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.

Ricochet's own William McGurn has a powerful and subtle column in today's WSJ: WTC Mosque Meet The Auschwitz Nuns. In anticipation of today's unanimous decision by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission not to block the building of the Ground Zero Mosque, Brother McGurn remembers what happened in the 1980's when Jews protested the presence of Carmelite Nuns at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland:

What did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them.

Let's remember what this means. By their own lights, the nuns believed they were doing only good. They may have had a legal title to be where they were. And it is likely that they never would have been forced to move by local authorities had they insisted on staying.

The point Bill carefully and rather puckishly doesn't make is that PJP2 may have been operating under a different set of assumptions than Mosque promoter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and toward a different goal: ie. Christian love and kindness.

All ideas of freedom of religion aside, the mosque is an act of such immense cultural insensitivity it almost amounts to purposeful cruelty. It would not be perpetrated by any religion dedicated to anything like the late Pope's principles.

I am claiming victory in the Love Your iPad versus Kill Your iPad contretemps lately raging here on Ricochet. Rupert Murdoch, one of the best business minds of the age, is on my side, so I rest my case:

"Initial expectations that (Apple) would sell a few million (iPads) will fall way short of the mark,'' Mr Murdoch said.

"It looks like they will sell around 15 million iPads this calendar year and more than 40 million by 2012.

More importantly, Murdoch claims his own victory: News Corporation's new pay-for-content business model is working.

"It's going to be a success. Subscriber levels are strong. We are witnessing the start of a new business model for the internet.

"The argument that information wants to be free is only said by those who want it for free,'' Mr Murdoch said.

Well, Newsweek is pretty much free as an enterprise. But I still prefer paying for my WSJ iPad app.

Eugene Volokh, who helped draft the initiative, has the news. It is always comforting, though not as regular as it should be, to see a court properly interpret the Constitution now and again. And the Supreme Court of California, no less. As other federal courts have found, Proposition 209 does nothing more than declare the basic meaning of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: that the government cannot discriminate on the basis of race. Government can only take race into account when it provides a remedy to individuals who have suffered past racial discrimination at its own hands (a government has to take the race of the black freedman into account, for example, when it provides him with assistance after the end of slavery).

Nonetheless, the 1970s gave rise to a whole industry devoted to coming up with ever more intrusive and creative efforts to create a racial spoils system for all sorts of government spending. For roughly the last 20 years, the courts have been rejecting these racial set-asides, with university admissions as the only exception and even this under the cover of "diversity," rather than racial preferences. The decision yesterday upholding Prop 209 should be yet another judicial nail in the coffin for the misguided quest to divide up government largess on racial grounds.

This won't stop the Obama administration from using its Justice Department from trying to protect groups that want to continue to make racial claims for privileged status (such as the Supreme Court case where Obama defended New Haven's right to toss out test results for firefighter promotions because they did not yield enough minorities), or appointing judges who will uphold racial preferences (Sotomayor was the lower court judge who upheld New Haven's blatant racial discrimination against whites). But it will be on the losing end of most of these cases.

The case is also interesting in that it opens a window into the circus house of mirrors the whole diversity/racial preferences industry has become. Here, we have the case of the City of San Francisco, probably the most liberal city government in America, claiming that it needs to give minority businesses a 5-10 percent bidding advantage (their bids for government construction projects receive a 5-10 percent discount, while white businesses do not). Why? Because San Francisco claims that its own government officials are discriminating on the basis of race.

Anyone who has lived in San Francisco and seen its city government in action would laugh at the idea that it is discriminating against minorities. But the obvious weak spot of the City's argument is that if its officials are discriminating, it can just fire them. A city shouldn't need to reform its own illegal practices by shifting the costs onto innocent white businesses, who are not responsible for any discrimination. It should bear the costs itself, either by paying damages to minority businesses that have suffered at its own hands, or by taking the real step of dismissing the officials responsible for the alleged discrimination in giving out contracts. That the City cannot take this step shows that the program is really about government rewards for friends who have the right skin color.

And this doesn't even get us into the question whether any consciousness of race should be permitted at all, once we have a state like California where no race is in the majority. Every racial group in California can lay claim to being a "minority."

Thanks to Damian Counsell, I present to you the most "monumentally creepy" website I have seen in some time. (Has anyone noticed that this Damian Counsell fellow seems to be behind half of my posts and Judith's? He really exists. He's our dear friend from school. We think he should be here on Ricochet, but so far he seems to prefer to operate behind the scenes--the secret beige-colored puppet-master behind the regional subcontractor conspiracy. Well, he's here in spirit.) Anyway, behold:

"A woman without hijab is like a chair with three legs."

The Iranian site promotes the glories of chastity and the hijab. Can't have one without the other! Could it be a parody? I fear not. Anyone here read enough Farsi to be able to say?

Newsweek sold for one dollar!

Via Andrew Sullivan:

"They have not come up with a single, solitary, new idea to address the challenges of the American people. They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas — not one," - president Obama, getting feisty.

Via Jonah Goldberg:

Dems have tried repeatedly to tie the GOP to Bush’s economic policies, which remain highly unpopular. But so far, that hasn’t worked, according to officials at the Dem-leaning Third Way think tank.

“Just eighteen months after President Bush left office with the nation’s economy in historic freefall, two-thirds of Americans now see congressional Republicans and their economic ideas as new and completely separate from those of the former president,” the group wrote in a strategy memo sent to Dem leaders last month. -- Reid Wilson

It is time someone disabuse the President of his impression that the best way to challenge Republicans is by tying them to George W. Bush. Yes, Mr. Obama -- Republicans, like W., are Republican. But the notion that "they" want a replay of the Bush administration, because they have no other concept of how to govern, isn't just risible and patently false on its face. It's positively laughable. And when a President gets fiesty, he doesn't want to be laughable.

Palin's new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, is set to hit bookstands this November. Though news of her second book is a few months old, HarperCollins, Palin's publisher, recently released the cover image for the book. What do you think of the cover?

According to HarperCollins, Palin will tackle American history, current events, and culture in the book, while she reflects on the "key values" that shaped her life and outlook.

Written in her own refreshingly candid voice, America By Heart will include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have moved her-from the nation’s founding documents to great speeches, sermons, letters, literature and poetry, biography, and even some of her favorite songs and movies. Here, too, are portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her deep love of country, her strong rootedness in faith, and her profound love and appreciation of family.

For those of you just waking up. Israeli and Lebanese soldiers have exchanged fire on the border; one Israeli and three Lebanese soldiers have been killed, along with a Lebanese journalist. The Israelis say the Lebanese started it; the Lebanese say the Israelis started it; both agree UN 1701, which ended the 2006 war, has been breached.

Here's a little buried, unconfirmed item I noticed while looking for more details:

The Voice of Free Lebanon on Tuesday reported strange activity in the central Bekaa Valley town of Qoussaya. It said strange, young bearded men have been seen in PFLP-GC bases in Qoussaya.

"These elements have started deploying three weeks ago," VFL said, pointing out that the men were seen in army combat uniforms.

It said these men, seen wielding weapons, were setting up checkpoints at crossroads.

VFL said local residents have informed authorities of the strange activity.

Lots of "strange activity" these days. What happened this morning could be a misunderstanding--it seems to have involved a tree--or it could be the beginning of the Apocalypse. Since I don't know, and since I just don't have the stomach to worry about the Apocalypse with every news report, I'm going to return to considering the many mysteries of Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Drop me a note, Judith, if it really looks as if the end is nigh.

The headline of this article in the Financial Times is "The Crisis of Middle Class America," and later in the article, we learn that it is in fact a "slow-burning crisis of American capitalism." This, I think we can safely assume, is meant to suggest a crisis of capitalism, period, since America is universally understood to be a metaphor for capitalism. It's bad news for capitalism, apparently:

Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.

Combine those two deep-seated trends with a third – steeply rising inequality – and you get the slow-burning crisis of American capitalism. It is one thing to suffer grinding income stagnation. It is another to realise that you have a diminishing likelihood of escaping it – particularly when the fortunate few living across the proverbial tracks seem more pampered each time you catch a glimpse. “Who killed the American Dream?” say the banners at leftwing protest marches. “Take America back,” shout the rightwing Tea Party demonstrators.

Statistics only capture one slice of the problem. But it is the renowned Harvard economist, Larry Katz, who offers the most compelling analogy. “Think of the American economy as a large apartment block,” says the softly spoken professor. “A century ago – even 30 years ago – it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.”

Let's start with the low-hanging fruit here; that apartment block analogy comes from Schumpeter, not Larry Katz, though I'm glad to know he's familiar with it. Now, as for the claim that someone killed the American Dream, it would be awful if it were true, but it's actually just not. Take, e.g., this US Treasury study of income mobility from 1996-2005, which uses as data individual tax returns. Key findings:

• There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period as over half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile over this period.

• Roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.

• Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 – the top 1/100 of 1 percent – only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period. [In other words, no, the rich weren't getting richer and the poor getting poorer--just the opposite.]

• The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).

• Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

Right. So, over the past generation, the American Dream has been holding up just fine. It may be dead by the time we finish trying to cure this non-existent crisis in capitalism, but let's not pretend the elevator's been broken for so long that we may just as well give up waiting for it and mope despairingly in our flooded basements.

Next point. I'm not being snotty here, I just genuinely don't understand this part of the article. I'm not in America right now, and my finger isn't really on the pulse. There may be something unstated but obvious in this story that I'm not getting. But why exactly are the Freemans of this story living so close to ruin? They're earning $70,000 between them, and apparently the state pays for their son's care. The article never says what, exactly, is costing them so much that they can't live on this. They're not unemployed. They do have health insurance. There's an intimation that the drain on their budget that nearly cost them their home was the fee they had to pay for their son's health insurance, although that's not stated explicitly. Even assuming that this was an astronomical fee--say, half their annual income--there's no hint of any other massive unexpected financial burden on this family. So why exactly are they unable to manage? It's entirely possible that there's a good reason, even one relevant to the writer's case, but I don't see it. Do you?

Having been offered no evidence that the lachrymose Freemans are exemplars of a crisis in capitalism itself, I think one might wish to focus on the first paragraph, the one followed by the "Yes, but."

Technically speaking, Mark Freeman should count himself among the luckiest people on the planet. The 52-year-old lives with his family on a tree-lined street in his own home in the heart of the wealthiest country in the world. When he is hungry, he eats. When it gets hot, he turns on the air-conditioning. When he wants to look something up, he surfs the internet. One of the songs he likes to sing when he hosts a weekly karaoke evening is Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black”.

That's not just "technically speaking." Mr. Freeman should, indeed, count himself among the luckiest people in the world, because he is. Find me a system other than capitalism that can produce a country in which this standard of living is cause for this level of despair--just one, ever, in history--and we can revisit the issue. Gloomy times? Sure. A nasty recession? No doubt. A crisis in capitalism itself? Give me a break.

Yesterday's rocket assault from Sinai, which killed one Jordanian in Aqaba and wounded three others, was assumed by many to have been intended solely for Israel. (One rocket landed in an open area in Eilat, causing no damage.) As it turns out, Jordan was probably also a target. Haaretz reports this morning that Global Jihad appears to have been behind the attack, and "[t]hey consider the Hashemite kingdom to be as legitimate a target as Israel, if not more so."

The threat of Islamist terror is not new to Jordan: in 2005, three suicide bombers blew themselves up simultaneously at hotels in Amman, killing over 50 and wounding over 100. (One of the bombers detonated himself in the middle of a wedding party.) Mutual concern over Islamist terror has led to closer security and intelligence cooperation between Jordan and Israel that has saved lives in both countries. (This cooperation continues despite the cooling of relations over the past year.)

Haaretz makes the point that while Egypt is protesting vociferously that yesterday's attack couldn't possibly have been launched from Sinai, Hamas regularly smuggles weapons from Global Jihad in Sinai into Gaza, including Grad missiles. Haaretz adds that "Global Jihad activists have come to the Gaza Strip, trained there, armed themselves and returned to Sinai to commit acts of terror against tourist targets in Sinai and elsewhere in Egypt." The great might of the Egyptian security force does not appear to be inhibiting any elements of this cultural exchange.

I'll note in passing that not all of the radical Islamic groups in Gaza that are receiving arms from Sinai are friends of Hamas. One of them, Jund Ansar Allah (Warriors of God), unilaterally declared an Islamic emirate in Gaza last year, resulting in a bloody gun battle with Hamas in Rafah. They, and several other Islamist groups in Gaza, affiliate themselves not with Hamas or even with the Palestinians. They are about Global Jihad: Islam über alles. And even Hamas has the sense to be nervous.

Charlie Crist has opened up a solid lead in his race to remain the most egregious, appalling, and greasy governor in America. I feel sick:

The latest survey has Crist ahead of Rubio by 41 percent to 30 percent with 12 percent for Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek. The race is a little closer if billionaire Jeff Greene wins the Democratic nomination later this month, with Crist leading Rubio 37 percent to 29 percent with 16 percent for Greene. The margin of error is 4 points.

John McCormack has more in the Weekly Standard. Is there a more repellent politician in office? Is there a more transparent, dishonest, creepy, or downright orange officeholder in the land? Say what you like about that crazy, mean old bag of bones Pete Stark or the tax cheating Charlie Rangel -- both of those guys have a certain malignant integrity.

Charlie Crist now says that most, if not all, of what he's stood for and campaigned on these past few years has been, essentially, a lie. In other words, he's campaigning as the Man You Can't Trust.

And it seems to be working. Some politicians make you angry. Some make you sad. Some make you frightened. But some just make you sick.

All signs point to a rout of the Democrats in November, but the Republican Party can do itself a big favor by avoiding the “M” word. When a party begins to believe it has a mandate from the people, all good sense seems to fly out the window, and the feeling that it can do no wrong flies in.

While I believe it’s true that voters will want to put a stop to many of this administration’s initiatives and its profligate spending, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a mandate for the other side’s wide-ranging initiatives and their own flood of expensive legislation.

Americans seem to like incrementalism and, even when they lurch from one party to another, it doesn’t mean they expect a lurch from one extreme to the other from their government.

There is a large and growing suspicion that neither party is up to the task, and, while the Republicans may be the beneficiaries of Democratic overreach in this upcoming cycle, they need to beware of misreading the message. Imagined mandates merely lead to hubris and, as both sides are learning, voters are far more willing than ever to “throw the bums out.”

I went the Arclight to see this as-most-critics-are-calling-it masterpiece. Some of the DRAMATIC dialogue was so DRAMATIC that I got a fit of the giggles more than once and almost had to leave. I had tears rolling down my face at one point. It feels good to laugh like that, but it hurts when you have to hold it in. Key laugh lines (not giving anything away I promise you!): "I was eleven." "Disappointed." Oh there were more, but those two were my favorites.

This is a beautiful collection of images of mostly rural and small-town America, notable for their lovely composition as well as for their vivid color. The pictures were taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and are now the property of the Library of Congress. The image to the right is the tank crew of an M-4 in Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1942. (Hat tip: Damian Counsell.)

The American Spectator holds a symposium, starring Dick Armey, Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, Jim DeMint, Jim Geraghty, Phil Klein, Grover Norquist, and more. Jim Antle kicks it off:

Is the Republican party ready to regain power? Probably not [...]. Yet it is a risk conservatives have no choice but to take.

It's true enough that this is the big leagues, and it's time to measure up. The real question is whether Republicans can agree, in time, on an affirmative approach to governing that can command broad -- or broad enough -- popular support. Conviction and guts are necessary, but when it comes to Congress, they're not sufficient. In addition to those endowments, Republicans need a good measure of political savvy and policy chops. None of these things are out of reach. Yet it's difficult to leap so high when in the midst of a vast shift -- from a party driven by the rhetoric of opposition, and the political opportunities it creates, to a party organized around the logistics of legislative work and the strategy required to push back constructively against a President unbowed.

Former NBA center Chris Dudley is running for governor of Oregon as a Republican.

Dudley, 45, has a degree in economics and political science from Yale. His paternal grandfather, Guilford Dudley, was US ambassador to Denmark during the Nixon and Ford administrations. The Times ran an interesting – and balanced! – piece on him today.

As a player, Dudley was infamous for his horrendous shooting. Playing mostly with the Nets, Trailblazers, and Knicks, Dudley’s lifetime scoring average was 3.9 points per game. He holds the league record for missed consecutive free throws (13) as well as the record for missed free throws for a single trip to the line (5). But Dudley was a good shot-blocker and defender and played 16 years -- about 15 more than anyone expected.

Back when I occasionally covered the Knicks, the nearly 7-foot Dudley was often savaged by the press. If I remember correctly, headline writers touted him the “Great White Nope” more than once. But, he was polite, reserved, and unflappable.

He was also known, I might add, as “Dudley Do Right.” Dudley was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes when he was 16 and, through his foundation and camps, works to comfort children living with the disease. When he played for Portland, Dudley also gave $300,000 to help pay the college tuition of an entire class of 4^th graders.

Dudley’s candidacy has met with some skepticism, but he’s not above laughing at himself:

“When I was playing in the N.B.A., it was, ‘Well, he’s from Yale, he’s too intellectual,’ ” he said. “Now it’s flipped back the other way.”

I don’t know … I like this guy. What’s the word on him from the West Coast?