I'm long past my self consciousness about being a DWTS fan. I'm a TV fan and it's a major live TV achievement. Bristol Palin made the finals last night beating out Brandy, who I thought should win the whole thing. However, I actually only vote for Bristol. Why? She's adorable and real. Don't we all want to reward that? She makes no effort to be anyone other than herself. Who are these other celebrities? Who knows? They're paid to be phony.

The P.D. that hired me as a morning host in L.A. said people are evolving away from phony. They wouldn't tolerate another traditional morning show broadcasty voice in L.A. Mine sounds like Kermit the frog. Was he right? Maybe, but perhaps more ahead of his time than anything.

I like Sarah Palin because she's adorable and real, just like her daughter, and her whole family. I'm evolving away from phony, for sure. I chose the "real" Ramones over KISS in high school.

I wonder if the message from Season 11's DWTS is that real is going to win over phony in 2012 too. No matter what kind of skill set you think the Palin's come to the table with, watch out. They are able to get tons and tons of votes from people all across America.

I didn't realize how much I missed Dick Cheney's tart humor until I heard his speech at the ground-breaking of the new George W. Bush Presidential Library.

I have a piece up at Conservative Home on how the new GOP Congress is better poised to handle a likely budget showdown with a Democratic President than the post-94 Gingrich Congress was. Two of the three reasons I lay out have to do with the increased strength of the conservative movement, in that Americans, and the new GOP caucus, are far more skeptical of government spending than they were in the mid-1990s, and the fact that conservatives now have a great many more outlets for getting their message out. Both the US version of Conservative Home -- just launched this week by my White House colleague Ryan Streeter -- and Ricochet are good examples of those new outlets. These sites will make the job of House Republicans easier when they get into the inevitable high profile fights with President Obama and the Senate Democrats.

BY MATTHEW BOYLE

Former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta, now the head of the Center for American Progress, called on President Obama to push forward with his agenda using federal agencies and executive branch power Tuesday, even though Democrats were dealt a blow in the recent midterm elections. Podesta said the American people want the president to move forward with his agenda.

“I think most of the conversation since the election has been about how President Obama adjusts to the new situation on Capitol Hill,” Podesta said. “While that’s an important conversation, it simply ignores the president’s ability to use all levels of his power and authority to move the country forward.”

Citing his experience in Clinton’s White House after the GOP House takeover of 1994, Podesta said Obama’s administration “can and should take” the specific measures detailed in a report released by the Center for American Progress, utilizing all the tools at its disposal to circumvent Congress in a way to keep his agenda moving forward.

“One of the best ways for the Obama administration to achieve results of that nature, in the short term, is through substantial executive authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta said. “As noted in the Constitution and the laws of the United States give the president the ability and the responsibility to act as the chief executive using authorities granted to all presidents such as executive orders, rule-makings, agency management and public-private partnerships.”

Even though he said that he disagreed with why former President George W. Bush went about using them, he defended how the former president used executive actions in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.

“No one can doubt that President Bush, also, when he took office in 2001, made extensive use of his executive authorities,” Podesta said. “Sometimes I agreed with it, often I didn’t, but he was able to move the policy agenda forward using executive authority.”

In an April 2005 speech about the importance of checks and balances in government, however, Podesta opposed the president expanding his executive boundaries.

“I’m convinced that Americans want the president and the Congress to work together to ensure that judges who populate the federal bench and who serve with life tenure are highly qualified men and women whose views are within the constitutional mainstream,” Podesta said in the April 2005 speech, according to a transcript obtained by The Daily Caller. “The filibuster is a means towards that end. Why? Because it encourages presidents to consult with the Senateand to name moderate, mainstream nominees who will judge cases fairly and without bias, and who will have no difficulty garnering the votes of 60 senators that they need to be confirmed. By removing the safeguard offered by the filibuster, the nuclear option would seriously and perhaps irreparably damage an institution that has functioned since its inception under customs and traditions that ensure an atmosphere of careful deliberation and mutual respect.”

Podesta’s staff wouldn’t return TheDC’s request for comment on his change of heart regarding the president’s use of executive power.

(This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller)

The New York Times Magazine has written a profile that leaves me loving Sarah Palin!

And (maybe this is wishful thinking) something in there made me think Sarah is reading a little Claire Berlinski and maybe even a little Peter Robinson?

I continue to read all that I can get my hands on — and reading biographies of, yes, Thatcher for instance, and of course Reagan ...

This is actually remarkable. As almost everyone knows, the city of Chicago is America’s nearest thing to a one-party state; probably only San Francisco rivals it. That won’t change in my lifetime. What is a bit less known is that over the past 20 years or so, the vast Chicago suburbs and exurbs, which in an earlier era sent to Congress such Republican stalwarts as Phil Crane, Henry Hyde, and Dennis Hastert, have become increasingly firm Democratic territory, with only the odd moderate or two, like Mark Kirk, holding on to House seats. It was this shift that essentially transformed Illinois from a purple state into a blue one.

Well. This year, Republicans held their existing seats comfortably and picked up two more on election night. And now comes word that the final suburban congressional district – IL-8, which had been in Democratic hands since 2004 – has been won in a squeaker not only by a Republican, but by a Tea Party Republican – Joe Walsh. Republicans now control the entire Illinois suburban congressional delegation. Folks, if a Tea Party Republican can win in the Chicago suburbs – in Obama’s home state – there are a lot more potential gains out there, given the right candidates and the right message.

I had a great time co-hosting the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. Absent Rob Long and James Lileks, it wasn’t quite as raucous as usual, but thanks to guests Claire Berlinski and Steve Manacek, I thought we had an entertaining and occasionally informative program. Rob and James are on a National Review cruise, and apparently the phone lines were less important to them than the buffet lines, but they should return next week.

In any event, I appreciate the opportunity to participate, and I look forward to hearing Rob and Peter and James next time. Meantime, I’ll return to my broadcast specialty: selling vowels.

What is it with the conservative columnists who write for the New York Times? Is there some secret clause in their contracts requiring them to take a certain number of shots at Fox News personalities per month? Just this week we’ve had Ross Douthat complaining that conservative criticisms of the initial Bowles-Simpson deficit commission proposal came mostly from “know-nothing television entertainers” (with a link to a Sean Hannity video clip) – while acknowledging, a mere two paragraphs later, that the proposal would leave the government’s share of GDP “at the highest level in modern American history.” Memo to Mr. Douthat: it is hardly evidence of know-nothingism that a conservative might take exception to a proposal that endorses the biggest role for government in modern American history.

Then there was this gem from David Frum:

Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. They wrap themselves in closed information systems based upon pretend information. In this closed information system, banks can collapse without injuring the rest of the economy, tax cuts always pay for themselves and Congressional earmarks cause the federal budget deficit. Even the market collapse has not shaken some conservatives out of their closed information system. It enfolded them more closely within it. This is how to understand the Glenn Beck phenomenon. Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation. As black Americans are crushed under Depression-level unemployment, the administration’s policies are condemned by some conservatives as an outburst of Kenyan racial revenge against the white overlord.

One wonders how long it took for Mr Frum to cram that much nonsense into a single paragraph. Where to begin? Are there conservatives who believe giant global financial firms can fail without injuring the rest of the economy in any way? I doubt it. There probably are some who believe such injury may be temporary and less-than-catastrophic, and therefore an acceptable price to pay for maintaining freedom for risk-takers to fail – but that’s not Mr. Frum’s claim. Tax cuts “always” pay for themselves? There may be a few zealots who believe this, but it is hardly true of “conservatives” as a class, which is what Mr. Frum purports to describe. Conservatives believe that earmarks “cause the federal budget deficit”? Oh, come on. And the free enterprise system may or may not be “under assault,” but soaring corporate profits by themselves are hardly evidence that it is not – “corporatism,” or state-controlled capitalism, can be consistent with very healthy corporate profits, at least for a time.

The common message here is simple. It’s directed at these writers’ own overwhelmingly left-wing peer group, and it says, in bold italics, “Hey, guys, we may be more conservative than you, but at least we’re not part of that Palin-loving, Fox-watching rabble out there. It’s okay to invite us to dinner parties.”

All this sort of thing does is create completely unnecessary fissures among people who are fundamentally on the same side on most important issues. The vast majority of conservative – even Tea Party – voters do not despise or resent intelligent, talented, educated people – the so-called “elites.” They do resent the condescension and “separatism” of the voices who are continually disparaging the modes of thought and expression – often in an exaggerated and highly over-simplified form – of those who are less “elite.”

And there’s no need for it. Highly intelligent guys like Douthat and Frum ought to be able to recognize and acknowledge that Hannity, Beck, and others are speaking to a different audience; their style and rhetorical devices are going to be different. But the vote of each member of that audience counts for exactly the same as that of a New York Times editorial writer – and there are a lot more of them.

The excesses and failures of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime have given conservatives an opportunity (which they may yet well squander) to establish a practical, durable governing center-right majority. Doing so will require building and maintaining an effective coalition not only across regions and economic classes, but across groups with different cultural affinities and education levels. Creating tensions and resentments across those groups is not helpful.

According to the WSJ Law Blog, the New York Court of Appeals is set to deliberate a case on the perils of golf. Here's the Wall Street Journal's Ashby Jones on the background of the case:

You couldn’t teach a better lead paragraph in an article than the one in this AP story, out Monday.

It reads:

"Two doctors are playing golf on Long Island. One hits such a poor shot from the rough that it hits his partner, standing somewhere off to the side, in the head. Whose fault is that?"

Whose fault indeed? Should the victim have to suffer the consequences of the shot, having assumed the risk of being struck by a golf ball simply by stepping onto the course? Or, should the shot-taker be held liable for not having abided by the custom of yelling “Fore!” after a lousy (and potentially dangerous) shot?

Richard is the expert on torts, so I await his opinion. But my view is that anyone who steps foot on a golf course knowingly puts his life into the hands of others.

I've never understood the attraction of hitting a small white ball a great distance, and then walking to it, and then hitting it again. For hours and hours at a time. Lots of sports involve hitting balls on a field or court, but they usually involve vigorous exercise.

Golf must score for the highest expenditure of dollars and time per calories burnt. The only thing to recommend it is the clothing. The Long Island doctors should try my game, squash, where two people with long racquets trap themselves in a small room and hit a hard rubber ball--one gets hit by the ball, racquets, and limbs all the time.

Just in case we needed a reminder, here's what the other side thinks of us. It's also, I think, an attempt at humor by Tina Fey, who just received the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain prize for humor. This was part of her acceptance speech:

And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women - except, of course --those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape 'kit 'n' stuff. But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know - actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."

Interestingly, PBS cut out this part of her quote for the televised version of the affair.

"It was not a political decision," responded Peter Kaminsky, one of the broadcast's executive producers. "We had zero problems with anything she said."

Well, of course. They love everything she does and says! However, the Kennedy Center receives state and federal tax dollars. So does PBS. When will taxpayers get a say in what kinds of garbage our money supports?

Warren Buffett: grateful citizen or crony capitalist?

In a pandering op-ed published in today's New York Times, Buffett basically massages the feet of his buddies in government for everyone to see. In the form of an open-letter, he thanks Uncle Sam for bailing out Wall Street and Big Business, thus saving the entire economy from disaster.

When the crisis struck, I felt you would understand the role you had to play. But you’ve never been known for speed, and in a meltdown minutes matter...Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered... Just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic — and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.

...I would like to commend a few of your troops. In the darkest of days, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch. And though I never voted for George W. Bush, I give him great credit for leading, even as Congress postured and squabbled.

Former New York Sun managing editor Ira Stoll, writing at his blog FutureOfCapitalism.com, offers his two cents on Buffett's letter:

The bottom of the article says, "Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company."

He could have signed it instead, "Warren Buffett, the largest crony capitalist in the world, shareholder of GE, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, M&T Bank, and American Express, as well as competitor of private equity and hedge fund firms that have been threatened with new taxes and regulations, and behind the scenes, insider adviser to most of the government officials mentioned above."

Also noteworthy: Buffett dropped this line on Squawkbox this morning: "If the government hadn't acted, I would be eating Thanksgiving dinner at McDonald's."

What do you make of Buffett's big wet kiss? This isn't the first time that Buffett has stepped in as the American government's unofficial propagandist.

As I was unpacking yesterday, I came across a book I've been trying to find since last year, a collection of short stories by Ben Fountain called Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. Don't be put off by the title: His talent is the real thing.

The protagonist of Asian Tiger is a washed-up Texas golf pro flown out by the Burmese generals to help General Myint bring down his handicap. It captures the country--the eerie sad beauty of it, the ignominy of the generals--far better than I could now at such a remove of distance and time.

Sonny stepped off the plane in Rangoon -- Yangon in the official, post-imperialist nomenclature -- got a whiff of the dense alluvial air, and thought: home? No, he was about as far as he could get from Linwood and the ditchwater funk of the gulf coast, but Rangoon’s scruffy urban mass had a small-town feel, its streets shot through with a rural ethic. The smog harbored startling hits of orchids and manure. Rusting corrugated roofs and moss-streaked stucco seemed to mediate a timeless, more organic state of mind. Roosters could be heard at all hours of the day, and even rush hour lacked world-class conviction, a tinny whirr and chutter that teased his ear like the plinking of thousands of pinball machines.

From the generic swank of his hotel room, he could watch Chinese junks gliding by on the river, a wonder surpassed only by the locals themselves, slender, graceful people with cashew-colored skin and hair that flashed midnight blue in the sun. And here is another wonder: they didn’t hate him! Poor people who bought their cigarettes by one’s and two’s, and yet they didn’t hold their hardship against him, this loud, lumbering, pink-skinned American whose sheer unsubtlety made the natives cringe and giggle.

His portrait of the generals in particular suggests the feeling I had about them from reading the New Light of Myanmar. (This is obviously a publication much like the Vientiane Times, for which I used to work.)

Ah, the generals -- after trying to chat them up at the nightly banquets Sonny had come away actually pitying them. What was the point of having power if you were comatose? They were weird little guys, homely men with pot bellies and wispy, tinted hair and all the liquid charm of formaldehyde. Sonny took a seat amid the chill of their anti-charisma and listened to General Hla make the pitch: they wanted Sonny to become Myanmar’s ambassador of golf, their consultant on matters of tourism and sport and their host to visiting dignitaries and businessmen. As compensation he would be provided a car, a house, reasonable expense money, and a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a month.

“We also request,” Hla added as his colleagues came to the edges of their seats, “that you please be available to give us private instruction.”

Re-reading that story made me terribly sad for Burma all over again. It's easy to be romantic about Aung San Suu Kyi; she's obviously the stuff fables are made of. But I doubt she has what it takes to go beyond the role of beautiful, imprisoned symbol. I wish I could say otherwise, but my intuition says she's not going to be able to hold the opposition together; and having been released, she'll quickly lose the luster associated with martyrdom. The opposition is already fracturing.

If you're interested in books that bring Southeast Asia to life, I also recommend Stan Sesser's Lands of Charm and Cruelty: Travels in Southeast Asia. I misplaced my copy of that years ago, but it's outstanding.

Speaking of charm, cruelty, and Southeast Asia, I note once again that Anwar Ibrahim is not Suu Kyi's Malaysian analogue. He's doing the rounds comparing himself to her. It's nonsense. Yes, he's been imprisoned under what are obviously spurious charges, for obviously political reasons. And yes, this is deplorable. But the parallels end there. What on earth is this business of calling him a "noted democracy advocate in his own right?" How did he get a reputation for that? On the golf course, I suppose. It does seem as if he's been playing golf with the right people.

It's all so sadly craven. By all means, object to Malaysian political corruption and the political use of its judicial system. I surely do. But it's grotesque to play make-believe about someone like Anwar. He's the co-founder and director of the DC-based International Institute of Islamic Thought, which is under investigation for terrorist financing. (He's invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned about this.) His connections to the most extreme fringes of political Islam are extensive and extremely well-documented. He's not a hero of democracy. He's yet another deeply unpleasant, corrupt Southeast Asian politician, and what's more, he's mobbed up with the anti-heros of global political Islam, and has been since the beginning of his career.

Genuine heros of democracy are few and far between in Southeast Asia. Being locked up on ridiculous sodomy charges doesn't make you into one--it just disqualifies the people who locked you up.

Anyway, Fountain's story really captures something about the stupid cruelty and corruption of the Burmese generals, and about Southeast Asia generally.

Photo by John McDermott, and the whole gallery is stunning.

With Rob and James cruising the Bahamas this week, we draft Pat Sajak to guest host with Peter. He reminisces about Bill Buckley and Merv Griffin, and let's us in on what's it's like to be a celebrity conservative. Then, Claire Berlinski joins to discuss our junk and the TSA, royal weddings, and the the inside story behind her cross town move. Finally, Ricochet contributor Steve Manacek stops by to talk about the Deficit Commission and why we should be afraid. Very afraid.

The following bullets are approved by the TSA for in flight use:

• We don't have a copy of Pat's photo of Reagan but we do have this one of a young Peter Robinson posing with his former boss.
  
• Many episodes of William F. Buckley's Firing Line are now available on YouTube.
• Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan is a co-educational, liberal arts college known for being the first American college to prohibit in its charter all discrimination based on race, religion, or sex; its refusal of government funding; and its monthly publication, Imprimis. National Review has described Hillsdale as a "citadel of American conservatism. Ricochet contributor Paul Rahe is a member of the faculty.
• Among other things, Merv Griffin was a band leader, a talk show host, and the creator of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
• All of Pat Sajak's recent Ricochet posts are on his profile page.
• Claire Berlinski's recent move is well documented on the pages Ricochet.
• San Diego's John Tyner coined the phrase "Don't touch my junk." Videos of his encounter with the TSA are on his blog.
• Royal weddings. Really?
• John Burns reported for the New York Times from Baghdad for most of the Iraq war. He is now based in London. His archives may be accessed here.
• Hey John Boehner: Man up!
• The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's Power Point presentation may be viewed here.

Music from this week's episode:

• Let Yourself Go by James Brown
• Planet Claire by The B-52's

The direct link to this week's episode is here, but we'd really love it if you'd subscribe. Just because The Beatles like iTunes doesn't mean you do, so visit our Feedburner page for a number of other subscription options.

The Ricochet Podcast is sponsored by Encounter Books. This week's featured title is Gray Lady Down: What The Decline and Fall of The New York Times Means For America by William McGowan. Available at EncounterBooks.com and at Amazon.com.

Vlad Putin seeks citizen participation in a matter of national importance: naming his new puppy. RT reports:

Vladimir Putin has asked Russians to submit their choices of a name for a puppy—a Bulgarian shepherd – which was a present received by the Russian Prime Minister during his recent trip to the Balkan nation.

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Tuesday evening that the Prime Minister has decided to rename the puppy, originally named Yorgo, but has not yet come up with a new name. Thus, all Russians can submit dog names via the Internet and Putin will look though them all, the press secretary said.

I'm not a Russian, so Putin won't accept my suggestion, but I propose "Tolstoy" (толстой). The name would be a nod to the golden age of Russian literature as well as an apt description of the pup's chubby physique.

A Congressional ethics panel found Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel guilty of 11 of 12 allegations of violating House ethics rules.

Rangel, who had boycotted his own hearing a day earlier, was not in the chamber when the committee chairwoman, California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, announced the verdict.

"We have tried to act with fairness, led only by the facts and the rule of law," said Lofgren.

Rangel had been facing 13 charges, but the bipartisan committee combined two of the charges.

Rangel was acquitted on the charge of bringing discredit upon the House of Representatives.

Continue reading at www.nydailynews.com.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has once again demonstrated he doesn't understand the U.S. nearly so well as he thinks he does, giving an interview to the Washington Post that calls for an end to U.S. military operations in his country. It's getting lots of attention for having aggravated General Petraeus, who seems to be the Afghan President's sole ally in the Obama Administration. I didn't read Karzai's meaning that way -- it sounded to me more like him wishing the time for operations was over, and the understandable frustration of a political leader that has to justify night raids by foreign military forces (we've tripled the number of such raids in the last few months as part of the surge).

What really did alarm me about the Karzai interview was his allegation that the U.S. “rigged the elections.” I don’t question the validity of the statement, mind you. The 2009 Presidential elections were so fraudulent that the United Nations’ #2 man (an American) resigned rather than validate the results. What’s so breathtaking about Karzai’s complaint is that he was the beneficiary! The rigged election is what returned him to power, and the rigging was not done by the U.S., but by his henchmen and politically-stacked electoral commission. The same can be said of the recent Parliamentary elections, the results of which have not yet been announced.

The Obama Administration brushed Presidential election complaints under the rug because of the difficulty of organizing a new election, the embarrassment of complicity – you’ll recall the President boldly stated at the conclusion of his first Afghanistan review (March of 2009) that leaders would no longer get a “blank check” -- and the belief that keeping Karzai in place would facilitate a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces. That election is widely seen as having delegitimized both democratic government and U.S. motives among Afghans.

There’s a great book about soldiering called Once An Eagle, by Anton Myrer. In it, the hero concludes that “the romantic, spendthrift moral act is ultimately the practical one – the practical, expedient, cozy-dog move is the one that comes to grief." The Obama Administration allowing rigged elections in Afghanistan is yet one more demonstration of that wisdom.

The bureaucrats in Brussels, as I noted in an earlier post, are pushing the Irish to accept a bailout. The Irish response? For now, at least, they're pushing right back, insisting that they can sort out their troubles on their own.

I myself find this thrilling--just thrilling. A great people, the Irish have chosen to demonstrate not just the old, wonderfully lyrical approach to life but practicality, determination, and a mastery of free markets. For a beautiful summary of what the Irish are thinking, take a look at the opinion piece that Irishman Oliver O'Connor, a former advisor to the Irish government, published last week in the Wall Street Journal:

Some recent headlines and commentary seem to suggest that the Irish economy has all but collapsed. It hasn't, and it doesn't have to...

Irish people now have a...track record of innovating, marketing, selling, manufacturing, raising capital, and making deals in a range and depth of global markets than they ever have before...

Go hat in hand to Brussels? Seek dependency?

The crash did happen, but Ireland's economy still has a pulse, at least as strong as many of its larger partners around the world. Its debts are massive, but manageable—no one has proven yet that they are not.

This is a playable hand. The financial engineering required to restore the Irish budget to health is doable, and is being done. Now, it's over to the political engineering, whose highest achievement would be to let the Irish people do what they do best: adjust and thrive.

Irish history has its glorious moments. We could be witnessing another.

I suspect many people here are do-it-yourself types. The type of person who sees a problem, imagines a solution, thinks, "How hard can it be?" and then digs right in.

I also suspect, however, that it might take a really special kind of person to actually pull such things off flawlessly and to find the process gratifying to boot (Paules comes to mind).

I wonder, instead, how many of you will share a story here (mostly just to make me feel better) that negates this type of approach. In other words, when have the words, "How hard can it be?" came back to bite you?

I'll start, since one is so very fresh in my mind:

1. Thinking that cutting your children's hair yourself will save time and money.

We just recorded the Ricochet podcast, and because we're pundits, we did our best to make something out of the announcement of Prince William's engagement to Kate Middleton. It is, after all, the news of the day. We tried, folks, but I think you'll see that none of us had strong feelings about it.

Should conservatives think anything at all about this event? Is there an angle we're missing? I guess I'm opposed to spending taxpayer money on it. But I don't feel all that strongly about it, really.

In a few minutes, the President of the United States will bestow on Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta the Medal of Honor. Fox, I believe, is carrying it live. I wrote about it today in the Wall Street Journal.

Of the eight men who have been awarded the MOH from this war, Sgt. Giunta is the first to survive the action that earned it for him. Check out his story on the official army page.

Remember, the Medals are for *us*, not for people like Sgt. Giunta. He doesn't need any medal to remind him of the price of freedom. I believe the ceremony is beginning soon, but the army website provides all the information. They will publish the citation and the president's speech after they are read aloud in a few minutes.

Linguist and author John McWhorter states that a seemingly fool-proof method exists for teaching poor, disadvantaged (and, yes, black) students to read at or above grade level. It’s been around for almost 40 years. The method is called Direct Instruction. But it’s not being embraced by school districts. (More on that later).

In a better America, schools that do not use Direct Instruction to teach kids from poor households should be seen as vaguely criminal. People should point them out as they drive by them, like crack houses.

In the early 70s, the Nixon administration commissioned Project Follow Through which determined that Direct Instruction was dramatically more effective than other types of literacy instruction. The DI teaching method is based on “sounding out words rather than learning them whole and on a tightly scripted format emphasizing repetition and student participation.”

The statistics are pretty amazing:

A half-day preschool program in Illinois showed that … DI can teach even 4-year-olds to understand sounds, syllables and rhyming. The students entered kindergarten reading at a second-grade level, with their mean IQ jumping 25 points. No fewer than nine other sites nationwide yielded results of that caliber. … Decade after decade, DI has continued to kick serious butt all across this great land. Houston, Baltimore, Milwaukee -- you name it; I am unaware of anywhere it hasn't worked.

But we all know words like “tightly scripted” and “repetition” give progressive educators the willies. They sound too much like rigid and old-fashioned. Ew.

Instead, as McWhorter points out,

... conventional teacher-training programs … keep alive the canard that teaching poor kids to read is an elusive, complex affair requiring a peculiarly intense form of superhuman dedication and an ineffable brand of personal connection with young people. The poor child, the popular wisdom tells us, needs freedom to move about the classroom, or Ebonics, or less soda, or more leafy green vegetables, or any number of things other than being taught how to sound out words and read. Distracted by the hardships in their home lives, surely they cannot be reached by just having the facts laid out for them the way lawyers' kids can be reached.

Super genius, arbiter of all matters cerebral, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, has pronounced that the world's favorite target for derision, Sarah Palin, lacks the intellectual curiosity to be president.

I am really tired of liberals implying they have a monopoly on intelligence. Their claimed compassion monopoly is tough enough to endure, but the intellectual thing is getting old too. If you're conservative, you're presumptively moronic. If you're a Christian conservative, you're stupid on stilts.

Liberal politicians always seem to have the "trappings" of intelligence, the IQ street cred, as it were. The intelligentsia depicted Brahmin John Kerry as Mensaesque. Jimmy Carter was reputed to be the smartest that guy ever to wear a pair of Buster Brown shoes.

But beyond the lib stereotypes, what about the premise underlying Murkowski's lament, i.e., that robust intellectual curiosity is an essential qualification for the job of the presidency? And, while we're at it, what is intellectual curiosity? I'm curious.

Murkowski apparently attempted to edify us on those questions. She said, "You know, she was my governor for two years, for just about two years there, and I don't think that she enjoyed governing. I don't think she liked to get down in the policy." Murkowski went on to explain that she would prefer a candidate who "goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about how we're going to deal with" important issues.

To quote the Church Lady, "Isn't that special?"

Sounds to me like she's describing a policy wonk, not someone who's intellectually curious. In fact, as I think about this isn't that what the lib elite really means when they talk about intellectual curiosity? Don't they mean people who recreationally ruminate about policy?

It seems to me that the libs' ideal president is an academician or someone who cogitates with the best of them. But are these types really best suited for the big issue decisiveness that great presidents have often displayed? Or are they better equipped for "nuance," minutia and intellectual handwringing?

We know that Jimmy Carter -- the smartest guy in every room ever constructed by carpenters inside and outside Habitat for Humanity -- was not an effective president. He was terrible -- not just because his policies were disastrous, but because he was woefully unsuited for the job.

I'm sure all libs would agree that Carter possessed an abundance of intellectual curiosity, so what does that say about the relationship of this attribute and effective executive governance?

Interestingly, though, these same lib snobs (and a few conservative snobs to boot) swore that Obama was the smartest messiah since Jimmy Carter. Though we haven't seen his transcripts, he certainly went to the right schools. So he is definitely intellectually curious right?

Well, let's see. If you use Murkowski's intelligence yardstick: dreaming about policy and enjoying governing, we know Obama doesn't quite fit the bill. We're told from a growing number of sources that Obama really doesn't like the details of governance; that he can't be bothered.

Well, you might say, "that may be true, but you can't deny he's a policy wonk. He has big ideas and he is pushing them passionately."

I'll concede he cares about policy to the extent that he wants to shove his grand vision down America's throat. But how can any reasonable person characterize Obama's approach to ideas as open or curious? He's the most dogmatic ideologue we've witnessed -- and that's saying something. There doesn't appear to be an ounce of intellectual curiosity in his bones. He isn't curious. He has known all the answers for a long time. Curiosity is an annoying distraction at best. Listening is foreign to his being.

But, truth be told, intellectual curiosity is euphemistic for "enlightened liberal," so Obama qualifies. So what Murkowski is really saying is that Palin would not make a good president because she doesn't subscribe to the liberal worldview.

And, according to the Murkowski perspective, Sarah Palin, no matter how smart she is, cannot possibly be intellectually curious. I know many conservatives are convinced Sarah Palin is intellectually challenged, but I'm not one of them. My appreciation of Palin grows in direct proportion to elitist criticism of her. Plus, I think she has refreshingly good instincts.

I'm sure Lisa Murkowski considers herself intellectually curious. Do you think she'd make a better president than Sarah other than in her own mind?

The leftist narrative during the Bush years held that civil rights were rapidly sublimating under the heat of post-9.11 measures such as the Patriot Act. Listening to Keith Olbermann and like-minded commentators in those dark days, we were all Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, subject to rendition and waterboarding at the whim of a despotic Vice President Cheney.

According to this history, President Obama and large Democratic congressional majorities were elected to change course, guiding the Republic back to the sunlit uplands where privacy and personal freedom would once again be safe from erosion by a hyperactive national security apparatus. The closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo, repeal of the Patriot Act, end of Predator drone assassinations and successful resolution of the war in Afghanistan made good on the Democrats’ promises, ushering in a new era of enhanced civil liberties at home and. . . wait a minute—none of this actually happened.

Instead of enhanced civil liberties we have the opposite, thanks in this case to the ineluctable logic of Security Theater, where the answer to each incremental threat is another intrusive mass-screening program. And every other consideration—effectiveness, cost-benefit analysis and personal freedom—must give way in favor of the appearance of doing something.

A gun is used to hijack a plane? Bring on the magnetometer. C4-enhanced lingerie? Time for full body scans for millions of travelers. Don't worry, the image of your unclothed body will only be seen by government employees, and the x-ray dose is minimal. Sheesh, it’s not like the TSA is digging through your library receipts. And since this is America, you always have the right to object to the scan and select the infinitely more personal Groin Grope. But don’t decide to forgo both the ionizing photo and the tactile perineal exam in favor of going home or, as John Tyner is discovering, you may be fined and prosecuted.

How do my fellow Ricochetans reconcile the Obama administration’s airport body scanning policy with its earlier civil libertarian rhetoric and the inconvenient truth of an intentionally wide-open southern border? And is this the beginning of a real backlash or just a blip on the radar?

That is the headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. And there we are told that QE2 – the Federal Reserve’s policy of instituting a second round of quantitative easing aimed at cutting mid-term and long-term interest rates, at encouraging borrowing, and at stimulating economic activity thereby – has thus far been followed by an increase, not a decrease, in yields on Treasury bonds. Some are reportedly worried that “the Fed’s program might be ineffective or backfiring.” But the article does not explain why any sane human being might think this the case.

I can think of one reason: the fear of inflation. Quantitative easing – the Fed’s buying of Treasury bonds on a grand scale – is, in effect, a massive printing of money. The first round of quantitative easing provoked such fears, and the price of gold – the ideal hedge against inflation – went through the roof. Ben Bernanke’s second great attempt at manipulating the markets will no doubt reinforce this trend, and it has, for understandable reasons, angered our chief trading partners – among them, the Germans, the Brazilians, and the Chinese – who believe that we are deliberately destroying the value of the dollar for the purpose of making American goods more competitive in the international markets.

Will quantitative easing encourage borrowing and fire up the American economy? Were this an ordinary recession, it might in the short run have such an effect. In the long run, however, it might well in such circumstances produce a stagflation hard to cure. We have been down that road before.

The problem is that this is not an ordinary recession. It is not primarily due to the business cycle. It is rooted in a financial crisis that is, if anything, more severe in Europe than in the United States. It more nearly resembles what happened in 1893 and 1929 than anything more recent, and it has instilled a measure of caution and wariness in millions of Americans that one cannot simply conjure away.

We are, to put it mildly, in debt. Our assets are worth less than what we expected them to be worth, we have no idea what the houses we own are worth, and we fear the worst. Cheap loans are not going to induce either consumers or the owners of small businesses to get deeper in debt. We are saving and paying down debt in much the same manner in which we spent and took on debt in the 1990s and the first few years of the current millennium. In these circumstances, the Fed has little or no leverage – but it can act in such a manner as to increase our fears. And, under Ben Bernanke, that is precisely what it is doing.

For almost a hundred years – since the establishment of the Federal Reserve Board under Woodrow Wilson – we have operated under the presumption that “rational administration” of the money supply on the part of experts would enable us to sidestep economic crises. Thanks to the Federal Reserve in the 1920s and early 1930s and thanks to that body under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, we have suffered on a scale unknown prior to the establishment of that institution. It is, I think, time for us to reflect on the pretensions of John Law and to reconsider whether the expertise required for “rational administration” of the sort envisaged by Greenspan, Bernanke, and the like is actually available. Had it not been for the easy-money policy followed by the Fed under these gentlemen, the dot com bubble and the housing bubble would not have developed. Left to their own devices, markets may overshoot, but they are far less irrational than the “expert” who thinks that from his Olympian heights he can master them.

Please join me in welcoming Kori Schake, this week's guest contributor. Kori is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of international security studies at the United States Military Academy at West Point. During President George W. Bush's first term, Kori was the director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on the National Security Council. From 2007 to 2008, she was deputy director for policy planning in the state department. Kori was the senior policy adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign during the 2008 presidential election. You can read her regular contributions on the Shadow Government, a Foreign Policy blog.

John McCain thinks so. Speaking at the Foreign Policy Initiative, a DC-based think tank with ties to William Kristol, McCain had this to say about Rand Paul:

"I think there are going to be some tensions within our party," McCain said during a conference put on by Foreign Policy Initiative, a DC-based think tank. "I worry a lot about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party."

A prime example, McCain continued, was Rand Paul, Kentucky's next U.S. Senator.

"I admire his victory, but ... already he has talked about withdrawals [and] cuts in defense," McCain said....

Alright, I think McCain needs to simmer down. There's a difference between suggesting cuts to a wasteful defense budget and being an isolationist. Robert Gates, after all, has suggested cuts to the defense budget too. Does that make the secretary of defense an isolationist? And what evidence do we have that Paul is a protectionist? The evidence, actually, points in the other direction.

Matt Welch's analysis of all this is worth a read, if for the lead paragraph alone. Writing at Reason.com, he asks,

Was it all just a bad dream? Feels like 1997 all over again–first David Brooks calls for a hacktacular new "National Greatness" movement in American politics, and now Sen John McCain (R-Ariz.) is snarling about "protectionism and isolationism" in the GOP...

Seeing Rand Paul on CNN a day or two after the election, talking cogently to Wolf Blitzer about how no serious agenda of fiscal responsibility can avoid scaling back military spending, was almost an out-of-body experience. You mean...Republican senators...can say that? Out loud and everything? Well, they used to, and they finally are again, and they may have willing partners in a weakened Democratic Party, all of which is why the National Greatness gang is trying to snuff out the GOP strain before it spreads.

As the Congressional Hispanic Caucus prepares to meet with President Obama today to discuss immigration reform, California's Supreme Court voted unanimously yesterday to offer illegal immigrants in-state tuition to public universities. The Daily Beast reports:

The California State Supreme Court voted unanimously on Monday to give in-state tuition at public universities to illegal immigrants who have graduated from state high schools. California is one of 10 states to make this offer, and the court ruling is the first of its kind. While federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving college tuition based on residency, California law carves out an exemption for students who attend the state’s high schools for at least three years.

On the up side, this measure could put illegal immigrants on the path toward assimilation and naturalization. On the down side: I'm not sure that taxpayers should have to foot the bill for that. Could a utilitarian argument be made, however, that it ultimately costs taxpayers less money to help subsidize an illegal immigrants' college education, as oppose to, say, the alternative? The LA Times crunches some numbers:

The Immigration Reform Law Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based group that challenged California's law, contends that more than 25,000 undocumented students attend the state's public colleges and that lower tuition for illegal immigrants costs the state more than $200 million annually.

The state's colleges and universities say that more than 41,000 students, less than 1% of total enrollment, qualify for the lower tuition under California law but that many of those are U.S. citizens.

Among things I don't want to see in the news:

UN peacekeepers in Haiti have shot dead at least one person in clashes sparked by claims that Nepalese soldiers brought the cholera epidemic that has swept the country, killing 1,000 people.

Crowds in two northern towns threw stones, set up burning barricades and blocked roads to protest against the presence of the foreign troops and the government's response to the crisis, which has unsettled the authorities and the UN in the runup to elections on 28 November.

UN Peacekeepers, otherwise known as "my family."

Well, nothing's going to be solved by my worrying about it. And a lot of dust bunnies here to vacuum.