A one-of-a-kind sucker

Powerline has a great summary of the interview Wolf Blitzer conducted yesterday with our Elder National Disgrace, Jimmy Carter. Incredibly, Carter admitted that Hamas double-crossed him, promising to him in private one thing then declaiming the opposite in public. Yet somehow Carter still managed to blame it all on Israel.

The first line in the post is the best line in the post. "There's a sucker born every minute... but a sucker like Jimmy Carter comes along only once or twice in a century."

Where has this been all along?

This video of President Bush pushing back against MSM idiocy on the war is solid. If only he could show these colors more often.



Hat Tip: Hot Air

Republicans and Crime

William Stuntz has posted some interesting data he uncovered during his research into the growth in prison populations that has occurred in the U.S. over the last thirty-five years. Contrary to type, Democratic governors tend to oversee disproportionately large (relative to national averages during the same time periods) increases in prison populations, while Republican governors tend to preside over disproportionately small increases or even decreases. Stuntz concludes that the common explanation for the putative over-population of America's prisons -- it's the fault of evil conservatives -- is wrong. Stuntz allows that he has not completed his research and that additional data might turn out to run contrary to this trend.

(Stuntz begins his post with the assertion, "Pretty much everyone—Republican or Democrat, right or left—familiar with America’s criminal justice system agrees that our prison population is far too large." That assertion simply is not true. Perhaps Stuntz means to say that everyone in his elite circle of acquaintance who is familiar the criminal justice system agrees with that proposition.)

The data is not self-explanatory, and causation in this case is necessarily a matter of speculation. Stuntz offers his own explanation. He posits that Democrats hoping to appeal to swing voters, who are mostly white and working-class, must appear tough on criminals, and black criminals in particular, and so must put more blacks in prison. Meanwhile Republicans, who are reputed to be tough on crime, must merely pay lip service to law enforcement.

This explanation rests in part on the supposition that at least some, if not most, imprisoned persons do not belong in prison. Stuntz, like many liberals, seems to assume that some large portion of prison residents in the United States are not at all culpable. This is unlikely, to say the least.

Another intepretation of Stuntz's data, at least equally as reasonable, is that Democratic policies result in higher crime, and therefore result in higher prison populations. This interpretation is consistent with studies that demonstrate links between welfare dependency and crime, fatherlessness and crime, and divorce and crime. Democrats are the champions of welfare entitlements, higher tax burdens, and regulations that retard economic development. And they are doing everything in their power to undermine the traditional family, advocating for same-sex marriage and no-fault divorce, and opposing parental consent prerequisites to abortion.

In any event, kudos to Stuntz for conducting this research, which is sure to rub many in the academy the wrong way.

McCain's Faith

The LA Times writes today about John McCain's faith:

Not long after he became the presumed Republican nominee, John McCain flew to New Orleans to face a skeptical audience -- conservative leaders of the Council for National Policy.

A questioner zeroed in on a topic McCain rarely addresses on the campaign trail, asking him to explain his faith in God.

McCain, an Episcopalian who attends a Baptist church in Phoenix, turned to a well-worn tale of the guard he met when he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. The man once loosened the ropes binding McCain, and later shared his Christian faith with McCain by silently sketching a cross in the prison yard with his sandal.

The story played well in an ad before the New Hampshire primary, but it was deeply disappointing to many at the New Orleans gathering, conservative activist Richard Viguerie recalled.

"He blew that question off by telling us about the faith of his jailer," said Viguerie. "It was very obvious to those three or four hundred conservative leaders there. . . . The vast, vast majority of them were either sitting on the sidelines or unenthusiastic about his impending nomination and he didn't move a single person."

McCain's reticence about raising the subject of his faith in public is all the more noticeable as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have spoken up about their beliefs as they campaign for the Democratic nomination.

The secular language of McCain's speeches, often rooted in patriotic themes of duty, honor and service, is also a striking contrast to that of President Bush, who bonded with evangelicals by threading religious language through his speeches and speaking about how faith rescued him from his struggles with drinking.

I am torn here. I don't think there is anything wrong with weaving the language of faith into your policy speeches like Bush did. If that is who you are as a candidate fine. On the other hand, we see where some of this language led in real policy terms. "Compassionate conservatism" became nothing more than big-government conservatism that spent way too much while achieving far too little (typical of anything big government-related).

If McCain shies away from that, good for him. And unlike some evangelicals, I do not feel the need to be placated by the stump speeches of political candidates.

Champions of self-aggrandizement

Prominent Catholic statesmen, euphemistically called "pro-choice," who support a right to abort unborn human persons have no business ingesting the transubstantiated body of Christ at mass. That is not my polemical assertion but rather the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Bob Novak notes today that the archbishops of New York and Washington DC, eager not to cause offense, have violated this prohibition, serving communion to Ted Kennedy and Rudy Guliani, among others.

Many non-Catholics read Catholic teachings through their own consequentialist lenses. They wrongly attribute to the Catholic Church the intent to exact vengeance on pro-choice pols, or to dissuade them from voting in favor of reproductive "rights." The Catholic view of communion is that the elements actually become Christ's body and blood. Abortion is a moral issue, on which there is a correct position and a clearly wrong position. To support the destruction of innocent human life is to live unrepentant in sin, and to reject Christ's grace. Thus, denying Ted or Rudy communion is not pursuit of a vendetta but rather an exercise in holiness.

Meanwhile, Ted and Rudy like to pretend that they are still Catholic, that their Catholicism means something to them, as it does for their constituents. To be invited to the Pope's mass and given a seat of honor there is to be acknowledged as an important American Catholic. It is to receive the imprimatur of a Church whose compassion, defense of truth and life, and righteousness Ted and Rudy despise.

Trampling the grace of Christ for personal aggrandizement should be unthinkable for prominent Catholics. Did Ted even pay heed to the Pope's admonition to cultivate an intellectual culture that is truly Catholic?

Rebate checks coming soon

What will Americans spend their tax rebate checks on? NBC news investigates (click image to watch):



In the meantime, who could not have seen this coming. Retail outlets are already starting their "stimulus" sales. Here is a screen grab from the Restoration Hardware website:

CNN shows its bias

Kudos to the group Americans for Prosperity for catching CNN on this one:

Political hot potato: rising gas prices

Harry Reid is taking steps to further regulate the gas industry in the name of low gas prices:

Nevada Senator Harry Reid says it may be time for Congress to do something about soaring gas prices.

The Senate majority leader says he has directed key committee chairmen to begin assembling a package of proposals aimed at addressing the growing impact that high gasoline and other energy prices are having on the economy.

Reid declined to say what proposals are being considered. But he says the plan is to bring a package to the Senate floor before Memorial Day.

Whenever an issue gets hot, this is always the first instinct of the Democrats. Whatever package they produce, you can bet it will include major punitive actions towards energy producers while having zero positive effect on the long-term price of gas. It is always a show with these guys.

The reality of the situation is that it has been years of this kind of behavior that has produced the inflated prices we see now:

For decades, Congress has led our government into disastrous decisions by being the patsy of radical environmentalists, naysayers and prophets of doom. Recent presidents have done little to resist.

Now American consumers pay the price while politicians try to evade and shift the blame.

However, we can lower gas prices by reversing misguided federal policies, and lower food prices, too. It's all about what we learned (or should have) in Economics 101 – supply and demand.

The stifling of domestic oil and gas production and the suppression of new refineries and nuclear power plants have choked off the supplies of domestic energy, forcing us to rely on foreign oil. In the international market, we must bid against the growing energy appetites of China and India, and we're held hostage by the oil cartels of OPEC. The world market is unstable and expensive, and we shouldn't be at its mercy.

Reducing regulation is the last thing any Democrat is inclined to do. Reagan's old saying about a big government view of the economy is apt here; "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

There is another side to this coin though. Republicans in Congress are dropping the ball too. Where are the Republicans who are willing to call the Dems out on their hypocrisy? How can Nancy Pelosi demand perpetual $2.00 a gallon gas prices while also demanding we break our addiction to foreign oil and promote "green" energy? The Dems are completely inconsistent on this point yet never are called on it. Republicans should begin to hit this point while also promoting clean nuclear energy (for heaven's sake, even the Greenpeace founder now agrees with us on this issue).

We should then promote a systematic deregulation of the gas industry to provide some relief from artificially government-inflated high prices. But that does not mean prices will go back to where they were 5 or 10 years ago. And what is so terrible about prices slowly rising as long as it is determined by the market?

As market prices rise incentives for developing alternative forms of energy rise as well. This moves us closer to breaking our addiction to foreign oil, which I believe is a national security imperative.

Republicans also should be aware that rising gas prices are the only hope of moving the issue of ANWR through the Congress. Democrats who continually refuse to allow us to tap our own resources here at home while prices rise are in peril of being exposed politically.

VDH on energy and the environment

In his essay, A New Environmentalism, Victor Davis Hanson today makes a compelling argument in favor of developing traditional, domestic energy sources, such as nuclear plants, coal, and oil.

The question is no longer simply whether we want to drill in the Alaskan wilderness or off the Florida or California coasts. Rather, the dilemma is whether by doing so, we can mitigate the world's ecological risks beyond our shores, deny dictators financial clout, get America out of debt, and help the poor afford food.

"Britain has had it with religion"

On one hand, you can't blame run of the mill Europeans for their angst against religion. As they leave their front doors and head to the streets of their cities they are confronted with a terrible fact: Muslims, many of whom are Jihadi sympathizers, are taking over their world. Not only are they immigrating to Europe at astounding levels, but they are refusing to assimilate, thus diluting European culture and snuffing out the remaining lights of Western thought in the Old World.

Our feckless European friends see this as well as the current war being waged against brutal Jihadism and they blame it on "religion." Were it not for religion, they would all be free to sip their wine, eat their cheese and live to a ripe old age while suckling on the government teet.

A CHARITY set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century - religion.

A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith - not just in its extreme form - was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.

Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.

The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.

Many participants said religion divided society, fuelled intolerance and spawned “irrational” educational and other policies.

...Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was “extremely pleased”.

“Britain has had it with religion,” he said.

As Mark Steyn has pointed out in his wonderful book America Alone, the religion-less Europeans are losing the will to resist Islamization. Their rampant secularism and big government welfare state is producing Europeans who are soft. Without religion they are no longer able to see right from wrong. How can they really condemn Jihadis? How can they really say European culture is worth saving when they have turned their backs on such a large part of their rich history.

The welfare state too is contributing to their softness. The Europeans long ago abandoned the idea of liberty while trading it in for "freedom from want." Their governments pay for everything: vacations on the coast of France, health care from birth to death, education, shortened work weeks and afternoon tea. When you rely on big government as your provider, you lose the ability to build character by making it on your own. This, incidentally, is the kind of character -- or hardness -- needed to resist the Jihadis.

Will this ever end?

2008 should be known as the Year of the Bailout. The Wall Street Journal explains the latest:

Guess who's asking Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a bailout now? Hint: They are members of an exclusive club who bet wrong on the credit markets last fall. No, it's not a cabal of Wall Streeters, but Democrats in Congress.

We're referring to the "student loan crisis" now appearing in a media outlet near you. In September, Congress vowed to make education more affordable by passing the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act." The law reduced the interest rates borrowers pay on federally insured student loans. Backed by the Federal Family Education Loan Program, these loans account for more than 70% of education lending. Taxpayers will fork over $7 billion by 2012 to pay for the rate cuts.

Jimmy Carter and the failure of evangelical courage

A prominent evangelical pastor in a large northeastern city recently gave a sermon in which he extolled the post-presidential activities of Jimmy Carter as a model for Christians to emulate. (I was in attendance and was astonished.) This same pastor recently hosted at his church Jim Wallis, Accommodator-in-Chief. That the two events occurred in the same pulpit is not coincidental. Wallis and his organization have intentionally associated themselves with our Elder National Disgrace on numerous occasions (see, e.g., here and here). Indeed, Carter wrote the forward to one of Wallis' recent books. Birds of a feather and all that jazz.

Carter's latest demonstration of fecklessness and irresponsibility -- lending the legitimacy of the high office he once occupied to a terrorist organization -- is perfectly consistent with his behavior over the last couple of decades. And it is consistent with the conceit, self-absoprtion, and delusion of his Accommodator accolytes. Here's an Accommodator today (incredibly) defending Carter's most recent folly on Wallis' blog:

Carter's visit also showed that while Hamas, like most Palestinians, are bitter about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, they are pragmatic enough to accept a two-state solution negotiated by the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, so long as the Palestinian public gets a chance to approve it in a popular referendum. ... Keeping 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza under permanent siege is illegal and immoral. Israel, and indirectly the U.S.'s, refusal to accept the offer by Hamas of a ceasefire is illogical.

The trouble with this assessment is not so much its factual inaccuracy. The real problem is the author's complete disregard for facts. Hamas most emphatically denies that it is willing to accept a two-state solution. That fact is not merely inconsistent with the author's claim, it is exactly the opposite of it.

Facts, those stubborn things, make rather infrequent appearances in Accommodators' reasoning. Misrepresentations and calumnies are frequent guests in "God's Politics."

The increasing influence of the Accommodators (or the appearance thereof, which the mainstream media is more than happy to perpetuate) is no longer merely an irritant. It has become dangerous. If terrorist thugs such as Hamas believe that they have successfully deceived some large portion of American evangelicals they are likely to become even more emboldened. Carter and Wallis abet that mistaken impression, and the bloodshed that results.

We will repeat again the refrain: The Accommodators do not speak for us!

Clinton wins big, race goes on

Despite being outspent by millions of dollars, Hillary Clinton looks to have pulled off a double digit win in the Keystone State. Governor Ed Rendell rightly calls last night's results a "game changer," and he is right.

Before Wrightgate broke, this was Obama's election. Since then, Obama has been seen in another light. Add to the fire the William Ayers story and Obama's boneheaded belittling of "bitter" working class Americans who "cling" to religion and guns.

All these stories will follow Obama into the general election if he ends up pulling it out in the Dem primary.

Now you have to really question whether this guy can win...or better yet, Democrat poobahs need to ask that question and adjust their support accordingly. He clearly is not the teflon candidate as his supporters had hoped. Teflon candidates don't get their rears served to them by an underwhelming candidate to the tune of 10 points or more.

Lastly, Democrats who are all over the airwaves saying this is not hurting their party are completely full of it. If this trend continues and super-delegates do indeed begin to move for Hillary, the Party will have a full fledged revolt on their hands. Are we to believe that denying the democratically elected Obama the nomination will not have repercussions with black voters and young voters? Nonsense.

How not to engage the Pope

We, and particularly I, have been quite critical of Accommodators, those so-called Progressive Christians who, in their quest for relevance in a secular, liberal world have traded away the only thing that makes them unique -- Orthodoxy -- in exchange for the illusion of acceptance by liberal elites. As we have mentioned before, another faction within evangelicalism is, if not equally as puerile as the Accommodators, at least as embarrassing to thoughtful evangelicals, which we here in the Cloakroom strive to be.

We have termed this latter faction the Know Nothings, after the Nineteenth Century political movement that was characterized by its anti-Catholic bias. Today, Know Nothings earn the appellation not by preserving the secrecy of their societies and meetings but by deliberately fostering an anti-intellectual fideism, a skepticism of religious and institutional authority, and a dogmatic commitment to theonomous reasoning. For an example, consider Pat Robertson predicting that Orlando, Florida would suffer natural disasters as a result of its decision to host a gay pride parade and, on a separate occasion, castigating mainline Protestant denominations as harboring the spirit of the Antichrist.

The Know Nothings have found one of their own in Mike Huckabee. However, perhaps no current American politician better deserves the label of Know Nothing than Tom Tancredo. Here's Tancredo responding to Pope Benedict's call for United States Bishops to welcome and support recent American immigrants: "[T]he pope's immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church."

There are compelling prudential arguments in favor of an enforcement-first immigration policy. Mr. Tancredo would do well to articulate those arguments. Accusing the Pope of placing proselytization over the Gospel is neither persuasive nor helpful. In the first place, it is not at all clear that the Pope's comments were directed toward American immigration policy. Regardless, what possible harm could come from the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States, by (legal) immigration, evangelizing, or proselytizing?

Just as we criticize the lunacy of the left wing of evangelicalism, we reject the reactionary rhetoric of some of our conservative, evangelical brethren. We can do much better.

The Utility Infielder of Constitutional Jurisprudence

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr points out the affinity that Justice Kennedy, indisputably the most influential member of the Court at the moment, has for the word "dignity." Dignity has become an all-purpose purpose for state action, something like a utility infielder for constitutional justification. Why does the Court prohibit states from criminalizing sodomy? To protect the putative "dignity" of autonomously-chosen homosexual relationships. Why are States entitled to sovereign immunity from lawsuits by their citizens? To protect the States' "dignity."

One derives the impression that Kennedy (and those Justices trying to secure Kennedy's swing vote) employ the word "dignity" whenever they can find no articulable justification for their decision. So, for example, in Lawrence v. Texas the Court struck down a criminal prohibition against sodomy. That decision served no purpose other than elevating homosexual intimacy to moral equivalence with conjugal monogamy. But the Court could not say that it was lending the approbation of the United States government to homosexual intimacy. So Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, threw in the word "dignity." That gave homosexual relationships the appearance of inalienable sanctity, much like life and liberty, without precisely identifying homosexual sex as the interest that the Court was acting to protect.

Kerr's interlocutor, Michael Dorf (a former Kennedy clerk, incidentally), also criticizes the Court's profligacy with the word "dignity." He finds puzzling the Court's concern, stated in last week's death penalty decision, for the dignity of the lethal injection procedure. Fair enough. But then Dorf wanders off into the ridiculous. He asserts that the lethal injection case "bears an uncomfortable resemblance" to last term's Gonzales v. Carhart decision, in which the Court upheld Congress' ban on partial-birth abortion. The legitimate state interest in that case was respect for the dignity of human life. Dorf continues, "The Court in Gonzales v. Carhart validated the federal government's aesthetic interest in dignity, at the potential expense of women's health... ."

This short assertion, not even Dorf's entire sentence, contains not one but two fallacies. First, promoting respect for the inherent value of human life is not merely an aesthetic interest. Aesthetics are important interests, which the state may rightly promote. But human life is valuable in and of itself. This is what moral and legal philosophers mean when they say that human life has intrinsic value. It is an end, a purpose, an interest, all of its own and even when it serves no additional purpose.

Second (and here Dorf is guilty of outright prevarication), nothing anywhere in the public record demonstrates to the least degree that the ban on partial-birth abortions jeopardizes any cognizable interests of women, or even has the potential to do so. Congress made express findings on this point, and the evidence overwhelmingly supports those findings.

Furthermore, Justice Kennedy (again), writing for the majority in Gonzales v. Carhart, expressly invited abortion proponents to bring specific challenges to the ban based upon particular cases. If the partial-birth abortion ban impedes a woman's access to needed health care, threatens her life or health in any way, or otherwise infringes upon any of her constitutionally-protected rights, nothing in the Gonzales v. Carhart decision prevents her abortionist doctor (who bears the penalties for performing the procedure) from bringing a claim challenging the ban as applied to her. As Ed Whelan recently pointed out, one year after the Gonzales v. Carhart decision, not one single such claim has appeared anywhere in this immense nation.

In other words, abortion proponents lied through their teeth. And Dorf continues to do so, shamelessly.

All of this suggests that the word "dignity" should not be used for all-purpose utility work in the Court's lexicon. Instead, the word has particular usefulness in service to the dignity of human life. Kerr and Dorf rightly chide the Court for using the word too freely. But we ought not throw the baby out with the bath water. The inherent dignity of human life is a very important state interest. And in Gonzales v. Carhart, at least, Justice Kennedy rightly called our attention to a just cause.