Penis Envy on Campus

More evidence, as if any were needed, that only one view is allowed on many college campuses. From the National Review:

College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate “V-Day” (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day “mascot” — a friendly looking “penis” named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.

Jim River Merges with Large Body of Water

The Jim River Review has now moved and merged with South Dakota Politics. Professor Schaff and myself can be found blogging there on most days. SD Politics was formerly Daschle v. Thune, and played a significant role in that famous Senate race. We are proud to join Jon Lauck on his site.

The Trouble with Tsunamis Is . . .

You can't easily blame them on George Bush. If the weather heats up or cools off enough to make someone slightly uncomfortable, that's because the Texas Shrub refused to sign the Kyoto protocol. But how exactly can he be blamed for undersea earth movements? There are a few paranoid fantasies floating around concerning new superweapons, but the safer response is to do as John Pilger does in the New Statesman, and argue that Bush really is a tsunami.

The charming thing about Pilger's relentless hatred of everything American is that it is largely matched by a hatred of anything British. One should have such enemies. He discredits everything he stands for.

A Journalistic Scandal You May have Overlooked.

The irrespressible Michael Fumento details a Jason Blair type scandal at USAToday. In the process he tells a good story about bad science. Read the whole thing.

Everyone Katie Couric Knows Is An Idiot

NRO's The Corner leads us to this missive by the goddess of early morning talk shows:

"You know, Larry, I usually tease you about kind of the inordinate attention some of these stories get, but everybody I know, they were very upset this weekend about this particular breakup, because it sort of made you feel like, 'Gosh, can any marriage last?' And here they seemed really suited to each other. They were, you know, so attractive. They both seemed like very nice people. And I actually called our newsdesk on Saturday and said: 'I know that we have this tsunami going on, and--and all these people, but is it true that they broke up? I mean, so I think a lot of people are really interested particularly in them as a couple. Why do you think that's true?"

So it takes being attractive and nice to have a lasting marriage? I guess that explains my single status. When will President Bush declare war on celebrity break-ups? This reminds me of the central theme of the worst film in memory, Pearl Harbor, which was "What's truly bad about war is that it keeps good looking people from hooking up."

Defending Wal-Mart

A column in the NY Post today (hit the link above) defends superstore giant Wal-Mart against the forces of darkness, also known as the New York City Council. I have my own ambivalence about Wal-Mart. This column, written by one Ryan Sager, references the "creative destruction" of the market, emphasizing the creative aspects of Wal-Mart in terms of jobs and wealth. This is my beef with the (usually) conservative defenders of Wal-Mart and the market in general. They tend to dwell on the creative at the expense of the destructive. While I see the overall benefit of Wal-Mart in what it creates, it still sucks to be on the "destructive" side of progress. I see all the benefits of outsourcing (see Dan Drezner's "Outsourcing Boogeyman" in a recent Foreign Affairs) but it is no fun if it is your job being outsourced. Be that as it may, the opposition of local governments like those in California, Vermont, Chicago, and now in New York, to Wal-Mart is baffling to me. Don't people in these places like buying necessary consumer goods (toothpaste, underwear, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" on DVD) at low prices? Would they prefer the "working man" pay more for these items? Do their communities have so many jobs they just don't need any more? The opposition to Wal-Mart strikes me as largely motivated by an irrational hatred of business, especially one that is, God help us, successful. If we are going to try to help the poor, it'd be best if we weren't angry at those who create wealth.

From Broad Construction to Snip and Tuck Construction

Opinion Journal directs us to this delightful example of amendment on the fly from the ACLU free speech page:

It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The Constitution’s framers believed that freedom of inquiry and liberty of expression were the hallmarks of a democratic society.

Here is the actual text of the first amendment, from Epublius.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievance.

This is a case of careless lieing to make your point.

Powerline on the CBS Report

Powerline makes much hay of the obvious weaknesses in the CBS memo gate report. It rather studiously avoided passing judgment on the authenticity of the Killian documents, and instead made a strong case for the appearance of inauthenticity. The latter, the report clearly implies, should have set off the warning bells.

Nor does the report take the question of political bias seriously, as far as one can tell. But it seems to me that the latter amounts to another self-imposed injury on the part of CBS. Lots of network talking heads and former network talking heads bobbed up on cable last night, and virtually all of them denied that political bias played any role in the scandal. This is so implausible as to discredit anything else they had to say on CBS's behalf.

Wouldn't it have been far more plausible to argue that political bias played a small role but did not determine the outcome? I can believe for example that the primary motive behind the scandal was desperation over viewer loss, and that the 60 Minutes team might well have run a damaging story about Kerry if they believed it would help them in the ratings. But fear of helping Bush back into the Whitehouse would surely have created a little friction in the scandal machine, and might have been enough for them to check out the sources a little more thoroughly. As it was the desire to hurt Bush probably greased the wheels instead. Admitting this much would hardly make the network look worse. Indeed at this point arguing that the desire for a scoop trumps political bias would make the network look a little better.

Military intelligence

I recently finished John Keegan's Intelligence in War, which, as the name suggests, is about the strategic and tactical use of intelligence in wartime. Keegan uses various case studies (Admiral Nelson chasing French through the Mediterranean, Jackson in the Shenandoah, German attack on Crete in WWII, etc) to illustrate lessons about how intelligence is gained, and more to the point, how it is used during warfare. The central point is this: While obviously it is better to have good intelligence, it is not a substitute for fighting will and the ability to think on your feet when inevitably circumstances change in a way the renders your intelligence moot. Also, intelligence is always inaccurate to one extent or another. It can only give you a partial picture. I think Keegan is trying to warn us away from a modern conceit that somehow intelligence will save us from having to make difficult foreign policy decisions and having the will to see them through. Intelligence will give us obvious answers, some think, such as whether we should invade Iraq or not. Intelligence, Keegan suggests, is not a substitute for judgment, leadership, and will.

Crap and Corruption at CBS and CJR

It seemed very odd to me that CJR would publish its Blog-Gate just before CBS issued its report on the Memogate scandal. What is certain is that in light of the CBS report, the CJR piece looks even dumber than it did on first read.

"Blog-Gate," written by Corey Pein, tries to argue that the bloggers were guilty of the same sins as CBS, but to do so he is forced to pepper his essay with howlers and wrap himself in self-contradiction. Consider this one:

Ultimately, we don’t know enough to justify the conventional wisdom: that the documents were “apparently bogus” (as Howard Kurtz put it, reporting on Dan Rather’s resignation) and that a major news network was an accomplice to political slander [my italics].

It may be true that " copies cannot be authenticated either way with absolute certainty," and therefore we do not know for sure that the documents were bogus (i.e., forged). But we know for sure that the documents were "apparently bogus," for that's the way they appear to any reasonable person. While the CBS report is careful to deny any finding concerning the authenticity of the Killian memos, it leaves no question that the documents were highly questionable and should have triggered greater scrutiny. Consider Section VII B of the Report, "The Language and Format of the Killian Documents Do Not Match Those of
the Official Bush Records ." Consider the following:

Four of the Killian documents . . . have signature blocks on the right side of the page. Three of the former TexANG personnel interviewed advised the Panel that the signature block in documents from the 147th Group would always be on the left. The Panel has reviewed the official Bushrecords, including four official documents signed by Lieutenant Colonel Killian, and has confirmed that the signature block in memoranda and letters of the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group was always on the left. Indeed, in the official Bush records available to the Panel, the signature block on documents from the 147th Group was on the left at least 20 times and was never on the right.83 Accordingly, the referenced Killian documents deviate from standard
format.

And this:

Four of the Killian documents have signature blocks, but the format of the signature
blocks varies greatly. . . . Among the official Bush records available to the Panel are five documents signed by Lieutenant Colonel Killian. These records evidence instances where Lieutenant Colonel Killian signed in accordance with the standard format and no instances where he signed as in the Killian documents. . . . The deviation of the Killian documents from standard format of the signature block is another indication that the Killian documents may not be authentic.

The report goes on to consider a variety of ways in which the Killian memos differ from authenticated documents including those that really were written by Killian. While we cannot demonstrate from this that the Killian memos were bogus, they damned sure look bogus. To deny that is stupid.

Pein repeats the silly assertion that the memos "could be fake but accurate, as Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told CBS on September 15." But this undermines his own case. The bloggers turned out to be right about the documents: they are "apparently" bogus. If being right is all that counts, how can he complain about the bloggers faulty fact checking or their many obvious biases?

The CJR is supposed to support good journalism. This article confines itself to protecting bad journalism from outside scrutiny.

The Left Shall Rise Again!

Having grown up in the South (Craighead County, Arkansas, to be precise), I have seen my share of folk who can hang on to a lost cause for a very long time. Now we are witnessing this same spirit in the contemporary left. Knightrider, posting on Dec. 30, urged the Democrats to filibuster the certification of Ohio's electors. Thanks to Polipundit.

According to research done here, once an election challenge has occurred, the House and Senate split into their respective bodies to deal with the challenge. According to the federal statute on this issue, both houses have a 2 hour limit on debate, after which they are supposed to vote to accept or reject the electors. However, Senate Rules contradict the federal statute: the Senate Rules allow unlimited debate unless 60 Senators vote to cut off debate. The Senate Rules are Constitutionally granted. The Constitution trumps a federal statute.

Why is this so important? Because once the electoral college votes, Bush could be removed only by impeachment. That's important because Knightrider is still hoping for a couple hundred thousand votes to mysteriously pop up somewhere in Ohio.

Meanwhile at the Daily KOS, the war for the authenticity of the infamous "Killian" Memos goes on without pause.

DailyKos was one of the very few sites that did any serious counterinvestigation into the claims that the documents were word-processed forgeries, through this story and multiple followups, and found that the right-wing blog "forgery!" claims could be disproved pretty easily.

This shows a kind of disengagement from reality that will probably deepen rather than fade with the passing of the years.

The Peculiar Demographics of the Zombie Vote

A question was raised recently concerning the fact that it is usually Republicans who challenge votes in elections. Why don't they want everyone to vote? A clue is provided by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (what a good paper name!).

At least eight people who died well before the November general election were credited with voting in King County, raising new questions about the integrity of the vote total in the narrow governor's race, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review has found.

This calls to mind something one of relatives once said about voter demographics in my home state of Arkansas. Jews and Catholics can sometimes be persuaded to vote Republican, she said, though it is very difficult. It is even harder to get Blacks to vote Republican, though in rare cases it can happen. But for some strange reason, the dead always vote Democrat.

Why We Still Need Ted Kennedy

Just when you thought Congress couldn't get any funnier, there comes this piece from the Wall Street Journal. It involves Ted Kennedy questioning the humanity of "water-boarding," where you make someone think he is drowning. Even a low grade idiot would have advised this Senator not to go there. But instead of that, he had only his own wits.

Best of all is the "Best of the Web" article title: A Bridge Too Far. Now that's comedy.

Theology and the Tsunami

In the season opener of Joan of Arcadia God skips up to Joan in the form of a little girl with curly blond hair and glasses. Joan, who is just back from a few weeks in a clinic because she was, well, talking to God, puts her hands over her eyes and says "You aren't there! You aren't there!" God replies in a little girl voice: "That's what people keep telling me."

There's nothing like a tsunami to bring out the foul-weather atheists. Ron Rosenbaum announces in the New York Observer us that "Disaster Ignites Debate". Rosenbaum makes the argument from evil well enough, but spoils the fun by trying to be cute. Calling God "Big Guy" shows a kind of disdain for believers that does not really help much when he finally urges a truth between believers and non-believers.

Martin Kettle, writing in the British Guardian, compares our reaction to earthquakes with that of 18th century Europeans, and decides that the latter "ask questions we shy away from." Atleast the British left can see some of the disadvantages of political correctness:

The need for mutual respect between peoples and traditions of which the Queen spoke in her Christmas broadcast seems to require that we must all respect religions in equal measure, too. The government, indeed, is legislating to prevent expressions of religious hatred in ways that could put a cordon around the critical discussion of religion itself.

That's too bad, because

A non-scientific belief system, especially one that is based on any kind of notion of a divine order, has some explaining to do . . . . What God sanctions an earthquake? What God protects against it? Why does the quake strike these places and these peoples and not others? What kind of order is it that decrees that a person who went to sleep by the edge of the ocean on Christmas night should wake up the next morning engulfed by the waves, struggling for life?

So political correctness is bad because it might protect the pious from the drubbing they deserve.

These essays get the problem of evil basically right. A God who was both omnipotent and omni-compassionate would necessarily be both willing and able to prevent such terrible tragedies. Since God did not prevent it, then either he is not the one or not the other, or perhaps not anything at all.

I happen to agree that the argument has no solution. But at the same time anyone who thinks that this is an insoluble problem for religion doesn't understand what religion is. As philosophy begins with a puzzle and responds with a question mark (what is nature? What is God?), piety begins with the problematic character of human life, mortality and pain for example, and responds with an exclamation mark. Religion (at least the great religions) insist that human beings should behave as if there were a God (or in the case of Buddhists, as if the Dharma is perfect) regardless of what the evidence shows. Jews and Christians do not have to wait for a holocaust or a tsunami to come along to know that evil in the world is a challenge to God. In fact, the sages have always recognized that it is harder to be pious when things are going well than when they are going terribly.

The Jewish philosopher Emil Fachenheim has argued that the holocaust was an example of inexplicable evil, and that salvation from it was possible only because human beings were capable of equally inexplicable instances of resistance.

Whether one responds to life with a question mark or an exclamation mark, it is clear that the latter is posited out of no naivete. When you are sunning yourself on the beach, look around for the pious. They will be the ones warning that the wave is coming.