I remember that it was a peaceful sleep. That part of sleep where you hear the sounds around you, but they just drift into your dreams. Somewhere in the distance there was a long, wailing sound. The sound was continuous, and it was waking me up, but it wasn't my alarm clock. It was, ...a siren? Why is the alert siren sounding? It was the Fall of 1994, a Sunday morning, and I was stationed at Kunsan Air Base, Republic of South Korea. Kim Jong-Il had assumed power in North Korea only a few weeks earlier making that country even more unstable than usual. Because of my job, I knew when base war exercises were held, and I was not aware of a practice alert being scheduled for a Sunday morning. If this wasn't a practice alert, I thought, it could only mean one thing. We were at war.

Our orders if the unthinkable happened were simple. No time to shower or shave. Get dressed, don your war gear, and get to your pre-assigned post. I knew the number of minutes it would take for North Korea's missiles and jet fighters to reach us and time was not on our side. Strapping on my flak vest and web gear, I paused just a few seconds to kneel beside my bed and pray. For those few seconds, I didn't pray for victory nor even for my own survival. My prayer was simply this: if things went badly, that they would find enough pieces of me to send home to my family. To my sudden surprise, I found myself choking back a few tears. I put on my helmet, and ran to my post.

Fortunately in our case, it was an exercise that day. The wing commander wanted to gauge the readiness of the base on the weekend, hence the alert. I relive this story in this space in order to spotlight, however clumsily, the vivid and personal emotions that the warrior grapples with in moments of peril.

Today at Battalion Airfield in Afghanistan, General McChrystal led approximately 400 troops in a Memorial Day ceremony honoring their fallen colleagues. Meanwhile, here in Panama City, FL, Kent Forest Lawn Cemetery, the military section was decorated with American flags as veterans and their families attended a ceremony to honor the those who paid the ultimate price. We were surrounded by members of the Patriot Guard, who stood between the ceremony and the main street, each member holding a flag. Members of various veterans organizations marched to the memorial in the cemetery and saluted our fallen brothers and sisters in arms. One old gentleman wore his Army uniform and marched to the memorial. His spine stiffened as he stood as tall as possible and rendered as sharp a salute as I've seen from many active duty folks. Then he executed an "about face," and forgot what he was supposed to do next. So, he stood there at attention, ...for awhile. A long while. Finally, he understood the signal to march away from the memorial. I leaned over to my son and said, "He's just a little confused.' Being from the south, I added, "Bless his heart." I thought better of it and added, "Bless his brave heart."

The commander from the nearby military base spoke and reminded us all of the sacrifice made on our behalf. As if speaking to my experience at Kunsan, he added, "Sometimes our folks never saw it coming." Think the USS Cole, or the Pentagon on 9/11.

And people like me are left wondering why we made it home while so many of our betters didn't. After the 21 gun salute, after Taps, after the F-15 fly-over, I walked,to the memorial. I thought of our fallen, their voices forever silenced, and was briefly overcome with emotion. My renewed promise is to do my best to be worthy of their sacrifice. To be worthy of the sacrifice of their families, for whom the fire of the guns, the sound of taps cuts to their very soul. I'm thankful for all of them. Bless all of their very, very brave hearts.

Of all the guests I had on my morning show at Indie 1031, the biggest deal for me was Dennis Hopper. I don't know how it happened. I didn't think I deserved it at that stage of my career but what a thrill. Easy Rider was just one of the many R rated films my dad took me too as a 6 year old as he rolled the dice on how these films would later affect me. I think I benefitted. I fell in love with the characters' quest for freedom and I'm still in love with it. I had to pin one of the stars & stripes peace sign fingers over the poster I had of him in my Orange County bedroom so my parents would let me keep it up. (They weren't crazy.)

Eventually I saw what the hippies were really all about and these fears were galvanized by a healthy punk rock movement that was in its infancy quite anti-hippie. Eventually it was more or less co-opted by the hippie movement as well but, hey, I could go to law school and make the ultimate anti-hippie statement!

The death of Dennis Hopper is the ultimate end of an era in my eyes for one reason. The guy told James Dean stories! He was friends with James Dean for pete's sake. They were friends. He had plenty of stories about Dean and he told some of them on my radio show and I was beside myself. He didn't know I was conservative, and at that time I didn't know he ran away from the hippie culture in the same way I did, but he really opened up and told us all about what it was like to make Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet (well, David Lynch was my weatherman), and Easy Rider.

He was a pure gentleman. He was there to promote his wonderful Cinevegas Film Festival, but he knew we would love all his personal stories so he was great about it and answered all my fanboy questions. I should have known right then that he was a bit to polite to be a lefty. And he showed up on time in a suit and tie, at 7:00 in the morning! It was almost Reaganesque.

Later, I worked with him a few more times in Vegas and Venice helping promote the festival and he was always the same. Cool, polite, and very smart. And he coughed up James Dean stories! Who's going to do that for us now? No one. It's the end of that era. Will people tell Dennis Hopper stories? Yes, because they're actually better. Just ask me.

Amateur film shot in Honolulu six-and-a-half decades ago, as news of the Japanese surrender sank in.

Takes awhile to load.  But it's worth it.

Visiting family in downstate Illinois for Memorial Day. You fly into O'Hare and then drive....

It's about 3 hours through the cornfields; a drive that I've done countless times and always find profoundly relaxing and reassuring. Imagine -- real farms that aren't designed for tourists or for making artisanal camel's milk cheese. Also a great reminder of the vastness of the American heartland; one could drive for days through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and see mile after mile of this incredibly fertile soil dotted with sturdy farm buildings. (Granted, some of these farms are probably now devoted to bio-fuels, but let's ignore that for now).

In this part of the country, "American exceptionalism" comes naturally and un-ironically. Sadly according to the latest Rasmussen poll, confidence in America's future is at a low ebb (only 42% believe America will continue to be #1). I haven't looked at the polling data, but I bet the percentage is a lot higher in these parts.

During the Second World War, Theodore Herbert Robinson spent some three years as a boiler tender on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Roger B. Taney, pictured above. He would spend hours at a time in the boiler room, where he regulated the oil that was piped into the boilers to keep them burning and the superheated steam that was piped out of the boilers to power the ship's engines. Deep in the ship, next to the boilers. That would have been a bad location if a torpedo or kamikaze had ever hit--and during the Battle of Okinawa, I learned when I did some research, the Taney came under repeated attack by kamikazes, sounding general quarters 119 times in just 45 days. In my father's place, I'd have spent every moment frightened of finding myself scalded or trapped. As it turned out, that would have been the wrong fear. The pipes in the boiler room were wrapped with asbestos, and the vibrations from the ship's engines, which were located in an adjoining compartment, kept the air in the boiler room swimming with asbestos particles. Thirty years after the war, my father lost part of a lung to asbestosis. A decade-and-a-half later he died, of conditions exacerbated by asbestosis, becoming, in effect, a delayed casualty of the War.

He never complained about his service--for that matter, he scarcely mentioned it, even when, once or twice over the years, I tried to get him talking about it. As he saw it, he had simply done what he had to do, just like millions of young American men like him. In one sense, I suppose, he was right about that--during the Second World War, heroism became almost commonplace. Yet on this Memorial Day, six-and-a-half decades after a young man from Johnson City, N.Y. found himself belowdecks thousands of miles from home, my father has two sons and seven grandchildren who are in awe of him.

Yes: "Men of Harlech," as sung in Zulu, the best kind of war film: a gripping, personality-driven account of the greatness of ordinary men in the crucible of crisis...which reminds us all that war is hell.

Yes: "I Left My Love," as sung in The Horse Soldiers, where John Ford directed John Wayne as a Union Cavalryman sent behind Confederate lines.

So, who double-dares me to go out on the streets and ask where I can find a kosher bratwurst?

My parents were married a happy 45 years – not giddy happy, but placid happy. Part of the reason for their happiness was their traditional approach to what today are called “gender roles.”

My dad was in charge of 1) earning money, 2) “life” conversations with children, 3) entertaining guests, and 4) running errands on Saturday. He excelled in his role, as my mother did in hers. She 1) cleaned, 2) bought and prepared food, 3) fixed stuff (televisions, roofs), 4) did scheduling, and 5) managed finances.

I don’t remember either of them lobbying for a change. There was no envy. They just got on with it. Neither wanted or would have liked to do the other’s jobs. In fact, they laughed the loudest when one of them tried – often ineptly – to play the opposite part. My father once came home from the grocery store with powdered milk instead of powdered sugar and cabbage instead of lettuce. My mother, not known for her patience with fools, once turned on her heels and walked away from a crazy neighbor. Luckily, my dad’s charm smoothed things over so we could still wave hello over the hedges.

Progress came in the form of efficiency. Experience allowed each to become more skilled at his or her “job,” and the spare time this created was devoted to fun family stuff.

The modern family is more complicated. The roles blend and this can be confusing, to say the least. It’s often unclear who should be doing what. Sometimes an embarrassingly mundane job will flummox both husband and wife. Shirts get ironed poorly no matter who does it. A leaky faucet goes unfixed. Sheets, especially those fitted ones, don’t get folded; they get rolled up into balls and stashed in the closet. Something’s amiss.

Luckily, my husband is modern in the best sense. He is, in many ways, a more patient and capable homemaker than I am. He also thinks I’m talented enough to earn for the whole family. (Bless him.) But he doesn’t feel any internal conflict about the children/job tradeoff. If he has to give the kids French fries for dinner – and I mean just French fries – he does it. He figures tomorrow will be better. I have been known to start worrying about dinner at 9:15 a.m. And be in a bad mood about it all day. Sometimes I call him at work from the grocery store in teary frustration, asking about certain cuts of meat. What’s the difference between a rib eye and eye round? Is it “prime rib” or “prime roast”? The guy at the meat counter thinks I’m a joke. I kind of am.

I need the fulfillment that comes from working outside the house. But when I was working, we had to pay someone else to care for the children. Then, because no one was managing the household, we would do desperate things to keep ourselves sane – pizza Fridays (and Sundays!). We shopped in the neighborhood’s most expensive food mart because it was convenient, and we sent the laundry out so we wouldn’t be swallowed by it. All of this “discretionary spending” cancelled out my income, so, after years of guilt and feeling stretched too far, I’m trying the home-all-the-time thing.

It’s week three. I’ll let you know how it goes.

My old friend (and former neighbor) Tim Fall moved with his family from Venice Beach to Oklahoma City a few years ago. Tim and I did a lot of writing and producing together (still do) and he was an actor on a lot of shows (some of which I produced.)

So this Memorial Day weekend, in between working on a script together, we're driving from my house to his house in Oklahoma City. There was some stuff I was keeping in my garage, but really it's just an excuse for a road trip.

And a road trip in anywhere in Southern California isn't complete without a stop here:

In-n-Out Burger is simply the finest fast-food burger in America. And that's actually saying something, because America has some excellent fast-food burgers, as my friend John T. Edge has convincingly proven.

What I like most about In-n-Out -- and America in general -- are two things:

1. Each cup has its own little biblical message printed on the lower rim. Which is wonderfully American. The family that owns In-n-Out has a lot of strong, positive faith, and they want to share it. John 3:16. So cool. Can't imagine that happening anywhere else.

And 2. Free refills. In America, we expect, and get, free refills. In fast-food places, they give you a giant cup and point you to the fountain. In a lot of restaurants, they walk around the place with giant pitchers of iced tea or whatever and fill 'er up. I especially love when they have to pour from the side of the pitcher. Because we're Americans, and we love ice. In France, for instance, there's no such thing as the free refill. They measure drinks out by the centiliter.

I'm really only half-joking, here. There's something about our sense of abundance, of generosity, of plenty, that's worth thinking about, on this Memorial Day. There's a reason life in America can be such joyful fun.

Of course, we can go too far. Next stop: Las Vegas,

I agree with his argument that political corruption, generally, is a vastly under-appreciated problem. (I am not quite as confident as he is, however, that nuclear weapons are soon to be a thing of the past.)

Following all the news from the Gulf -- and all the commentary on the news from the Gulf -- has made me think not so much of Katrina as of an earlier disaster -- the space shuttle Challenger. And it seems to point to a rather disturbing trend in our national life -- the increasing politicization of EVERYTHING. Peter & others can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall very much commentary back in 1986 to the effect that the Challenger explosion was "Reagan's fault," or a "political disaster for Reagan." Overwhelmingly (as I recall) people accepted that for what it was -- a terrible tragedy, but also a risk that came with the territory of space exploration.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and if you listened to anyone to the left of Olympia Snowe you'd have thought George W. Bush personally directed the winds and rains of Hurricane Katrina precisely to obliterate the poor of New Orleans. And now, with little-concealed glee, conservatives are pouring it back on Barack Obama -- "Obama's Katrina" (Rove), "political disaster for Obama" (Noonan), and so on.

Out here among the 97% of Americans who don't live day-in-day-out in the political cauldron, most people are pretty clear that the Big Spill is not really Obama's fault, any more than Katrina was Bush's or the Challenger Reagan's. I'm not sure the "political class" (politicians, journalists, commentatators, think-tankers, bloggers, whatever...), left or right, is doing itself any favors with the rest of the population by trying to spin a political angle on EVERYTHING.

Another reason to put American faith in French, not British, leadership in Europe? Read Gilles Kepel at The National Interest:

The imperial experience serves as a backdrop to the markedly contrasting ways that London and Paris have approached the immigration dilemma. France has created an intermingled culture, which is being forged on a daily basis between the native Gaul and the immigrant Arab and Berber. It revolves around two French obsessions: the bed and the dinner table. Your average young Muslim girl is interested in living and having children with a French gouer, a North-African colloquial term meaning “infidel”—i.e., non-Muslim. (Gouer is itself a corruption of the classical Arabic kuffar, used in immigrant slang to designate a French native. They are also known as fromage, or “cheese”—ironically the same synecdoche that was used in the neocon-coined “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”) These women would loathe the very idea of an arranged marriage to a fellah (peasant) cousin from the far away bled (North Africa) with his unrefined manners and pedestrian French.

Fun. Kepel goes off the rails resorting to the shopworn pomo-lite language of approaching "the other," but he underscores a point that cannot be overemphasized: "government support of domestic Islamist communalism" -- the British approach -- does not peace and harmony make.

This week, Ben Smith reported in Politico that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aspires to make the United States more like Brazil.  According to Ms. Clinton:

The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] - whether it's individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms...Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what - they're growing like crazy.  And the rich are getting richer, but they're pulling people out of poverty.

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Heritage Foundation's marvelous 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, I highly recommend it.  A few raw comparisons from the index:

• The freest country, Hong Kong.  5.7% 5-year compound annual growth.  4.4% unemployment.  Tax rates that are among the lowest in the world with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 14.2%.

• The eighth freest country, the United States. 2.2% 5-year compound annual growth.  9.9% unemployment.  Burdensome tax rates with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 28.3%.

• The 113th freest country, Brazil.  4.5% 5-year compound annual growth.  7.3% unemployment.  Tax-to-GDP ratio of 35.3%.

That anyone could look at that dramatic comparison and decide, "Gee, we really ought to try to be more like Brazil -- they've got it going on!" I find simply befuddling. 

Not too long ago, I took a trip on a container ship from Seattle to Shanghai. You can see some photos of it on my old blog, if you're a container ship travel nut. I went with my friend and fellow Ricochet contributor Mike Murphy, and we had an amazing time. Except for the storms.

When we steamed into Shanghai, though, there was a problem.

Evidently, not too many people arrive in the People's Republic via container ship.

So as the mess got sorted out -- which (surprise!) took $100 in cash -- I had time to wander around the customs office. There was an information kiosk with a touchscreen display, and as I tapped my way through the various listings, I came across this screen.

It may be hard to read. It's the "Code of Professional Ethics" which all customs officers are supposed to follow.

Of course, I agree with all of them. But you should feel free to choose your own favorite. Mine is in bold. All other punctuation (or lack thereof) is original:

Be loyal to the Party

Be steadfast in faith, listen to the command of the Party, protect the Constitution and be loyal to the motherland.

Serve the people

Love the people, be a devoted civil servant, know clearly what to love and what to hate and be committed to eliminating the evils and protecting the good.

Be impartial in law enforcement

Don't play favoritism. Don't bow to the high and mighty. It is strictly forbidden to extort confessions. Don't be wrong or connive at people.

Be just and impartial, clear-handed and clear-headed.

Live plainly and work hard. Work selflessly for the public interest. Guard against corrupting influences and reject bribes. Don't get influenced or contaminated.

Unity and coordination

Have the interest of the whole at heart and do one's utmost to cooperate. Respect each other and support each other.

Be prepared to sacrifice one's life

Be dedicated to one's duty and skilled and proficient in one's work. Be intelligent and brave and fear no sacrifice

Strictly observe discipline

Listen to the leadership, obey orders, comply with regulations and keep secrets.

Perform one's duties in a civilized manner

Be modest and prudent. Don't make a show of one's authority. Treat people politely and be neat and tidy in appearance.

Listen to the leadership, obey orders, comply with regulations, and keep secrets. Sort of describes the relationship most of the news media have with the Obama administration, don't you think?

Was anyone convinced by the two-page memo released by the White House on the Sestak jobs program? There was some unintended humor, as befits this posturing administration -- the White House had Bill Clinton offer Sestak an unpaid but prestigious job to get out of the PA Senate primary race. History tells us that Clinton and interns don't mix well.

The Hatch Act (18 USC 600) makes it a crime to a) offer anyone a federal "employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit" b) as a "consideration, favor, or reward" c) for "any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party" involved in a election.

It does not matter, it seems to me, that Bill Clinton was the intermediary (the law prohibits direct and indirect offers), or that the position was unpaid (the law lists employment, compensation, and position separately). The law was obviously intended to stop the practice of offering jobs to wealthy campaign contributors (one has to find ambassadors somewhere), but its text seems to include offers in return for more than just money ("any political activity" or "for the support of . . . any candidate).

One wonders if Ken Starr is available.

Kim Strassel make a good argument in the Wall Street Journal today that, in attacking Obama for his handling of the oil leak, the GOP had better watch it.  Insist that the federal government ought to be big and powerful enough to plug leaks a mile under water at a moment’s notice?  Argue that offshore oil exploration is so risky that the Obama administration should never have approved it?  Those lines of attack could very easily twist around to bite the GOP itself.

On the other hand, it’s entirely legitmate, I can’t help supposing, to hold the Obama administraton responsible for enforcing the federal laws and regulations that govern offshore exploration and drilling.  Unlike the Katrina disaster, in which primary legal responsibility for managing the emergency lay with the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana—both utterly dysfunctional, as we quickly learned, but still—the oil rig that blew up in the Gulf was drilling in federal waters.

Do we have any experts in the Ricochet audience?  Because all this leads, I think, to two questions:

Was the Obama administration right to permit BP to begin operating the doomed rig in the first place?

And if the Obama administration had proven both prudent and competent in administering the various federal agencies into whose jurisdication the vast oil spill has now washed up, what would the administration have so far done differently?

As everyone knows, I can be a real squish.  So let me stipulate, at the outset:  I'm for a small, limited government.  I'm for a flat tax.  I instinctively recoil at government schemes and programs and mousetraps designed to shape and change human behavior.

And of course, it goes without saying that San Francisco Mayor Newsom is an absurd clown.

So, I'm asking for an intervention here.

Because I sort of like this.  And I know it's wrong, of course.  But I still sort of like it.

Save me.

Peggy Noonan has a very insightful column in today's WSJ (subscription required), regarding some of the signature problems with the Obama administration. Highlighting the President's aloof dismissal of the majority of American opinion regarding illegal immigration, the unseemly manner in which a hideous health care law was inacted, and the government's inability to plug an oil leak, Noonan zeros in on the central thesis that the Founders understood over 200 years ago, namely that:

"...even though the federal government has in our time continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs."

And that's the problem, isn't it? On the one hand we are told that if we surrender enough of our liberty, enough of our property, enough of our rights, an omnipotent and caring government will take care of us, feed us, heal us, cause the seas to subside, etc. On the other hand, these same people cannot manage to secure the border, balance a budget, plug a leaking pipe, or care in the least about the will of the people. And so the President continues audaciously proving lessons that were learned long ago, that a government which over reaches will inevitably fall short. That the sum of human experience has yielded certain truths, and that those truths are as relevant today as they were when the Founders enshrined them in the Declaration and the Constitution. That an American President instructs us in the wisdom of the Founders by default is sad. That he does so under the ironic banner of "Change," is tragic.

Gary Coleman, the short-statured star of the TV sitcom, "Diff'rent Strokes," died today.

He was a funny guy, and a talented actor perfectly suited to that show and that time. His catch-phrase, "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" was, you know, a catch-phrase. It's easy to make fun of it, and to snark about it, but try introducing a catch-phrase into the popular culture sometime and see how hard it is.

I never met Gary -- but I always had a soft spot for him. Seven years ago, when he ran for governor of California in the famous recall election. If memory serves, he lost. To another, slightly taller, figure from Hollywood.

The week after the election, in my humor column, "The Long View" in National Review -- which I can't link to because they don't put that magazine on the web -- I fantasized about what might have happened after a Coleman upset:

Transcript, “The Today Show,” December 8^th, 2003:

Katie Couric: “Do you just have to pinch yourself?”

Gary Coleman: “Every day, Katie. I mean, it really is incredible.”

Katie Couric: “Did you have any idea…any inkling of a what they’re calling the ‘late Coleman surge?’”

Gary Coleman: “No idea at all, Katie. None. I didn’t have much of a campaign budget, remember. So we had zero, really, for any kind of polling. The Field Poll showed us hovering in the low fives, high fours…”

Katie Couric: “Ahead of Angelyne and the Green Party, right?”

Gary Coleman: “Yeah. Right. Comfortably ahead of the Green Party, and within the margin of error with Angelyne, but then, Zogby came out the night before the election and showed us in the low teens, and I remember getting those numbers and just thinking, you know, ‘what choo talkin’ bout, Zogby?’ and just…”

Katie Couric: “But by the next day…”

Gary Coleman: “Yeah, the next day I’m on one of those little planes headed to Sacramento and…”

Katie Couric: “Were you nervous?”

Gary Coleman: “Freaked.”

Katie Couric: “But other things were going on in your life at the time, right?”

Gary Coleman: “Right.”

Katie Couric: “You have a new lady in your life, am I right?”

Gary Coleman: “Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s strange, because ever since my show went off the air, it’s been, I don’t know, like, impossible to meet girls. And now, I’ve got to say, it’s really great to have a such a terrific lady to lean on. And she’s not just my girlfriend – my first real girlfriend, actually. I mean, she’s more than a lover. She’s an advisor. A partner. A counselor. She’s my everything.”

Katie Couric: “And she’s here with you today.”

Gary Coleman: “Yes, she is.”

Katie Couric: “Hi, Arianna.”

Arianna Huffington: “Hello, Katie. It’s wonderful to be here.”

Katie Couric: “So….I’ve got to say, this is an unlikely romance.”

Arianna Huffington: “You know, Katie, the truth is, it isn’t, really. It’s just that we’ve been conditioned to expect that people of the same height tend to end up together.”

Katie Couric: “And when did you know that this was the guy for you?”

Arianna Huffington: “A few minutes after Fox/Opinion Dynamics released their exit poll results. I just thought to myself, who’s that hunk in the boy’s blazer?”

Katie Couric: “Wow. I imagine there have been a lot of compromises?”

Gary Coleman: “Yeah. Of course. Like in any relationship. I mean, when we go to parties thrown by Arianna’s friends, I have to wear a sign that says ‘I am not the parking valet.’”

Arianna Huffington: “And I was surprised to learn that the residuals from ‘Diff’rent Strokes” weren’t all that lucrative. But you know, Katie, love really does conquer all. He’s a wonderful man. A wonderful, dear, sexy little man.”

Katie Couric: “Sounds like the things that every couple goes through. We wish you the best.”

Not sure, at this point, that Coleman wasn't a better choice.

Having finished a rejuvinating workout at the military base near my home, I emerged from the weight room to see a good number of troops in their dress blues.  I asked when they began working out dressed like that, and was informed that they were gathering in the gym for their promotion ceremony.  It's an interesting and insular community on base.  Here at the gym, young men and women walk a little taller in their dress blues, displaying rows of ribbons that mark courage and honor.  Today they add another stripe to their sleeves.  Their wives, husbands, and children are with them to share in their accomplishment even as they also share in the sacrifice of service.  Meanwhile, the thunderous roar of F-22 fighters shakes the ground and rattles the windows as our pilots hone their deadly skills.  In the base exhange, families purchase the items they need, and retirees like me drink coffee, tell lies, jokes, and watch with a mixture of pride and nostalgia as the current generation of warriors get about the business of keeping the nation safe.  Just another day at the base.  Another day in a community that will do whatever it takes to defend your community.

The razor-sharp Cheryl Miller is a must-read in today's Wall Street Journal:

At times, though, the abrupt tonal shift from testimonial to infomercial can be jarring. [...]

Stacey Feldman, vice president for marketing at First Response, acknowledges potential pitfalls in the approach, especially if happy endings are in short supply. "We were worried," she says, "but this is an honest portrayal. We want to be there for the ups and downs in these women's lives."

[...] But will her stars agree? Especially if, after airing their most intimate moments and private yearnings, they don't win the pregnancy prize?

"I'm speechless and all out of tears today. Don't know what to say," wrote Wendy, a Conceptions Diarist, in her farewell post. "I have to say this project has consumed me." Sometimes even reality TV can get too real.

If you get RT America on your cable TV -- or if you click here -- you can watch me deliver some fair and balanced criticism of the Obama administration's new National Security Strategy (or, as it is known in wonkese, NSS). Though he's made some blunders, optical and otherwise, I'd been pleasantly surprised at the president's ability to shepherd the nation through the tricky geostrategic obstacle course we inherited from the Bush years. But it's time to shift into a more focused and creative gear -- with our thinking uncluttered and undistorted by what I'd call the 'strategic misidentification' that characterizes this NSS. One might venture that beneath the finely spun sugar of this document is a core of carefully acknowledged truths about the reality of our world and our position in it. But that kind of rhetorical finesse is out of place in a statement meant to carry the clarity and heft that it must.

At the end of the site's first work week, I'd just like to observe that the two best political pieces on my Rushian stack o' stuff this week happened both to be by Ricochet contributors. Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge interview with John Podhoretz really is superb. And so too is the article by my fellow City Journal contributing editor Claire Berlinski on the indifference to the records of Soviet evil (linked, as Claire mentions in her post, by that fine, fine paper The New York Times). How genuinely delightful to be in such company!

That said, I now plan to leave my computer behind to join my former karate instructor on the shooting range where we will continue our training for the coming zombie wars. Have a wonderful Memorial Day.

Thanks to Drew Klavan, Rob Long, Ursula Hennessey, and the many Ricochet readers who have made suggestions, the summer reading list for the three teenaged Robinson males has begun taking shape:

The mandatory pile

One brand new copy, purchased at the full retail price, of Andrew Klavan's most recent book for young adults, The Long Way Home

Hatchet

Graveyard Book

Microbe Hunters (One of my boys loves science. We'll see if he loves science writing.)

Sink the Bismarck (The best way to introduce the boys to history, I figure, is by way of the Department of Blowing Things Up.)

The Once and Future King (I've been meaning to read it myself since I was about 15.)

The optional pile

Two additional copies, used, of Andrew Klavan's most recent novel for young adults, The Long Way Home

A couple of books from the Hornblower series

Another couple from the Great Brain series

Kim. Also a collection of Kipling short stories, most certainly to include "The Man Who Would be King."

Chronicles of Narnia

If I may, a few remaining questions, the first of which goes to Mrs. Hennesey: Ursula, you spent a decade as a professional sports writer. What sports books would you recommend? Books in which teenaged boys could lose themselves (which is what they'll have in mind) while being exposed to clean, straightforward prose and a skillful narrative (which is what their father has in mind)? Sports books--it's tricky ground, I find. Sports writers tend to write for newspapers and magazines, getting their work into print while their audience still recalls the game or match or contest about which they're writing. Books? Not so much. There's John McPhee on Arthur Ashe and Bill Bradley, and then there's David Halberstam on rowing. But those aren't books by sports writers. They're books by writers who happened to take six months off to write about sports.

As you'll see, Ursula, I'm desperate.

My next question I direct to my esteemed colleague, Mr. R.C.B. Long. Kim? Really, Rob? Jeepers. The story is set in a world, the Raj, that went out of existence seven decades ago, the narrative makes heavy use of dialect, and the story line (as I recall) is pretty darned complicated. Maybe some Kipling short stories instead? Or would you contend--and who knows? You've met all three of them--that my not particularly literate boys could pull themselves together and make it through Kim on their own, unflogged by their male parent? I'm asking for summer reading suggestions here. If you insist on Kim I will certainly pick up a copy--but let the boys know that it was your idea.

This is your last chance to take it back.

Gov. Jindal needs to borrow a little of Gov. Christie's moxie. The oil is lapping at the bayou and the Corps of Engineers -- one more example of bureaucratic delay and non-responsiveness in the Gulf -- is dragging it's feet on the necessary approvals to let them put in prophylactic sandbags. The Governor needs to take ownership, put on his waders, lead the sandbag brigade, challenge them to throw him in jail, and be willing to go if necessary. Now that would earn him some love!

Did FOX this AM on the Administration's decision to extend the moratorium on drilling. Remember, there have been 3000 deep water wells drilled safely, but we're not stopping there but including approved sites in Alaska and shallow water wells. Either this is a huge political overraction, or taking advantage of an opportunity by an administration staffed with people who never liked offshore drilling and thinks $5 gas is a good thing. Can we say lost jobs? Higher costs? If we're going to shut down things which are potentially harmful, any votes for including Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and the White House on that list?

Let's just get the nonsense out of the way first. I, Ursula Q. "Public," am not at all "assured" by you, Mr. President, that "nothing improper took place." Nonsense. However, to my Ricochet political experts, please help me fill in some blanks with this New York Times story about Bill Clinton passing on Rahm Emanuel's "message" to Joe Sestak.

1) Why would Clinton do this? What does he get out of it?

2) Why would Sestak, or anyone, for that matter, be enticed by an unpaid advisory job? There must be some other, under-the-table kind of thing that will result in money, right?

3) Please explain why someone like me shouldn't be totally revolted by all political operators, if this is, indeed, run-of-the-mill political shenanigans?

Reihan Salam and Keith Hennessey are making sense. Hint: you can't pin it all on W.

The brilliant PEG points my eye toward this observation on the limits of transparency in an era of big government:

People who are hip to the we-gov (as opposed to e-gov) concept are beginning to see that in order to bring netizens in as partners in governance, they need to be data literate, and need to be empowered with an understanding of what data actually means. Otherwise data — data that is useless to anyone except an intellectual elite — is largely just another tool for public relations, or a way to lower costs.

I've got nothing against popular numeracy, though I do groan each time a pundit or a president plumps for 'more science and math education' as a twenty-first century cure-all. Here I see a similar problem. Should we really seek public data literacy because our government is impenetrable and unintelligible unless we can crunch numbers? Or is this a case of the enormous tail wagging, and whipping, the dog?

A progressive fatalist -- here is a moniker that should enter the lexicon -- might argue that this sort of logic reflects simply the latest and greatest definition of citizenship. Just as basic literacy and public awareness once set the bar for responsible citizenship (never mind those nasty poll tests), now, today, anyone who wants to participate properly in politics needs to brush up on their quant skills. But this elegant line of reasoning conveniently elides what any friend of political liberty will recognize as the central problem: a government that concentrates information as irresistibly as it concentrates power.

Even setting aside the libertarian worry that a national-security state run wild will gobble up all our private information in permanent endless databases, Americans should pause before learning to love government data. The ability to digest numerical information, though important, still puts the would-be citizen in a default position of passive consumption. And the switch from discourse-driven citizenship to data processing puts us all on a conceptual footing that favors precisely what any public conversation about the means and ends of our BIG government should emphasize -- the indefinite expansion, entrenchment, and convolution of bureaucratic complexity. As David Brooks warns today, super-human complexity breeds all-too-human complacency, caprice, and corruption -- the very things that an active, education citizenry is able, and even designed, to prevent.

A Ricochet reader -- who can't comment because she hasn't yet decided to join -- sent me the full transcript of Crowley's remarks on Pakistan's You Tube ban. I'm very relieved to see that in context, Crowley does not at all sound the complete cretin he would seem to be from the way Dawn reported it. He actually offers a reasonably robust defense of freedom of expression, apart from that line about protecting citizens from offensive speech.

Note to the anonymous Ricochet reader: You may as well join. You're obviously into it, and it's not that expensive.