watch this stuff?” he asked as he glanced at the screen during the most cheesy part—when Lois Lane is flying with Superman to the song Can he read my mind? I cringed a little and wished he’d walked in when Superman was flying through the San Andreas Fault. “It’s just the same story over and over again,” he said. “Spiderman, Superman, Batman, X-man, all in tights, all the same. I don’t get it.”

Of course they’re not all the same, and I wanted to tell him so, but I think he was really just irked by the way my eyes lit up when Henry Cavill came on the screen, so I told him to shush and go away.

He did get me thinking though. Why do I like superheroes so much? Why do so many of us? Over the past decade superhero movies have flooded the market with Thor, Iron Man, Batman, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, and on and on. But even before that, superheroes have been a part of pop culture, from dime novels to the Superman series in the 80s. And now we have another Superman movie. We can’t seem to get enough of them.

I think it has to do with an existential reality we all share—we need hope because we know, deep down, that we’re vulnerable, that we need to be saved. Superheroes give us that. They fulfill our deepest longings for good to triumph over evil—an epic battle that rages throughout the human experience.

That’s why we watch superhero movies over and over again. That’s why we get chills when someone with power and clarity and goodness stands up to evil and crushes it. Whether it’s Superman facing down Lex Luther or Thor defeating Loki, we cheer because in that moment we’re experiencing hope.

Of course, it could just be that we like all the gadgets and cool costumes and that the superheroes are really handsome (women want them and men want to be them). What do you think? Why do we love creatures of myth? Why do we never tire of the superhero?

You're mostly familiar by now, I imagine, with Nigel Farage - the down-to-earth leader of the closest thing we've got to a Tea Party in Britain: UKIP. Well this week, he was in trouble - sort of - yet again over the issue of lapdancing clubs.

Towards the end of a boozy lunch last week with some parliamentary journalists, the UKIP leader was asked how he felt that one of his party’s candidates in the imminent county elections was the proprietor of Northampton’s premier lapdancing club. Farage replied to the effect that this was a good thing because clearly the fellow was a successful entrepreneur.

My view is that this kind of honesty is a breath of fresh air. Partly for this reason.

Why would it be bad for a party political leader to visit a lapdancing club? It's not, after all, as if such establishments are illegal; nor is it as though the girls are being coerced into performing in them. All the lapdancing girls I've ever spoken to tell me it's a really good way of earning a living: the hours are flexible, the money is decent, the clientele are generally appreciative and well-behaved (they have to be or they'll get chucked out). If anyone is being exploited at these clubs, in my experience, it's the poor, hapless, drunken middle-aged men with their tongues hanging out at what they can't have. Not that I buy into that "exploitation" idea, in any case. The "e" word is yet another liberal-lefty/militant-feminist construct which has little to do with women's rights and almost everything to do with undermining liberty and free markets.

But, more importantly than that, I believe that one of the reasons we have the terrible politicians we currently have is precisely because they are too scared to tell the truth, too removed from the lives of real people. If we're ever to get the revolution we deserve we need more people like Farage.

I'd vote for him. Would you?

Sabrina Leigh Schaeffer has a piece on Forbes headlined "Out-Spent, Out-Numbered, Out-Researched: The Power Of Progressive Women's Groups." It ends:

AEI’s Christina Hoff Sommers said it best at a recent IWF policy forum, “Conservative leaders and funders don’t take women’s issues seriously. They tend to treat women’s groups like the Ladies Auxiliary and women’s issues as a distracting side show.”

Sommers is right.  Conservatives and Republicans have very little idea of what they’re up against or what to do about it. Most organizations on the Right test almost nothing, and certainly don’t support multiple organizations devoted to scientifically finding out what works with women.

The Right can count among their ranks exceptional individuals like Hoff Sommers, Diana Furchgott-Roth, June O’Neill, Carrie Lukas, and Kay Hymowitz, writing independently at different think tanks. There are a handful of women’s groups like the Independent Women’s Forum, where I’m the executive director, and our sister organization the Independent Women’s Voice, as well as Concerned Women for America, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, Smart Girl Politics, and VIEW Pac, which raised a mere $346,000 during the 2012 election to help elect Republican women candidates.

What the Right lacks is serious interest and investment in finding out how to move more women to our side. If conservatives truly want to shrink the gender gap and win elections, women can no longer be an after-thought. Conservatives need to invest meaningful resources into the groups that are speaking to women. And conservatives must embrace social science research, digital communications, and boots on the ground to find out what works and with whom.  At the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice, we have run a host of randomized-controlled message and field experiments in several states with sound results. But so much more needs to be done.

Women need to hear a competing vision. When conservatives and Republicans unilaterally disarm and don’t bother to engage with more than 50 percent of the voting public, we can’t win.  The Right must move beyond its fear of playing gender politics, and recognize that men and women might have different ways of looking at things. It’s not pandering: it’s simply choosing to engage.

Even yesterday at this Heritage Resource Bank I attended, this topic was front and center for many folks. Clearly no one seeks to lose women to leftist politics, but one doesn't see much progress on efforts to reach female voters.

It's been a few months since we last spoke about this opportunity for improvement. Is it time to start showing more interest and investment in finding out how to get more women on the right side of the ledger?

My, but isn’t this interesting?

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

Young Ezra Klein tells us that this really isn’t that big a deal; all that he says has happened is that a Republican amendment “has possibly created a problem in which the federal government can’t make its normal contribution to the insurance premiums of congressional staffers.” As a consequence, there is a need for “some method through which the federal government can keep making its current contribution to the health insurance of congressional staffers.” Klein sums up:

This isn’t, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. It’s an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.

Anyone who believes that this issue can be dismissed and dispensed with because of the “drafting error” excuse ought to read Megan McArdle, who points out that the “drafting error” excuse has been worn out, and that it may now be time to consider the entire health care reform bill “one long drafting error.” Of course, we would have known that earlier if we didn’t take Nancy Pelosi’s advice to pass the bill in order to find out what is in it.

In the meantime, get ready for increases in health insurance premiums. And don’t think for a moment that those increases will be limited to Maryland.

As I mentioned today on the podcast, earlier this week I interviewed Jeb Bush for an upcoming Uncommon Knowledge. In this excerpt, the former Florida governor argues that the party should put the immigration issue behind it and acknowledge that not all immigrants will take a path to citizenship.

Why is it so important that Iran and North Korea not become nuclear states? Why is it so significant that Syria has chemical weapons? Because regime behavior is related to regime type; when other states declare us their mortal enemy, and cite our downfall as their goal, history tells us to take it seriously. Because, as deadly as WMD in the hands of terrorists would be, WMD in the hands of extremist regimes would be even worse.

With the apparatus of the state at their disposal, and/or with the backing of other states, Ahmadinejad’s Iran, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and Bashar al Assad’s Syria are, potentially, more capable of planning attacks on the west, and of successfully using WMD, than terrorist cells or groups. Moreover, because they are terror sponsors and supporters, WMD in their control means WMD out of control, susceptible of being sold to fanatics who can afford the price, or are willing to work for the desired cause.

President Obama chose a minimalist response to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. (Some observers suggested he wanted only to contain the programs rather than stop them.) Under his watch, both countries have moved dramatically closer to becoming nuclear powers, while their horrific human rights violations have gotten worse. Obama’s expectation that outreach would procure their cooperation is a pipedream. North Korea recently announced it would not agree to talks on its nuclear program. Similarly, a top Iranian official recently said "the Islamic Republic of Iran will never stop uranium enrichment activities."

The consequences of the Obama administration’s minimalist response to the Syrian regime’s reign of terror on its citizens and its long-time pursuit of WMD are just as evident and just as tragic. In a January 2 blog I said:

In response to peaceful pro-democracy protests, Assad employed heavy artillery to gun the people down. When state brutality only fanned the rebellion, he employed tanks, attack helicopters, and fighter jets against rebels and civilians alike. When that didn’t do the trick, he launched Scud missiles at the people. He now prepares, and by many accounts is already employing, chemical weapons.

Early this week, Israel, England and France disclosed that Assad used chemical weapons on the Syrian people, with Israel's senior military intelligence analyst saying the regime used them "repeatedly" last month. But the US wasn’t so sure:  Bloomberg, “US Sees No Hard Evidence of Syrian Chemical Weapons;” Washington Post, “US Still Evaluating Claims that Syrian Government Used Chemical Weapons;" NPR, “US Hesitant to Act on Claims of Chemical Weapons in Syria.” Today, the administration acknowledged Syria’s chemical weapons, but headlines again underscored its minimalist response: CBS, “Syria Has Likely Used Chemical Weapons on a ‘Small Scale’ Chuck Hagel Says;” BBC, "US Has ‘Some Confidence’ of Syria Chemical Weapons;” USA Today, “US Now Says Syria Likely Used Chemical Weapons.”

Note that the administration stuck with its weak and dilatory approach even though reports that Assad was amassing chemical weapons to use in Aleppo and elsewhere emerged months ago, and even though his use of banned cluster bombs on innocent civilians had already been confirmed. 

I will never forget a day just before Christmas when our house was filled with more teenagers than usual. Two of my daughters had friends over. Giggles compounded giggles and music floated through the halls. I walked downstairs, and in one room was my oldest, the redhead, playing a guitar as her friend sat on the floor barefoot and cross-legged, plucking a violin. Another lounged on the couch and sang along, her dark curls tied up in a bright yellow scarf. Off to the side, my youngest and her friend were gathering up anime books so they could practice drawing their favorite characters. They were the ones giggling. 

I stood back and took in the scene, struck by something I wanted to fix in my memory forever. It wasn’t the joy of life fluttering all around me. Or the cozy Christmas setting with the tree in the background and cinnamon spice candles flickering on the mantle. Or the smell of pumpkin pie in the oven. It was the girls themselves.

One was a Muslim whose father travels back and forth between Washington and Tunisia to help set up the new government there, one was a Jew whose parents had just returned from Israel where they travel every year to visit family, and one was a Coptic Christian whose family left Egypt just before the Arab spring but who still has family near Cairo, many of whom have had to leave their homes because of persecutions from Mohamed Morsi’s government. And then, of course, there were my girls who are southern, white Christians.

The significance of the mix was not lost on me. I leaned against the wall and looked at their different faces, their smiles, the way they joked with one another, laughed together, played music together, chatted about anime together, and I thought in a fleeting idealistic moment that this is how life should be, how it can be—until the innocence is lost, until they grow up.

I sighed and turned to leave, but before walking into the kitchen, I glanced back. I will never forget the pair of brown eyes looking up at me. The youngest girl in the room, just turned 13. The Coptic Christian. A tiny thing, skinny with thick black hair. I call her my little Egyptian princess, and she beams a toothy white smile whenever I say it. But there is something in her eyes that doesn’t smile—ghosts of loss, of persecution, of fear.

As the timer on the oven beeped, I looked back at her and smiled, touched by her in a way I couldn’t explain. Surprisingly, she jumped up and gave me a hug. Ignoring the beeping, I folded her small body into mine; I wanted to keep her there, keep her safe. I also wanted get the attention of the other girls and tell them, implore them, to look around and remember that moment. To remember what love looks like. To remember what peace feels like.

I thought of that moment today when I read an article about the fate of the Coptic Christians in Egypt and another one about how girls have been kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam and made to marry to their abductors.

For those young women and girls fortunate enough to escape their captors, their horrors were chillingly expressed by one of the authors of the CSI report before a US congressional committee in July 2012:

“Many who return home indicate that they were raped and told they could not go home because their families would never accept them back. Many are beaten; others are forced into domestic servitude. They are not allowed to leave where they are held without a member of their captor’s family keeping watch. They eventually are brainwashed into thinking the only way to be safe is to convert. Their families, who have been searching frantically for their daughters, sisters and wives — without any help from the police — often never discover their fate.”

Equally disturbing is that while the number of abduction cases has dramatically grown, the age of its victims has dramatically shrunk, with the typical age of abductees, according to an official with a Christian NGO, to now be 13-14 years of age.

One of those young girls is Sarah Ishaq Abdelmalek, a 14-year-old Coptic girl who disappeared in September 2012 after stopping at a bookstore on her way to school.

Sarah’s kidnapper was believed to be the 27-year-old Muslim bookstore owner, Mahmoud Abu Zied Abdel Gawwad, a married man and father who reportedly smuggled Sarah across the border into Libya. Despite an Egyptian prosecutor ordering Gawwad’s arrest in October 2012, the police have yet to arrest him.

Yet, that governmental inaction should come as little surprise to those who believe Sarah and girls like her to be the victims of a well-orchestrated plan to kidnap Coptic females, an operation run by Egyptian Salafist groups, Muslim businessmen and Egypt’s governing authorities.

After reading that story, I remembered those girls in my living room. The Christians. The Jew. The Muslim. The little Coptic Christian so loving, so vulnerable. I felt tears well up along with a sense of despair and shame. Ashamed that my country is supporting a government that allows this kind of violence against innocent people and that no one in America seems to care. And despair that there are ingrained beliefs that devalue human life and that the unguarded friendship I saw in my home among girls so very different and yet so much alike is a dream that will never come true in an adult world.

I hope I am wrong. I hope we don’t become uselessly distracted by issues like free birth control and SSM that pale in comparison to what girls like the Coptic Christians are facing. I hope America can be strong again so that peace can be a reality. I hope that can happen, but I hope against hope.

Dude was a stoner, according to his classmates at UMass, Dartmouth.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "frequently reeked of marijuana," his old dorm buddies told the Associated Press.

Just when you thought the killer couldn't be any more unlikable, you find out he was a hypocritical slouch who spent his time half-baked in the lead up to his murderous rampage against "the infidels."

I gotta ask: Does Allah offer a dispensation for junkies on jihad?

Hot off the AP wire:

U.S. intelligence has concluded "with some degree of varying confidence" that the Syrian government has twice used chemical weapons in its fierce civil war, the White House and other top administration officials said Thursday.

"Some degree of varying confidence"? I'll take 'Phrases I never want to hear from medical professionals or national security experts' for $1,000, Alex. Still, this was the infamous red line -- the point at which the Obama Administration promised there'd be consequences. And yet, in the very next paragraph:

However, officials also said more definitive proof was needed and the U.S. was not ready to escalate its involvement in Syria. That response appeared to be an effort to bide time, given President Barack Obama's repeated public assertions that Syria's use of chemical weapons, or the transfer of its stockpiles to a terrorist group, would cross a "red line."

Look, even if chemical weapons are being used, one can make a reasoned case as to why American national security interests aren't well served by getting involved any further. Fine. But that's not an argument for moving the red line. It's an argument for not having announced one in the first place. You only have to test the electric fence so many times before you come to the conclusion that you're just not going to get shocked.

I'm down here in humid Orlando, Florida, for the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank. It's an annual conference for right-of-center groups and activists. I'll be speaking on religious liberty at a panel discussion this afternoon. Be sure to say hello if you're one of the gathered throng.

Anyway, on the flight down I was thinking about this amazing blog post I read in the Washington Post yesterday.

Here's the deal. President Barack Obama was going to keynote Planned Parenthood's ritzy gala tonight. There is no bigger supporter of abortion rights, even the most extreme variety, than President Obama. And Planned Parenthood has returned the favor, helping out with unspeakable amounts of fundraising and public relations (the media will do anything for Planned Parenthood and if you doubt that, read this or just remember the Komen Foundation kerfuffle last year).

No sitting president has addressed Planned Parenthood, much less as their keynote gala speaker, before now. And this is all happening in the midst of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell's trial for killing 7 newborns and a mother and a Planned Parenthood official supporting after-birth abortions in testimony in Florida.

Yesterday, word came out that President Obama wasn't going to keynote the gala. Instead he'll address a smaller gathering on Friday.

Pro-life groups, as they do, trumpeted this backing out:

“Planned Parenthood last week admitted to knowing about the horrors going on inside Kermit Gosnell’s squalid Philadelphia clinic, but chose not to exercise its position as the leader in the abortion industry to put an end to the butchering of women and children,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion political action committee Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement. “No matter the reason for his backing out, it is certainly a good time to distance oneself from Planned Parenthood.”

At which point Juliet Eilperin, a Washington Post reporter, somehow thought her duty was to defend poor President Obama and lambast the pro-life groups trumpeting his backing out of the keynote:

Actually, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday the president had delayed his appearance at Planned Parenthood’s annual gathering so he could spend more time with victims of last week’s explosion in West, Texas. He will speak Friday at the group’s national conference.

But never let accuracy get in the way of buzz.

Actually? Actually?

How could someone be a reporter at a major media outlet and think that the word of Jay Carney settles ... anything? Yes, the pro-life groups are going to have their spin and the White House is going to have theirs. That's fine. If the pro-life groups want to say it's a big deal that Obama backed out of the gala and the White House want's to say it's not, the world will not end.

You simply quote the two sides and get out of the way.

We will never know the motivation of President Obama for canceling his keynote gala not just because motivation is complex but because reporters don't currently have the ability to see into anybody's heart.

Was it because he didn't want to be photographed in a tuxedo praising abortion while the Gosnell trial goes on? Was it because he was too busy with folks in Texas? Was it because it would be unseemly to be partying with the abortion backers while a town buries its dead? Was it because of something else?

That last line is not reporting. It's snark-infested opinion and it's not fitting for a media outlet that has already had some trouble (to understate wildly) on the Gosnell beat.

As a guest blogger here on Ricochet last fall and while out and about talking about my book, The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, I have been asked many intriguing and hard questions about language and dictionaries. At the American Enterprise Institute, for example, where I delivered a Bradley Lecture, Walter Berns, the constitutional expert, asked me about the word civilization.

He said he had, some years back, looked up this word in the Oxford English Dictionary and discovered that only in the mid-nineteenth century had civilization gained a plural form. Berns didn’t like the plural form. To him it suggested a trivialization of the underlying concept. He said he admired how the Founders had used civilization: as an antonym for barbarity, a word he thought had become lamentably rare.

This all sounded unlikely to me at the time, but I looked it up and found that Berns is correct. The first use of civilizations in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1865, though it is possible to find earlier instances using Google Books.

But it was not the case that before we began pluralizing civilization it amounted to a single unified thing. The phrase “civilized nations” made a very similar point in the eighteenth century and can be found in Federalist numbers 10 and 15. I also looked at the digital Thomas Jefferson papers found at the Library of Congress website, which show that Jefferson’s notion of civilization contained significant variety.

In an 1812 letter, Jefferson described a native American civilization: “That nation, consisting now of about 2,000 warriors, and the Creeks of about 3,000 are far advanced in civilization.” Discussing assassination and other underhanded methods of gaining power in 1789, he said, “All of these were legitimate principles in the dark ages which intervened between antient & modern civilization, but exploded & held in just horror in the 18th century.”

Jefferson, at times, thought of civilization as portable (wondering whether resettling blacks in Africa might help advance civilization there) or even lacking in countries that indisputably had it (in 1816 complaining about Britain and France, “the two most distinguished in the rank of nations, for science and civilization” behaving so lawlessly on the high seas).

So even before we started talking of civilizations with an s, at least one Founder talked of a plurality of types: ancient, modern, European, and native American. The antonym barbarity may be implicit in all of these uses (and explicit in many others), but there is an interesting story in the OED about its bad guy association with good guy civilization, which comes from Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson:

On Monday . . . I found him [Johnson] busy, preparing a fourth edition of his folio Dictionary…. He would not admit civilization, but only civility. With great deference to him, I thought civilization, from to civilize, better in the sense opposed to barbarity, than civility. 

The fourth edition of Johnson’s dictionary was contemporary with the American founding. It came out in 1773.

It seems to me strange to insist on the strength of such evidence that the Founders knew only one kind of civilization and thought anything that fell short of this single unified standard was to be called barbarity. In their own time, civilization was enough a neologism that Johnson restricted its definition to a legalistic sense (the process by which a criminal trial becomes a civil one) and hesitated, as Boswell recorded, to contrast civilization with barbarity.

It is hard to describe the invisible turning point in the minds of language users when civilization, a mass noun, suddenly became countable, but at some point in the eighteenth century civilization in the conventional sense of an advanced society became established. Then, in the nineteenth century, differing examples of civilization inspire the idea’s separation into multiple forms.

An 1825 article in The London Magazine shows an early use of civilization in the plural. In France, the author says, when a woman commits adultery, “civilization argues that no good can come from persecution and disclosure.” In England, “civilization . . . raises up in arms, the whole sex, to denounce the lapse of virtue.” “Thus,” the author concludes, “do civilizations differ.” The same article also listed contrasting examples of civilization from Arabia, India, and elsewhere.

Not coincidentally, the phrase American civilization goes from zero frequency to great prominence during this same period. Ralph Waldo Emerson used it as the title of a major essay in 1862, which observed, “Each nation grows after its own genius, and has a civilization of its own.” But Emerson wanted to modify the definition of American civilization. Writing during the second year of the Civil War, he argued that America could not be considered civilized so long as it tolerated slavery.

So, in the United States and elsewhere, while the word civilization was becoming countable and plural, the idea of civilization was undergoing a profound moral refinement. Its blessings were being extended and advanced as never before. Far from being trivialized, the idea of civilization was being rebuilt, amidst great suffering and mass graves, on a sounder moral and legal basis. With the abolition of slavery, freedom and civilization were now bound together, and America’s role in the world began to change. One can see this in the history of American civilization, a phrase that was never more common than in the twentieth century during World War Two.

In a case that calls to mind Melissa Harris Perry's recent opinionating on MSNBC about children and their relationship to their families and to the community ("We have to break through the kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or that kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities"), the Obama administration is trying to deport a German family, now resident in Tennessee, that sought refuge in the United States for the purpose of homeschooling their six children. Homeschooling is against the law in Germany and can result in fines, jail time, and the removal of children from their families.

The case has conjured an assortment of responses, ranging from the more benign "of course they should be allowed to stay; they're harmless" to the more hostile "if they were a little darker and had crossed the border illegally, they'd be given driver's licenses and voter registration cards". But the case isn't quite the no-brainer it appears to be.

In 2010, Judge Lawrence O. Burman granted asylum to the Romeikes, a devout Christian family, on the grounds that their desire to homeschool is one of the “basic human rights that no country has the right to violate.” But the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned Burman's ruling, arguing that German homeschoolers are not a persecuted group and thus not eligible for asylum. According to a piece up on Patheos, the US Attorney's decision can be explained as follows: 

The Board of Immigration Appeals needed to answer these questions: (1) Have the Romeikes suffered persecution? (2) If they did suffer persecution, was it because of their religion? (3) Alternatively, if they did suffer persecution, was it because of their membership in a particular social group? The Board of Immigration Appeals answered no to all these questions. First, it wasn’t persecution because the anti-homeschooling law was one of general application (not meant to target a specific group, but rather something that applied evenly across the board). Next, because there were secular reasons for the compulsory attendance law, even if it had been deemed persecution it wouldn’t have been persecution suffered because of their religion. Finally, the Board of Immigration Appeals found that German homeschoolers are not a particular social group within the meaning of the act. To be a social group, there must be “social visibility” and “particularity.” Homeschoolers are simply too “amorphous” to constitute a social group eligible for protection under the asylum law.

The decision has now been appealed to the 6th Circuit.

There is a broad consensus within the conservative universe on the side of the Romeikes, whose case has been taken up by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The case has touched a popular chord, with over 100,000 people signing an HSLDA petition placed on the White House website on the Romeike's behalf. But does it hold up?

The Patheos article says no. The religious freedom argument, they say, does not apply because 

asylum law does not depend on American constitutional rights. Just because you have a right under the American constitution, that does not mean you will receive asylum because your home country does not recognize that right. A prime example is the right to free speech. European countries tend to have a much narrower range of protections for speech, strongly limiting hate speech. Germany, for instance, forbids anyone from advocating for the Nazi party. Such a law would not survive a constitutional challenge in the United States. However, you cannot receive asylum in the United States if you are a Nazi sympathizer in Germany. This is because such a law would not be seen as “persecution” within the meaning of the asylum statute.

...the 6th Circuit should not see the compulsory attendance law as an attack on religious liberty. Germany is not out to smother any particular religious group or even all religious groups—its goal is a shared experience. In light of the problems Germany has had with the large number of Turkish immigrants not assimilating, it’s not difficult to see that the Romeike’s have just found themselves at odds with a law of general application. After all, under our own 1st amendment jurisprudence, laws of general applicability are not seen as violations of religious liberty.

Patheos also argues that the case could set a dangerous precedent:

If homeschooling were sufficient to grant you asylum in the U.S., what other laws of general applicability in other countries could get you asylum here? Remember my Nazi advocacy example? That would be the tip of the iceberg. What about countries where private tun ownership is barred? or countries where wearing the burka in public is banned? This would mean a complete transformation in the way the Department of Justice handles asylum cases.

The HSLDA's alternative argument, that the family is being persecuted because they are members of a particular social group, also does not bear scrutiny, according to Patheos:

[S]ocial groups must share “immutable characteristics.” “Immutable characteristics” is a term typically found in Equal Protection law and commonly refers to things like race or gender. HSLDA and its ilk has fought against expanding Equal Protection to include other characteristics such as sexual orientation, but now—since it suits them—they would like this phrase to be broadened to include “homeschooling,” because homeschooling is “fundamental to [asylum-seekers’] individual identities or consciences.” The Department of Justice rightly contends that homeschooling is not an immutable characteristic because you can simply stop homeschooling.

An addendum to the Patheos piece makes the point that Germany is the only country in Europe that bans homeschooling. If the Romeikes want to homeschool, they can do so anywhere in Europe other than Germany and avoid persecution. 

Where do you stand on this? Technically speaking, it appears the HSLDA is asking the US government to bend the rules on this family's behalf. Should it?

Keith Hennessey has high praise for the intelligence of George W. Bush, and having worked closely with the 43rd president, Keith Hennessey is probably in a position to speak authoritatively on Bush’s strengths, weaknesses and character. I have no doubt that Bush is smarter than he let on, but I have to wonder why he didn’t let on. It is one thing to cause your opponents to underestimate you—or misunderestimate you (I guess making the joke here is obligatory, or something)—but it is another to allow your opponents to openly disrespect you without any pushback, thus ensuring that your public persona is reduced to joke-level status. I appreciate that in addition to wanting to be underestimated, Bush also wanted to be seen as a good ol’ boy—the better public image to win votes with, my dear—but Bill Clinton managed to show that you can be both publicly whip smart and a good ol’ boy. I am sure that it was within Bush’s skill set to manage the same feat, which makes it all the more strange that he chose an alternative path.

Hennessey’s post is also interesting because of all of the scorn and scoffing that it engendered on the left. Ezra Klein informs us that he believes that George W. Bush was smart too, but that he was also a bad president; historians say so, after all! The fact that the historians in question are a politically biased bunch goes unmentioned by young Ezra. Also unmentioned by young Ezra—and by all of the other port-side commentators that I have seen who have weighed in on Hennessey’s post—is the glaring contradiction between (a) the assertion that Bush was a terrible president and Barack Obama is a vast improvement; and (b) the incontrovertible fact that on a host of very important issues, Barack Obama is serving out George W. Bush’s third and fourth terms.

Yesterday was a tough day on the road.  The drive from Dothan, Alabama, up through Gadsden and on to Albertville, Alabama, took entirely too long, due mainly to traffic in Montgomery that had me debating whether to rip the speedometer out and replace it with a calendar.  And if your fun meter isn't pegged after spending all day shifting gears like a madman, while dragging 76,000 pounds over hills and through a gazillion small towns with a fresh traffic light every 20 feet, then your meter needs adjusting.  And so will your legs, because after several hours of shifting a heavy clutch, your left leg will be over-developed, causing you to walk in circles for a few minutes until you learn to compensate.  Further adjustments to the fun meter can be made at the grocery warehouse, which took so long to unload 22 pallets of water that I could have drunk the stuff off the trailer quicker.   

Then, having derailed my load schedule, the warehouse guy regretfully informed me that they were rejecting three cases of the water because a couple of the bottles were leaking.  This latest bit of news went over about like a pregnant pole vaulter, because I had to then contact my company, who would contact the original shipper, who would determine where I should take the rejected freight.  Meanwhile, the next load, which absolutely positively no-kidding-really-we-mean-it had to be on time, was in jeopardy.  Finally, after a series of bureaucratic bloopers, my 14 hour clock was almost up, so I had to find a place to park for the night (one of the positive aspects of federal "Hours of Service" rules is that they impose a daily limit to the lunacy). 

My day was much improved upon reading the headline, "Trucking Industry Is Set to Expand Its Use of Natural Gas."  Finally, I thought, the magic of red beans and rice can be used to get up those hills without all the gear-shifting!   Alas, my hopes were but a fart in a whirlwind, because the New York Times article went on to extoll the virtues of the other natural gas as a means to power 18 wheelers.  I'm still fairly agnostic on the issue, though I have seen the occasional oasis of natural gas fueling stations spring up in a few truck stop parking lots.  I haven't seen anyone use them yet, so the most obvious result thus far is that they we've lost much needed parking spaces to accommodate the things.  (Note:  The good thing about trucking is that you take your hotel with you. The bad thing is that, some nights, you have no choice but to keep driving until you find a place to park your hotel, and parking can be tough to find.)

But back to the gas, where it seems that the trucking industry will do all it can to stay in the good graces of the environmental movement.  The Freightliner Cascadia I drive, for instance, sports a sticker declaring that the vehicle is in compliance with all current California emissions standards.  This includes the use of Diesel Exhaust Fluid, which requires its own little 21 gallon tank and mixes with the engine's exhaust to neutralize the emission to something on the order of water vapor.  Hence, there is no "smoke stack" on the truck.  The trade-off is yet another expense, in addition to fuel costs, at the pump (and the fact that if you run out of the stuff, the engine will, repeat - will, shut down).  

"Major shippers like Proctor & Gamble, mindful of both fuel costs and green credentials, are turning to companies with natural gas trucks in their fleets," says the article.   To sweeten the deal further, the federal government is evidently offering a 50-cent-per-gallon tax credit to those companies that use Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), though that tax credit is slated to expire at the end of this year.  Additionally, the NYT discloses, the Obama administration directed stimulus money to a Chinese company, ENN, which worked with another company to open an LNG fueling station in Salt Lake City.  This is the same bunch, of course, that picked Solyndra as a worthy investment, so the fact that they are pushing LNG initiatives is more than a little worrisome.  In fact, given their track record, it probably jeopardizes what might otherwise be a decent idea.  

For it's part, the company I drive for is taking a serious look at natural gas options as well.  "Natural gas-powered trucks were introduced into our fleet in 2011 and we are monitoring the performance," writes Schneider National, which goes on to specify that the technology is currently being used in "shorter haul work configurations," meaning dedicated accounts, intermodal operations, -- those areas restricted to defined routes within the limited LNG fueling infrastructure.  Additionally, according to Schneider, "Today, due to more limited horsepower, natural gas-powered heavy trucks are currently not a solution to be used for all terrains…"  I've seen reports that put the reduction in horsepower at approximately 20% for natural gas vs. diesel-powered 18 wheelers.  That's significant, especially when even with the powerful engines we currently use, I find myself repeating, "I think I can, I think I can," when pulling 80,000 pounds up the Pocono Mountains at a screaming 20 mph.  

Many years ago, Schneider was one of the first trucking companies to exploit Qualcomm technology, which allowed drivers to communicate with dispatchers via onboard  computers and allowed companies to use satellite technology to track and monitor their trucks and equipment.  Left to their own devices, the companies steadily improved the concept so that today, the computer attached to my dashboard allows for messaging with my dispatcher (including various macros by which I receive freight assignments), electronic logging, GPS navigation, vehicle performance monitoring, and even multi-media presentations and briefings from the company to the driver.  Similarly, left to its own devices, I'm confident that the industry can systematically and effectively integrate new fuel technology into the fleet while coordinating with fuel providers on infrastructure development.  

What I fear, is that the government will distort the process to the extent that success will be defined by the degree to which the industry can overcome red tape and still get anything done.  The same government, for example, which currently provides a 50-cent-per-gallon tax credit for the use of LNG, also imposes a 12.5 percent federal excise tax on the purchase of all new trucks including LNG trucks, which already cost nearly twice as much as a conventional diesel-powered truck.  Such self-defeating initiatives, at cross-purposes with themselves and with logic itself, will likely prove less than useful.   Add to that the general vulnerability of the natural gas shale drilling industry to the whims of the EPA, and the whole enterprise becomes a puzzle with extra pieces.  

T. Boone Pickins, himself a backer of natural gas as an alternative to diesel-powered trucks, predicts that in seven years, a majority of long-haul trucks will be powered by natural gas because 70 percent of the fleet operate in "defined regional areas," and a natural gas truck can go 600 miles on one fill-up.   As the driver of a truck that gets over 1,100 miles on a single fill-up, I respectfully submit that much work remains to be done and that the federal role should be minimized, unless we want the government do for natural gas trucks what the Education Department has done for scholastic achievement, or what the Energy Department has done for energy independence, or what the Transportation Department has done for road conditions, or what Obamacare is about to do for your access to a doctor. 

Deep inside President Obama’s new budget, there’s this fascinating little nugget: Under the White House proposal, the budget actually balances in the year 2055.

But wait, there’s more. While spending would be a couple of percentage points above its post-WWII average by then, revenue would be much higher, some four percentage points, roughly 22% vs. 18%. A record tax burden — with a bullet.

Now, as the Office of Management and Budget puts it: “These projections are not intended to be a prediction of future legislative action, nor are they intended to reflect explicit policy proposals for the years beyond 2023; rather, they are a mechanical extrapolation of the Budget policies.”

I sure hope not. See, one of the changes whose fiscal impact is “mechanically extrapolated” is Obama’s proposal to alter how Social Security benefits are calculated. He wants to base them on the so-called chain weighted CPI index instead of the current CPI. But while this switch would reduce cost-of-living increases and cut Social Security’s future shortfall by 15%, AEI’s Social Security guru, Andrew Biggs, isn’t a fan. He would prefer a chain weighted version of the CPI-E, which measures price changes for individuals over 65.

Biggs also highlights how the switch in the Obama budget would affect the US tax burden:

 Currently, most income tax credits and deductions, along with the dollar values attached to different income tax brackets, are indexed to inflation. Using a lower inflation adjustment would reduce the value of credits and deductions and push a greater share of workers’ incomes into the higher tax brackets. Result: higher taxes, and particularly so on low and middle class households. While the Social Security cuts max out at around 3 percent of annual outlays, the income tax increases continue forever. Over the first decade the chained CPI would cut spending by around $130 billion and raise taxes by around $100 billion, but over the second decade and beyond the chained CPI is predominantly a tax increase.

In other words, by lowering adjustments to the tax brackets, chained CPI would gradually make more of Americans’ earnings subject to higher tax rates. Bracket creep returns! Over the next decade, tax revenue would rise by $124 billion. But then it keeps on going. Average tax rates and tax revenues relative to the economy would soon rise to record levels. And as the Tax Policy Center notes, this would also be an ever-expanding middle-class tax hike.

Bottom line: One reason why the Obama budget balances in 2055 — massive tax increases. Biggs also offers a smart portfolio of Social Security reforms:

1. Republicans shouldn’t undercut the President so much as up the ante: propose Social Security reforms that protect the old and the poor but cut costs by reducing benefits for higher-income retirees and improving incentives for saving and longer work lives.

2. For instance, a universal flat benefit could eliminate poverty in old age at half the cost of the current Social Security program.

3. Automatic enrollment in retirement savings accounts could build real saving and investment.

4. Eliminating the payroll tax for older workers could encourage longer work lives, improving retirement security and boosting GDP.

5. Coupling a low initial benefit with COLAs that rise faster than inflation could both discourage early retirement and help the oldest retirees who are in greatest danger of poverty. The chained CPI isn’t the only Social Security reform on the table, and it’s certainly not the best one. Republicans should look further.

I'm not saying Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a point about decadent American society, but, well, this:

San Francisco may have banned the exposure of genitalia, but that’s not stopping the Department of Public Health from bringing back its giant Healthy Penis. Yes, the beloved six-foot-tall mascot for safe sex is literally coming out of the closet and will be back at parades and other city events – and this time he comes with free penis-shaped stress toys!

These are costumes.  Worn by city employees.  In parades.   To promote "awareness" of sexually transmitted diseases.  Okay, deep breath:

The health department sparked some controversy when it debuted the three characters, all penises but in different hues, back in 2002. But the penis costumes – worn by health department staff and aimed at encouraging gay and bisexual men to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases – became popular and have been copied in San Jose and Cleveland.

I'm not sure what the "controversy" could have been about, considering it's an initiative within the city of San Francisco.  Not girthy enough?  Insufficiently tattoed or pierced?  But I do find it interesting that the giant penis costumes have been copied in San Jose and Cleveland.  When your innovation finds purchase only in San Jose and Cleveland, perhaps it's time to rethink it.

And another thing: if the goal is to prevent disease -- which seems like a useful goal for something called a Department of Public Health -- then shouldn't they be using a Diseased and Pockmarked Penis costume rather than a Healthy Penis costume?  After all, when the anti-smoking guys want to spread their message, they use images of a diseased lung.  This is what smoking does to you!

In other words, they stigmatize the disease.  They make it something you'll change your behavior to avoid.

The Healthy Penis crowd have a different idea:

Susan Philip, director of STD prevention and control services for the health department, said estimates of HIV incidents in San Francisco are declining – but that gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia are on the rise. That’s in large part, she said, because many men choose to have sex with people of the same HIV status as themselves to forgo using condoms. It means they’re not protecting themselves against a host of other STDs.

It’s a serious subject, but Philip said she hopes the funny, eye-catching campaign can bring some attention to the problem.

“It is a light hearted, fun way to talk about an important health issue,” she said. “It sticks with people.”

I'll let that last sentence pass without comment.

But the idea that it should be "fun" and "light-hearted" suggests that the people behind this are a little less interested in having an impact and a little more interested in cavorting around in a giant penis costume.  

Wanna meet hot babes while avoiding the risk of rejection? There's an app for that! as they say.

In our feature story today at The College Fix, Amelia Evrigenis writes about a new smartphone app called Tinder. College kids everywhere are using it to find hook-up partners online.

Apparently, the main appeal of the app is its ability to eliminate the sting of rejection, while constantly boosting users' self-esteem by telling them how "hot" they are.

Tinder, the latest technology-driven flirting crutch, has transferred the collegiate hook-up scene to cyberspace, where today’s 20-somethings – raised in a culture with “participation trophies” and “there’s no wrong answers” – can find possibilities for meaningless sex without fear of rejection.

“Tinder eliminates the hurt of getting turned down,” the company’s spokeswoman, Alexa Manteen, is oft-quoted as saying.

These Tinder-fueled one-night stands, which epitomize romance upon college campuses, have become incredibly popular. Launched in October at USC, the smart-phone application has since been “downloaded by millions of millennials” and “helped make more than 20 million matches,” the Los Angeles Times reported in March.

I’ve heard it once, and I’ve heard it again: “Tinder got me laid.”

Here’s the way it works: Tinder is a smart-phone application, and users download it and form a Tinder account with pictures taken from their Facebook profile. Next they elect a radius of 10 to 100 miles from which potential “matches” can be pulled.

Then the game begins.

Pictures of other Tinder users located within the radius appear on the phone screen. The application displays the potential match’s first name, age, and the number of shared Facebook interests in addition to photos. The Tinder player proceeds to tap a green heart button to “hot” the individual, or hits a red X to “not.” A new match appears, and the cycle repeats. When two Tinder users “hot” each other, the application notifies each of them that they are a match, and allows them to message each other. If the “hotted” individual doesn’t reciprocate the sentiment, the secret is safe with Tinder.

The fragile, untested egos of Dr. Spock's kids are stroked by the beeps and buzzes of the phones in their pockets. Looks like the philosophy of positive reinforcement has found its ultimate fulfillment in the loveless sexual wasteland of modern college life.

Meanwhile the prospect of knowing real love, which by its nature demands the absolute risk of the human heart, grows a little slimmer for this lonely generation.

"Tinder"--it's an ironic homonym for a app that was tailor-made to facilitate relationships devoid of human feeling.

There are varying suggestions about how the country can make itself safer. Tom Friedman in the New York Times:

UNTIL we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men. 

With all our warts, we have built a unique society — a country where a black man, whose middle name is Hussein, whose grandfather was a Muslim, can run for president and first defeat a woman in his own party and then four years later a Mormon from the opposition, and no one thinks twice about it. With so many societies around the world being torn apart, especially in the Middle East, it is vital that America survives and flourishes as a beacon of pluralism.

It is interesting to see someone insist that pluralism is what will make us more attractive to those inclined to bigoted ideology. The example given above was apparently insufficiently impressive. 

Rebuilding our strength has to start with healing our economy. 

Again, someone who finds holy justification for blowing up a child might be dissuaded by signs of robust animal spirits at work in the economy, but these are material things, insufficient to fill a spiritual void. Or so we’re always told, anyway.  

We’re trying to put America back on a sustainable growth track that will expand employment, strengthen our fiscal balance sheet to withstand future crises and generate resources to sustain the most needy and propel the next generation. That requires three things: We need to keep investing in the engines of our growth — infrastructure, government-financed research, education, immigration and regulations that incentivize risk-taking but prevent recklessness. 

I don’t know how you invest in immigration, and as far as education goes, the bombers attended a good school. It’s possible that someone en route to deliver a bomb would see a newspaper kiosk, read a headline that said new bank regulations would mandate greater capital reserves and forbid certain speculative ventures, and think: this was the sign from God I was looking for. I shall stay my hand. 

So what to do?  We need a more “radical center” — one much more willing to suggest radically new ideas to raise revenues, not the “split-the-difference-between-the-same-old-options center.” And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.

A bigoted idiot reads of a bomb going off in a place where people have simply assembled for pleasure, and suspects Islamists. A bigoted opportunist uses the history of the bombers to question immigration. But if one’s mind draws a line from the horror to a need for carbon tax, that’s Nobel-quality intellectual reasoning.

The House Committees on the Armed  Services, Judiciary, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Government Reform released a damning interim progress report on their investigation into the Benghazi terror attack in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stephens and three other men were killed:

• Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013. 
• In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department. 
• Contrary to Administration rhetoric, the talking points were not edited to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior administration officials.
• All of this seems to conflict with what the Obama Administration told the American public in the thick of the president's ultimately successful re-election campaign.

It gets better:

"The Administration willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a political demonstration caused by a YouTube video. U.S. officials on the ground reported – and video evidence confirms – that demonstrations outside the Benghazi Mission did not occur and that the incident began with an armed attack on the facility," the report says. "Senior Administration officials knowingly minimized the role played by al-Qa'ida-affiliated entities and other associated groups in the attacks, and decided to exclude from the discussion the previous attempts by extremists to attack U.S. persons or facilities in Libya."

I get why the administration behaved the way it did. And it was so successful that I imagine this template will be repeated in future damaging incidents. But Stephens and his colleagues deserve better.