THIS MIGHT BE INTERESTING: Robert McNamara is the latest subject of a documentary by Errol Morris. Roger Ebert writes:

When Errol Morris first showed Robert McNamara the Interro-tron, the former defense secretary balked. "What's THAT?" he asked the famed documentarian. Morris explained that his device linked two video cameras and two video screens so that he and his subjects can look each other in the eye while talking. In most video interviews, the subject is looking to the side of the camera. With the Interrotron, he is looking straight down the barrel--making eye contact with the viewer.

McNamara had agreed to a one-hour interview with Morris, whose subjects over the years have included the metaphysician Stephen Hawking, as well as lion tamers, pet cemetery operators, electric chair inventors, Death Row inmates, wild turkey hunters in Florida, a student of the naked mole rat and an autistic woman who designed most of the cattle chutes in America.

Morris knew within the first five minutes, he says, that he wanted to do a feature film about McNamara. Eventually McNamara grew to accept the Interro-tron, and in Morris' startling and persuasive new film, "The Fog of War," he looks us straight in the eye as he re-evaluates his role in the Vietnam War.

It is an extraordinary performance, from a man who at 85 still skis and climbs mountains, and takes no guff from Morris. He talks about his realization that the war was unwinnable, about a private memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson, about whether he resigned or LBJ fired him. "When I raised that question with Kay Graham, publisher of the Washington Post," he recalls, "she told me, 'Of course you were fired.' "

Morris is one of the most distinctive filmmakers in America, a man who combines documentary subjects with haunting, rhythmic graphics and, in his later films, otherworldly scores by Philip Glass. "A Fog of War" is a presentation of a man's thoughts, memories and conscience, all woven together into a tapestry of realism and regret.

I don't know how well an interviewer Morris is, but McNamara would certainly be a fascinating subject. He and Johnson cocked up the Vietnam war so badly, that they tarnished America's military reputation for decades. It was only with Desert Storm that the American military's reputation was restored, and only because the American military completely rethought and revised its tactics, not the least of which was insisting that commanders in the field not be second guessed by the White House during a battle, unlike McNamara and Johnson, who were naive enough to believe that as fluid as war as Vietnam could be controlled on a daily basis from 10,000 or so miles away in Washington DC.

"WEIRD PLACES": Peter Kilborn of the New York Times makes a revealing Freudian Rainesian slip, perhaps second only to Howell Raines' own classic "better and, more importantly, more diverse" quip. Orrin Judd has the details, and some thoughts.

"ALL WILL BE REVEALED": My review of the new Led Zeppelin DVD is online at Blogcritics.

ANDREW SULLIVAN and a reader thoroughly deconstruct the Bush "dry drunk" meme that seems to have (temporarily at least) replaced the "he's a dummy", and the chickenhawk riffs.

By the way, do the folks on the left really want to use this attack? It may very well make it that much tougher for somebody who actually did inhale (or worse) in his past to actually get into office in the future.

DON'T BOGART THE REMOTE, YASSER: More than you ever want to know about Yasser Arafat's sleeping habits, via Ben Domenech.

That's the subtext that I'm drawing from the post in NRO's The Corner.

Orrin Judd has a theory that all comedy is conservative. I agree with that to a certain extent, but it's definitely true that at some point on the leftward curve, humor seems to be anathema--there's just too many shibboleths that risk offending. With the PC movement allowing anyone and everyone to claim victimhood, it's got to be tougher to write a funny script in Hollywood. And increasingly, Hollywood's obsessions (anti-war, vegetarianism, Scientology, an obsession with race, rococo sexual politics and of course, bashing anyone whose politics are to the right of Jerry Brown) aren't playing well out in the heartland.

Perhaps that explains why Mel Brooks' Broadway version of The Producers was set in the past, and the Austin Powers movies makes fun of the '60s and '70s--humor was allowed back then. Or why My Big Fat Greek Wedding, about a traditional Greek family whose daughter is marrying a spineless WASP who believes in many of those same Hollywood trends I just mentioned) was such a hit.

DON'T BLAME THE COP IN NYC, CNSNews reports:

New York's finest have a message for city residents and visitors angry over a wave of misdemeanor criminal, traffic and parking citations issued under orders from City Hall: "Don't Blame the Cop!"

Patrick J. Lynch, president of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), said Thursday that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is changing the primary mission of the city's law enforcement officers.

"City Hall is trying to turn us into a revenue-generating agency rather than a policing agency," Lynch told CNSNews.com Thursday. The PBA has launched a print and broadcast ad campaign called "Don't Blame the Cop!" to tell their side of the story.

Lynch said the mayor's office has "put a quota on the number of summonses" police officers must issue and specifically instructed officers to write citations that will result in fines.

"So they're telling us how many to give out and what types to give out," he explained.

As an example, Lynch noted that, in the past, officers have been given the discretion to write safety violation notices to motorists with broken taillights or other vehicle equipment problems.

"When you give out an equipment summons, the citizen can get it fixed, get it checked by a police officer, and there is no fine attached," Lynch explained. "So they'd rather us give out summonses that bring in the dollar bill rather than the summons that actually saves a life."

Is there anybody in New York who actually likes Bloomberg and his policies? Does he actually think they're improving the quality of life there?

I wonder how all this will play out next year when the GOP's convention is in town.

WELL, HER INITIALS SEEM APPROPRIATE: Why is Barbra Streisand suing an
suing an environmentalist photographer for taking a photo of her house?

Singer/actress Barbra Streisand has filed a $50 million lawsuit against amateur photographer Kenneth Adelman for posting a photograph of her Malibu, Calif., estate on his website. The site features 12,000 other photos of the California coastline as part of a project to document coastal erosion for scientific and other researchers.

Adelman's website, also contains photos of other houses along the coastline. He told CNSNews.com that Streisand was the only one who took legal action against him. Neither Streisand nor any other humans were caught in the photos.

The lawsuit names Adelman, his web hosting service and Pictopia, a photography company that distributes his work. It claims the picture of Streisand's house violates her right of privacy and a state law enacted to curb paparazzi. The suit seeks to have the photo removed from the website and $50 million in damages.

The article says the photographer as and his wife spent the bulk of last year "photographing the entire California coastline from their private helicopter in public airspace from an elevation of 500 feet using a standard photo lens, not the telescopic kind of lens used frequently by paparazzi".

So why is he being persecuted by Streisand, who in theory, should be a fan of coastal erosion studies.

THE BILL SHOW: The great P.J. O'Rourke does one of the things which he does best: savage Bill Clinton:

Clinton understands what motivates the North Koreans. It's the same thing that motivates him, although North Korean revelations were explosive in more than the New York Post sense. Clinton explained matters to the audience: "Why were they building bombs? It's the only way anyone pays attention to them."

Clinton proposed a new Marshall Plan for war-torn parts of the earth, such as the Middle East. It's an interesting idea, giving generous economic assistance to countries with the world's largest petroleum reserves. Plus, I thought, I did that this morning when I filled up the Suburban. Clinton said, "We spend less than one percent of our budget on direct foreign assistance." But he had a little lapse there and forgot to count the 17.8 percent that we spend guaranteeing, with our Army, Navy, and Air Force, the existence of live foreigners to assist. (Even if the foreigners with the best guarantees—NATO members—are the ones least in need of assistance.)

Clinton said that we have to "build institutions of international cooperation." He noted several. The Kyoto treaty got applause. The World Court didn't. Even liberals fret about the idea of being pulled over by a World Cop for some World Driving Violation (not using the horn enough?) and then having to go before a World Traffic Magistrate and explain in Esperanto that they were rushing a sick gerbil to the pet hospital. Clinton praised "Powell and"—that tagalong—"the President" for going to the UN with their Iraqi-weapons-of-mass-destruction concerns. "If we have to take military action now, we'll have the world behind us," Clinton said, in the one newsworthy statement of the evening—although this did not make the papers the next day. "We'll get a lot of help."

"To build the world we want," Clinton said, "we need people with the habits of mind and heart to do so." He cited Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela, and modestly avoided mentioning himself. But what if people don't act like Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela? What if people act like Winnie Mandela? Clinton didn't say. But in an April 2002 speech to the National Jewish Democratic Council, he proposed a U.S. intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian clash. His plan was a combination of prom-chaperone duty and Vietnam: "The United States must go there and put our arms around that thing like a wet blanket ... We have to cover this situation ... And we have to wade into it and stay there through disappointment and difficulty ..."

As O'Rourke writes, Clinton "has an understanding of foreign policy's deep, broad, and murky waters. Former world leaders do. They acquire it suddenly upon leaving office."

Read the whole thing.

THE TAX REVOLT TURNS 25: June 6 will mark the 25th anniversary of California's Proposition 13. Michael J. New of the Cato Institute has some thoughts.

INSTAPUNDIT IS BACK ONLINE.

THE NEW LINEUP: Steven Den Beste looks back at a post he wrote in March of 2002 of who are allies would be in the war to liberate Iraq, and reassesses who's had our back--and who's been ready to put a switchblade into it.

Den Beste also has a nifty analysis of General Tommy Franks' tactics in the run-up to the war.

ANOTHER COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER HECKLED, this time at Smith College. Jonathan V. Last writes:

When the speaker took the podium, a handful of graduates walked out. Others turned their folding chairs around and sat with their backs to the stage for the entire address. So did a number of parents and guests.

And that's when things got lively. As soon as the speaker began, a chorus of shouts and boos came from the back of the assemblage. The heckling continued until almost the seven-minute mark in the speech, when the speaker finally addressed the protesters and promised to meet with them afterwards if they would quiet down.

Mercifully, they did. The speech went on for a few more minutes--nothing terribly controversial, the standard fare about reaching for your dreams and giving back to your community. Then, as the speaker mentioned the remarkable example of the passengers of Flight 93, a man rushed the stage carrying a sign proclaiming, "Another reason why they hate us."

Police officers quickly surrounded him and escorted him out. A few moments later, another protester made a break for the stage wearing a gigantic papier-mâché mask that someone told me looked like a caricature of the speaker featuring a giant hooknose. Five cops rushed to intercept the papier-mâché kid and wrangle him or her out of the quad.

By then the screams and catcalls had returned. One more protester was surrounded by police, after which it was relatively smooth sailing for the final few paragraphs of the speech.

Who was this rabidly pro-war speaker who was heckled by the idealist left-wing college students?

Click on over and find out for yourself--I don't want to spoil the surprise.

It turns out that al Jazeera, the Arab TV network, was on Saddam's payroll, writes Stephen F. Hayes.

And in their own way, so was CNN, of course.

The jury is still out as to exactly why the BBC was so biased towards the Baathists, however.

BLOGCRITICS IS BACK ONLINE: Al Barger has a nice rebuttal to Maureen Dowd and her use of "psychobabble as a weapon".

I still can't InstaPundit to open, although Glenn writes on his backup site that for some it's simply loading slowly.

AMBULANCE CHASERS ARE FINALLY UNDER ATTACK THEMSELVES, says Ronald Bailey of Reason.

Who knows--maybe someday we'll look back on their attempt to ban Oreos as their high water mark, the point at which the tide finally turned against them.

Maybe.

TO ULTIMATELY EMERGE FROM THE WILDERNESS, Tony Blankley writes, the Democrats have three models to choose from: Robert Taft, Wendell Wilkie or Ronald Reagan. Who they choose to model their presidential candidates on will say much about their future.

THE EIGHT YEAR ONE-TERMER: Earlier today (scroll down), I quoted Dick Morris, who said Bill Clinton "was a one-term president who lived in the White House for eight years". Clinton's inaction on terrorism during the second term will likely cost the Democrats the election in 2004, Donald Lambro writes:

The Democrats' biggest challenge in 2004: Convince independent and swing voters that their party can protect the United States.
That's going to be a hard, if not impossible, sell.

Polls show that Americans, by margins of 40 percent or more, trust President Bush and Republicans more than the Democrats to keep our nation safe from terrorism and other security threats. Yet the message coming from Democrats (including most of the party's presidential candidates) is one of weakness, timidity and ambivalence on the most politically pivotal issue of our times.

Intense criticism is being heard lately from Democratic strategists and a few leaders — all of whom complain that the party's opposition to the war in Iraq and continuous attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the war on terrorism is hurting Democrats. The gist of their ominous warning: If Democrats can't show that they're tougher than Mr. Bush on national security, the party faces the impossible in 2004.

Clinton could have eliminated this issue, but as Byron York wrote shortly after 9/11, the polling data just didn't support his doing the right thing:

So Clinton talked tough. But he did not act tough. Indeed, a review of his years in office shows that each time the president was confronted with a major terrorist attack — the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers attack, the August 7, 1998, bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole — Clinton was preoccupied with his own political fortunes to an extent that precluded his giving serious and sustained attention to fighting terrorism.

In the short term, he survived. But Clinton's indecision--or rather, his decision to do nothing--has caught up with his would-be successors, as the buck did not stop on his desk.

PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS tax cut bill into law. As Lawrence Kudlow writes:

Tax cuts under John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton (during his second term) all produced faster economic growth, more jobs and higher tax revenues. Indeed, the Clinton 1997 capital-gains tax cut was the driving force for late-decade budget surpluses. Revenues in this period soared as profits accrued from stock market gains and stock options. It was a near-perfect illustration of the Laffer Curve, which says, in clear terms: Tax something more, get less of it; tax something less, get more of it. The less we penalize work and investment, the more work and investment there will be.

This is Economic Behaviorism 101, and it's a simple science that too many members of the U.S. Congress and most state governments fail to comprehend.

Or do they get it?

The so-called sin taxes on alcohol, beer and tobacco suggest that liberal lawmakers just might understand the behavioral basics of taxation. In recent years, legislatures on every level have poured taxes on these products — especially tobacco, where the latest liberal mantra aims to save smokers from themselves. But doesn't this assume a behavioral change by smokers in response to the higher tax-cost of cigarettes? Sure does.

So why wouldn't the same logic apply to taxes on investment? Of course it applies. If we tax investment more, we will get less investment. But if we tax investment less — including dividends, the centerpiece of the president's plan — we'll certainly get more investment. And that's exactly what the American economy thirsts for today.

DEEP IN THE WHICHY THICKETS: Jonah Goldberg analyzes the recent Times article on (groan) "Hipublicans":

All of this adds up to the real secret of campus conservatism's modest success, as Colapinto suggests. The "establishment" on campuses is thoroughly liberal or left-wing, and college kids like to challenge the establishment. The condescension and astonishment we're all used to hearing from the Times has to do with the fact that even rich, spoiled, and successful liberals — like Howell Raines, to name just one — cannot fathom that liberalism is today the atrophied status quo, and that the one-time rebels are now the silly and pompous establishment they once believed they were rebelling against.

This is simply a fact. Sure, there are college conservatives who are putzes and morons, but colleges are full of putzes and morons. That is the natural state of the universe and it would be foolish to say that conservatives don't get their natural distribution. But the difference between conservatism and liberalism, particularly on college campuses, is the difference between emotion and reason. Campus conservatives must question the conventional wisdom of the culture as well as the privileged testimony of the experts who run their classrooms and schools. You can't do this with emotion alone. But you can stifle this with emotion, which is what liberals do when they scream racism, sexism, homophobia, and the rest. Their shrieks are an attempt to stifle dissent. They say conservative ideas are "mean-spirited," as if that's the same thing as saying "you're wrong." I can call you uglier than a three-day-old tube steak. That's mean-spirited, but it's not necessarily wrong.

That's why the closing paragraph of the article strikes such a hilarious note. Colapinto quotes two professors who fear the rise of conservatism will "stifle intellectual openness among students." Colapinto understands the irony of professors who, for argument's sake, have no problem with speech codes and the totalitarian language of American academia today, fretting that a few more students disagreeing with their professors might be a threat to intellectual openness. My guess is that the editors at the Times — and far too many of their readers — do not.

Or as I recently headlined a post, diversity for me, but not for thee.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, alternative student newspapers are a growing campus phenomenon. Sheri Annis writes, "If only a small percentage of these young writers join the mainstream press, it could look very different a decade from now."

CAN'T OPEN INSTAPUNDIT OR BLOGCRITICS? Glenn Reynolds, on his
InstaBackup site, has the details as to why (apparently there was a a fire at Hosting Matters, the company that's his Web host), as does Across The Atlantic.com.

DICK MORRIS WRITES, "A second term is a terrible thing for a president to waste. Sidney Blumenthal's new book makes clear how totally Bill Clinton wasted it. He was a one-term president who lived in the White House for eight years." If Morris doesn't totally cut Blumenthal's book to shreds, these articles pretty much finish the job.

IT'S TWO, TWO, TWO TOPICS IN ONE: James Lileks not only deconstructs the techniques that make up the archetypal New York Times story, he explains how "Heienkein [sic]screwed the pooch several years ago when switched ad campaigns":

It decided it didn’t want to be a premium beer for people who had premium tastes, and instead it went for the Xtreme market. The brand had been nurtured for decades as a symbol of taste and refinement, and now it’s slacker-hooch? Great move. Putting out a can in the shape of a keg to cement the frat-boy connection - another great move. The ad reps should have gone to the store and looked who bought it: Dad. He thought he was an aesthete when he was in college, drinking Heneken while everyone else pounded down the Fox Deluxe and Walter and Falstaff and other iterations of the eau de dead mouse imbibables; now he’s the golf geek with madras shorts, white legs, dark socks and sandals. The guy who still has a reel-to-reel for his Gil Evans collection, the guy who wonders why Leroy Neiman doesn’t apppear in Playboy anymore, the guy who’s noted in his social circle for his ability to use the Internet, but who’s never used the right mouse button. No, he’s not hip. But he makes $174,000 a year. By all means, alienate him in an attempt to win over that lucrative Kinkos demographic!

Did Lileks actually ever meet my dad? He got several details about the old man (who started drinking Heineken when Lowenbrau began to be brewed in the US instead of being an import) dead-on.

(Another nice touch: How many different ways did Lileks attempt to spell Hienekin, Heienkein, Heineken in his Bleat?)

MAN BITES DOG ALERT: Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll actually admits that his paper has a liberal bias, in a memo to his staff. Matt Welch has more on Reason's "Hit & Run " Weblog.

NEXT THEY'LL TRY TO BAN OREOS: CNSNews.com writes that "a British legislator has proposed banning sport utility vehicles from congested city streets, and his comments prompted howls of protest from motoring groups."

Geez--this from the country that brought you the Range Rover.

MAUREEN DOWD'S HIDDEN CORRECTION, as spotted by Joanne Jacobs.

GALLING THE FRENCH: Donald Rumsfeld hits them where it hurts, according to Jed Babbin.

WELL THIS CLEARS IT UP! Andrew Sullivan quotes from an exchange between Howie Kurtz and Lawrence O'Donnell, the creater of "Mr. Sterling," whom Kurtz describes as "the absurdly idealistic senator played by Josh Brolin" in the NBC TV series:

KURTZ: One thing these programs have in common, conservatives are practically invisible. President Bartlett in "The West Wing" is a Democrat. Martin Sheen, in fact, made anti-war ads before the invasion of Iraq. "Mr. Sterling" is a California liberal based loosely on Jerry Brown. Why aren't there any Republicans?

O'DONNELL: You will never get that TV show. You'll never, ever get the Republican TV show. the Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum, 99 percent leftist liberal and, like me, socialist. And we don't know how to write it. We don't.

Of course not. But I know someone who does...

BEST. 404. EVER.

(Link via Joanne Jacobs.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Attention, Wachowski Brothers: put down the bong and step away from the script." --James Lileks plugs into the Matrix Reloaded and takes aim with deadly accuracy, as usual.

IN THE LIGHT: The new Led Zeppelin DVD is just staggering. Expect a full review on Blogcritics in the not-too-distant future. If you don't have your copy yet, just click on the image below.

DIVERSITY FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: College professor Mike S. Adams decided to conduct a little experiment in campus diversity and tolerance:

It all started when I noticed that a colleague of mine had a "Mondale/Ferraro '84" sticker on the filing cabinet in her office. I also noticed that another colleague had one posted on the front of his office desk.

Remembering that the university has a provision specifically prohibiting faculty from using "University funds, services, supplies, vehicles, or other property to support or oppose the candidacy of any person for elective public office . . ." I decided to initiate my experiment.

First, I placed a "Clinton/Gore '96" sticker prominently on my office door to see if anyone would take offense. After two years without any complaints, I decided to replace the sticker with one that said "George W. Bush for President." Within a few weeks I heard reports from two faculty members and one staff member saying that someone was preparing to file a complaint about the Bush sticker.

Since the faculty handbook specifies "appropriate disciplinary action, including discharge from employment" as one possible consequence of violating the aforementioned rule, I decided it was time to let the faculty in on my little experiment. I did this by sending an e-mail to everyone in the building which began as follows: "You have all been involved in an experiment in tolerance which, unfortunately, some of you have failed . . ."

Which explains why movements such as this one are growing--and rapidly.

UNDERPERFORMIN' NORMAN UPDATE: Speaking of smoking, what's Norman Mineta been puffing lately? Jeff Johnson of CNSNews.com writes:

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission) Friday that, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, aviation security officials had not considered that a hijacker might commandeer an airplane for any reason other than taking hostages.

"I don't think we ever thought of an airplane being used as a missile," Mineta declared.

But former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), who now serves on the commission, challenged Mineta's claim. Roemer noted that there was consideration within intelligence agencies that terrorists might plan an attack such as the one carried out on 9/11.

"Wouldn't you view it as a failure of our intelligence community not to tell the secretary of transportation that there was such a conceivable threat, that the people like the Coast Guard and the FAA should be thinking about?" Roemer asked.

"We had no information of that nature at all," Mineta replied.

"There was nothing in those intelligence reports that would have been specific to anything that happened on the 11th of September," Mineta said. "There was nothing in the preceding time period about aircraft being used as a weapon or of any other terrorist types of activities of that nature."

But those statements directly contradict documentation compiled by aviation security analyst Andrew Thomas in his new book Aviation Insecurity: The New Challenges of Air Travel .

"With all due respect to Secretary Mineta, either he's incredibly in denial or just simply not the sharpest tool in the woodshed," Thomas told CNSNews.com Friday. "There were clearly - well before 9/11, years before 9/11 - numerous instances where we knew of both al Qaeda and other terrorist groups threatening or actually putting into place the hijacking of commercial airliners and slamming them into targets on the ground."

Al Qaeda started planning suicide hijackings years earlier

Thomas details a 1995 warning from Philippine authorities to the FBI about a plot by the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, and an accomplice, Abdul Murad.

* * * Thomas believes that the problem on Sept. 11, 2001, was not that the aviation security system failed, but rather that the aviation security system was - and still is - designed for failure. He recommends focusing on "bad people rather than bad things" through stricter access control and limited use of passenger profiling.

"The need to look at certain passengers differently than others from a security perspective only makes sense," he wrote. "A World War II veteran simply does not pose the same level of potential threat as a young man traveling from a troubled country.

"To try to argue this point," Thomas believes, "is silly."

Of course. But that's never stopped Mineta from trying.

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR ETHICS: Robert W. Tracinski writes on "The Hazards of a Smoke-Free Environment":

Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion.

Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and offices - places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously negligible, such as outdoor public parks.

The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand" smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.

All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbors. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free, because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbors, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.

Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behavior.

That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited intrusion of government into our lives.

Read the whole thing.

MONA CHAREN ON JAYSON BLAIR, on the spiffy new Washington Times Website:

I don't believe for a minute that the New York Times is populated by racists making life bitter for black journalists. But if the accusation were lodged against the Bush administration or Citibank or Fox News, who doubts that the New York Times would believe it and broadcast it to the world? So how do you like them apples, Howell Raines?

Much ink has been spilled over the question of whether Mr. Blair got special treatment because he was black. Columnist William Raspberry, among many others, has argued that many white journalists have committed similar transgressions. Very true. But there has never, to my knowledge, been a case in which a white reporter was repeatedly reprimanded for errors and mistakes but nonetheless promoted and given plum assignments. You need not be a mind reader to guess that editor Howell Raines is determined to see black reporters succeed — no matter what.

I hate the condescension inherent in that liberal pose. There are hundreds of black journalists at the top of their field — Thomas Sowell, Gwen Ifill, Keith Richburg, to name just three. Black journalists (doctors, lawyers, accountants, educators, etc.) require nothing more than that we ignore their race. To treat them as hothouse flowers is so insulting. It is also unjust to others.

Though the New York Times will be the last institution to understand this, the moral of the Jayson Blair story is simple: You do not put an end to racial injustice by reversing it.

This approach isn't likely to help either.

I'M BACK, after a weekend jaunt to Seattle with my wife to visit some mutual friends. Watch for regular blogging to resume shortly.

A JAYSON DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND! James Taranto writes that Jayson Blair imitates Seinfeld.

Actually, it's worse than that. Blair imitates...George Costanza.

FEW RISE TO DEFEND WHITMAN, as she announces her exit from the EPA. Which makes sense--environmentalists aren't going to like any Republican, and conservatives don't like anyone as squishy in their politics as Whitman.

On the other hand, she was apparently extremely helpful during Bush's 2000 campaign, and was due for some slot in the administration.

Orrin Judd writes, "This would be an ideal time for George W. Bush to strip the administrator of Cabinet rank and fold the agency into the Interior Department. Won't happen."

FLASHBACK: James Lileks, in January:

Nowadays, if you point out that someone’s a Communist, you might well be accused of - dum dum DUMMMM - McCarthyism. The term has morphed from its original meaning. It no longer means falsely accusing someone of being a Communist. It now includes correctly identifying someone as a Communist, or ascribing a taint to someone because they don’t reject the Communists in their midst. (I’ll admit there’s a significant difference between the two.)

It's also come to mean any attack on the left by an organization that it disapproves of. Meaning, any organization (or person) is subject to being labeled with the "M" word.

Flashforward to this article by Jonathan Calt Harris on Campus Watch:

* John Esposito of Georgetown University disparages Campus Watch as "the rantings of a self-appointed McCarthyite organization."
* Asma Barlas, of Ithaca College finds that "It's precisely this kind of McCarthyism that is most detrimental to being a good citizen of America."
* "A horrid form of cyber-McCarthyism" complains Columbia University's Hamid Dabashi.
* "An exercise in McCarthyism," declares Ralph M. Coury of Fairfield University.
* "All of this reeked of McCarthyism and I considered it a gross attack on the freedom of expression," intones Khaled Fahmy of New York University.
* Laurie King-Irani, former editor of Middle East Report magazine, dubs it the "McCarthyist Campus Watch website."
* Eric Foner of Columbia and Glenda Gilmore of Yale write in the Los Angeles Times that Campus Watch's call for outsiders to keep an eye on Middle Eastern studies "conjures up memories of World War I and the McCarthy era."

As Harris writes, "Campus Watch has no intention that any scholars lose a position or be deprived of freedom of speech. Rather, it seeks to spur discussion of what it perceives as a faulty, extremist, intolerant, apologetic, and abusive record in Middle East studies."

Jonathan Tabin recently wrote, "Administrators justify [commencement] speeches-- and condemn the walk-outs and boos that they are now drawing-- by saying that its their job to "challenge" students-- but by an amazing coincidence, these "challenging" speakers sure tend to reflect the bias of the administration. Funny how that works."

And funny how they don't like to be challenged, themselves.

EXPLOSION IN THE MAIL ROOM AT YALE UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: Not many details yet, according to AP.

UPDATE (3:00 PM): "A member of the responding bomb squad confirmed that the explosion was caused by a bomb."

UPDATE (3:06 PM): InstaPundit has lots of links and news.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "He has the best possible actors. If you have a disagreement with them, you can always use them to wash your car."

--The late Zero Mostel, on Jim Henson and the Muppets.

SCHOOL BOARD SETTLES COMPLAINT BY PRO-GUN COALITION: "Public schools in Montclair, N.J., can't distribute gun control literature to students, then refuse to distribute materials explaining the other side of the story, a court has ruled", according to CNSNews.com.

900 LEFT FEET: Julia Gorin on why "diversity" trips up the Democrats.

(Link via Jay Bryant.)

THE WHICH BLAIR PROJECT: Scott Ott reports an momentous decision reached today by The American Professional Editors Society.

OUT FROM THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN: My (lengthy) interview with Allan Slutsky, the author of Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and the prime mover behind the film, is online at Blogcritics.org.

ARI FLEISCHER IS LEAVING THE WHITE HOUSE. Could Christie Whitman be next?

Frankly, I hope the next head of the EPA isn't as squishy an environmentalist as she's been.

UPDATE (3/21/03, 12:10 PM): She's resigned.

"SHEEPLE": Can't say I heard the word before, but James Lileks brilliantly deconstructs it--and Robert Sheer--in a typically excellent Bleat.

ACUTE SAHS CARRIERS: Arnold Beichman, writing on the spiffy new revamped Washington Times Website, has identified a virulent condition, more dangerous than SARS.

What is SAHS? Well, Norman Mailer, Margaret Drabble and Susan Sontag are all carriers.

"MEMO TO DEMOS": Rich Galen, a "Double Secret Undercover Operative" for the Democratic party, has released a double-top secret memo concerning the 2004 presidential campaign. Here's the executive summary:

I believe we have a great opportunity to be victorious in the Presidential election of 2004. We just have to find a different country to run in.

But do read how he reached that conclusion.

TACITUS HAS AN EXCELLENT ESSAY, TITLED "Why I am not a Democrat".

Read the--I know it's a cliche, but just do it, huh?--whole thing.

(Link via Patrick Ruffini, who has several new items himself.)

THE NEW YORKER: It's so right-wing, according to the Nation!

UPDATE: Orrin Judd has more.

And when I say there is none, I do mean that there is a certain amount, to paraphrase Monty Python. Stanley Kurtz writes:

Howell Raines is not the real issue, and getting rid of Raines won't solve anything. The problem is Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and he's not going away. In his wonderful book, How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), Harry Stein lays out the disturbing facts about "Pinch" Sulzberger. (Sulzberger's father was nicknamed "Punch," and the none too flattering nickname for Junior is "Pinch.")

Pinch was a political activist in the Sixties, and was twice arrested in anti-Vietnam protests. One day, the elder Sulzberger asked his son what Pinch calls, "the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life." If an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, which would you like to see get shot? Young Arthur answered, "I would want to see the American get shot. It's the other guy's country." Some Sixties activists have since thought better of their early enthusiasms. Pinch hasn't. [Emphasis mine; story also reported by the New Yorker--Ed]

Sulzberger once remarked that if older white males were alienated by the changes he was making to the Times, that would only prove "we're doing something right." Clearly, by Pinch's standards, the Times has lately been doing very well indeed. Around the time Sulzberger Jr. took over the reins of the Times, then Executive Editor Max Frankel admitted (with no apparent shame) that he had put a halt to the hiring of non-blacks and "set up an unofficial little quota system." So it's wrong to put the Blair affair entirely onto Howell Raines's well-known white guilt. Sulzberger has been imposing these policies on the Times since well before the accession of Raines.

It would be easy to dismiss Pinch Sulzberger as an ideologue and a lightweight, who just happens to have inherited the world's most powerful paper. The nickname invites ridicule. So does the stuffed moose that Pinch and others at the Times haul out whenever they want to talk about sensitive topics. An ideologue Pinch may be, but a lightweight he is not. On the contrary, Sulzberger has steered his paper to ever greater heights of business success. Sulzberger's accomplishments need to be taken seriously.

Last fall though, the Times' readership fell over five percent. And that during the DC sniper crisis, the run-up to the war in Iraq, (and of course before the Jayson Blair fiasco). It will be very, very interesting to read what the Times' numbers are in a few months.

MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE INVITED DANNY GLOVER: Chris Hedges, a New York Times reporter, was booed off the stage Saturday at Illinois' Rockford College’s when he tried to give an antiwar speech during the graduation ceremonies:

Elinor Radlund of Rockford read Hedges’ book on war and was horrified at what she said was the audience’s rude behavior. She was indignant she couldn’t hear the speaker.

“They were not behaving as people in an academic setting, where you’re supposed to be open to a great many ideas,” Radlund said.

It's understandable that kids go into college as tabula rasae, but I thought by the time you got out of college, you should also have some ideas--and ideals--of your own. (Not that I did, until I left Soft America for Hard America, to use Michael Barone's analogies.)

SERIOUS UPDATE: Here's a review of Hedges' book by Orrin Judd.

VERY SILLY UPDATE: Here's a transcript of Hedges' speech by Scott Ott.

CITIZEN BLAIR? Jayson Blair is looking for a book and movie(!) deal for his side of the story.

I suppose Pixar could do a CGI moose, but who will play Howell Raines?

TEST SNOBS: Why do affluent parents oppose standardized student testing? Joanne Jacobs, linking to Debra Saunders, has some thoughts.

DANNY GLOVER UPDATE UPDATE: I haven't read anybody else mention this yet, but it's pretty staggering that MSNBC, a cable channel left for dead when it had Phil Donahue as one of its "stars", apparently has enough viewers on the right to get MCI to sit up and take notice. No wonder they've finally gotten enough sense to try and co-opt Fox New's audience--it's where the numbers are!

Last year, the Moose was a suburban police chief tasked with apprehending the DC sniper. This year (or at least this week), he's the Beanie Baby symbol of all that is royally SNAFU at the New York Times. James Lileks writes:

Adults no longer run the Times. To me the most interesting revelation of l’affair Blair hasn’t been the way a rising star was coddled and cosseted; it’s the Moose. The Beanbag Moose. As I understand the story, some of the Timespersons were on a retreat in a rural conference center. During one of the meetings, a moose wandered into the grounds, and everyone watched him out the window - but no one mentioned him, because it wasn’t germane to the subject of the meeting. This story has become Legend, and has taken on the form of a Beanie Baby, come to enlighten those of us who see the Moose but dare not speak His name. It’s a metaphor, you see. A metaphor for unnoticed mooses. (Anyone who's ever been on one of these retreats knows exactly what would have happened if you'd interrupted a meeting on synergistic strategies to say "hey, how come no one's talking about that big moose out there?" Four words: Monday morning drug test.) Now at the Times if you wish you cut to the quick, you place on the table your company-issued beanbag herbivore to symbolize your desire to speak freely.

Grown-ups do not behave this way. Unless they are running a day care. It’s a cute anecdote for a retreat, but applied to the real world, to the newsroom, is a sign of how infantile management theory has become. The introduction of the moose splits the staff into two groups: the brown-nosers who put the moose on top of their computer monitor and give it seasonal decorations, and the cynics who stuff the damn thing in their bottom drawer next to the employee manual, the healthcare benefits package, and the rest of the crap the company expects you to read. They look at that moose, and think: if I get fired tomorrow, they’ll ask for the moose back. It’s their moose. It ain’t mine. I put this moose up on eBay, I’m going to be covering Trenton zoning meetings for the next ten years. Screw the moose.

There’s probably a secret Times subculture of Moose Abuse. No doubt the Moose has been photographed in a stripper’s cleavage, face down on a bar in a puddle of New Amsterdam lager, sitting in Thompkins Square with an anarchist’s A photoshopped on his chest, standing outside the building with a cigarette in his mouth.

The moose made an appearance last week at the Times' infamous Astor Plaza movie theater meeting:

On the empty stage, Sulzberger, Raines and Boyd sat side by side. They got no applause and no catcalls, though some audience comments were cheered.

In a surreal moment that reminded one staffer of Shari Lewis' old TV show, Sulzberger produced a stuffed toy moose that he sometimes trots out as a symbol of open communication.

Its use struck some in the audience as a tone-deaf and patronizing gesture.

Sulzberger handed the moose to Raines, who laid it aside.

As Lileks wrote, "grown-ups do not use metaphorical mooses to break the ice." But then, as he also wrote, "adults no longer run the Times".

REGIME CHANGE: The troops are massing at the border. Their general is champing at the bit. The next regime change is about to begin.

RISKY TALK: Shell of Across the Atlantic Fisks actor Danny Glover, who is upset that he may be dropped as a spokesman by MCI because of his anti-war and anti-American comments.

(An actor who's anti-liberation and anti-American. As another famous actor once said, I'm shocked. Shocked!)

As Jonah Goldberg recently wrote:

None of these people are being censored. They are being criticized. And only people so pampered, so spoon-fed with praise and encouragement, could confuse the free speech of others with the chilling of free speech in America.

No other profession in America has this confusion, journalists included.

If I wrote a column supporting the Taliban or pedophiles or whatever, I would suffer professionally in the form of dropped columns and canceled speaking engagements. If a plumber wrote "Down with America" on the side of his van, he would lose customers.

Only Hollywood types believe that we should applaud speaking out as courageous but that those who speak out shouldn't face any consequences or criticism for what they say. Courage without risk isn't courage; it's play-acting. And -sorry, Madonna -a society where elites with huge fortunes and PR machines are immune from criticism isn't a democracy, it's an aristocracy for Hollywood know-nothings who spew nonsense whenever they open their mouths.

Ironically, when Elizabeth Hurley crossed a SAG picket-line in 2000, Robbins responded by saying:

"We are bringing Hurley to trial," he foamed, "She will not get away with it." Note that "we." As Mr. Robbins, a prominent supporter of the strike, well knows, his comments are likely to resonate with those union officials responsible for deciding the former fembot's fate. The consequences of a "guilty" verdict could be serious. The equally influential Ms. Sarandon has supported calls for a lifetime ban on "scab" actors. If the case goes against Ms. Hurley she may never work in Hollywood again.

Cross a SAG picket line, risk being banned from your career for life. But speak out in favor of keeping a brutal dictator in power, expect no consequences.

What an astonishing mindset in Tinseltown.

UPDATE: Glover has apparently since been axed as a spokesman for MCI, via a campaign orchestrated by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, about which Andrew Sullivan writes:

As a matter of principle, I loathe boycotts and the screeching and self-righteous rhetoric that often accompanies them. I even defended Dr Laura's show against the mau-mauing gay left. So Scarborough's campaign leaves me with not a little distaste in my mouth. Still, it's not McCarthyism. The government is not involved; the argument is a valid one; no-one has a right to be a spokesman for corporate America, without public controversy or opposition. Glover hasn't been silenced; and he's free to continue to be an actor, where his views are likely to help, not hinder him. No one would complain if a similarly extreme right-winger were passed over by a major corporation. I don't like Scarborough's tactics. But Danny Glover can choose between his views and his corporate contracts. Perhaps, for his ideological consistency, it's about time he did.

Sullivan's absolutely right on that last point, but...ideological consistency? From Hollywood?!

Speaking of "self-righteous rhetoric", I'm sure Glover's comments about being released as a spokesman by MCI will at a minimum, echo the shrillness of Robbins', when he was recently disinvited to speak at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"THE FLORESCENCE OF THE ROT": Winds of Change looks at the death of socialism.

See also this recent post by Charles Johnson on the same subject.

DARTH VADER'S PSYCHIC HOTLINE: Forget Miss Cleo. If you've got questions, Darth's got answers!

(It's a short video clip that makes a nice double feature with another great Star Wars parody, Troops.)

UPDATE: The credits state it was filmed in Knoxville (which is fast becoming a real hub of video production, thanks to Scripps Howard, who tapes many of their shows for HGTV, the DIY Network, and their other cable channels there). I wonder if Darth knows this Sith lord?

FRANCE HAS COOTIES: Scott Ott has the err, details.

THE TILTH AND THE FURY: Rich Galen goes organic!

Well, sort of.

"STANDARDS ARE OUT OF FASHION", writes Eric Burns of FOXNews.com:

[Jayson] Blair started betraying trust more than three-and-a-half years ago. His job performance was a low point almost since the first day he held the job. Why was he not punished earlier? Why did it take until now to accuse him of violating the standards which the New York Times so ardently professes?

The reason is simple. It is also appalling.

Standards do not matter. Standards are out of fashion. Standards are high-button shoes and whalebone corsets and horse-drawn carriages or possibly even dinosaur eggs. Ours is a society which does not believe in standards, a society that cringes at the prospect of imposing standards because, if it does, it will hurt the feelings of those who cannot meet them.

That is why our schools give A's to B students and B's to C students and passing marks to boys and girls who have not only failed to master their subjects, but who don't even know the numbers of the rooms in which they are taught.

Sadly, he's right, of course.

LIFE IMITATES MONTY PYTHON, writes Steven Den Beste, as the German government, facing an enormous financial shortfall, taxes "thingy".

Thingy? You know, thingy....Thingy!

Messrs. Dimsdale and Gumby could not be reached for comment, however.

"THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS", writes Andrew Sullivan keeps on the current state of the The Times, adding, "The current leadership is the problem; everyone knows it; but no one will budge."

Read his whole post.

IS BUSH BEHAVING LIKE FDR? Scroll down for an interesting post on the Brothers Judd Blog.

My wife and a couple of friends and I saw the Matrix Reloaded yesterday, and I think I've figured out what the film is all about. Its plot makes far less sense than the first Matrix. Long scenes go on that could easily have been edited--or even cut--for pacing, and no one would have noticed. The dialogue is circular and often incomprehensible. Its best scene is a long, bitchin' car and motorcycle chase. It's about people trying to escape from a hermetically sealed world in which millions have no control over their lives after centuries of devastating war.

In short, The Matrix Reloaded is George Lucas's seminal dystopian quasi-classic THX-1138 remade on a gazillion dollar budget, for the same studio that released THX (Warner Brothers). It's the only reason that makes sense as to how such an otherwise self-indulgent, poorly scripted and edited film would be allowed to be released.

There are two action scenes that work: the afore mentioned car chase, and the Mission Impossible-style break-in to a nuclear power plant and hi-rise office building. The "wire-fu" stuff was fun in the first movie, and endlessly overdone in this one. And as a few critics have already noticed, Neo can fly in this movie, a power he acquired at the very end of the last film. So when 250 Agent Smiths open up a can of whoop-ass on him, why doesn't he just skedaddle, instead of sticking around and trying to fight them, particularly when they try to clone Neo into another Agent Smith?

(Why, because everyone liked the wire-fu scenes in the first film, and this being a sequel, you're going to get them rammed down your throat, over and over again.)

The last scene in the film though, sets up the last film of the trilogy quite nicely, which should be very interesting though. Hopefully they've done a better writing job on that film, however, and are currently doing a better editing job, based on the comments that this film is generating.

Speaking of editing: please, please--no more Cornel West in the next film, huh?

So should you see it? If the box office take is any indication, you probably already have. But if you haven't, as Jami Bernard wrote in the New York Daily News, go see it for the action scenes. (Monica Bellucci and Carrie-Ann Moss are pretty snazzy as well.) Don't bother looking for a plot, though. That corner of the Matrix's program seems to have been corrupted after the first movie. We'll see if they can rewrite the code in November.

TWO, TWO, TWO ARTICLES IN ONE: One issue of Smart TV & Sound that is, where I have two articles in the current issue (available everywhere). Buy a case or two--they make lovely birthday, Father's Day and Bar Mitzvah gifts!

Andrew Sullivan (with an assist from The Smoking Gun), examines Jayson Blair's very large credit card bills, and their sudden payoff.

MINUTEMAN UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs, at the coincidentally labeled Joanne Jacobs.com says that U-Mass will retain their symbol. "Now there are plans to redesign the mascot to boost sales of hats and sweat shirts. It would help if the team would win more games, too", she writes.

JUNE CARTER CASH DIED TODAY, at age 73.

NOW IT NEEDS TO BE PERMANENT: AP reports that "The Senate voted Thursday to suspend taxes on stock dividends for three years, restoring the centerpiece of President Bush's economic plan in a package of tax cuts that is still half the size he wanted."

Good start guys--now let's make it permanent.

UPDATE: Maybe it's not a good start. Virginia Postrel and The Volokh Conspiracy aren't too thrilled about its temporary nature.

HOOVERED: What did J. Edgar Hoover think of The Untouchables TV series? He wasn't too thrilled with it, according to Forbes.com:

Hoover was furious that credit for federal crime fighting was going to a rival agency, the U.S. Treasury Department. The real-life Ness was a Prohibition agent who later became Cleveland's top cop. He died in 1957, and his memoirs formed the basis for the TV series. But most of the plots were largely fictional, drawn loosely from past headlines and often including the names of then-deceased but real-life hoodlums like Al Capone, Dutch Schultz and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll.

"We must find some way to prevent FBI cases from being used," Hoover wrote on one document. On another: "If the bureau [is] not depicted on this case and credit given Treasury Department, program will be historically inaccurate." It seemingly never dawned on Hoover that the show, pitting Stack's good-guy government agent persona against big-time Mob boss Frank Nitti, bolstered the image of law enforcement.

So Hoover sent aides to pressure Desi Arnaz, whose Desilu Productions made the series, in what apparently were only partly successful efforts to change the plots. The bureau started an unsuccessful investigation into published stories that ex-FBI agents were writing scripts for the show.

* * * All the while, at a significant cost to taxpayers, Hoover had special agents compose scores of plot summaries--written, amusingly enough, in the same breathless style of the show's narrator, Walter Winchell. Example: "The sex angle is played to the hilt, and Heller obviously had become the mistress of both the attorney and Felcher and continually 'makes a play' for Ness with extremely suggestive dialogue."

Nice to know then, as now, that taxpayers really get their "investment" money truly well spent.

BUSH. GEORGE BUSH. Very funny Photoshopped James Bond poster at Conservative Commentary.

Makes a good double feature with Paybax.

UPDATE: And this film as well.

DR. LICKS: Just had a great conversation with Allan Slutstky, aka "Dr. Licks", aka the man who wrote Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and who sweated blood to turn it into a movie. Watch for an interview on Blogcritics in the not too distant future.

UNTOUCHABLE: The great Robert Stack died yesterday at age 84, of heart failure, according to the Internet Movie Database.

I saw him just a few years ago on O'Reilly--he looked fantastic. He also "came out of the closet", to admit that he was one of the few Republicans (at least willing to admit it) in Hollywood.

Sorry to hear of his passing away--he'll be missed.

TOO HOT FOR DISNEY: In a remarkable moment of sanity all too rare for Hollywood, Disney has reportedly somehow come to their senses, and has dropped Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore's anti-Bush project.

(Link via Little Green Footballs.)

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SID: Andrew Sullivan reviews Sid Blumenthal's new book:

This new Son of Man must be connected to the Old Testament. How to do so? By placing a scene at the start of the book in which the ghost of F.D.R. blesses the man from Hot Springs. So we start in Hyde Park. Sid goes ahead of a Presidential visit to pay his respects to his ancestors. The President follows, and places a red rose on F.D.R.’s and Eleanor’s white marble tomb. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’m not making this following bit up: "An aide gently but insistently reminded [Clinton] that his time was limited. The turbulent world was tugging at him, starting with a boisterous crowd waiting at the local high school. ‘It’s so peaceful,’ Clinton whispered as he stared at the tomb. His mind was filled with great plans: universal healthcare, reducing the federal deficit, investments in education and the environment, cutting crime, remaking the welfare system, ending discrimination, to begin with."

To begin with? What on earth would be next? A space colony on Mars?

Read the whole thing (Sullivan's review, not necessarily Blumenthal's 800-page doorstop), as they say.

FREE AT LAST DEPARTMENT: "SF lawyer says he's dropping suit against Oreo cookies"

Once again, SF stands for science fiction: this suit should never have been launched in the first place, proving yet again, just how right Malcolm Muggeridge was.

PROBE OF TIMES' PLAGIARISM SCANDAL WIDENS: CNSNews.com has details, along with this tasty tidbit:

With its famed, perceived integrity at stake, the Times held a Wednesday afternoon meeting open only to staff at a Manhattan theater to discuss the Blair matter.

Oh to be a fly on the wall during that meeting!

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg weighs in on the scandal, and has a publishing announcement of his own to make.

And in other journalistic news, Mark Steyn was fired by Canada's National Post, shortly after another great journalist, David Frum, left the paper.

Besides being fantastic writers, I wonder what these two journalists have in common...? Don't email--I'll figure it out eventually.

LIFE IMITATES RAY BRADBURY: Fahrenheit 451 turns 50. John J. Miller writes:

Jules Verne is famous among science-fiction writers for predicting 20th-century technologies, such as submarines and rocket ships. Mr. Bradbury rivals him in "Fahrenheit 451." He envisioned the popularity of headset radios, plus interactive TV and live news broadcasts.

In one scene, Mr. Bradbury's protagonist--a renegade fireman who commits the crime of reading--tries to evade his pursuers by running down a street. He looks through the windows of the houses he passes and sees the chase being shown on television, as if he were O.J. watching himself in a white Bronco.

* * * Mr. Bradbury insists that the purpose of "Fahrenheit 451" was not to prophesy. "I wasn't trying to predict the future," he says. "I was trying to prevent it."

In one immediate sense, he failed. In 1979, he discovered that "some cubby-hole editors" had bowdlerized his book in 98 places. One line--"Feel like I've a hangover. God, I'm hungry"--became "Feel like I've a headache. I'm hungry." The changes first appeared in a 1967 edition for high-school students, but it wasn't until Mr. Bradbury learned of the problem a dozen years later and complained that his publisher saw the irony of censoring a powerful anticensorship novel. "I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book," he wrote of the incident.

* * * Today, Mr. Bradbury is more concerned with another problem that he thinks he didn't prevent. "There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them," he says. "The education system in this country is just terrible, and we're not doing anything about it."

One of the often-overlooked details of "Fahrenheit 451" is that the censorship Mr. Bradbury describes was not imposed from the top by a ruthless government. Rather, it seeped up from the indifferent masses. As a villain explains: "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. . . . No wonder books stopped selling." (Emphasis mine.)

I'd argue the last sentence, at least for the moment (Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders all seem to be doing just fine, thankyouverymuch), but as usual, Mr. Bradbury is spot-on. Fahrenheit 451 is one of the great dystopian novels of the 20th century, and can easily be read alongside the greatest, 1984, as a warning of the evils of socialism, taken to their logical extreme. As Ayn Rand (who could write a mean dystopian novel or two herself) once wrote:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.

She must have read the mind of the bureaucrats in New Jersey. And Mayor Bloomberg. And the DEA. And MADD. (And those are just from links I pulled off my blog from the past two days.)

"FOR WHOM THE BONG CHONGS": I can't say I was ever that big a fan of Tommy Chong and his on-stage partner in tokes, Cheech Marin, even at their high point (hehe) in the 1970s. Sophmoric druggie humor just doesn't do much for me, especially when I can pop in a DVD of the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, or an early Woody Allen movie.

But why is the DEA raiding head shops and busting people like Chong for "illegal drug paraphernalia"?

BACK TO THE FUTURE: There's a possible replacement for the Space Shuttle, Jeffrey D. Goldader writes in Tech Central Station. And it's been proven--from the Earth to the Moon. And back.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SOLUTION OUTLIVES THE PROBLEM? Steven Den Beste has several examples--in several different areas--of what happens when a solution takes on a life of its own.

Here's another one.

CUE THE THEME FROM JAWS, Andrew Sullivan writes: Sheeeee's baaa-ack! "And so far, she's been playing her hand very very smoothly."

THE MINUTEMEN: Joanne Jacobs and Eugene Volokh come to their defense.

Sad to see "Blue State" America returning to its pre-9/11 ways so quickly, isn't it?

WAY TO GO CAVUTO: Neil Cavuto has just torn Paul Krugman a new Clymer.

COULD A FILM VERSION OF ATLAS SHRUGGED FINALLY BE COMING TO THE BIG SCREEN? A production company has bought the rights to the book, and hired veteran screenwriter James V. Hart (who's written the screenplays to Contact, Hook, Bram Stocker's Dracula and Tuck Everlasting.

The press release (linked to above) gives a bit of the background behind the numerous attempts to bring the novel to the screen. It will be interesting to see if this one finally makes it...but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it. (Besides, I can't hold my breath for three minutes, let alone three years!)

(Found via Stephen Green, who's probably already wrangling for the director's chair.)

DRIVE TO WORK drinking coffee, listening to the radio, or having a bite to eat behind the wheel? You could soon be punished "by stiff fines and possible jail time if New Jersey politicians have their way", according