What with Steven Slater's dramatic departure from his Jet Blue flight this week, stories about incivility on flights are cropping up. I shared this counter-anecdote for an Associated Press story today:

Mollie Hemingway, a mom of two from Washington, D.C., fondly recalls a flight attendant — traveling as a passenger, no less — who became her guardian angel on what seemed destined to be a flight from, well, a place with no angels.

Flying to Denver with her daughters, ages 1 and 2, Hemingway was stressed to the point of sobbing when her older child soiled her car seat minutes after takeoff, meaning Mom had to balance two kids on her lap.

Changing diapers in the tiny bathroom was a challenge. And the sleep-deprived girls were melting down, "turning into crazed beings that kicked the seats in front of them," Hemingway reports. The flight attendants were nowhere to be seen, until the angel appeared, offering to take the baby.

"I practically threw the baby at her," Hemingway says. "Later she exchanged seats so she could sit next to me and she helped me entertain the girls. I am so thankful for her help."

I'm a strong woman. A veteran traveler. But it's true -- I was crying. Repeatedly. The worst flight I'd had prior to that was the 10-hour Honolulu to Chicago leg I flew with my husband and daughter while pregnant with #2. But this last flight beat even that. And your worst?

We've known for quite some time that Harry Reid has an obsession with race. When the book Game Change was published earlier this year, we learned that:

[Harry Reid's] encouragement of [candidate] Obama was unequivocal. He...believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,"...Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.

It turns out, Harry's obsession with race extends to an obsession with ethnicity, as evidenced by remarks he made yesterday:

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio responds:

(h/t John McCormack at TWS)

With Peter Robinson hiking in the Sierras (that's not a euphemism, he actually is hiking in the Sierras), Jonah Goldberg sits in and perhaps needless to say, adult supervision is in short supply. Hence, we cover Star Trek (of course), gay bars and the GZM, the use of fake swear words in popular culture (Johnny Dangerously, anyone?), and the time Rob spotted former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in a hot tub. Really. Not to worry though, there's plenty of serious discussion (tenure and taxes, primary election analysis, and of course, conservatives and pop culture) to go around.

Links from this week's show:

• Lileks mixes it up with the Boing Boing cartoonist
• Claire Berlinkski interrogates the GZM Twitter account
• Not fluent in Ferengi? A primer here
• Rob Long on the Gutfeld GZM gay bar story
• Johnny Dangerously on IMDB
• Economist Stephen Moore's bio
• The Shining re-imagined as a romantic comedy

Music from this week's episode:

• Wake Up by Arcade Fire (bonus: live version here)
• Opening Sequence from Star Trek TOS

Direct link to this week's show or better yet, subscribe and have the show delivered automagically each week.

I'd like to thank Rob Long for not stealing my idea - as he'll be the first to tell you, that's a rare thing for a Hollywood guy. He said he’d post this if I didn’t, but apparently not. So:

During today's Ricochet podcast, we were talking taxes and revenue with Jonah Goldberg, and I suggested we adopt the ideas of those who want to tax wealth as well as income. The Moneybags set - you know, the ones whose forebears made a pile in Consolidated Monocle or cornered the sassafras market way back when - have piles of money that just sits there, unmolested, and we need to get at it to fund tomorrow's great ideas. (Or, more likely, fund yesterday's underfunded bad ideas.) That's the argument, anyway. But why stop there?

Why not treat tenure as wealth, and tax it accordingly? Take a college professor. (Please.) Calculate how much they'll make until retirement from their permanent job. Declare it wealth. Hoover up a chunk. Write in a provision that says they'll get 47% of the amount paid (with no interest, over ten years) if they ever quit, with the remainder going to a fund to pay for college tuitions for the poor. Sit back; make popcorn; enjoy the reactions.

Obviously not going to happen, but it brings up an idea: if you wanted to irritate the raise-taxes folks with tax-hiking proposals designed to nettle and sting their tender flanks, what would you do?

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To hear more from James Lileks, be sure and check out this week's Ricochet Podcast (with Rob Long and Jonah Goldberg).

Like any pundit, my one great love in life is talking with other pundits about punditry. So I really had to reach outside my comfort zone to talk about pundits with Elizabeth Wurtzel. Not only a memoirist and litigatrix, she's a media visionary -- and she's given Ricochet an exclusive inside scoop on the next big national dialog about to sweep America.

Elizabeth Wurtzel writes:

Somebody somewhere could probably get tenure by becoming the leading, or perhaps only, authority on the Third Amendment to the Constitution, which has been sorely neglected. For those who don't remember, this lost clause is a ban on quartering soldiers in private homes during peacetime, and it has not really mattered to much of anybody in a good two centuries or so. It has never been reviewed by the Supreme Court -- but The Onion once ran an article about the National Anti-Quartering Association, which it described as "the nation's leading Third Amendment rights group" -- keeping America safe, year after year, from soldiers demanding room and board.

My suggestion that we have a searching national debate about the Third Amendment -- an "adult conversation," like the one we're supposed to be having right now about raising the retirement age -- is prompted by my viewing of the various 24-hour news channels. I've determined that nothing that's being said by the likes of Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck -- and their lesser minions -- is really any less ridiculous than discussing quartering soldiers, pro or con. All day long, pundits debate topics that don't really matter, like whether the Fourteenth Amendment will be repealed, which is simply not going to happen -- the Constitution has not been changed in decades, and that provision is pretty much sacrosanct. Or they handicap polls, or they parrot press releases -- and they all say the same things over and over again, which is nothing more than the conventional wisdom either skewed left or flushed right, depending on which side the person is on. The one thing that does not happen on television news is anything that you would call "news" -- I mean, yes, there is "breaking news" whenever something new doesn't happen with the BP oil spill and they have a press conference about it anyway, or something doesn't change with unemployment numbers but the President makes remarks from the Rose Garden just the same. There is just a lot of unenlightened debate about things that don't matter or, quite possibly, don't even exist.

So my suggestion is that we make a cognitive leap and actually discuss an issue that we honestly know doesn't matter: the Third Amendment, and its implications. Let's eliminate the notion that we are having a meaningful conversation and go right for the completely wasteful, irrelevant and unimportant. That's what is happening anyway.

And the added benefit is it might give some poor academic a new idea for a scholarly paper. I see journal articles. I see New York Times bestsellers.

Colorado voters picked their nominees for the upcoming election last night. There were some interesting results. Dan Maes edged out Scott McInnis for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Ken Buck beat Jane Norton for the Republican Senate nomination. And Obama-backed Michael Bennet beat Andrew Romanoff for the Democratic Senate nomination.

After a year of brutal defeats for Obama, his team was understandably pleased by this outcome. They immediately bragged to their press friends and so stories about the vote yesterday told readers that this was all about Obama being awesome again. Or something. John F. Harris' story in Politico was headlined Primary night yields good news for President Obama and Democrats. Sam Youngman's story in The Hill was headlined Axelrod says Colorado results show Obama voters will show up for midterms.

And Marc Ambinder's piece at The Atlantic advanced the story a bit by getting Bennet pushback against Team Obama's braggadocio. That might confuse most readers of Ambinder -- known for his quick capture of White House views. But Bennet's brother James is Ambinder's boss. It was headlined: White House, Bennet Moving in Opposite Directions

Now, I'm a native of Colorado and most of my family lives there and is politically involved. None of these headlines seemed to match with what they were reporting. Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi was also perplexed. He takes apart various claims:

But as of right now, Republican Ken Buck is leading in every poll I’ve seen, and the only “energized” party around here seems to be the party that wants to drive out incumbents.

You wouldn’t know that reading most national coverage. And in just a few posts, Ambinder describes Bennet as a brilliant campaigner (he spent millions more than Andrew Romanoff) as “relatively independent” (he voted down the line for the Obama agenda) an “education innovator” (DPS has, at best, mixed results) and so on. ...

Ambinder claimed that “Democratic turnout was high (though a bit lower than Republican turnout).” In the Colorado Senate race, despite a registration advantage for Dems, 338,537 Democrats voted as opposed to 407,110 Republicans. Is that a “bit,” or is that a lot? Put it this way, more people in Colorado voted for Jane Norton than Michael Bennet on Tuesday.

That last stat makes the Axelrod claim seem pretty silly. All of these stories seem to suffer from too much inside-the-beltway perspective.

Who knows what will happen in November? Colorado campaigns can be infuriating for all involved. But when including White House spin in stories, reporters really should work overtime to avoid contradicting easy-to-find data.

Ross comes close to saying as much, in (1) his recent column on gay marriage and (2) a recent post continuing the conversation:

(1) Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy.

(2) the truth in question asks men and women to engage in sacrificial and frankly counter-biological behavior, in pursuit of an ideal that few societies in history have even attempted to achieve. I will return to this point again and again throughout my responses, but let me be clear: The marriage ideal that I’m defending would be in equally serious difficulties in contemporary America if homosexuality did not exist, because what it asks of straight people is in deep tension with what straight people want to do, and with the way that the incentives of modern life often line up.

Hmmm. There's a difference, isn't there, between labeling marriage counter-biological or unnatural and thinking of marriage more as super-natural, or even a specific kind of natural? It's true that lifelong monogamous marriage is consistent with our natural abilities and endowments. Simply because something runs contrary to at least some of our natural appetites doesn't mean it's unnatural. Running is natural, even though we feel exhaustion or laziness. Countervailing extremes are natural.

When we try to enlist nature as a guide to what we want, it contradicts itself. In fact, I'm tempted to say that, in the case of we humans, biology itself isn't of much use in determining what exactly is natural. (Nietzsche, who insisted that the most fit specimens are often the ones killed off by the weaker many, mocked Darwinism for thinking itself a science and not a belief system.) On its own, nature leaves us with no clear picture of what it means to be human. It's not that marriage runs contrary to nature. It's that our nature is compatible with a wide variety of relationships -- lifelong monogamy and nightly orgies alike.

The question is what we are going to do with our nature -- toward what end we are going to, shall we say, educate it. Marriage, which as I understand it goes way beyond 'lifelong monogamy', is a particularly ambitious way of educating our human nature so as to reach beyond some of its more animalistic and banal characteristics. If the conflicting features of our human nature abound, the meaning and purpose of heterosexual marriage superabounds. In its superabundance, it's supernatural -- not in a way that overthrows the laws of the flesh, we might say, but in a way that fulfills one of its particularly impressive kinds of promise.

Half of all new businesses fail in five years.

Unless they're Amish.  Amish businesses have a 95% success rate.  The Amish economic engine -- in places like Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, where the recession has hit especially hard -- is roaring.

Jason Zasky, in FailureBlog, asks Erik Wesner, author of Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Survive why this is so.

He offers a brace of interesting answers.  One, they don't sue:

In the business realm, it can be a bit of an Achilles heel...I ran into a number of Amish businesses that  had not been paid by dealers, resulting in thousands of dollars in losses. They typically have limited  means to recoup money. An Amish person may hire a lawyer to draft a letter, but that is usually where  legal involvement ends. So unscrupulous outsiders may take advantage of Amish this way, and some have.

Amish, on the other hand, tend to get the word out to others in the community quickly if there is an  individual passing bad checks, for instance. Word gets around and if you treat people well, others will  learn about it quickly in Amish communities. The opposite is true as well.

Another reason -- they keep costs down:

Amish tend to run lower-overhead businesses. One reason is that there is less of a cultural expectation  to deck a business out in frills such as air conditioning and plush offices. Amish businesses are typically operated at home, often in a shed or old building converted for the purpose. Amish tend to be  efficient in how they use resources. An aversion to waste is built-in to the Amish mentality.

Also, they try to build lasting businesses:

The idea of humble leadership is another good example. Amish frequently express the idea that “I’d  never ask an employee to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do.”  Amish bosses are often  involved in the work in a hands-on way, rather than simply delivering orders from a remote office. This orientation has something to do with the productivity and longevity Amish bosses get out of their employees.

A third idea would be the approach to growth. Viewing employees as family, rather than a disposable input, tends to make you approach decisions more cautiously. A side benefit has been a very low rate of failure among Amish businesses. In light of the numerous high-profile business failures, not to  mention recent “bubbles” driven by greed, a measured approach to growth may be wise.

There's a lot going on, apparently, besides barn raisings and pie baking.

The other day, I posted a blog largely in praise of the television show Mad Men. Then last night, I had an opportunity to watch the second episode of the current season. It contained what John Nolte of Big Hollywood calls a "sucker punch," which is where the lefty screenwriter simply can't help but unleash an unnecessary, self-righteous and out-of-context insult against conservative viewers. In this case, some of the old 1960's ad men on the show are sitting around griping. One says that Medicare is the beginning of socialism, and the other--get this--says, yeah, and civil rights, that's really bad! Translation: These old poops are just like the racists who oppose Obamacare today.

As this had nothing whatsoever to do with the story--and as Medicare is a socialist mess about five years away from insolvency--and as civil rights legislation was supported by a greater percentage of Republicans then Democrats--I would like to take this opportunity to send a response to the creators of Mad Men. But I can't, because only one message is appropriate and this is a family-friendly site.

Eugene Volokh flags a "fascinating new article" by Prof. Rick Sander and Prof. Jane Yakowitz. They introduce their findings as follows:

One of the most enduring shibboleths in the legal world is that would-be lawyers should go to the most elite law school they can get into. That’s why LSAT prep courses and US News rankings generate so much [...] interest, and it’s why so many applicants apply to more than ten schools and move thousands of miles to matriculate at the “best” school that will have them.

There have long been grounds for skepticism about this view. In the work one of us did on law school affirmative action, lots of data suggested that black law school applicants were being harmed, not helped, by being enticed to attend more elite schools where their credentials were below those of their classmates. Grades mattered a lot in determining who passed the bar, and being “mismatched” in law school had devastating effects on grades. [...]

Certainly our advice is not to go to the worst school one gets into [...]. We hope the group most influenced by our findings, however, are legal educators, who to date have tended to underestimate and trivialize the learning that occurs in law school and its significance for later career success. We hope that academics will stop repeating the mantra of “eliteness = success” and start studying real learning outcomes [or maybe “real advances to human capital” or something like that?].

I must confess that I am not surprised by the findings of Sander and Yakowitz. The explanation is this: being an excellent lawyer depends on a lot more than knowing the law. It also depends on a sense of self-confidence that can win the trust of clients and the respect of business partners (for transactional lawyers) and opponents (for litigation). That self-confidence, and all the other skills that come with it—presence, responsiveness, alertness to social cues—depend on success early in life. The student who swims well with the tide and develops these skills at lesser law schools have built an asset that some students with the same raw intellectual ability cannot acquire at the top schools because they are always under suspicion and hence ill-at-ease. To be sure, there are some positions that are dependent on doing well at major law schools, and these include prestigious clerkships, teaching positions, jobs in the media, where the connections run only to a half dozen skills. Yet even at all elite places most law students will practice some sort of law, so that for them hitting the comfort zone in law school really matters.

There is also another statistical anomaly that is worth mentioning. Take a great student and put that person in a lesser school, and usually the achievement level will be pretty close to the same. The point here is that the person is what matters critically. So if someone in the top 1 percent nationwide comes to Chicago or Boalt Hall (to pick two places not quite at random), they fight against a strong pack and may finish in the middle. Let them go to a second tier school, and they finish at the very top, which compensates for the placement.

So the moral is: always go where you feel comfortable because that it where you are most likely to realize your full potential.

There’s been a lot of great talk on Ricochet about the Ground Zero Mosque—so I would like to add another voice to that conversation, that of Asra Nomani, a Muslim by birth, and a moderate one too, if we follow the definition Claire gives.

In a column today, Nomani, pictured above, does not denounce the Ground Zero Mosque out of hand, but she questions it, noting that "We’re not being honest in our Muslim community about the violent ideology inside of our Muslim world that needs to be defeated....we have a serious problem inside our Muslim communities."

I think many at Ricochet would agree with Nomani when she writes, "We need an expression of institutional Islam that is moderate, progressive and liberal. We don’t have it yet."

Will we find it at the Ground Zero Mosque? She admits that she is as concerned about the mosque as conservatives are. She has seen firsthand the Wahhabist direction that many mosques in the US are moving in, like her own in Morgantown W. Va, and so she acknowledges that at Ground Zero, there is "potential for a 'good mosque' and a 'bad mosque.'"

Nomani, Indian by birth, is a moderate Muslim woman in the way we at Ricochet have come to define the term here and in other conversations. She is a modern American woman who is also a Muslim. She attends mosque regularly, but she doesn't wear the veil, and she is the single mother of a young boy.

What's more: she has seen the evil of radical Islam face to face. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, her good friend was Daniel Pearl--the American journalist who was brutally murdered in 2002 by terrorists in Pakistan.

Nomani herself has received death threats from radical Muslims for her bold and brave efforts--in writing and in deed--to move Islam in a more progressive direction (for instance, she's involved in a movement to end the gender segregation which occurs in a majority of American mosques).

I think we need more voices like Nomani's out there. If a major mosque is going to go up at Ground Zero, or anywhere else in this country, I hope that their leaders internalize the thoughts of people like Nomani as those mosques form their religious and intellectual identities.

I'm only halfway through, but this is obviously the article everyone is going to be talking about. Judith, you may want to skip it; it's not calculated to reassure, and what can any of us really do?

Reuel Marc Gerecht, as usual uncommonly intelligent, asks whether Imam Rauf is a "moderate Moslem" today in the New Republic. I agree entirely with his assessment:

If Mr. Rauf has collected monies from individuals or Muslim organizations overseas that preach contempt for infidels, have financially supported religiously militant organizations, or, worse, provided aide to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, then his project, which has been approved by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ought to be cancelled. Any American non-profit organization can tell you exactly whence its money comes. By contrast, it appears that the Cordoba Initiative’s funding has not been cross-checked with financial counterterrorist information within the Treasury Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency. (If it had been, we probably would have heard about it.)

And I note, again, that Imam Rauf's association with the Perdana Peace Initiative makes it hard to believe that this isn't the case. Gerecht continues to ask, "What might be an American definition of a “moderate Muslim?” and offers the following as a rough answer:

(i) a believer who unqualifiedly rejects terrorism against anyone. This is America’s Eleventh Commandment. If a Muslim cannot renounce terrorism against Israelis, that person should not be allowed to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero. Testing for unacceptable deviancy isn’t hard. Just borrow from the former al-Qa’ida philosopher, Abd al-Qadir bin Abd al-Aziz, aka “Dr. Fadl,” who sees Palestinian suicide bombers as destined for hell. Thus: “Do you, Feisal Abd ar-Rauf, believe that Allah damns eternally Palestinian suicide bombers?” “Do you believe that rockets launched at Israeli towns by Hamas and Hizbollah are acts of terrorism, which will bring down upon the perpetrators Allah’s wrath?” Mr. Rauf’s answers ought to be short.

(ii) a believer who embraces the doctrine of “neo-ijtihad,” which holds that Muslims today are not chained to the Qur’anic interpretations and legal decisions accepted centuries ago as canonical. Specifically, a “moderate Muslim American” is someone who unqualifiedly renounces the applicability of the Sharia, the Holy Law, in American society. The “Americanization of Islam” here means that the traditional Muslim understanding of orthodoxy as orthopraxy (it’s not what you believe in your heart—that is between you and God—but how you act, i.e., apply the Sharia, in the public square that matters) is null and void. Thus, women may veil or not veil as they please; a woman’s testimony is equal to a man’s; polygyny is verboten; marriage to a menstruating child is an abomination; accepted corporal punishments—amputations and stonings—are immoral; apostasy reflects bad judgment but isn’t criminal; and Jews and Christians should spiritually no longer be viewed as dhimmis, a properly subordinate species who really don’t deserve the same social status and legal rights as Muslims. Jewish and Christian power in America and Europe isn’t an offense against the divinely-sanctioned natural order; it’s just the product of a long, difficult, and tortuous evolution. The Sharia is a lengthy and complicated corpus that developed over centuries and often constrained the worst instincts of despots. A “moderate Muslim American” would see it in much the same way that a faithful “moderate Jewish American” views the Old Testament and the Talmud: documents of a certain time that contain considerable “divine” wisdom (as well as much looniness) and many imperatives for a good, healthy life.

I agree. An excellent definition. Gerecht concludes:

If Mr. Rauf can so define “moderate Islam,” he may not be as American as apple pie, but he would certainly be as American as much of New York City. Any mosque built by such a believer would honor us all.

I agree with that as well. I would add one more point, namely that Moslems who embrace Gerecht's definition surely do exist. They are not mythological. Assertions to the contrary are ridiculous and undermine the credibility of anyone who makes them. The distinction between radical and moderate Islam is well worth drawing and must be drawn if we are to avoid radicalizing moderates by confirming the propaganda of the Narrative.

Park 51 is now on Twitter:

If you're a journalist interested in the Park51 community center project, please contact us here or at park51nyc@gmail.com 2:00 AM Jul 16th via web

.@sarahpalinusa if you'd like to discuss our community center and prayer space project, please feel free to contact us.#transparencyiskey4:41 PM Jul 19th via web

RT @joegomezruiz: I see nothing wrong with building a mosque near ground zero (9/11). Have we forgotten freedom of religion in this country?10:40 PM Jul 19th via TweetDeck

.@elidesuperbiam @greggutfeld If there are no place to learn about Muslims and build engagement, we all loseabout 8 hours ago via web

.@greggutfeld Greg, we're looking to open Interfaith dialog and build moderate Muslim communities. Hate speech doesn't helpabout 8 hours ago via web

From me:

@Park51 Imam Rauf key figure in Perdana Peace Org, prime sponsor of Gaza Flotilla, perhaps IHH. What is the link to Park 51?about 8 hours ago via web

@Park51 We agree that #transparencyiskey. Let me help you get the facts out. This needs investigating; it looks like tie to terror group.about 8 hours ago via web

From Park 51:

Park51 @ClaireBerlinski I'm sorry what are you referring to? Links please?about 8 hours ago via web in reply to ClaireBerlinski

From me:

@Park51 http://www.perdana4peace.org/agenda.aspx?x=3,about 8 hours ago via web in reply to Park51

@Park51, http://www.perdana4peace.org/Default.aspxabout 8 hours ago via web

@Park51, Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement.about 8 hours ago via web

@Park51, Has money from this gone to IHH? It's a quasi-terrorist entity. http://bit.ly/dc0z6P Its German wing has been banned.about 8 hours ago via web

Did you receive links, @park51? I sent them.about 7 hours ago via web

@Park51 Imam Rauf key figure in Perdana Peace Org, prime sponsor of Gaza Flotilla, perhaps IHH. Are there links between PPO and Park 51?8 minutes ago via web

@Park51, this is quite an important question. I support goal of engaging moderates. But is PPO/IHH Imam Rauf's idea of moderate?5 minutes ago via web

I'll let you know if they reply.

A cure for Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is coming--but when? Will the Obama administration seize the opportunity to accelerate efforts to improve the health and wealth of Americans--or are the Obamans too stuck inside their own model of shortsighted austerity to take advantage of scientific progress?

A new study out today suggests that a reliable test for AD may be available soon. A team of 13 doctors and scientists, spread across three countries--Belgium, Sweden, and the US--teamed up to write “Diagnosis-Independent Alzheimer Disease Biomarker Signature in Cognitively Normal Elderly People,” appearing in the Archives of Neurology. The study suggests that a test of spinal fluid will yield up indicators as to whether someone is suffering from the beginnings of the disease.
This would seem to be a big breakthrough in AD research. After all, you can’t cure a disease if you don’t know exactly what it is--including its biomarkers.

Yet interestingly, at least one prominent doctor didn’t seem very impressed with these new findings. On his CNN blog today, Dr. Sanjay Gupta wrote: “I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that nowadays, there aren’t great options for prevention or treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.” And then he added another downbeat observation:

Even if the spinal tap becomes a proven, effective screening test for AD – would you really want to know, if there isn’t much you can do about it?

A bit defeatist, wouldn't one say? After all, knowledge is power--the beginning of power to achieve a cure. And without knowledge of AD, surely there's no hope.
Perhaps we know why Dr. Gupta was recruited by the Obama administration for the post of Surgeon General of the United States in early 2009. He shares their “scarcitarian” mindset, the idea that medical advance means medical expense. But in fact, medical advance means, over the long run, medical savings--enormous medical savings. That was the story of all cures--in addition to the humanitarian imperative, being healthy is cheaper than being sick. And living people are more economically productive than dead people. Moreover, if the new cure could be made in the US, that new production would be a source of jobs and wealth. But as we know, the Obamans seem interested only in bailouts and “stimulus”; by contrast, the nuts and bolts of actual production have little appeal, they seem to look askance at any new economic activity beyond issuing and signing checks--gotta watch that “carbon footprint.”

On “ABC World News” tonight, another medical journalist, Dr. Richard Besser, was much more upbeat: The new research he said on the broadcast, will lead “one day” to “a cure for the five million Americans suffering from Alzheimer's.” Dr. Besser also spoke, on air, to Dr. Paul Aisen, a neurologist at the University of California at San Diego, who offered viewers real hope:We now have a tool that allows us to identify the disease, years before dementia starts. And that's the stage of the disease at which intervention should be effective. if treating the Alzheimer's Disease process before there's irreversible damage to the brain. I think that's the key to bringing this epidemic of Alzheimer's under control.

“Bringing this epidemic of Alzheimer's under control”--now that’s hope, that’s change we can believe in.

OK, but when do we get AD under control. As Dr. Besser recounted his conversation with Dr. Aisen to guest-anchor George Stephanopoulos, Dr. Besser recalled, “I asked him if there would be a cure or an effective treatment in our lifetime. And the answer I got, George, 'absolutely.'" Stephanopolous agreed that was cheerful news, but failed to pin down Besser as to a more specific timeline--”our lifetime,” after all, is a bit unspecific. For the record, Dr. Besser and Stephanopoulos are both in their early 50s, so we can all do some mathematical guesstimating.

So an AD cure is in sight--the issue is whether or not we should speed up the cure by mobilizing public and private resources to conquer AD before AD conquers all of us.

Once upon a time, spurring the progress of an ambitious undertaking would have been a no-brainer for a Democratic president. John F. Kennedy, for example, relished the space race as an opportunity to show off America’s greatness. As JFK said at Rice University in 1962, “We choose to go to the moon.” Not only that, he continued, this feat would be accomplished in the cming decade, because setting such a goal “will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
And that’s what we need today: the organization and measuring of “the best of our energies and skills.” Everybody responds better to a challenge--and Kennedy challenged us, so profoundly, that even after his tragic death, we fought the good fight to get to the moon. And indeed, that’s how big things get done--through inspiration and mobilization, getting our energies and skills in gear.

Unfortunately, the incumbent Democratic administration doesn’t seem interested in any great undertaking to cure AD. In fact, it has allowed federal funding for AD research to level off. To the Obamans, the only issues in healthcae seem to be covering everyone, while at the same time “bending the cost curve” so that healthcare gets cheaper, according to Office of Management and Budget/Congressional Budget Office rote calculations. That’s a terrible way to run a government--letting OMB/CBO determine policy.

In that vein, one has to wonder whether federal beancounters would have let the Manhattan Project, for example, go forward, on the ground that atomic technology was too expensive and speculative. Fortunately, another Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wasn’t interested in green-eyeshade objections. As assistant secretary of the Navy during World War One, FDR had seen the reality of trench warfare; so in World War Two, he wanted to use technology to minimize that sort of carnage. And so he gambled on the wisdom of Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Robert Oppenheimer. The gamble paid off; Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives by bringing World War Two to a quick end. And yes, the atom bomb, and then atomic power, saved money, too.

Instead, the Obama administration is patting itself on the back for Medicare reductions that will never come to pass. So there we have it: Real science is ignored, while fake politics is extolled. Only in Washington DC would such foolishness seem normal, even savvy.

Allahpundit has the hype:

Politico is updating with returns from all four states. Two plotlines for you tonight. One: There’s a Gingrich/Huckabee vs. Palin proxy war happening in the GOP gubernatorial primary in Georgia. Newt and Huck backed Nathan Deal, who’s narrowly ahead with 15 percent of the precincts reporting as I write this, and Sarahcuda chose Karen Handel, not only anointing her a “mama grizzly” but turning up in the state to campaign for her. If Deal wins, expect much media navel-gazing tomorrow about What It All Means vis-a-vis Palin’s brand.

The other big one, and even more fun for political junkies, is the Bennet/Romanoff showdown in the Democratic senate primary in Colorado. Remember, Romanoff was the guy whom The One tried to bribe into getting out of the race; as if that’s not sweet enough, Bill Clinton turned around and endorsed him in late June, making this a glorious Obama/Clinton proxy war. Bennet, as the incumbent, is the favorite, but Romanoff’s been creeping up and it’s now too close to call. Another fun fact: Bennet was enough of an ObamaCare shill that he once told CNN he’d happily risk his job in order to pass the bill. Here’s hoping he’s finished off tonight.

Want updates? Josh Kraushaar, Dave Weigel, and Stacy McCain are tweeting the returns.

That pesky Constitution of ours continues to hamper those who seek to advance the Liberal agenda. It can be done, and is being done, but think how much time could be saved if judges and agencies didn’t have to expend so much effort contorting words and ideas to circumvent that document’s meanings. So, in the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation, I asked a Liberal lawyer friend of mine to suggest some changes to the Bill of Rights that might streamline this whole process. [HIS COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS ARE IN BRACKETED CAPS.]

I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof [EXCEPT WHEN SUCH EXERCISE TAKES PLACE IN PUBLIC SETTINGS IN A MANNER THAT MIGHT OFFEND OTHERS. NEED TO FIND SOME WAY TO EXEMPT OUR ISLAMIC FRIENDS]; or abridging the freedom of speech [UNLESS SUCH SPEECH--ESPECIALLY BROADCAST SPEECH--IS HATEFUL], or of the press [UNLESS IT ENGAGAGES IN HATEFUL SPEECH]; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances [AS LONG AS SUCH ASSEMBLY OR PETITION IS DONE IN A NON-HATEFUL MANNER].

II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.[CAN WE SUBSTITUTE SOMETHING ABOUT FREE HEALTHCARE OR EDUCATION?]

III No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. [I THINK WE SHOULD EMPHASIZE THE FACT THAT WE’RE WILLING TO ALLOW THIS ONE TO STAND UNTOUCHED.]

IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [SEEMS UNNECCESARILY BROAD.]

V No person shall be held to answer for any capital [NEED TO LOSE “CAPITAL”; REMEMBER OUR BASE], or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War [SUBSTITUE “CONFLICT” FOR “WAR”] or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb [COULD BE OFFENSIVE TO THOSE WITH PARTICULAR HANDICAPS]; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation [UNLESS SUCH DEPRIVATION IS CONSIDERED ESSENTIAL BY RESPONSIBLE AUTHORITIES].

VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. [KIND OF BORING. COULD WE RE-EMPHASIZE FREE HEALTHCARE AND EDUCATION?]

VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, [NEED TO UPDATE AMOUNT TO REFLECT PAST AND PROJECTED INFLATION. SUGGEST $800, UNLESS WE USE CBO ESTIMATES, IN WHICH CASE, LET’S GO WITH $8 BILLION] the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. [WITH BP IN MIND, LET’S MAKE IT READ “REALLY, REALLY EXCESSIVE FINES.”]

IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. [LET’S BE SURE WE RETAIN THE POWER TO CONFER THOSE RIGHTS. THERE IS THE DANGER, WITH PRESENT WORDING, PEOPLE MIGHT ASSUME THEY WERE BORN WITH SOME SORT OF RIGHTS.]

X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. [I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS HERE! IT’S GOT TO GO!]

PBS Newshour hosted a live TV debate between Mark Zandi and me on the question of whether government interventions helped or hurt the economy. The show highlighted a paper by Alan Blinder and Zandi, about which I posted comments. Several people who watched the show commented on how Zandi agreed with me on two important issues:

1. that the on-again off-again bailout policies in 2008 helped bring about the panic that year and
2. that holding off on any tax rate increases next year would be a stimulus to economic growth.

Of course, we disagreed about other things.

One of my basic rules is, if Terry Teachout writes something, read it.

In the latest issue of Commentary, he writes about David Mamet, the ferociously profane, hilarious, electrifying playwright.

Mamet has written some spectacular stuff -- American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow.  But he also wrote the best, most compact manifesto for screenwriting I've ever read.  It's here, and it's brilliant.

He also wrote an essay two years ago, for the Village Voice, entited "Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal," in which he describes his new thinking as a result of reading works by the League of Conservative Super Heroes such as Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Steele.

Teachout isn't totally sold, of course.  And the whole essay is worth reading, as always:

Mamet does not fit easily into any political pigeonhole. He appears at first glance to be less a  conservative than a libertarian. As he explained in his Village Voice essay, he is “hard-pressed to see  an instance where the intervention of the government [has] led to much beyond sorrow,” and nowhere  in that essay or the pages of Theatre does he betray any interest in the social issues that are central to the belief systems of most conservatives.

At the same time, though, Mamet’s repudiation of liberalism is rooted in a view of human nature that is more complex than that of most libertarians, and one that can easily be related to the skeptical  worldview that animates his plays. “As a child of the 60’s,” he wrote in the Village Voice, “I accepted as  an article of faith?.?.?.?that people are generally good at heart.” It was this credo that he specifically  repudiated in that same essay:

I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in  circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

...Therein lies part of the strength of Mamet’s major plays: they present human behavior rather than trying to explain it. None of the characters is obviously sympathetic, nor do any of them step forward at  evening’s end to reassure uneasy audiences that they are seeing man at his worst and that a well- regulated society has the power to lead him in the paths of righteousness. Instead, Mamet portrays human life as a Hobbesian war of all against all, leaving it to the viewer to draw his own conclusions about the ultimate meaning of the struggles for dominance that he witnesses on stage. The only difference between Mamet then and Mamet now is that he has decided that government intervention can do little or nothing to ameliorate the effects of these struggles, and that men do better to work out their differences through the operation of free markets.

Still, I love that line:  "hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government has led to much beyond sorrow."

As the result of severe drought, heat, and thousands of miles of forest fires, Putin has instituted a ban on Russian grain exports. I recently interviewed an American grain trader working in Eastern Europe about the implications of the ban. Below is an excerpt from the interview. Because the right to free speech is not always guaranteed in the country in which she is working, I'll refer to the interviewee as "Miss GT" (short for Miss Grain Trader) to protect her identity.

Diane Ellis: Can you give readers an idea of the magnitude of the situation? How much of the total grain supply does Russian grain represent?

Miss GT: Russia is the world's third largest producer of wheat (after the EU and the United States), so the recent export ban will have a large impact on the global supply and demand. Since Russia produces comparatively small amounts of barley and corn, the other grain supply and demand schedules will be less directly affected by the ban; however, the tightening of the global wheat situation will spillover and affect all grains and oilseeds. Currently the USDA estimates global wheat production at 344mmt (million metric tons), with Russia producing 53mmt. In terms of export flows, the USDA's 120mmt will have to be reduced by 15mmt for Russia, and the 8mmt from Kazakhstan and Ukraine are also increasingly called into question and will likely be significantly reduced.

DE: What are the implications of the ban on grain export for a) Russian grain producers and consumers and b) the rest of the world? Who will be hardest hit by this ban?

Miss GT: Some Russian grain exporters lobbied heavily for the ban, in order to escape cheap contracts after the precipitous rise in prices. Similarly, local consumers will benefit as prices stabilize. In Russia the price of bread and beer have large political implications, so politicians (read: Putin) will also benefit from taking a strong stand.

Egypt is the hardest hit by the ban, as last year they imported around 6mmt of Russian wheat. This wheat will be replaced by French wheat, but since the EU does not have enough room to increase its export numbers by such an amount, other origins will have to be brought into the mix. Global prices have already risen dramatically, which will slightly decrease demand, but there still is a lot of wheat that needs to be "found." Since the United States boasts the world's largest wheat reserves, it seems the exports will have to come from there. However, US wheat still prices at a premium to French wheat.

Jonah alerts me to this decadent news:

“They are very much a modern family. They are open-minded. They are generally adorable,” said Bill Hayes, president of North Carolina-based Figure 8 Films and co-executive producer of the show. “Their children were so well behaved and polite and healthy and happy,” he added. “Pardon the cliche, but the proof was in the pudding. I thought, ‘What a bunch of great young people, and there was nothing strange about them.’ They have an unusual lifestyle, but for them, it was their lifestyle.”

Please restrain me from asking whose lifestyle isn't theirs 'for them.' We make a mistake if we think of gay marriage simply as the pointy end of the wedge driving a full complement of Alternate Lifestyles into the heart of the culture. The slippery slope metaphor implies a single-lane ski jump. A better metaphor is a large scoop of ice cream on a tiny cone under a heat lamp. It melts in all directions. The troublesome principle is that however you live should be celebrated -- not just tolerated -- as long as you're "modern," "open-minded," and "adorable." That kind of love is way too big, isn't it?

Hunter Thompson understood: "Just how weird can you stand it, brother -- before your love will crack?"

Five Thousand Dollars, according to the German government. Or at least, that’s how much an Afghan life is worth.

In a gesture whose apparent "generosity" is undermined by its stolidity, the German government is giving $5,000 to “every family that lost a member in a German-ordered airstrike in Afghanistan,” according to the Spiegel Online.

Five thousand dollars is a settlement sum.

In 2009, a group of Afghan farmers, seeking compensation for loved ones lost as a result of German airstrikes,hired a German lawyer to take legal action against the German government. The farmers--through their lawyers--haggled with German officials over an appropriate sum. Figures from $33,000, to 200,000 Euros, to $500,000 were all tossed around and debated.

But according to a bureaucrat in the German Defense Ministry, who ended up having the final say, “$5000 is a suitable amount” for the life of a dead Afghan civilian. Apparently, America pays $2,000 for a lost soul.

There's something Kafkaesque in the legal wrangling--the negotiators' back and forth--of putting a dollar sum on a human life, don't you think?

Obama Press Secretary and first-rate stress case Robert Gibbs can't take it anymore:

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.” The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

The Daily Caller has more. Richard Adams flags Glenn Greenwald's reax:

one of the most petulant, self-pitying outbursts seen from a top political official in recent memory, half derived from a paranoid Richard Nixon rant and the other half from a Sean Hannity/Sarah Palin caricature of The Far Left.

Matt Yglesias ventures something of a defense:

it’s not the job of the President of the United States to stand up for a pure ideological vision—his job is to cut compromises to implement policies that improve on the status quo. But by the same token, it’s not the job of activists to be “satisfied” with compromises premised on the current boundaries of political feasibility.

Here's what fascinates me most: Obama now has amassed vocal critics on the right and the left who think he's too much like George W. Bush. That can't be good news for the President.

Tom Sowell nails it again:

A graduating senior at Hunter College High School in New York gave a speech that brought a standing ovation from his teachers and got his picture in the New York Times. I hope it doesn’t go to his head, because what he said was so illogical that it was an indictment of the mush that is being taught at even our elite educational institutions.

Young Justin Hudson, described as “black and Hispanic,” opened by saying how much he appreciated reaching his graduation day at this very select public high school. Then he said, “I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.” The reason? He and his classmates were there because of “luck and circumstances.”

The issue isn't just the misguided student who blames the meritocratic admissions process for lopsided outcomes (and they are lopsided -- out of 200 kids in my daughter's class, she is one of just three blondes). Of greater concern is the faculty, including apparently soon-to-be Justice Kagan's brother, who fail to diagnose that the real problem is a public school system that severely disserves those most in need, and instead would dilute what makes Hunter the outstanding school it is.

There's no one funnier than the hilariously evil Greg Gutfeld, of FoxNews' Red Eye. His recent book is hilarious.

He's reached a new level of mischief. And this time, he's serious. He's raising money to buy a place close to the Ground Zero Mosque. He's going to open a business there:

So, the Muslim investors championing the construction of the new mosque near Ground Zero claim it's all about strengthening the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world.

As an American, I believe they have every right to build the mosque - after all, if they buy the land and they follow the law - who can stop them?

Which is, why, in the spirit of outreach, I've decided to do the same thing.

I'm announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.

Which immediately spawned a huge Twitter meme of people trying to name the new place. Most of them are objectionable, of course -- but a few aren't.

This strikes me as exactly what the response should be to the GZM. As Greg says:

The goal, however, is not simply to open a typical gay bar, but one friendly to men of Islamic faith. An entire floor, for example, will feature non-alcoholic drinks, since booze is forbidden by the faith. The bar will be open all day and night, to accommodate men who would rather keep their sexuality under wraps - but still want to dance.

Bottom line: I hope that the mosque owners will be as open to the bar, as I am to the new mosque. After all, the belief driving them to open up their center near Ground Zero, is no different than mine.

My place, however, will have better music.

What a fantastic troublemaker.

I get a little behind in my WSJ reading, but I saw something from a few days ago about how insurance companies are helping (both with manpower and money) doctors' offices go fully electronic with records.

I am truly conflicted about this. On the one hand, I don't really want my medical life story passed around by my different doctors, not to mention the entire world if there was a breach of security. Who wants this out there?

25-year-old female arrives, certain she has "gangrene." After brief but hysterical conversation, she recalls that she had been wearing her green flats from Payless a lot lately. Led to questions about anxiety. Suggested a visit to a therapist.

Then again, when I take my four year-old to the pediatrician, the conversation starts off fine. She's doing well, yes, making progress; therapy has been great; integrated education has been great. Stomach problems? Yeah, still. Have you seen a gastroenterologist? Yes! We finally got an appointment and went. Great, who'd you see? Uhhhhhh. I think his first name was Joe, or something? Where was his office? I think it was at NYU ... no, wait, Cornell Hospital. Though maybe that’s the same hospital? Sorry, I think so, but…Okay, no problem, when did you go? Uhhhhhhh....

The doctor politely moves on. Has she been tested for allergies? Uhhhhhh (repeat of above).

Now, my daughter has yet to be in a true medical emergency. But if I can't remember key facts with a pleasant doctor in a pleasant setting, how the heck am I going to remember key facts in the emergency room at 3:30 in the morning? My middle daughter has a lot of minor medical issues, but even with my other kids ... I honestly can't remember which immunizations they’ve received, even though the doctor patiently repeats them to me each time he gives them out. I can't tell you how mortifying it is to have the doctor ask if they've had their flu shots this year, and to only be able to sit there, puzzled. It hasn't helped that we've recently moved to a new town and are seeing all new doctors.

My point is, having access to this stuff electronically could certainly save lives, save time, and probably save taxpayer money. Yet, I don't want my "stuff" out there.

What's the solution?

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will be marching in Montreal's Gay Pride Parade.

All righty then!

Leaving aside the group's apparent ignorance of the definition of "apartheid," there remain one or two questions about their perception of gay life in the Palestinian Territories versus Israel. There are, unfortunately, many instances that could be catalogued here of the persecution of homosexuals in the Territories. Rather than provide a list, I'll instead offer a quick primer on gay rights in Israel.

1. Gay sex is legal.
2. Same-sex partners can legally adopt children, including one another's biological children.
3. Gay soldiers serve openly throughout the armed forces. Discrimination by the army against homosexuals of either gender in recruitment, placement or promotion is prohibited.
4. Gay partners who are living together have the legal status of "unregistered cohabitation," a version of common-law marriage. They are viewed by the state as legal units for tax, real estate and financial purposes, including spousal benefits. Same-sex partners of civil service employees are entitled to survivor benefits.
5. Insurance companies recognize same-sex partnerships. Surviving partners receive employment compensation.
6. Same-sex marriages performed abroad are legally recognized by the state. (Note that for any marriage conducted inside Israel to be legal, it has to be performed by an Orthodox rabbi, so gay weddings are out. So are non-Orthodox straight weddings. Marriages abroad, however, are all legally recognized. There is thus a long tradition of couples marrying in Israel with the clergyman who suits them and then flying out of the country to have another ceremony. I did this. I got married in Jaffa in September 2001, a lovely wedding to a nice Jewish man, but treif (unkosher) according to the Chief Rabbinate since our rabbi wasn't Orthodox. We got married again in Cyprus a month later. If we hadn't, technically we wouldn't be married.)
7. Foreign partners of gay Israelis are eligible for residency permits.
8. Lesbians are granted the same access to IVF treatment as straight women.
9. Individuals have the right to change their legal gender.
10. The city of Tel Aviv recognizes all unmarried couples, straight or gay, as family units. This entitles them to the same discounts for municipal services -- things like day care, pools, sports facilities, and so on -- that married couples receive.
11. Israel has had an open and thriving gay pride movement for decades.

Anyone has the right to opine about Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians (and they do), but it takes a special kind of tunnel vision to do so as a homosexual with no reference whatsoever to the largely grim reality of life for homosexuals in the Territories. Denouncing Israel as an apartheid state is apparently of greater value to these people than taking a public stand to improve that reality for gay Palestinians. I can’t help but wonder what said gay Palestinians – who can’t openly identify as such for fear of retribution -- think of all this.

Just wondering: has this little item appeared anywhere in the Stateside press? In what the Jerusalem Post is calling "a morbid show of bravado," Iran has dug mass graves for American troops in the event that the US attacks. The gesture was apparently prompted by the statement last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the US has a "contingency plan" in place to attack Iran if necessary.

Teheran has also -- once again -- openly defied the Security Council. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran activated its second centrifuge cascade yesterday. This means it is now capable of enriching uranium at up to 20%. Twenty percent enriched uranium is categorized as weapons-grade nuclear material. (Ninety-five percent enrichment is required to build an atomic bomb.)

Is the Teheran leadership's apparent desire for a showdown getting much play in the US? And should it?