When I heard that a computer virus was slowing down Iran's nuclear capability, I assumed there was some fancy spycraft involved. This New York Times story has more:

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

That use of the word “Myrtus” — which can be read as an allusion to Esther — to name a file inside the code is one of several murky clues that have emerged as computer experts try to trace the origin and purpose of the rogue Stuxnet program, which seeks out a specific kind of command module for industrial equipment.

If you're wondering how you get Myrtus from Esther . . . Esther's original Hebrew name was Hadassah, meaning Myrtle. Incidentally, the guava fruit is also part of the Myrtus family, and one of the code modules is identified as Guava.

So do you think it's Israel? The U.S.? Neither?

The Robinson/Berlinski interviews over at Uncommon Knowledge have been great so far, part two especially. To hear Claire articulate Thatcher's moral approach to free markets should be enough to make the scales fall from even a liberal's eyes - which, if nothing else, would be cheaper than plastic surgery.

But answer me this, Claire: what on earth is that you are wearing around your swan-like neck? I mean, inquiring minds want to know!

Earlier today I wrote a short piece just as my flight from L.A. was about to depart (thanks, Emily, for getting it edited and posted), and now that I'm on another coast, I wanted to elaborate on one portion of the piece. In it, I observed that this administration has been evaluating the performance of voters when it was supposed to be the other way around. They're busy ripping into the Right (ignorant bigots) and the Left (whiners who need to "buck up") while ignoring their own shortcomings. They seem to have forgotten that they were elected to represent all of us, no matter how distasteful that might be for them.

It got me thinking about the attitude some voters on the losing side of an election have expressed in past campaigns: "He's not my President!" Well, I've never subscribed to that mindset. In fact, every President is our President. That's why we're supposed to show respect for the office even as we criticize policies. But something disheartening and alarming is going on. For the first time, I'm beginning to feel as if this man is not my President, and that feeling is not coming from me. He really can't stand Tea Party people, and he really is exasperated with carping liberals. He appears suspicious of anyone who succeeds in the private sector and positively angered by anyone who had the temerity to become wealthy. He seems to like no one except those who continue to idolize him.

Politics is a rough game, and politicians are expected to have a thick skin. What they're not expected to do is to shut out, dismiss and demean those who criticize them. And as to the argument that this Commander in Chief's critics have been especially brutal, I remind everyone that not one of those critics is President of the United States.

Michael Bloomberg says he has no intention of challenging Obama for the presidency in 2012.

In other news, Jerry Brown says he'd certainly run for president again, if only he were younger.

Sorry for the disappointment this news may have caused any of you.

At the Corner, Kevin Williamson throws down the gauntlet:

set aside the legal questions for a second. The Awlaki case speaks to something even more fundamental than law: Decent nations do not permit their governments to assassinate their own citizens. I am willing to give the intelligence community, the covert-operations guys, and the military proper a pretty free hand when it comes to dealing with dispersed terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates. But citizenship, even when applied to a Grade-A certified rat like Awlaki, presents an important demarcation, a bright-line distinction in our politics.

If Awlaki were to be killed on a battlefield, I’d shed no tears. But ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in Yemen or Pakistan is no different from ordering the premeditated, extrajudicial killing of an American citizen in New York or Washington or Topeka — American citizens are American citizens, wherever they go. I’m an old-fashioned limited-government guy, and I am not willing to grant Washington the power to assassinate U.S. citizens, even rotten ones. The three most powerful people in government at this moment are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, a fact that should give pause even to the most hawkish conservative. I would hope that other conservatives see this at least as a matter of prudence, if not a burning moral question.

In theory, I think Williamson's judgment is a slam dunk. In practice, this whole controversy seems to me to augur a not very placid conversation about who should get -- or lose -- American citizenship, and how. Here, at any rate, is a political question that touches directly on a first principle. Should the federal government be granted the power to assassinate citizens? And to answer that, don't we need to ask: Can that power, even if granted, ever be legitimate?

Taking a few days of down time from the road, I notice more and more reports of the President, Vice President, and even Senator Kerry (D - France) scolding the liberal base for their restless impatience. I keep asking, what are they impatient about? What more do they want? Perhaps a few of the lurkers from the left will be kind enough to explain. The government has stimulated the economy into a virtual death spiral. They own a large part of the automobile and financial industries. Freedom is on the decline at home even as our enemies gather strength abroad. Sounds like a liberal nirvana to me, so why the long faces? What more do you want? How many more regulations and taxes do you require? How much more private property must you gobble up? How many businesses must you kill before you're satisfied? How high must the unemployment rate go to quench your thirst for government dependence? When do you stick a fork in this bloated government rump roast and call it done?

Forty-seven House Democrats have sent Nancy Pelosi a letter expressing their support for the Republican position of extending the Bush tax cuts on investment income:

"Raising taxes on capital gains and dividends could discourage individuals and businesses from saving and investing," said the letter, dated Friday and released Tuesday. "We urge you to maintain the current tax rate for both dividend and long-term capital gains taxes."

These 47 Democrats would provide more than enough votes to extend the tax cuts, notes Jennifer Rubin, but Pelosi is unlikely to allow the vote to come to the floor. This, Rubin argues, presents a lose-lose situation for Democrats who've expressed dissent toward Obama's tax plan.

Even though many Democrats now want to extend both these tax cuts on investment income as well as the rest of the Bush tax-cut plan, they have a serious problem with the voters. What’s their pitch? I’d vote for the tax breaks because it’s harmful to the economy to hike taxes during a recession, but my Democratic leadership won’t let me vote. The solution to that is simple: vote for their opponents, whose party would demand a vote and pass the extensions overwhelmingly.

What began as a trap for Republicans has devolved into an ideological and political dead end for liberals. Take the vote and lose, and infuriate the base. Don’t take the vote, and lose scores of House members. At this point, there is no good solution. It seems no one in the White House thought this through.

Just getting your attention. There are many fine Muslims in LA. I know quite a few.

However, this Yom Kippur I had to sit through my beloved Rabbi's (and I really do love this man) sermon, chastising 2,000 Westside Los Angelenos not to be afraid of the Ground Zero Mosque, which he said "is neither at Ground Zero, nor a Mosque." He was sending a sincere plea for people not to judge many by the acts of a few. (And by that he meant Muslims, not the over the top histrionics of some of the GZM opposition, by which we're all embarrassed.) Though well meaning, I believe he was astonishingly naive about the future of Islam in our lives and the murky intent behind Imam Rauf's refusal to relocate said non-Mosque.

Cutting to the chase, he is pursuing a series of panels with leaders of the Islamic faith for our Temple. In the interest of presenting a more balanced approach to this...i.e. not a total white wash of the threat of Islamic Sharia Law...I volunteered to help put the panels together.

If you have any suggestions for pithy (and by that I mean SHORT), well-thought out articles on this subject that will not scare off the average dyed-in-the-Koolaid Liberal, link me! But most important, if you know of any great panelists in the Los Angeles area, let me know. I know my position on the creeping worry of Fundamentalist Islam, but I need the back up. And I need people with the kind of credibility that even a Westside Liberal can't dismiss. If this guy spoke english and lived here, he'd be perfect.

Has there ever been a group in the White House so fundamentally, and I’m beginning to fear, genuinely confused about the relationship between the government and the governed? It seems they’ve spent most of their first two years in power whining. They’ve whined about the cards they’ve been dealt and the lack of cooperation from the Republicans, but, most of all, they’ve whined about the American people. Millions of Tea Party voters have been tarred as ignorant bigots, and now they’ve gone after their own, telling them to “buck up” and questioning their real commitment to change if they don’t.

Hello? Is anyone home? We’re supposed to be evaluating your performance, not the other way around. You work for us, remember? You were elected to represent all the people of this country, not just the ones who continue to believe in your infallibility. Happily, we'll have the chance to express our displeasure in November by voting instead of whining.

Meanwhile, more tea party news comes to us via Politics Daily.

Beau Biden, Joe's son, told CNN yesterday that Christine O'Donnell "should be taken seriously...my party is taking her seriously." O'Donnell is seeking Joe Biden's old Senate seat, a seat that many Democrats wanted Beau to go after, but he deferred, much to their chagrin.

Now the Democrats have Christopher Coons, the self-described Marxist, and not exactly what you would call the strongest candidate the Democrats could have hoped for. By way of example, days ago Coons ridiculously said that serving in the US Senate would be a "great way for me to apply the principles and values that were honed at YDS [Yale Divinity School]," where in 1994 he scored a Masters in Religion with a specialty in ethics.

Via The American Spectator, here is what appears on the YDS curriculum:

Yale Divinity School Courses and Required Reading

• Witchcraft and Witch Hunting: Specifically listed as REL 717: Witchcraft and Witch Hunting, the "REL" presumably stands for "Religion." Apparently Christine O'Donnell's main offense when it comes to dabbling in witchcraft in high school on a date is some sort of Ruling Class snobbery that she didn't go to Yale Divinity School, where witchcraft has been quite officially part of the school's curriculum. The very same school from which Chris Coons insists he has taken his values....

• Queer Worship. You read that right. The formal name for this course is REL 786, Liturgy and Gender (Queer Worship). Queer Worship, you see, stands for…stands for…well, let's just say the course description says in the wonderfully baroque style of academia that the course offers students like Mr. Coons once was "the opportunity to reflect critically on how ….queer theories and theologies are impacting how Christian worship is performed and reflected upon."....

• Feminist/Womanist/Gendered Theologies:This course is listed as "REL 749." It is designed, the course description says, "to formulate a robust theological understanding of today's theopolitical issues" by "using feminist, womanist, and ethnic gendered theologies." Womanist theology? That would be? A religious movement focusing on how exactly to liberate -- there's that pesky Marxist word again -- African women in America. Drawn from feminist and liberation theology, there appears to be not a word of Witchcraft 101 or Queer Worship in this course. ....

• Introduction to Christian Ethics II:Yet another opportunity here in "REL 715" for Coons to study up on his favorites. Black Liberation Theology guru James Cone is mandatory reading here. Values taught in the reading for a class on Christianity? In God of the Oppressed Cone salutes the values of Marx in a chapter called "Marx and the Sociology of Knowledge" while also musing about "Jesus is Black and the "Meaning of Liberation."

Good to know that all this training in ethics may be coming with Coons to Washington. No wonder Beau wants the Dems to take O'Donnell seriously. The crown of saying "nutty things" will be slowly passing from O'Donnell to Coons on this one.

A new Gallup poll shows that distrust of the media is at a record high. Half of Americans say the media are too liberal, a third say they're just about right and 15% say the media are too conservative. Andrew Malcolm at the Los Angeles Times has the best write-up thus far:

Really biased Gallup Poll claims most Americans don't trust their hardworking news media

According to that fringe polling outfit named Gallup, a record 57% of Americans profess little or no trust in this country's mass media to report the news fairly and accurately.

What a crock!

A new WSJ/NBC poll focuses on the elusive tea party movement. The numbers indicate that the tea party is a major source of enthusiasm among Republicans. Here is a snapshot of the findings:

1. 71% of Republicans support the tea party, have a favorable image of it, and want its candidates to do well on November 2.

2. Tea partiers constitute one third of those most likely to vote in November--meaning, they are not a trifle, but a major part of what will drive the election results in a few weeks. On a related note, thanks to the enthusiasm the tea partiers have drummed up, two thirds of Republican voters are "intensely interested" in the midterm elections (while only one half of Democrats are).

3. The GOP can boast a three point edge against Democrats. Of the likely voters polled, 46% to 43% would prefer the GOP to control Congress. But: "That is down from a nine-point Republican lead a month ago." What's changed in the past month? One bullet point, off the top of my head, is Christine O'Donnell's victory in Delaware. That may have energized the Republicans in this poll, but cooled the Independents. What else changed last month to sway these numbers?

4. The final figure I'll cite has to do with the important independent voters. One third of them have an affinity for the tea party, but 59% of them do not support the tea party, which could ultimately hurt Republican candidates in the general election. I wonder if independent voters are as "intensely" interested in this election as Republicans are. That would be a good figure to know in analyzing how the results will shake out in November.

I first learned about the American south at school in the American north.

In the north, it was a pretty simple story: slavery built the south into an agricultural powerhouse; religious forces in the north agitated for abolition; a growing industrial economy in the north soon dwarfed the southern plantation industry; southerners held on to an immoral, inhumane, utterly evil institution until the north came down with superior military might and smashed the old order.More or less, that's the story as it's usually told.

But Francine Latour, at Boston.com, has a fascinating adjustment to the storyline. In a review of Anne Farrow's book, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, she retells this almost too-perfect story:

In the year 1755, a black slave named Mark Codman plotted to kill his abusive master. A God-fearing man, Codman had resolved to use poison, reasoning that if he could kill without shedding blood, it would be no sin. Arsenic in hand, he and two female slaves poisoned the tea and porridge of John Codman repeatedly. The plan worked—but like so many stories of slave rebellion, this one ended in brutal death for the slaves as well. After a trial by jury, Mark Codman was hanged, tarred, and then suspended in a metal gibbet on the main road to town, where his body remained for more than 20 years.

It sounds like a classic account of Southern slavery. But Codman’s body didn’t hang in Savannah, Ga.; it hung in present-day Somerville, Mass. And the reason we know just how long Mark the slave was left on view is that Paul Revere passed it on his midnight ride. In a fleeting mention from Revere’s account, the horseman described galloping past “Charlestown Neck, and got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains.”

When it comes to slavery, the story that New England has long told itself goes like this: Slavery happened in the South, and it ended thanks to the North.

Ordinarily, I don't like this kind of we're-all-guilty historicizing. But the New England attitude is so smug, so carefully tended, that's it's refreshing to prick the pompous bubble. School textbooks usually stick to the party line: New England = Thanksgiving, Minutemen, and Patriots; The South = Racism, Slavery, and Blood Money. That distinction continues to this day.

Oh, this is delicious. Wikileaks is imploding under the weight of its collective vanity:

A purported transcript of the chat provided to Wired.com by a WikiLeaks insider shows the conversation grew heated.

Assange: If you do not answer the question, you will be removed.

Domscheit-Berg: you are not anyones king or god

Domscheit-Berg: and you’re not even fulfilling your role as a leader right now

Domscheit-Berg: a leader communicates and cultivates trust in himself

Domscheit-Berg: you are doing the exact opposite

Domscheit-Berg: you behave like some kind of emporer or slave trader

Assange: You are suspended for one month, effective immediately.

Domscheit-Berg: haha

Domscheit-Berg: right

Domscheit-Berg: because of what?

Domscheit-Berg: and who even says that?

...

“I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest,” Assange wrote Snorrason. “If you have a problem with me, [expletive] off.”

The wonderful thing about people like this is that they always end up this way.

Proposition 19, also known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, is a California ballot proposition which will be on the November 2, 2010 California statewide ballot. I don't smoke pot. And I take great pains to avoid people who do. My grandpa "Pepe" used to say, "it makes you "estupid." I think he was right.

But.....after Bill Handel made his case this morning on KFI AM 640 here in Los Angeles, I am now voting FOR proposition 19. If it wins, I will cringe at news coverage of dirty hippie celebrations that will likely occur in Rob Long's part of town but I will endure that for one reason.

Prop 19 would be a blow to the Mexican Drug Cartels. I will support almost anything that would drive them out of business or at least throw a wrench into their operations. Sure they can still smuggle tax free pot into the country, but as Handel said this morning, "when's the last time you heard of a murderous cartel smuggling tax free booze into this country?"

They're destroying my second favorite country down there and we have run out of bullets. This is potentially a powerful weapon against them. Let's do it. It's humane. And I want my favorite taco place back. My second message is don't be a dope, get off the dope.

I just learned I've taken sides in the great Arizona illegal immigration debate of 2010. Unwittingly.

It all happened a few weeks ago when I visited the Penzey Spice store in Northern Virginia. I'm a fan of their spices and in addition to stocking up on our regulars, we purchased something called Arizona Dreaming. It was billed in this cheesy way as "The flavors of South of the Border combined in ways that Americans love so much!" Having grown up out West, it just sounded so tone-deaf. I actually decided to look and see where the company was based -- Wauwatosa, WI.

Anyway, it's a nice salt-free spice and it really is good on scrambled eggs.

Apparently it's also supposed to be a political statement against Arizona's new immigration law. From the Arizona Republic:

Penzey wrote a letter to go with the launch, saying: "In our need to restore our sense of self-control, are we actually going to reward our politicians who are not working to bring us together, but instead forsaking America's beautiful 234-year-old history of diversity? . . . The Arizona I know has plenty of happy feelings to spread."..

Come on! Can't a girl just buy some spices without getting embroiled in politics?

The other thing I find funny about Penzey's call to arms against the "anger and fear" surrounding the Arizona law is that a few years ago a Greek friend of mine was outraged at the gross stereotypes Penzeys used in a "Greek diner" themed catalogue.

(Headline stolen from Exurban John)

For the past ten years, my Mexican grandparents have implored me to come visit them in their small town in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. For one reason or another -- school, work, money, time -- I never made it down. And now I add fear to that list of reasons I won't make the trip down any time soon.

Mexico, as John Hinderaker notes, is a country where people are stoned to death.

The situation in Mexico is a disaster, and one that directly threatens our national security. For reasons that I don't understand, most Americans don't seem to care, and the Obama administration reflects that apathy. Mexico makes Iraq look like Switzerland. Iraq is, I think, important to our security, but Mexico is much more so. I don't know what the solution is--other than the obvious, a massive application of police/military force to kill the criminals--but at a minimum, we should take notice.

I share John's bafflement -- why do Americans seem not to care that we have a failed state on the other side of the border? We concern ourselves with the problem of immigration, which is certainly a formidable issue that must be addressed, but why the complacency when it comes to the savage violence that occurs there every day?

Perhaps we collectively ignore the problem because there are no obvious solutions. How does Mexico crack down on drug terror when its government is broke, teeming with corruption, and when government officials fear for their own lives? And what can the U.S. do to help when we're broke, dealing with a host of domestic policy woes, and trying to fend off a constant stream of Islamoterror threats?

I can't begin to answer any of those questions. But, I agree with John that at the very least, we should take notice.

The Pledge to America says the Republicans will hold a vote on repealing ObamaCare, which will be then be vetoed. What then? They don't specify.

Rush talked today about a different Repeal Pledge today on his show and linked to it.

Excerpt of transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen, this must be repealed. Obamacare must be repealed. Now, the Republican Pledge says we're going to do that. They mentioned repeal and replace. But have you asked yourself, what is the real desire on the part of a lot of Republicans to really walk down that path and repeal this? In the past we've gotten lip service. "Oh, you want to repeal it?" "Hell, yeah, we agree, yeah, yeah, we're going to repeal it." But then, if you listen carefully, you'll hear them say, "Well, we actually can't. Have you ever seen Social Security repealed? Have you ever seen Medicare repealed?" Republicans are telling us, ah, yeah, we want to repeal it, but it may be very tough to do, and they say we can't really do it 'til we get the White House back. So is there a real impetus to repeal this or is it just lip service from the Republicans?

Now, people at the Independent Women's Voice have put a website up called Repeal the Pledge, and it's a site that people can go to and sign an electronic petition. There's no "donate" button on this site yet, so don't worry here, this is not a trick to separate you from your money. These are just people who believe that the Republicans need to be held their feet to the fire. Okay, you say you want to repeal it? Sign the pledge. Sign the politician. You say you want to repeal health care, sign something, not some vague pledge. Sign a specific petition that says you are going to repeal or make an effort to repeal health care, starting for good in 2013. What is the Web address? Darn it, I'll have to get the Web address up there to Koko because I just have a link to it in the story, doesn't actually give out the address, it's just the link. But it is a place where candidates will also be asked to sign the pledge, kind of like a "no new taxes" pledge, that kind of thing.

Now, a lot of people think, a pledge, petitions, who's going to do this? These don't mean anything. Internet petitions. And, I know, there's some people that want to get traffic to their websites and so forth. But nevertheless people involved here do care about this. This health care reform really is -- we said it before it was voted on -- ball game, in terms of you nationalize one-sixth of the US economy, the amount of freedom that's lost, usurped, the massive growth of government to handle all this, the inefficiency with which it will be handled, the worsening delivery of health care itself. This is a disaster. The whole regime is a disaster. But I'll find the link to this website if you want to go visit it, you might want to think about signing it. It's a petition. They're working hard at this site to get candidates to sign it as well, just to try to get some feet held to the fire on this rather than just a bunch of words. "Yeah, yeah, we want to repeal it."

It is a delight to comment on Bill McGurn's column in today's Wall Street Journal because we spoke extensively about it before he wrote it. Indeed he even had a quotation from me that got killed in editing. Rather than let a great line go unnoticed, I shall lead with it here, and then explain the logic behind it. Here is the quotation:

Unfortunately, the willingness of courts to adopt an open-ended definition of public use unleashes a set of tactical maneuvers that undermine the very spirit of community that Justice Stevens and others think arises when political bodies are allowed to first deliberate and then act free of all constitutional constraint.

The basic problem is this: The assumption that underlay the decision in Kelo was that political bodies essentially deliberate in benign ways when they act without the nettlesome interference of the courts. So it is said that the alternative views will be heard, and the truth will win out. But the world does not work that way. Deliberation in politics is not abstract discourse. It is not an effort to persuade people of some disembodied truth. It is an effort to win favor and support for particular positions. The nature of the deliberation follows the underlying structure of the relevant set of property rights. If the constitutional order says that A can take from B for some private gain, those who stand to win will deliberate in a way that helps them achieve that goal. One part of that argument is that the folks who have the control over deciding whether or not to approve a project should do so because they can get the property at a low eminent domain price even when its subjective value is higher. It only gets worse when as in Kelo the state tops off the deal by giving lots of money that reduces the obstacles that the just compensation clause places in the path of those who wish to take.

So once we get cases of aggressive takeovers, we get cases in which the critics ought be be silenced. Little did I know that when I wrote my blurb, it would become the source of a defamation suit. The case was not, for what it is worth, litigated on the merits. Rather, it was clear that there was no jurisdiction in Texas given that my only contact with the state was the publication of the jacket blurb for a national market. That defense was not available to either Carla Main or Encounter Books, because both clearly did business in Texas. So the merits decision awaits us. I have seen few defamation cases weaker than this one. Mr. Royall should publish his own version of the events because Bill McGurn's column will I think turn few people in his direction.

I know Denver's archbishop, Charles Chaput, reasonably well -- well enough to expect that when he delivers a thoughtful address on how the media covers religion, he's going to provoke a strong response. Fair enough.

Still, it was somewhat astonishing to read a Beliefnet commentator, Mark Silk, deploying the phrase "it's pretty white of Chaput" in a column objecting to the archbishop's remarks. Not only because it's bad form, but also because the archbishop is part Native American (Potawatomi, I believe).

Then again, maybe you have to be a professor and have gone to Harvard to write this way.

The Atlantic Wire asks the question, “Why is Rahm Emanuel leaving so suddenly?" Writer Max Fisher trots out some theories to attempt to answer the question, but I have a few theories of my own.

• The other Chicago mayoral candidates are already getting most of the good voter names off area tombstones.
• He just can’t stand the new Oval Office furniture any longer.
• He’s tired of hiding sharp objects in preparation for the White House post-election party.
• He can’t figure out a way to say “no” to Harry Reid’s request that he be listed as a reference on Reid’s résumé.
• His F-bombs are becoming strangely ineffective at meetings; he needs a new audience.

Of course, there’s always the slight chance he just wants to get out before the November elections.

Greetings, Ricochetoisie.

My name’s Bill Walsh and I’ve been brought in by the Berlinski junta as Minister of Information. I myself am not entirely clear what that entails. It could just be Claire wants more people on the official Ricochet Trivial Pursuit team. That said, she said that equipment would be arriving for my ministry, and sure enough, I found a giant crate on my doorstep. I figured, well, maybe laptops? Perhaps some iPads?

So, I got out the ol’ crowbar and opened the thing, and I now have 200 Kalashnikovs with Bulgarian stampings. I’m not entirely sure what this has to do with the gig, but doubtless Claire will tell me. And you don’t cross Claire, as y’all have doubtless learned at this point.

So, who am I? I’m a former consultant and sometime author, editor, and translator who’s currently picking up a doctorate. I like long walks on the beach and fuzzy bunnies. Also, I can juggle moderately well. So, clearly I’m qualified to serve drinks at Rob Long’s Malibu sea-side estate. (Though not at Peter Lawford’s beach house…that’s a whole other thing…)

So, here’s a question for everybody. I agree wholeheartedly with the Ricochetic mission of fostering civil conversation…but I think it‘s definitely swimming against the tide of contemporary discourse, which seems to be increasingly polarized and angry. Truism, right? Even on the right, the tone from (my friend) David Frum’s FrumForum folks is often “get thee behind me, Walmart Jesus People!” and conversely the conservative right sometimes erupts in “Anathema, RINO! Anathema!” My question to y’all is: why do you think it is? Do you think it’s a matter of the internetization of the conversation, with immediacy and anonymity encouraging fury and incivility? Or is it a matter of the ideologicalization of the parties, with two camps with mutually exclusive premises incapable of agreement and therefore devolving into shouting? Is it a result of the end of the left’s monopoly on the commanding heights of media, and their fury at dispossession and the bloodthirstiness of the torches-and-pitchfork wielding mobs who’ve pulled them down? Is it a function of the increasingly take-no-prisoners tone of politics, from the Clinton impeachment to the 2000 election, and so on? Or is there just something in the water at this point?

It could be one, some or all of those things—or something else entirely. What do you think? Any hope we’ll get past it? Or is it just the natural outgrowth of the rough-and-tumble of democratic politics in the age of the aggressive bureaucratic state, and the idea of getting back to a less-heated environment is Pollyanna-ish wishful thinking?

And does anyone need a Bulgarian AK in 5.56 NATO?

I fear that I may become insufferable and that my friends and wife may soon seek a court order for my incarceration. You see, I can’t get this tune out of my head – and on any given day, after reading the polls -- whether I am at home or walking to my office from the parking lot -- I am apt to break into song:

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

My poor wife and children have to listen to me singing like a banshee – and never more frequently than today, when I learned that John Raese has opened up a modest lead in the West Virginia Senate race, that two polls show Linda McMahon closing on Richard Blumenthal in the Connecticut Senate race, and that the latest poll suggests that Dino Rossi is about to overtake Patty Murray in the Senate race in the state of Washington.

Someone should suggest to the Republican candidates that they should adopt this song as their anthem – for it won’t be over, folks, ’til old Bob Dylan sings. If I had a cell phone, I know what I would use for the ring tone.

At least, according to Anne Applebaum in today's Washington Post:

Look at Afghanistan, for example, where American troops have been fighting for nearly a decade, where billions of dollars of American aid money has been spent -- and where a Chinese company has won the rights to exploit one of the world's largest copper deposits. Though American troops don't protect the miners directly, Afghan troops, trained and armed by Americans, do...

America fights, in other words, while China does business, and not only in Afghanistan. In Iraq, where American troops brought down a dictator and are still fighting an insurgency, Chinese oil companies have acquired bigger stakes in the oil business than their American counterparts. In Pakistan, where billions in American military aid helps the government keep the Taliban at bay, China has set up a free-trade area and is investing heavily in energy and ports.

And it gets worse:

China has found it lucrative to stay out of other kinds of conflicts as well. Along with Western Europeans, Americans are pouring vast amounts of public and private money into solar energy and wind power, hoping to wean themselves off fossil fuels and prevent climate change. China, by contrast, builds a new coal-fired plant every 10 days or so. While thus producing ever more greenhouse gases in the East, China makes clever use of those government subsidies in the West: Three Chinese companies now rank among the top 10 producers of wind turbines in the world.

Are we being outsmarted? Sure seems like it.

It is undeniably true that California's business unfriendliness leads--if that's the word--the nation as a whole. My post last night on our state's evolving cap-and-trade fiasco spurred some comments advocating construction of a statewide fence or some other means of quarantining our economic illiteracy.

It's too late.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini, speaking at last month's Aspen Forum, summed up America's manufacturing competitiveness thusly:

"I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States," Otellini said.

The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don't impose.

"If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here," Otellini said. But instead, it's the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest--and create jobs--than places in Europe and Asia that are "clamoring" for Intel's business.

Add in the uncertainties about the next move with ObamaCare, energy policy and environmental regulation, and it's an easy first step to take your red Sharpie and draw a big X over the United States on your map of possible locations for that factory you need to open in 2012.

I'm looking at a report from a major accounting firm describing the economics of corporate relocation in our global economy. Switzerland will levy a 10-12 percent income tax for your corporate headquarters, but will reduce this to 4-9 percent if you bring manufacturing into the country. Singapore offers an even better deal: a corporate income tax rate below 5 percent in exchange for building a local manufacturing operation. In contrast, America's federal corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, and just try building and opening a new factory in a predictable period of time.

A century or so ago officials in the United Kingdom also acted as if they were the only economic game in town.

One aspect of moral and cultural life that has always exasperated me is the sheer inadvertence with which God seems to have sprinkled around the talent. Some of the worst people produce some of the best art. Picasso? Horrible man. But even if you reject Cubism, perhaps his principal achievement, you’ve got to admit when you look at his “rose period” that the man was just giganticially gifted. Salvador Dali? A lunatic. Norman Mailer? A loudmouth. Christopher Hitchens? Well, there you have it, really, haven’t you? Why would God permit such an obstinate, evangelizing atheist to write so well, to prove so charming, and to demonstrate such courage in the face of grave illness? What was He thinking?

All this came to mind when, going through a pile of old notes just now, I came across a paragraph I’d copied down sometime last year. The author is Ralph Wood, and the passage comes from his 2009 review, in National Review, of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch.

It came as almost a relief for Flannery O’Connor to find, as Gooch notes, that “you don’t have to be good to write well.” Far from encouraging O’Connor to live a self-indulgent life, neglecting the corporal works of mercy required by her Christianity, this insight enabled O’Connor to practice what [philsopher and theologian Jacques] Maritain called “the habit of art.” The word habit does not here refer to the daily routine of working at her typewriter for three hours, although this was indeed O’Connor’s regimen. Habitus, in Aquinas’s sense, means the formation of the mind and the will, the intellect and the heart, through long exercise and steady devotion to particular practices—in O’Connor’s case, to the rigorous requirements of her art.

You don’t have to be good to write well. And instead of responding to that finding with exasperation, as I do, O’Connor, somehow liberated, simply sat down and got to work. I remember now why I copied that down in the first place. Really, I was thinking, I must become more like O’Connor.

Anyone following this? Antiwar protestors’ homes raided by the FBI in Minneapolis and Chicago:

On Friday, according to (Mick) Kelly -- who was at work at the time -- agents with guns drawn broke down the door of his second-floor apartment in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood looking for proof that he has supported terrorist organizations in Colombia and the Middle East.

No one was arrested in the raids. Kelly and the other subjects of the searches have been ordered to appear before a federal grand jury next month in Chicago.

Specifically, the warrant for the raid of Kelly's apartment sought notebooks, address books, photos and maps of Kelly's travels to the Palestinian territories, Colombia and in the United States on behalf of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). It also sought information on his personal finances and those of the group, on his "potential co-conspirators" and recruitment efforts for the group.

My eyebrows went up when I read the list of people nailed in the raid, because I knew one of them back in college. Mick Kelly was a short-order cook at the restaurant where I worked. Cheerful guy, hard-working - he’d get serious if the Issues of the Day came up, but there’s not a lot of time to discuss Central American policy when you’re trying to get the Eggs Benedict for table A-3. (This was the time in American history when colleges were enflamed by the juntas of Central America, and full of contempt for the "Freedom Fighters" who were battling the noble Sandinistas.) Apparently his ideas have remained unchanged since he was in college, which for some is a badge of honor.

Or is it a sign of intellectual rigidity? Aside from some of my cultural and aesthetic tastes, I’ve come to reevaluate most of what I held dear when I was 22. I’d be a bit nervous if I hadn’t. Which raises the question of whether your brain ossifies when you hit middle-age, and you reject reevaluating your reevaluations.

Though generally a fan of the Tea Party, Matt Lewis urges conservatives to pause to think about five elements about the movement that could prove destructive:

1. Lack of reverence for conservative leaders and organizations. It has been my observation that many of today's new activists are quick to conflate being "old" with being part the establishment....Conservatives would be foolish to abandon the wisdom of elders, much less eschew the infrastructure that has been created over recent decades, merely because it existed prior to 2010.

2. A move away from social conservatism. [T]he Tea Party has the potential to change [the conservative movement], possibly making it more libertarian...This could be good or bad (depending on your views), but it is a phenomenon worth considering.

3. Anti-Intellectualism. [C]onservatism began as a coherent intellectual philosophy. But in recent decades, conservatives have mocked "pointy-headed liberal intellectuals," creating an impression that intelligence is almost something to be skeptical of. While I am certainly not advocating elitism, I would strongly encourage conservatives to reject populism. Conservative candidates who can eloquently advocate for conservative positions have a better chance of impacting the culture than do demagogues who cannot effectively communicate their philosophy to the masses.

4. Purges. [T]here is...a danger of Jacobinism, where even fellow revolutionaries are purged -- not for philosophical apostasy but for not being "team players." In recent weeks, we have seen conservative writers labeled RINO's for questioning the background of a Tea Party candidate.

5. The Victim Card. Recently, a prominent conservative voice accused Karl Rove of sexism. While sexism certainly does exist, fair criticism and analysis of a female political candidate does not constitute sexism. Though winning is important, how you play the game is, perhaps, more telling. Conservatives should avoid copying the tactics of the left.

I can't exactly see where Lewis is coming from with his fifth point -- a single example can hardly be used to identify a characteristic of an entire movement -- but his other points seem fair and constructive. Though it seldom happens in the world of politics, a bit of introspection seems like an entirely healthy and positive thing.

While I was reading today's WSJ (see below), I saw that they gave HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a chance to respond to charges of "thuggery" based on her threats against health insurers. Sebelius says that she did nothing more than tell "health-insurance companies that, as required by law, we will review large premium increases and identify those that are unreasonable."

No, no, no. That's not what she said. As I pointed out here, Sebelius specifically threatened to crack down on insurers based on what they said; namely, for blaming rate increases on Obamacare. Her words:

There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases . . . Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.

She went on to warn that wayward insurers could be excluded from the new insurance markets. In short, the administration has threatened to put dissenting companies out of business. You just can't spin your way out of that.

Following Ricochet tradition, let me recommend Bill McGurn's excellent column in which he discusses the "litigious legacy of Kelo."

Kelo is the Supreme Court's 2005 decision that allows government to use eminent domain to seize your property and give it to a private developer. In practice it gives politicians the power to bulldoze neighborhoods for the sake of vanity projects. That's what happened in Freeport, Texas, where the city fathers tried to destroy a shrimping business to make way for a marina. And when a book exposed the collusion between the city and developer H. Walker Royall, Royall sued everyone in sight for "defamation" -- including Ricochet's own Richard Epstein who merely "blurbed" the book.

The expanded eminent domain power plus the use of courts to intimidate the opposition is a potent combination. Let's hope Royall's suit goes down in flames. In the meantime, Bill: if Royall sues you, give me a shout. I might know some lawyers.