This article, I think, lends strong support to my argument for banning the burqa. I have a massive file of stories like this, actually; I've been hearing such stories for more than a decade.

Brainwashed Muslim parents ask school librarians not to lend their children storybooks. (Jacqueline Wilson, the former Children's Laureate, is targeted for 'leading children astray' with her stories that deal with contemporary social issues, such as single motherhood.)

Some Muslim children have been kept away from school visits to temples, churches and art galleries.

Teddy bears and pets are also branded un-Islamic.

How about the daughter of a relative of mine, who was having a birthday-party and invited all the girls in her class. The Muslim pupils organised a boycott because she had invited 'unbelievers'.

In one secondary school, a talented Muslim pupil was cast in the leading role in the George Bernard Shaw play Caesar And Cleopatra. Her parents didn't seem to object, and all was going well until the dress rehearsal, when she turned up at school with bruises on her face, crying and refusing to go on stage. The local imam had summoned her family and warned them that acting in plays was 'worse than whoredom'. The father, an engineer, refused to be cowed, but the mother, scared of what people would say, beat her daughter and threatened to take her out of school (which she duly did).

The key point is that these stories are now common in Britain--not weird aberrations, but common. Note that the author of the article is a Muslim woman. (Yes, an authentic moderate Muslim.) She adds:

The full burka has been banned in France (where the hijab - a headscarf - is also not allowed in schools) and other European nations will follow.

In Britain, where personal liberty is sacrosanct, such state actions would appear authoritarian.

To me, that hands-off approach makes no sense.

Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and indulging Taliban values here?

Even if it offends liberal principles, the powerful must find a way of stopping Islamicists from promulgating their distorted creed.

If they don't, the future is bleak for Muslims and the country. Many of us British Muslims care deeply about both.

The West needs to be on her side.

Here's an intriguing development.

Israeli intelligence has come to the conclusion that it was a Hamas cell, and not an Egypt-based Global Jihad organization, that shot off the six rockets from Sinai that landed on Aqaba and Eilat on Monday. Hamas was also responsible, it appears, for a rocket attack launched from Sinai on April 22.

"It is clear to us beyond any doubt that in both incidents a cell of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza surreptitiously fired the missiles,” Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu said. “I want to be clear: Using the territory of a third country — a peaceful one — in order to launch missiles against Israel won’t help Hamas escape responsibility. Whoever shoots at Israeli citizens, and it doesn't matter from where, we will find them and hit them hard.”

Egypt, which initially said the rockets couldn't have been fired from Sinai, is now backing the Israeli assessment, and has publicly placed Hamas on notice. A security source quoted by the official Egyptian news agency Ashraq Al-Awsat said, "Egypt would not agree, under any circumstances, that any party use its territories to harm Egyptian interests." Hamas is denying any connection to the rocket attacks and blaming Islamic Jihad, which is denying it too.

If Hamas really was behind the attacks from Sinai, it might have overreached. Egypt has never concerned itself overmuch with the flow of smuggled goods and arms from Sinai into Gaza. But if Hamas has decided to use Sinai as a base for terrorist operations, essentially colonizing Egyptian territory for its own interests, it might have pushed Egypt too far. Egypt now has a greater incentive not only to take a closer look at the smuggling tunnels but also to police its long border with Israel; up to now, its fencing and surveillance systems (such as they are) have been restricted to the border with the Gaza Strip.

Of course, it might be wishful thinking to hope that Egypt will be prodded by this embarrassment to inhibit arms flow into Gaza. In truth, it'll probably take more than two rocket attacks on Israelis and Jordanians to get Egypt to do anything. Still, I'd expect Hamas to keep its operations on its own territory, at least for the time being.

Folks, help me out here. On Tuesday, Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic blogged that those opposing the Cordoba Mosque are serving the interests of Osama bin Laden, who seeks to promote a clash of civilizations. Osama bin Laden would bomb the Cordoba Mosque, Goldberg writes, because "al Qaeda's goal is the purification of Islam (that is to say, its extreme understanding of Islam) and apostates pose more of a threat to Bin Laden's understanding of Islam than do infidels."

Goldberg states in his post that he knows Feisal Abdul Rauf personally, so presumably he has some authority to identify him as an apostate. He characterizes Rauf as "a Muslim who believes that it is possible to remain true to the values of Islam and, at the same time, to be a loyal citizen of a Western, non-Muslim country."

Excellent. So has he asked Rauf why he wants to call the mosque Cordoba House? Has anyone asked him?

Forgive me if I've missed that conversation, if it ever took place, but it seems to me essential if anyone is to believe that this mosque is intended to be a place of healing -- if it is to be, indeed, anything other than the "victory for political Islam" that Peter Robinson cited in his post yesterday. I'm not trying to be snarky here: I sincerely hope to find evidence somewhere that Rauf has publicly explained the name, which -- in the absence of an explanation -- can only be viewed as a deliberately provocative choice, and a choice that belies all the talk about the mosque's wholesome, bridge-building intentions. Has anyone asked him?

I know there are more urgent issues to discuss right now but I cannot stress how important it is for you to start a tribute band if you don't feel like growing up just yet. I joined this one already in progress since about 1992. I've been playing with them for 5 years enjoying immensely being at ground zero of one of the biggest musical mysteries of our time. Namely: "Why do so many Latinos love Morrissey and the Smiths?"

It's an eternal question that can never really be answered. The closer you get, the less important it becomes and you forget why you were so worried about it. Just enjoy it. We appeared on the local news here in L.A. this past Monday to talk about the upcoming show at the Orange County Fair this Saturday.

Now that we've established that you are going to start a tribute band. To whom are you paying homage and most importantly, what will you name this outfit?

If this video doesn't appear, or if Claire can't see it, here's the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxuT0p_pSts&feature=player_embedded

The only way you could get some New Yorkers to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque would be for Sarah Palin to endorse it. As it happens, she is critical of the idea, which is all some need to know. A cartoon (reprinted approvingly at BoingBoing, where I saw it, reminding me that they think I'm an idiot) by "Tom the Dancing Bug" lays out what the wingnuts want for the spot, and of course Palin is invoked:

Preening, insular, race-based parochialism? Check! (Does this make New Yorkers incapable of commenting on culture beyond the Hudson? No; they understand tout le monde - by virtue of being le monde, I guess.) Let's examine the subtle, ingenious critique of the conservative response:

The Rethugicans would want an "Official United States of America Church" where only Jesus-addled bumpkins can bow a head, and pray God “not to send more terrorist or weather-related catastrophes upon our nation in retribution for our homosexuals and Democrats.” Ho! A witty jape, sir. It’s always amusing when people incensed by religious bigotry against Islam strike back with reductio ad absurdum depictions of Christians.

But wait, there’s more: the Republican 9/11 memorial would also have a "Muslim-free Zone" because GOPers are racist and xenophobic, and hate ay-rabs. This is a given. It’s a natural outgrowth of believing in lower taxes and property rights. And by property we mean SLAVES.

It would have “a Memorial to First Responders that commemorates their denial of health care - a reference, of course, to the Republicans' insistence that Congress might shave a buck or two from the Robert Byrd Institute for the Study of Robert Byrd to pay for the benefits. (Of course that was just a fig-leaf; they're really opposed to making sure the 1st responders don't get health care at all, because that would be socialism.)

There’s also an “Eternal Flame for the never-dying belief / wish that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind the attack.” Yes, of course. Ninety-six percent of Republicans believe Saddam was behind the attack, because Bill O’Reilly appeared to them in the form of a burning bush and told them so. Whereas no Democrat ever believed we went into Afghanistan to build an oil pipeline or steal iridium.

If there’s anything amusing about the work, it’s the context: to the cartoonist, this is the Republican response to the Mosque. Which almost suggests the Mosque is the Islamic response to 9/11. Which of course it isn’t. The Cordoba Center funders were as surprised as anyone when they found out how close to Ground Zero the site turned out to be.

UPDATE: The cartoonist responds.

>

More on This Topic

ROBINSON > A Brief Manifesto for "Cordoba House"

BERLINSKI > Call Their Bluff

POULOS > The Ground Zero Mosque Is not Like a Strip Club

>

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Reminder of a Bygone Culture

We "Must" Befriend Iran at Israel's Expense?

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In Defense of Air Conditioning

Commenting on Steve Manacek's post, "A Birthday Reflection on Mr. Obama," StickerShock agreed that judgment is more important than intelligence, suggesting that, whereas President Obama's judgment is doubtful, "Reagan's was superb.

How about an analogy --- Reagan : Obama :: Grace Kelly : Snookie.

From the New York Times today:

The Senate on Wednesday cleared the way to provide $10 billion to states and local school districts to prevent teacher layoffs and an additional $16 billion in federal aid to cash-strapped states, and the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she would summon House back from its summer recess to grant final approval to the bill.

The procedural vote in the Senate was 61 to 38, with the Maine Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, joining all Democrats in support of cutting off a filibuster.

Where on earth in the Constitution does it say that one of the roles of the federal government is bailing out improvident states and localities? Since most of the most debt-ridden states are "blue," this is little more than political robbery -- "we have the power to take money from the rest of you to help pay our bills, so we're going to do it." Shame on Snowe and Collins for agreeing to such a blatantly partisan political scam. And shame on all those Democrats from the more fiscally responsible states for allowing their taxpaying citizens to be ripped off like this. And for what?

The other thing this illustrates is the absolutely craven subservience of the Democratic Party to the teachers' unions. The strategy is abundantly clear -- spend whatever you want on whatever you want; when deficit troubles loom, cry, "Egad, we're going to have to lay off teachers!" And presto -- here comes the Great White (well, Multicultural) Savior -- the Democratic Party -- to Save the Teachers! Never mind that what's really being "saved" is a whole culture of political sinecures, of unsustainable pension commitments, of ineffective programs, of bloated bureaucracies, the serious reduction of any of which would be more than enough to "save teachers' jobs." A pox upon every single elected official complicit in this whole fetid conspiracy!

....before you wish President Obama a special birthday! The Organize for America site is here, and you're just a click away from letting the president know -- politely -- what you wish for him, in his 49th year.

And come right back here and tell us what you wrote.

Proposition 8 will soon become a cottage industry for all constitutional lawyers dealing with the equal protection clause. From a doctrinal point of view, the case is a vivid illustration of the enormous gulf that separates any theory of original constitution meaning from modern views of the living constitution. On the former, it seems pretty clear that the equal protection clause meant that the government could not in the enforcement of the criminal law make invidious distinctions between persons. Coupled with the Due Process Clause, it was intended to make sure that all states, and the southern states in particular, did not railroad folks into serious punishment by passing laws that discriminated or by enforcing facially neutral laws in an even-handed fashion. This rule could apply to any and all distinctions. It is not only blacks, but also women, foreigners and gays that should receive that kind of equal protection, which extends to all persons.

What the Equal Protection Clause was not in this view was a generator of new individual rights against the state, whether it relates to marriage or abortion or anything else. When the living constitution comes along, the older limitations vanish, and what we have is a redefinition of all sorts of substantive commitments. Marriage of course is a topic that gets to the core of human emotions, and the laws on family reflect a variety of religious and social perceptions that are not always in tune with the latest social theories. My fear here is that two different conceptions of legitimacy will lead to protracted social conflict which a more modest constitutional approach could perhaps avoid. But as things now stand, Vaughn Walker’s decision is in tune with recent Supreme Court cases in the way in which Prop 8 is not.

A great many of his supporters have made something of a fetish of lauding Barack Obama's supposed "intelligence" -- particularly (wink, wink) in comparison to his predecessor -- and asserting that this "intelligence" is one of his principal qualifications for office and one of his chief claims for public support. This view is not only confined to his left-leaning media fan club, but has permeated widely across at least one sizable (and swing-voting) segment of the electorate -- the better-educated professional/business class that tends to congregate in major-metro suburbs and the more affluent urban enclaves. These people are not part of Obama's natural "base" -- they tend to be moderates and independents. They've grown disenchanted with his policies, but they still largely cling to the belief that they should like him because he's -- well, so intelligent. And that's what a President should be, right?

Well, no. Leave aside for a moment the question of whether Mr. Obama's intelligence is really so considerable (the actual hard evidence is scanty and inconclusive) or just good marketing -- assume he is. The business/professional types who flocked to him in 2008 are the very first people who should know that the more senior you get in any organization -- and you don't get any more senior than POTUS -- what matters far more than "intelligence" is "judgment." When candidates are evaluated for entry- or junior-level "analyst" positions in the private sector, the bulk of weight is placed on how "smart" they are. When candidates are assessed for very senior positions, that question is secondary or tertiary -- if it even comes up at all. They're evaluated, instead, on "leadership," "character," and "judgment."

"Judgment" (like "intelligence") is an imprecise term, but I find it useful to think of "intelligence" as the ability to retain and process known facts, and of "judgment" as the process by which one reaches conclusions about things that are fundamentally unknown or not fully known. "Intelligence" recalls the name of the foreign minister of Uzbekistan or the GDP of Peru or the flow capacity of various trans-Caucasus pipelines. "Judgment" concludes that an Ahmadinejad will or will not respond to conciliation, or that the public will or will not like an ugly health care bill better once it's passed.

There are no shorthand "credentials," like Harvard or Yale, for judgment. The only test is the historical record of what one said and did, and what actually happened. Churchill belongs in the pantheon of greats because his judgments of Nazi Germany and of the British people's ultimate will to resist proved profoundly correct -- the majority of "intelligent" people in Britain in the 1930s did not share his judgment. In our own time, the judgment of Ronald Reagan, whose intellectual credentials were negligible, has to be considered exceptional. It was Reagan's judgment that freeing the economy from excessive taxation and regulation could reignite dynamism and growth after years of stagnation. It was Reagan's judgment that the Soviet colossus was in fact a rusted-out anachronism that could ultimately be defeated -- this at a time when the young Barack Obama was passionately supporting the "nuclear freeze," one of innumerable dumb ideas in history's ashheap.

Eighteen months is a rather short time over which to begin to assess Obama's judgment, but the early indications are that it falls way short of his intelligence, whatever that is. It has been Obama's judgment that conciliation and negotiation would defuse the threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea. How's that working out? It has been Obama's judgment that soothing words and mea culpas would produce warmer, more productive relations with the Islamic world and defuse tensions in the Middle East. Right. It has been Obama's judgment that a huge step backwards into Keynesianism and toward greater state control of large pieces of the private sector would juice the economy -- and prove popular. At the moment, this is not looking prescient. The inescapable conclusion, eighteen months in, has to be that this particular mix of intelligence and judgment is more appropriate for a rising-star policy analyst at the State Department than for someone aspiring to be a great national leader. This should be an unsettling thought to those with the intelligence to see it.

It's been a rough couple of weeks on the road. Things took an unfortunate turn a couple of weeks ago when I believe I might have cracked a rib. Trying to cut a bolt seal off of the trailer with small pair of bolt cutters (which was all the customer had), I placed one handle of the cutters against me for leverage and pulled the opposite handle toward me. The bolt won that contest, as I felt a pop that took my breath. I've been sporting an ace bandage since then, but the discomfort is fading.

The freight schedule of late has been brutal, so any time that can be used to rest is time well spent. Yesterday, I left a small town just east of Chattanooga,with a load that positively had to be in New Jersey this morning. The sooner I got stopped yesterday, the sooner I could start driving today. So I did what I did on active duty, ...I got it done. Didn't stop to eat, took my break and was up ready to roll at 2:30 this morning.

Making the delivery an hour early, I found a truck stop so I could take the rest of the day to get some needed rest. One problem: It's 90 degrees and the law prohibits idling the truck to stay cool. Amazing, isn't it? It's perfectly legal to have heat stroke, I suppose. But trying to rest while sweating like Bill Clinton under oath just isn't working. I am absolutely exhausted and have to wonder how safe a driver will I be tomorrow, having gotten little or no sleep due to triple digit temps in the cab? I would be tempted not to move the truck until I've been able to rest, ...but it's supposed to be even hotter tomorrow and sitting here till autumn isn't a good option.

Sharp reflexes are necessary if one is to navigate an 80,000 pound vehicle in a region where people drive like they are on suicide missions. Of what consolation will it be to the survivors of a family I wiped out that, well, I did my part for the environment the night before? Whatever noble impulses inspired the "No Idling" laws, it's always the unintended consequences that come back to bite. How many lives is the green agenda worth?

I don't usually see the words "marvelous" and "Krugman" in a sentence together, but Fred Douglass over at The American Thinker has the good news (hat tip Cindy Simpson):

A marvelous thing happened over on Paul Krugman's blog at the New York Times last week. Krugman effectively conceded defeat on a range of economic debates. Who defeated him? People who posted comments on his New York Times blog. Mere commenters.

Once upon a time, Professor Krugman gushed "I love my commenters." Why? They showered him with fawning praise: "Paul, you are a God-send for those of us who appreciate a superior intellect with common sense! Thanks for applying your brilliance," and "Paul, dig deep dude. You are brilliant."

But how the times have changed.

Now, whenever the professor sings his one note tune--austerity: bad, stimulus: good, tax cuts: bad, Keynes: good--his commenters scribble away long posts, full of data and analysis, applying the sand to Krugman's flimsy economic vasoline. As Douglass writes, the comments responding to Krugman were "reasoned. They were knowledgeable. They carried citations to economic science literature that one might expect in a Ph.D. dissertation."

Here are some pretty damning examples of Krugman getting sand kicked in his face on his own beach:

Matching Krugman's claim that government can "create wealth by printing money," several posters cited the latest economic science showing that the "multipliers" that Keynesians use are wrong. They further noted that Krugman had used these wrong multipliers seventeen months ago to predict incorrectly that Obama's stimulus package would keep unemployment below 9%.

And so Krugman's blog presented the most unforgivable conclusion: Krugman had actually been wrong. As he had been when he advocated low interest rates and the creation of a housing price inflation in 2001, one of the causes of current economic difficulties.

Things then got still worse. When Krugman repeated his claim that Bush's tax cuts had "caused" the deficit and damaged the economy, commenters first taught Krugman how to count. They then cited two papers by the Romers showing that tax cuts help economies. Christina Romer is, of course, the chief economic advisor to President Obama.

When Krugman repeated one of his "debt is good" posts, posters linked to the economic science from Reinhardt and Rogoff showing that high debt is inimical to economic recovery.

As a result of such posts from the commenters--"ranters" and "trolls," as Krugman has come to call them--the professor has changed his comments moderation policy. Now, comments can be no longer than "three inches." As Douglass says, Krugman's "thinking must have been thus: Three inches are sufficient to write "Krugman is brilliant," but not sufficient to present a documented and persuasive rebuttal to whichever of Krugman's standard arguments he was peddling that day."

Take this to the beach -- a new report on 100 particularly egregious uses of "stimulus" money, issued by Senators Coburn and McCain. My favorite? Over $700,000 for Northwestern University researchers to develop "machine generated humor." The lead designer plans to use artificial intelligence to create a “comedic performance agent” that “will be funny no matter what it is talking about." (And here I thought there already was a joke machine -- Congress).

The report includes hilarious -- and depressing -- details on how your hard-earned money will go to fund such things as:

• The emotional response of monkeys to inequality,
• Improved methods to predict the weather on other planets,
• Brand new sidewalks, to be built by a convicted felon.

Ricocheterians: look at the report and post your favorite stimulus project!

...Or so the federal government believed, until Amazon released the new version of their popular reader last week.

As the always great Byron York reports in The Examiner, the Obama Justice Department didn't like it when a lot of colleges like Princeton and Arizona State wanted to experiment with the Kindle, to see if students could use the device for textbooks. The e-book versions of (very expensive) textbooks would of course be cheaper, but they'd also be more environmentally sensitive. My guess is, it was the latter concern that made the experiment seem so interesting to college administrators.

That's when Thomas Perez, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division stepped in. Not so fast, said Perez. What about the blind? The old version of the Kindle had a text-to-speech function, but the keyboard require eyesight to use. And that, said the Obama DoJ, is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act:

"We acted swiftly to respond to complaints we received about the use of the Amazon Kindle," Perez recently told a House committee. "We must remain vigilant to ensure that as new devices are introduced, people with disabilities are not left behind."

Never mind that this is a device that's been revised and improved pretty constantly since its introduction. Never mind that other devices have text-to-speech functions, and that the marketplace would soon settle the matter. (Which it did: the new Kindle is fully text-to-speech functional.) Never mind that this was an experimental program -- totally voluntary with only a handful of students participating. The Obama Justice Department was firm: until everybody can use the Kindle, nobody can use the Kindle.

What's next on the Civil Rights Division's agenda? According to Byron:

Now, Perez is at work on a far bigger project, one that could eventually declare the Internet a "public accommodation" under the ADA. That could result in a raft of new Justice Department regulations for disabled access to all sorts of Web sites.

Of course, most Web access problems are already being solved by the market, but that won't stop the Justice Department's zealous civil rights enforcer.

Brace yourselves.

Here are the last two episodes in this part of the series, and I think they're especially interesting. In this one we have a very clear statement of "the narrative," followed by a very clear statement of ... well, something that isn't the narrative. As for this one--what do you think this pretty young woman is getting at?

Speaking to a local radio station on Monday, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan offered one argument. To Rogers, Bradley Manning, the army private who leaked tens of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, should be executed.

According to Fox News (via The Daily Caller), Rogers said:

We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed...That's pretty serious. If they don't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder...I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here...He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers . . . If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is.

And in a column at Townhall today, Tony Blankley thinks that WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange should be "prosecuted and possibly executed by the U.S. government for wartime espionage."

These remarks come on the heels of what Liz Cheney said a few days ago on Fox News Sunday--that Assange should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting al Qaeda. She added that Obama should move aggressively to shut down Wikileaks, with or without Iceland's cooperation.

Cheney said:

I would really like to see President Obama to move to ask the government of Iceland to shut that website down. I would like to see him move to shut it down ourselves if Iceland won't do it. I would like to see them move aggressively to prosecute Mr. Assange and certainly ensure that he never again gets a visa to enter the United States...What he's done is very clearly aiding and abetting al Qaeda. And as I said, he may very well be responsible for the deaths of American soldiers Afghanistan.

This past June, Assange worked closely with Iceland's government to pass legislation protecting investigative journalists, their sources, and sites like WikiLeaks, turning Iceland into a journalism haven. Allegedly, Assange has leaked documents onto WikiLeaks out of Iceland. Supporting Iceland's free speech legislation, he said:

In my role as WikiLeaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off more than 100 legal attacks over the past three years. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.

We've become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can't expect everyone to make such extraordinary efforts. Large newspapers, including the Guardian, are forced to remove or water down investigative stories rather than risk legal costs. Even internet-only publishers writing about corruption find themselves disconnected by their ISPs after legal threats. Should these publications not relent, they are hounded, like the Turks & Caicos Islands Journal, from one jurisdiction to other. There's a new type of refugee – "publishers" – and a new type of internet business developing, "refugee hosting". Malaysia Today is no longer published in Malaysia. Even the American Homeowners Association has moved its servers to Stockholm after relentless legal attacks in the United States.

Rogers, Blankley, and Cheney's remarks raise a host of questions:

Do Rogers, Blankley, and Cheney have a strong legal case? Can Pvt. Manning be charged for murder? Can Assange be tried for aiding and abetting a foreign enemy and espionage? And even if they can, should they be?

What should be done about WikiLeaks? Can it be shut down? Censored? Left alone? Should it be? Would following Cheney's advice about Assange and WikiLeaks deal a blow to investigative journalism?

Dorothy Rabinowitz has a really marvelous column in today's Wall Street Journal: "Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11: The enlightened class can't understand why the public is uneasy about the Ground Zero mosque." A particularly striking excerpt:

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

It certainly will.

I confess, by the way, that I was unfamiliar with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, but it looks hugely impressive. The site leaves no doubt that it embraces both the Islamic religion and American democracy. May the Islamic world heed them. May we all heed them.

When it comes to giving advice for a would-be Republican congressional majority, Ricochet member etoiledunord brought up a familiar name around here: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. But what does emulating Christie mean? Daniel Foster gives us a peek: "in an extraordinary move," he writes at NR, Christie

declared a fiscal state of emergency, announcing that by executive order he would impound $2.2 billion in appropriations from a fiscal year that was already seven months gone. That figure represented virtually every dollar the state was not legally obligated to pay out for the remainder of the year. In Bagger’s words, it was “everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“By doing that so quickly and so dramatically, and by executive action, it really set the stage,” Bagger says. “It was just a very clear declaration that there’s a new reality.”

There was much wailing and teeth-gnashing about the cuts among Democrats. Sweeney accused Christie of “pick[ing] someone else’s pocket,” and senate majority leader Barbara Buono went so far as to say the executive order had “declare[d] martial law” in New Jersey.

This raised the stakes significantly for the FY 2011 budget battle, which was then only beginning. In the year to come, the state would face an $11 billion deficit that made the previous shortfall look like a gratuity. It was a big hole, and Christie needed Democratic votes to close it.

The suspense! Click to read the whole thing, but also consider: is this kind of approach possible right now at the national level? Or...are state budgets too unlike federal budgets? Is the system too hard to crack? And what about this critique from Ross?

Having a credible message on fiscal discipline is a necessary part of any Republican resurgence. But it won’t be sufficient unless it’s married to a credible message that addresses mobility and opportunity as well. In the long run, a G.O.P. that has nothing to say about middle and working class insecurity (that, indeed, often seems to deny that America has any difficulties with socioeconomic opportunity at all) won’t be able to rebuild a lasting majority — and, indeed, won’t deserve to have one.

Here on Ricochet the other day, Conor Friedersdorf asked, in effect, What would it take? What would those behind the mosque at ground zero have to do to demonstrate good faith? An arresting question. If the organizers of “Cordoba House” would publish the following brief manifesto, I’ve decided, I would welcome them to lower Manhattan. Heck. I’d contribute a hundred bucks to their construction fund.

1. Over the centuries, we recognize, Islam has proven aggressive and expansionist, seeking to invade and subdue Christian Europe. (See, for example, the conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the early eighth century, the battle of Poitiers in 732, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the siege of Vienna in 1683.) Given this record, and given that the terrorists who killed thousands of innocent Americans just two blocks from the site on which we intend to build a mosque did so in the name of the jihad, we can understand why many Americans view our mosque not as an act of reconciliation but a provocation.

We therefore condemn, explicitly and categorically, any use of violence in the name of Islam whatsoever. We furthermore pledge ourselves, irrevocably, to the proposition that jihad must be understood only as an interior and spiritual struggle and never, ever as a political or military contest.

2. Given, again, Islam’s long record of what can only be termed imperialism, and given that the name we have chosen for our mosque, “Cordoba House,” hearkens back to the centuries when Muslims ruled much of Spain, subjecting a historically Christian territory to the rule of caliphs, and given that the express ambition of many Islamic radicals today includes the reconquest of “Al-Andalus,” the Arab name for Spain, we have decided to change the name of our mosque. We will now call it “Rumi House,” in honor of Jalaluddin Rumi, the medieval theologian and mystic, who truly understood Islam as a religion of peace.

3. We recognize that Americans have special grounds for looking with concern upon Saudi Arabian promotion of Wahabbism, the sect of Islam now dominant in Saudi Arabia—for years now, the Saudis have been using oil wealth to fund the construction of Wahabbi mosques and madrassas throughout the world, and the correlation between Saudi funding of Wahabbism and the rise of radical Islam simply cannot be denied. We therefore declare that we will accept no Saudi funding whatsoever.

4. When our mosque is complete, the United States will have become home to nearly 100 mosques. We wish formally to express our appreciation of the freedom of religion that has made this possible—and to call upon the countries Islam to adopt freedom of religion themselves. We note with special regret that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home of the holiest sites in Islam, is home to not a single church or synagogue—and, indeed, that in Saudi Arabia the mere possession of a Christian Bible represents a crime. This year, and every year, we will submit a petition to His Majesty, the King of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, imploring him to lift these and all bans on genuine freedom of religion. As we build our mosque in New York, we wish our fellow Americans to know that we cannot be content until there is a church in Riyadh, and a synagogue in Jeddah.

It's my job to cover Turkey from Turkey. But there's a part of the Turkish mystery that American journalists should be covering, and as far as I know, not one of them is on the job. Fethullah Gülen is in Pennsylvania. No one has any real idea what the guy is up to. No one has any real idea where his money's coming from, where his money's going, or what he really wants. This profile in the New York Times is so inadequate it's laughable--there's not one mention of the main point, which is that many Turks fear he's their Ayatollah Khomenei. I don't know if the Turks who fear and loathe him are right. But I don't know that they're wrong, either, and some of the people who tell me his influence is a major cause for concern have turned out to have been right about a lot of things.

Outside of a handful of academic publications, his name never makes it into the American news at all. It's a perfect story for a dedicated investigative journalist in his neighborhood.

Hey there, fellow journalists, if you're reading this--do you think the Abdul Rauf story is interesting? Try this one. The more you look, the more curious you'll get.

At about noontime yesterday, snipers from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) opened fire on Israeli soldiers performing routine maintenance work on trees and hedges in the gap between Israel's border fence and the internationally recognized “Blue Line” (the border between Israel and Lebanon). The Israelis were operating inside sovereign Israeli territory, in an enclave just west of Kibbutz Misgav Am.

Lebanese snipers shot Lt.-Col. (res.) Dov Harari (45) in the head and reserve Capt.(res.) Ezra Lakia (30), a platoon commander from Harari's battalion, in the chest. Harari was killed; Lakia was evacuated to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa in critical condition.

The Israelis responded to the attack with artillery and tank fire, killing three Lebanese soldiers and a Lebanese journalist. The clash escalated, with the Lebanese shooting a rocket-propelled grenade at an Israeli tank (it missed) and the Israelis continuing to strike the LAF outposts with artillery fire. Israel eventually brought in attack helicopters, which struck and heavily damaged an LAF command center in Taiba, a town nearby. The forceful response reflected Israel's belief that this was a "planned ambush" by the LAF, to quote Major General Gadi Eisenkot.

The Lebanese claim that the Israelis committed the initial aggression by entering Lebanese territory. This claim is patently false, as can be seen by the map above (source: the IDF website; the red splotch shows where the incident took place). The Lebanese claim further that the Israelis had not notified them in advance of their intention to prune trees on the border. This too is a lie: UNIFIL confirmed this morning that it received prior notification from the Israelis, and that it passed that notification on to the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese are defending their assault on the grounds that the Israeli "aggression" -- pruning trees -- was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 War in Lebanon. This is rather a striking argument, since 1701 also obliged Hezbollah to disarm. Hezbollah has, in fact, spent the intervening four years actively re-arming itself. According to the Pentagon, Hezbollah has been receiving up to $200 million a year from Iran for rearming purposes as well as direct weapons shipments. Last November, Israel interdicted a merchant vessel from Iran containing massive stocks of weapons for Hezbollah, including rockets, missiles, grenades, and anti-tank shells.

Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu stated yesterday that he holds the Lebanese government directly responsible for this provocation, which Israel views as a blatant violation of 1701. "Israel responded, and will respond aggressively in the future, to all efforts to disturb the quiet on the northern border and harm the citizens of the North and the soldiers protecting them," he said. The security cabinet will convene today to discuss this incident as well as the rocket attack on Eilat and Aqaba that occurred two days ago.

So what's really going on here? Here's the prevailing theory. Tensions have been rising in Lebanon of late because members of Hezbollah, including a senior figure, are about to be indicted by a UN tribunal for the murder in 2005 of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. Outrage over the assassination, which many Lebanese believe to have been ordered by Syria, led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon after 29 years of occupation. If Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Syria as well as Iran, is directly implicated in the assassination, it could spark serious tensions inside Lebanon. It's therefore in Hezbollah's interest, now more than ever, to set off a new conflict with Israel as a diversionary tactic.

Which was very bad news for Dov Harari and Ezra Lakia. Possibly for the whole region, too, although it's too soon to tell. We'll wait and see.

Contributing to Ricochet has been an almost gushy relief for me, and the relief has revealed, somewhat to my surprise--I didn't fully realize it--just how isolated I often feel in Istanbul. I'm sure that comes as no surprise to anyone else; it's fully to be expected, but somehow the obvious often escapes people when it comes to their own lives.

In my daily life, I meet almost no one who shares my fundamental assumptions about the world, who takes it as given that free markets produce more prosperous societies, who assumes that the United States is overall a force for good, who believes that the proper role of government is to defend the realm, make a few important laws, enforce them, and then butt out. I meet few people who view Israel, as we've termed it here, as "a normal country." I meet almost no one who shares my hostility to income redistribution or my belief that the Soviet Union was, indeed, the most evil empire mankind has known. I meet a lot of people who think Che Guevara was a terrific-looking fellow. (I don't think they have a more coherent or ideological view of him, frankly. Beyond that, they don't seem to know a thing about him.)

It's a marvelous relief--and obviously a lot of fun--to have a daily conversation with like-minded people. Again, no surprise. But I'm worried that it poses an intellectual hazard. I notice that because I'm scanning the wires for interesting items to write about for Ricochet, I'm spending more time reading websites where similar points of view are to be found. Nothing wrong with that, except that it crowds out the time I spend reading opposing points of view. This can't be healthy. First, it's too easy to miss the weaknesses in your own thought if no one is arguing with you. Groupthink, we all know, tends to lead to incredible mistakes in judgment. Second, the focus here tends to be on finding fault with opposing points of view, rather than figuring out where the common ground lies. Nothing wrong with finding fault with the opposing point of view, either--has to be done, it's essential--but in the end, we share a country with a lot of people who don't agree with us, and we have to live with them. There's no alternative. It's their country, too.

I get the sense--again, I'm not there, and I don't have my finger on the pulse, so I could be wrong--that America is now more polarized than I can ever remember. There's really a feeling, on the Internet, at least, of two very ideologically committed camps squaring off against each other, proud and swollen with mutual distrust and contempt, uncivil, unyielding, eager to attribute to the other the most sinister of motives, unwilling even to consider that the other might occasionally have a point of view worth considering. This tendency, I'm sure, is self-reinforcing; the more it appears that way, the more committed each side will be to entrenchment, to viewing the other side as radicals and lunatics committed to destroying the country. This can't be healthy, either. The United States is not facing the most extreme threats to its existence it has ever faced, but it is certainly facing extreme threats, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

So a few questions, ones I think we might ask on a regular basis. Who, on the self-identified Left, do we respect as a basically serious thinker with good arguments to consider? What is he or she writing these days? Which politicians in the Democratic party seem to us to be doing pretty good jobs, jobs we could live with even if we're not completely in agreement with their philosophy of governance? Are there any good policies coming out of the Obama Administration? Unexpected successes? Who, on the cultural Left, would be fun to invite to a dinner party?

I'll start first: Joseph Stiglitz has many important things to say. We ignore his criticism of the IMF, for example, at our peril.

When the IMF decides to assist a country, it dispatches a "mission" of economists. These economists frequently lack extensive experience in the country; they are more likely to have firsthand knowledge of its five-star hotels than of the villages that dot its countryside. They work hard, poring over numbers deep into the night. But their task is impossible. In a period of days or, at most, weeks, they are charged with developing a coherent program sensitive to the needs of the country. Needless to say, a little number-crunching rarely provides adequate insights into the development strategy for an entire nation. Even worse, the number-crunching isn't always that good. The mathematical models the IMF uses are frequently flawed or out-of-date. Critics accuse the institution of taking a cookie-cutter approach to economics, and they're right. Country teams have been known to compose draft reports before visiting. I heard stories of one unfortunate incident when team members copied large parts of the text for one country's report and transferred them wholesale to another. They might have gotten away with it, except the "search and replace" function on the word processor didn't work properly, leaving the original country's name in a few places. Oops.

I'd be very happy to sit down with Joseph Stiglitz and discuss ways to reform the way the world responds to banking crises. I'm sure I'd emerge from the conversation much better-informed.

Your nominations?

More from Claire Berlinski

Narcotics Non-Anonymous

Palin and Snobbery

Ban the Burqa

No Revolutions, Thanks, We're a Democracy

When I was a kid in the 50s, I watched in awe as futurists talked about the individual jet packs we’d all be wearing 20 or 25 years from then. I couldn’t wait to be just like Commando Cody who zoomed around in the Republic Pictures serials. Then in 1969, we landed a man on the moon, and my heart raced as I envisioned our inevitable colonies on Mars and the mining we’d be doing on other celestial bodies. I just hoped I would live long enough to hop onto one of the space vehicles that were sure to be in mass production by the turn of the century.

Well, here we are in the last half of 2010, more than 40 years removed from “one small step for man” and nearly 60 years past Commando Cody’s peak, and I’m still waiting. No jet packs are available on Amazon, and I can’t find a travel agent with tickets to anywhere but here on Earth.

So what happened? Where did all the glamorous and exciting and innovative opportunities of the future go? If you discount entertainment and communications, we’re still doing things pretty much the same way we did them before. Cars still crawl along highways, and, while airplanes may be faster, they still fly as they always did. In fact, it wouldn’t be too hard to argue that airplane travel has regressed in many ways. (I won’t even get into train travel.)

So instead of jet packs and weekends on the moon, we have computers, cell phones and high definition television. I have no problem with those creations, but it seems to me all our best minds are now on a quest to make these devices faster and smaller (or, in the case of TVs, bigger), and we can be entertained 24 hours a day virtually anywhere on earth. We seem to have given up the excitement of the real world for the “advances” of the virtual one. Who has time for all this futuristic nonsense when Facebook and Twitter are so now?

I’d love for my kids to be as excited about the promises of the future as I once was, but I’m not sure Universal Wireless Access is something you can sit in your room and daydream about.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my iPhone and my other toys, but I waited over 50 years for this? The future is a gyp!

More from Pat Sajak

Let's Have an Election Instead of a Mandate

Game Show Czar

Obama Oratory Overrated?

As the dreaded Commerce Clause rears its head once more, cynical observers outside the legal clerisy might wonder why so much ink is spilled over Constitutional law. From where we sit, there are three questions:

1. Is it good or bad for the federal government to mandate the purchase of health insurance?
2. Does the Constitution (as interpreted through the lens of US constitutional law) permit the federal government to mandate the purchase of health insurance?
3. Are there enough votes on the Supreme Court to squash the insurance mandate?

However strongly I might feel about question one, and about the exercise of federal power in general, I'm jaded enough to realize that my opinion is irrelevant to the outcome of the debate in the short term. Question three will determine the matter. But ninety percent of the public conversation falls under question two, whether it's the law school professor speculating on the radio show or the conservative protester waving his pocket copy of the Constitution.
The Constitution, like Robert's Rules of Order, provides a focal point and a procedural path for the allocation of governmental powers. It's undoubtedly served, like any set of conventions, as a stabilizing force. But I can't help thinking that by getting interested in historical interpretations of the Commerce Clause, etc., I'm laying a veneer of historical, intellectual, and moral legitimacy over what really is an exercise in pure politics.
Aside from the fact that its inherently interesting, why should I care what the Constitution actually says about the allocation of political power if the magic of the Commerce Clause (or the War on Terror, or whatever) means that Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court can agree to ignore any constraints on federal action? I'm open to convincing.

I like to follow Missouri news since my mom hails from there. But everyone should be interested in the news coming out tonight from the Show Me State.

Voters there had the opportunity today to become the first to have a say on blocking any portion of Obamacare. Proposition C asks voters if they oppose the requirement that most people obtain insurance or pay a tax penalty.

It's not even close. With 2117 of 3354 precincts reporting, some 74.5 percent of voters oppose at least that portion of the federal government's new health care plan.

Just another teachable moment.

Another David Brooks column, another thought-provoking foray into our mixed-up, crazy American lives:

In America, we have been taught to admire the lone free agent who creates new worlds. But for the person leading the Summoned Life, the individual is small and the context is large. Life comes to a point not when the individual project is complete but when the self dissolves into a larger purpose and cause. The first vision is more American. The second vision is more common elsewhere. But they are both probably useful for a person trying to live a well-considered life.

I'm not sure we really have been taught to admire that lone free agent -- at least, not as an end in himself. One of my favorite lines from Robert Nisbet's famous book The Quest for Community is actually a quote from Joseph Schumpeter:

the family and the family home used to be the mainspring of the typically bourgeois kind of profit motive. Economists have not always given due weight to this fact. [...] Consciously or unconsciously, they analyzed the behavior of the man whose motives are shaped by such a home and who means to work and save primarily for wife and children. As soon as these fade out from the moral vision of the business man, we have a different kind of homo economicus before us who care for different things and acts in different ways.

It's misleading to suggest that we have two choices -- either a worldview in which I make THE WORLD disappear into ME, or one in which I let ME disappear into THE WORLD. A life in which family is a foundational project makes room for a bigger me than a life ruled by community, and for a bigger world than a life ruled by what Christopher Lasch and other communitarian critics described as a selfish, minimal, narcissistic individual.

Some Christian critics today worry that an idolatry of the family can cause us to care, at the expense of our communities and even the world, way too much about the money and prestige accumulated by our gene pool. Maybe wife-and-kids is too narrow a world. But we can open that up by taking a longer view of family. As we hear every day, nobody really relates to anyone in their own bloodline farther away than grandchildren. At that point, they're mostly a lot of strangers and hardly at all you. Darwinianism doesn't give us a very generous understanding of how the personal project of an enduring family feeds harmoniously into the broader well-being of our communities and our world.

True, Darwinianism is a pretty (small-d) democratic way of viewing the world. It's more aristocratic, by contrast, to think of your great-great-great grandchildren as people who are just as much a part of your family as you are. I hardly expect or recommend a popular resurgence of family crests and other aristocratic trappings of pride in one's lineage. But the popularity of sites like Ancestry.com seems to me to reflect a deep-seated and very natural pushback against the culture of divorce and illegitimacy that's spreading more widely than many generations of Americans are used to. Our ancestors would've blanched at the idea that democratic life was somehow incompatible with a view of family that saw way beyond the nuclear.

Not long ago, the world-creating or nature-tackling agent of our romantic legends would've likely been a man who could only be understood in a family context. What could be more American than that?

Thanks to Senator Brownback and Representative Brady, we finally have a clear organization chart for our new healthcare system of the future.

Meanwhile, this nugget from Bloomberg Businessweek:

The health care reform law, which is designed to cover millions of uninsured people, will squeeze the profitability of the largest commercial health insurers over the long term, making them unattractive investments, according to Edward Jones analyst Aaron Vaughn.

Of course, as insurer profits are squeezed and capital dries up, companies intent on survival will need to cut services and restructure operations in all sorts of customer displeasing ways. Another round of demonization will follow, led by the President and his allies, followed by bankruptcy. And then, and then we emerge at long last into the sunlit uplands of single-payer government-run healthcare, which was the destination our betters had in mind from the start.

In the conversation about Bill Clinton, Ricochet member Paules just told me how to fix a refrigerator. (You'll have to see for yourself how the subject came up.) Impressed by Competent American Males (I'm always trying to figure out how come other men learned how to fix refrigerators, or clean a fish, or throw a curveball, when I remain so utterly clueless), I just checked Paules's profile--and found several paragraphs of really engaging prose, telling a really engrossing story. An excerpt:

My life has been episodic, so it's hard to know even where to start. I ran away from home six times during my youth to see the world.

See? I defy anyone to resist reading what comes next.

Man, am I ever liking Ricochet people.

After cringing through the coverage of Chelsea Clinton's wedding this past weekend--the New York Times headlined its fawning photo montage of the event, which took place in Rhinebeck, a wealthy little town in upstate New York, "'Royalty' in Rhinebeck"--this morning I passed a magazine rack, noticing Esquire. On the cover, Bill Clinton, looking, if I may be forgiven the adjective, cocky. The headline: "It's All Possible."

That did it.

For the editors of the Times and of Esquire, who could not so much as conceive of any coverage of, let us say, Ronald Reagan, or of George Bush, that wouldn't include at least a few implied sneers, a refresher. The record of William Jefferson Clinton includes the following items:

• Impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives
• The payment of a $90,000 fine for lying under oath in a federal court
• The payment of $850,000 to settle an allegation of sexual harassment
• The payment of a $25,000 fine and the suspension for five years of his licence to practice law in Arkansas
• Permanent expulsion from the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court

Inside HigherEd has a fascinating essay -- and call for discussion -- by Professor Timothy Larsen. It's about the intolerance and ignorance in some institutions of higher learning:

I had lunch this summer with a prospective graduate student at the evangelical college where I teach. I will call him John because that happens to be his name. John has done well academically at a public university. Nevertheless, as often happens, he said that he was looking forward to coming to a Christian university, and then launched into a story of religious discrimination.

John had been a straight-A student until he enrolled in English writing. The assignment was an “opinion” piece and the required theme was “traditional marriage.” John is a Southern Baptist and he felt it was his duty to give his honest opinion and explain how it was grounded in his faith. The professor was annoyed that John claimed the support of the Bible for his views, scribbling in the margin, “Which Bible would that be?” On the very same page, John’s phrase, “Christians who read the Bible,” provoked the same retort, “Would that be the Aramaic Bible, the Greek Bible, or the Hebrew Bible?” (What could the point of this be? Did the professor want John to imagine that while the Greek text might support his view of traditional marriage, the Aramaic version did not?) The paper was rejected as a “sermon,” and given an F, with the words, “I reject your dogmatism,” written at the bottom by way of explanation.

Thereafter, John could never get better than a C for papers without any marked errors or corrections. When he asked for a reason why yet another grade was so poor he was told that it was inappropriate to quote C. S. Lewis in work for an English class because he was “a pastor.” (Lewis, of course, was actually an English professor at Cambridge University. Perhaps it was wrong to quote Lewis simply because he had said something recognizably Christian.) Eventually John complained to the department chair, who said curtly that he could do nothing until the course was over. John took this to mean that the chair would do nothing and just accepted the bad grade.

But the best part is the comments section, where most folks manage to completely prove Larsen's point about the hostility toward Christians in academia.