South Dakota Politics

Johnson

See this editorial from the Argus Leader:

Johnson should assure voters he can perform job

By Randy E. Amundson

Published: May 5, 2007

I am puzzled regarding Sen. Tim Johnson's failure to speak his thoughts on some of the issues of the day. I understand that he suffered a serious brain aneurism. For that I am as sorry as the next person. It would not be my wish for that to happen to anyone. It did, however, happen to Johnson.

My problem is the almost total disconnect between the senator and his constituents since the aneurism [sic]. In the position of trust that the people of South Dakota have placed him, he doesn't have the privilege to neglect his constitutional duties to his state and his country. He, rather, has the duty to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.He hasn't been protecting anything but his privacy since his malady.

We have been assured that things are on the mend with Johnson. If that is the case, the senator might consider a news conference or an occasional press release to assure those of us who are represented by him that he is in fact on the road back to productivity.

My suspicion is that the senator's condition is much more serious than he or his staff has seen fit to admit. This South Dakotan is not comfortable when elected officials put themselves and their ideology above the best interest of those they represent.

Back in the good old days, the same thing happened with then-Sen. Karl Mundt. Mundt's handling of the situation wasn't any better for the citizens of South Dakota than Johnson's has been. Many will say that turnabout is fair play. I say balderdash! Isn't it about time that an elected official went out of his or her way for the voters?

The selfish, power-hungry nature of politicians today leaves nothing for this citizen to be proud of. Maybe it is time that all elected officials stepped to the plate and actually went to bat for those to whom they owe their careers.

It's time that Johnson leveled with the voters of South Dakota. Is he capable of representing us in the not-too-distant future? If so, he should extend us the courtesy of letting us know when we can expect him to start earning his salary. When can we expect Johnson to be able to handle the rigors of Washington to the point where he can start casting votes on the issues that are affecting our day-to-day lives?

I wasn't too sure that the voters of South Dakota actually elected him in the days following his last election. His opponent accepted the fact that there was a sufficient vote margin in favor of Johnson, and he was awarded the job. If he is able to perform his duties, now or very soon would be the time to do so. If he isn't up to it, now would be the most appropriate time for him to let us know.

We have been patient, but this citizen, for one, is rapidly losing that patience.

God bless Senator Johnson. I hope he recovers. I also hope he sees the need to inform his loyal constituency of his condition and his intentions to serve.

Evangelicals

See this Washington Post story entitled "Is There Disdain For Evangelicals in the Classroom?"  Excerpt:

Frank G. Kauffman was teaching a course in social work at Missouri State University in 2005 when he gave an assignment that sparked a lawsuit and nearly destroyed his academic career.

He asked his students to write letters urging state legislators to support adoptions by same-sex couples. Emily Brooker, then a junior majoring in social work, objected that the assignment violated her Christian beliefs. When she refused to sign her letter, she was hauled before a faculty panel on a charge of discriminating against gays.

The case has fueled accusations by conservative groups that secular university faculties are dominated by liberals who treat conservative students, particularly evangelical Christians, with intellectual condescension or worse.

"On many campuses, if you're an evangelical Christian, you're going to have to go through classes in which you're told that much of what you believe religiously is not just wrong, but worthy of mockery," said David French, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which sued Missouri State on Brooker's behalf.

Such accusations have been leveled for years at the Ivy League and other elite private universities. But they are gaining new attention from politicians and educators because of the Brooker case, which took place at a public school in the Bible Belt, and because of two recent, nationwide surveys of professors' views on religion.

Read the whole story.

The 110th Congress

Coming into leadership of the 110th Congress, the Democrats promised a change in style from the do-nothing 109th Republican-led Congress.  Yet, as this Washington Post story reports, since the Democrats have taken control of Congress, they've accomplished almost nothing:

In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them. ...

The "Six for '06" policy agenda on which Democrats campaigned last year was supposed to consist of low-hanging fruit, plucked and put in the basket to allow Congress to move on to tougher targets. House Democrats took just 10 days to pass a minimum-wage increase, a bill to implement most of the homeland security recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a measure allowing federal funding for stem cell research, another to cut student-loan rates, a bill allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, and a rollback of tax breaks for oil and gas companies to finance alternative-energy research.

The Senate struck out on its own, with a broad overhaul of the rules on lobbying Congress.

Not one of those bills has been signed into law. President Bush signed 16 measures into law through April, six more than were signed by this time in the previous Congress. But beyond a huge domestic spending bill that wrapped up work left undone by Republicans last year, the list of achievements is modest: a beefed-up board to oversee congressional pages in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, and the renaming of six post offices, including one for Gerald R. Ford in Vail, Colo., as well as two courthouses, including one for Rush Limbaugh Sr. in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Read the whole thing.

Casino Royal: Sarko Ahead in French Election

France goes to the polls Sunday.  It will be the first time since 1974 that Chirac has not been on the ballot.  From the British Guardian:

Three polls published Friday suggested that Sarkozy strengthened the lead he has commanded for months, giving him a winning margin of between six and nine percentage points. The solid figures for Sarkozy suggested he emerged the victor from the candidates' much-watched televised debate Wednesday, their only face-to-face encounter in the campaign.

It seemed obvious to me that Sarkozy won.  Royal has a simple strategy: pester Sarko relentlessly in order to trigger his famous Nixon-like temper.  The only problem with that strategy is that it is all or nothing.  If it had worked  the press would have talked about nothing except Sarko's outburst.  But it didn't, and so all one remebers of the debate was an angry woman who couldn't seem to stop interupting everyone.

Not content with that, the Socialist candidate has resorted to crude threats.  From the Financial Times:

In the final hours before France elects a new president, the flagging Socialist challenger Ségolène Royal on Friday warned that the centre-right favourite Nicolas Sarkozy was “dangerous” and would unleash “violence and brutality”.

In Ms Royal’s most venomous attack on Mr Sarkozy, she said his election could trigger a recurrence of the riots that shook France’s suburbs 18 months ago.

In other words, if you elect that guy, you will pay dearly for it!    Sarkozy gets France, I expect.  One wonders whatever will he do with it?

Limp Results from Laptops

My colleague Dr. Schaff fights a never ending battle to make the world safe from laptops in schools.  He will find this article useful.  From the New York Times:

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

SDP Jazz Note: Cannonball Adderley

On a more upbeat note than my last post, I found a marvelous video of the great alto sax jazzman Cannonball Adderley on the Dailymotion webpage.  It's about 25 minutes long, and contains three pieces.  The notes are in French, and include a brief biography but no information about the venue or the band.  Fortunately, Cannonball-Adderley.com has the goods.  The band includes Cannonball on alto, his brother Nat on cornet, Joe Zawinul on keyboards, Yusef Lateef on tenor, Sam Jones on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums.  The set was filmed for German TV in March of 1963.  The video is as bad as these things tend to be, but the audio is good enough. 

One final note: Julian Adderley's nickname was originally "cannibal Adderley," a reference to his appetites.  "Cannonball" was a corruption, but one that I suspect did his career a lot of good.   

Suicide Club III: When the horror is all too real

Some time ago I posted a review of the movie Suicide Club.  It was a very disturbing film, but one that I thought might be interesting to our readers in so far as it said a lot about contemporary Japanese society and by implication, modern civilization as a whole.  I had no idea at the time that certain events in Japan are almost as disturbing, and in many ways more disturbing, than those in the movie. 

Suicide Club begins with a group of Japanese teenagers, all of them young women, holding hands and jumping in front of a train.  We learn shortly that this is one of a series of group suicides that are somehow arranged by a mysterious series of dots on a web site.  It will turn out that the suicide cult has no real leadership, other than the youth of Japan collectively. 

It turns out that the suicide cult is real.  It is documented in the Atlantic Monthly (May 2007) by David Samuels.  The link may be protected by a subscription wall, but I highly recommend the article. 

On March 10, 2006, a car was discovered in a lightly wooded area of Saitama, a suburban prefecture near Tokyo. The windows had been taped shut. What the investigating officers who were called to the scene found was all too familiar: a plastic bag containing traces of crushed sleeping pills, and a row of charcoal burners that had sucked the oxygen from the car, asphyxiating the five young men and one woman inside. . . . During my first two weeks in Japan, five cars filled with dead bodies were discovered in the woods around Tokyo. It is a sign of how familiar these macabre cases have become that none merited more than a passing mention in the local newspapers.

Japan is experience an epidemic of anonymous, group suicide.  People who have never met before find one another on the Internet, and gradually plan their exit.  This is an example of a self-organizing system: coordinated activity initiated and guided from the players at the lowest level.  But if the suicide cult has no cult leader, it nonetheless has a guru. 

To the extent that the popular revival of suicide culture can be traced to any single event, this would be the publication, in 1993, of The Perfect Suicide Manual, a book by Wataru Tsurumi, a Tokyo University graduate and publishing-industry dropout. Tsurumi is an obsessive who professes a Nabokovian indifference to the consequences of publishing his work. In a culture where conformity is expected and geeks have a surprising amount of cultural power, he is a charismatic figure who has attained the kind of celebrity status usually reserved in Japan for pop stars or cartoon characters.

To date, The Perfect Suicide Manual has provided more than 2 million despairing or simply curious Japanese souls with technically explicit instructions on how to take their lives by 10 methods including hanging, electrocution, drug overdose, asphyxiation, and self- immolation. Tsurumi’s book contains tips about the best places to commit suicide, accounts of famous celebrity suicides, and assorted cartoons, whose effect is to suggest that suicide is easy and painless, a common, socially acceptable activity. Tsurumi sold his book to a movie studio, spawning a successful splatter film, which was followed by a sequel. He is now a highly paid celebrity speaker and a fixture on the international youth-culture circuit. As he told one inquiring reporter, “There’s nothing bad about suicide. We have no religion or laws here in Japan telling us otherwise. As for group suicides, before the Internet, people would write letters, or make phone calls … it’s always been part of our culture.”

The "splatter film," I am sure, is Suicide Club.  So what is it about modern Japan, a remarkably successful nation by any rational, economic standards, that encourages this sort of horror?  Samuels considers and rejects economic causation.  Japan suffered from a long recession, to be sure; but the suicides have become more frequent as the nation's economy recovered.  It is no doubt important that suicide was often considered an honorable act in samurai culture. 

Whereas in the West, suicide is generally seen as the needless act of desperate souls, or of the terminally ill, in Japan it is understood as a more or less rational decision that can be taken by perfectly sane individuals as well as by groups. Japan has a long history of families committing suicide together, as well as suicides by cults and militaristic groups, including kamikaze pilots, or samurai warriors who suffered dishonor and hoped to wipe the slate clean. What is shocking about the new suicide epidemic is not so much that it is a group activity as that people are choosing to kill themselves together with total strangers. The Perfect Suicide Manual has become the essential text of a decentralized death cult that takes orders from no one, and whose members meet on Web sites designed solely to support and strengthen their common intention to die.

In the Japanese past, individual and group suicide was in the service of group loyalties: national greatness of family honor.  What seems to have happened to the Japanese is that all those loyalties have collapsed.  For more than a few twenty-somethings in Japan, the escape of death is the only principle that can bring them into contact with other people.

To end with a discomforting thought: it may be that Japan is the most modern of all modern nations.  We in the West have struggled to liberate ourselves from the obligations of group loyalty.  It may be that we have no suicide cults only because we have been less successful at this than the Japanese.

Tribes in Anbar Vow to Fight al Qaeda

Bill Roggio: 

The Anbar Salvation Council, the group of tribal leaders and former Sunni insurgents, continues to expand its base of support in the Sunni community both inside Anbar province, and beyond. Sam Dagher of the Christian Science Monitor reports on a major development in Anbar province. The Anbar Salvation Council, led by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Rishawi, has turned the Albu Fahd tribe against al Qaeda. The Albu Fahd was one of the six original Anbari tribes to support al Qaeda and its Islamic State in Iraq. These six tribes are known in some military intelligence circles as the "Sinister Six". The Albu Fahd [described as the Bu-Fahed] has now joined the Anbar Salvation Council and pledged to throw its weight behind the fight against al Qaeda.

The Dangerous Book For Boys

Do you know any young boys?  Buy them this book.  Glenn Reynolds mentioned it the other day so I bought it (because I do whatever Glenn Reynolds tells me to do).  It tells you how to tie knots,  how to build a go-cart, and what happened at Gettysburg and Rourke's Drift.  It tells you how to make a paper airplane and what common tree leaves look like.  If even has useful information on how to deal with girls (tell one joke and then shut up) and contains the text of the Declaration of Independence.  It is not a small matter that it also happens to be a very attractive book at an affordable price.  Buy this book for the boys in your life. 

Post-Debate Poll

Did last night's debate change your assessment of the Republicans' chances in 2008?
	I think they're better than I had thought before.
	I think they're worse than I had thought before.
	No change in my opinion.
pollcode.com free polls

It seems to me that the big winner last night was Fred Thompson, who wasn't there.  Instapundit has a big roundup.  Also of interest:  The candidates mentioned Ronald Reagan nineteen times, but avoided as best they could mentioning George Bush.  Also, don't miss this editorial by Peggy Noonan.

Herseth and Hate Crime

SDWC:  "A bill was introduced in the United States congress recently to provide additional funding for the prosecution of hate crimes. . . . Recently, Republicans offered an amendment to this legislation to expand on who would be protected to include veterans, soldiers, and senior citizens as a protected class under the Hate Crimes bill, since sometimes people in those classes are victims of violence because of their status.  As you'll note here, on this mostly party line vote, South Dakota's representative, Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin, voted against providing additional protection for veterans, soldiers, and senior citizens from violence directed at them."

UPDATE:  This is a great line:  "So, according to Congresswoman [Herseth]'s vote, if a soldier in uniform returning from Iraq is attacked by war protesters, it's not a hate crime. But if this same soldier puts on a dress and is attacked, it is a hate crime.”

Hate Crimes Veto

My colleague, Perfesser Schaff, has a post on the hate crimes legislation moving through Congress.  Here is CNN:

The White House has threatened to veto a bill passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday that expands hate-crime laws to include attacks based on sexual orientation or gender.

Under current law, hate crimes are subject to federal prosecution only if the acts of violence are motivated by race, religion, color or national origin. Federal prosecutors get involved only if the victim is engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting or participating in interstate commerce.

I largely concur with Professor Schaff: if there is reason to oppose this bill, it is because this is a matter for the states and not for Congress.  It would be the business of the latter only if there was a finding that states were not protecting homosexuals against violence, or that perpetrators were finding refuge by fleeing across state lines. I think that neither is the case. 

Nonetheless, I would council against a Presidential veto.  Conservatives argue, rightly, against the creation of special rights for special groups.  An act of violence is not worse if committed by a heterosexual bigot against a homosexual than if committed by a homosexual bigot against a heterosexual, and some hate crimes legislation have had that outcome.  See RAV v. St. Paul. 

But I have argued in favor of hate crimes legislation.  The problem is that some criminals believe that certain classes of victims (homosexuals, immigrants, etc.) don't really enjoy protection by the larger society.  A character in the movie Judge Roy Bean couldn't imagine that it was really against the law to kill a Chinaman.  By providing stronger penalties for crimes committed against those who are selected out of the larger population, the law visibly corrects that error.  I think that such laws can be tailored so that they protect everyone, and not just the most vulnerable groups.  All of us are subject to being selected out in some circumstances. 

I would council the President to work with Congress on a law that protects everyone against hate crimes. 

Blanchard v Roe III

My friend Chad at CCK has a new post in response to my argument against Roe v. Wade.  This was the second round in the debate.  The first two can be found here at SDP, and here at CCK.  This is a substantial and mostly civil exchange (I could do without the "Ol' Perfesser" bit), and I recommend it to our readers who are interested in the issue. 

Here is my view from the most post:

Roe created a right to abortion which has no ground in the text, logic, or history of constitutional law.  It rests solely on the will of five or more out of nine.  This turns every Supreme Court appointment into a political crisis, in which competence and judicial philosophy are eclipsed by the single question of what that judge would do about abortion.  No other court decision has created this kind of political dysfunction.

Here is Chad's recent reply:

My argument remains based in the idea that a reversal of the Roe decision will have absolutely no effect on the messy court situation or on the politics of nominations.

A reversal of Roe would create a whole new set of questions that the courts would be asked to answer. The Ol' Perfesser disagrees and I guess that's where we'll have to leave that. But I would reiterate that in the absence of a federal solution in the form of a Constitutional amendment (which will never happen), the courts will remain in the middle of this "messy" battle rather than outside it.

If the Court acknowledged the simple truth, that the Constitution says nothing one way or another about abortion, then abortion rights and the rights of the unborn would be matters for the state legislatures and perhaps for Congress to decide.  By definition, the Courts would no longer be "in the middle."  Against my view Chad has only one piece of evidence: an entirely speculative argument that some states would try to prohibit their residents from crossing state borders to get an abortion.  This is a red herring.  There is no reason to assume that the problem would arise, and if it does it still would be a small issue compared to whether or what kind of abortion remains legal in each state. 

As it is now, the Supreme Court confirmation process has become a single issue referendum.  The last two times around Democrats flirted with the prospect of filibustering any nominee who didn't promise to uphold Roe.  What will happen if Bush must make another appointment with a Democratic majority in the Senate?  If he is unwilling to turn his constitutional prerogative over to the Senate, the Court appointment process is likely to deadlock.  All of this because the right to abortion is protected solely by five out of nine. 

Chad turns to the issue that was secondary to the debate, but primary in order of logic and morality.

Is the unborn child a person or not, under the Constitution?" The answer to this question is clearly "no." Some have religious beliefs that tell them that an unborn child is a "person." But "under the Constitution" an unborn child is clearly not a person. And perhaps even more importantly, when we start going down the road that leads us to the point that an unborn child is a person under the Constitution, we are moving into some dangerous territory. Territory that is probably the crux of the abortion debate.

After all, the minute a fetus has the same rights as a "person," is the exact minute that the rights of women are curtailed.

Chad ignores the more important part of my challenge, and I don't blame him.  Allow me to restore it:

Consider a perfectly healthy fetus, days away from natural birth.  Is this fetus a person or not?  Once outside the womb (a mere accident of time in the last days), he or she is clearly a legal person.  To kill a healthy human infant a few days after birth is murder, is it not, Chad?  So what about a day before birth?  The Court says that the same human being has no rights or claim to personhood at that point.

This is the fundamental issue.  Chad thinks an unborn child in the situation I describe has no rights under the Constitution.  But he doesn't deny the obvious: that it is a child.  He thinks that some children have a right to life, while others do not.  I hold to my ancient faith on this one, but I do not speak of religious faith.  In my case, religion has had no influence over this question.  I speak of Abraham Lincoln's ancient faith: that all human beings are created equal in certain unalienable rights.  I agree with Ms. Clinton's predecessor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who called late term abortions infanticide.  It is clear that Chad and I disagree on Constitutional personhood.  It is useful to know that we disagree on the founding principles in the Declaration of Independence. 

Hate Crimes

A couple local blogs (here and here) are commenting on the hate crimes bill soon to arrive on President Bush's desk.  Bush is threatening veto. The reason to veto this bill is not because hate crimes bills are bad (they are not) or that they include homosexuals (they should), but that this is not a federal issue.  Not every good idea has to be turned into federal law.  Let the states, which prosecute the vast majority of crimes, figure out what to do with crimes that specifically target discrete minorities in our population. 

Hell Freezes Over

I'll just come right out and say it: Chad Schuldt is right on school funding. Well, mostly right.  I believe Chad supports the lawsuit by school districts against the state claiming the that the state Constitution has been violated because we are "inadequately" funding education.  I believe this lawsuit is silly and is a waste of the state's time and money.  We do not use judges to figure out what "adequate funding" means, and if you think funding is inadequate I have a suggestion: work harder getting people elected who agree with you.

But on the matter of reserves, Chad is correct.  It seems disingenuous for the Governor to say that school districts should not keep such high reserves when the state has an enormous reserve.  Granted, states need reserves in ways school districts do not. Still, there is a bit of a pot and kettle situation here.  Also, Chad is correct that it is hard to hire people and make long term decisions based on one time money.  No one wants to hire a math teacher only to fire him or her the next year because the budget went away.  Further, one reason districts keep reserves is for anticipated budget cuts.  If you are a school district with declining enrollment, and that's too many of our districts, you face ever dwindling budgets.  That reserve can be used a later date to keep on staff or programming for at least a little while that you might otherwise have to give up.  So the reserve exists as protection against anticipated budget shortfalls. 

I get the Governor's point:  the money was appropriated in order to be spent.  But planning for a raining day is prudent budgeting that all governments do.  Whether districts are reserving "too much" money is hard to say, but it is not necessarily inconsistent for a district to ask for more money while it is in the process of putting some in reserve. 

Higher Ed

Hillsdale College President Larry Arn with sage advice: one of the best things the federal government can do for higher education is to leave it alone.  As the Department of Education discusses a kind of No Child Left Behind for higher education, perhaps Republicans in Congress and in the White House can make themselves useful and and see the trend towards centralization and uniformity that has been bad for k-12 education would be even worse for higher education. 

Run Fred Run!

The Republican presidential candidate debate just concluded on MSNBC.  Here are some thoughts.
Mitt Romney: As a candidate, he's quite handsome.
Sam Brownback: I cannot support him due to his robot like cadence.
Jim Gilmore: It's a bad idea to take a valium right before the debate.  Who knew that a suit that empty could move so much. 
Duncan Hunter: No chance to win, but more impressive that I anticipated.
Mike Huckabee: The only candidate I think better about after this debate, other than Hunter. 
Tommy Thompson: He proved once again that he'd make a fantastic mayor of Milwaukee.
John McCain: It's good to see that his age has not hurt is memory.  He very ably recited his stump speech over and over.
Ron Paul: Did the impossible in making me think even less of him.
Rudy Guiliani: Surprisingly seemed out of his element and inarticulate.
Tom Tancredo:  With good reason, he almost acted embarrassed to be there.
Chris Matthews: Awful.  Clearly played favorites and asked asinine questions. 

Overall the performance was dreadful and showed why many Republicans are looking elsewhere.  I saw a bunch of empty suits reciting platitudes. 

Novak on Johnson

Kevin Woster writing on Mount Blogmore:

Robert Novak led his column in today’s RCJ with a brief look at Sen. Tim Johnson’s medical condition and political future.

Novak says “national Democratic Party strategists” think Johnson will be ready for reelection in 2008. But if he can’t or won’t run, those same strategists, Novak says, fear the party will lose his seat.

That’s because they don’t think Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin could win a general election for the Senate seat, Novak says. He lists Gov. Mike Rounds as the likely Republican candidate for the Senate. (Rounds continues a coy non-denial denial about his possible run for the Senate….my words, not Novak’s).

Novak also lists Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard and state Sen. Majority Leader Dave Knudson as other possible Senate candidates.

Novak says “South Dakota Republican insiders” (Is that you, Joel????) say they doubt Johnson will be able to run next year.

Personally, I”m not sure on Johnson in 2008, although I tend to think he will run. Despite his docile personality, Johnson is a fierce competitor who loves the duties of the Senate and understands the importance of his seat to his party. I expect his recovery effort to be nothing short of heroic.

But if he doesn’t run, I think Herseth Sandlin would be a better candidate that Novak suggests.

Rounds would be tough to beat, no question. But as she showed in a competitive loss to Bill Janklow and two tough wins over Larry Diedrich prior to her 2006 blow-out of Bruce Whalen, Herseth Sandlin would be formidable, too.

And if the Republican candidate is anyone other than Rounds, I think she’d have to be the favorite.

Another al Qaeda Takedown

The Iraqis have announced another takedown from al Qaeda.  Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, was killed in a joint US-Iraqi operation:

U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed the head of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-led militant group that has claimed many major attacks in the country, Iraq's deputy interior minister said on Thursday.

Hussein Kamal said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had been killed in a battle north of Baghdad. He declined to say when but said authorities had recovered Baghdadi's body.

"Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was killed north of Baghdad by Iraqi and American forces. He died as a result of wounds sustained in clashes. The Interior Ministry has his body to carry out further checks," Kamal told Reuters by telephone.

U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver declined to comment but said a news conference would be held later on Thursday to announce the "success" of an operation against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has confirmed that it was not Abu Ayyub al-Masri who was killed earlier this week, but rather the information minister for al Qaeda in Iraq, Muharib Abdulatif al-Juburi.

2010 Governor's Race

Yesterday, Dave Kranz wrote about how the 2010 Gubernatorial context is shaping up.  Excerpt:

Even though some believe the Republican gubernatorial race will add up to a herd of candidates, political handicappers say it won't be as many as once thought.

Most often heard in the speculation of "definite" candidates is Daugaard, state Sen. Dave Knudson, former House Speaker Matt Michels and former state Sen. Lee Schoenbeck.

Political observers say Knudson and Schoenbeck seem to be making the most inroads. July 1 will tell whose got the money advantage.

Sen. Scott Heidepriem continues to be regarded as the only "sure bet" candidate to seek the Democratic Party gubernatorial nomination.

Dusty Johnson

My hometown paper, the Mitchell Daily Republic, is discussing the possibility of Dusty Johnson running for Congress.  Excerpt:

There are at least two obvious reasons that some Republicans want Dusty Johnson to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008.

In a 2004 campaign for a relatively obscure post in state government, he won more votes and raised more money than the 2006 Republican candidate for South Dakota’s House seat.

Johnson, a Mitchell resident, won a spot on the Public Utilities Commission in 2004. In doing so, he garnered 196,974 votes and reported receiving $194,905 in campaign contributions. Conversely, Bruce Whalen earned 97,864 votes and raised $150,447 last year in his failed bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

...

Another consideration in Johnson’s decision-making process may be the status of Herseth Sandlin. Some political speculation has her running in 2008 for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Tim Johnson, who may not be willing or able to run for re-election because of his continuing rehabilitation from a December brain hemorrhage.

If Herseth Sandlin runs for the Senate, it could clear the way for numerous hopefuls to run for the House. Dusty Johnson said Herseth Sandlin’s status will not affect his decision, but said what she does “will affect a lot of people’s decisions.”

HT to SDWC.

A McCain Resurgence?

The Politico:

SIMI VALLEY, Calif., -- ARG has new numbers today from the early state troika, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, showing McCain ahead in all three.

He' s up by 7 percent over Rudy in Iowa, 5 percent over Romney in New Hampshire and 13 percent over Rudy in South Carolina.

Per pollster Dick Bennett, McCain has gained strength among independents and continues to do well among Republicans. 

While the coverage was often unfriendly, keep in mind that McCain has been the subject of story after story in the recent days when the survey was taken. 

UPDATE: I should have noted that the poll also has Romney trending up in Iowa (4%) and New Hampshire (7%) from the March survey.  Straw poll wins there aside, there doesn't appear to be much movement for Mitt in South Carolina in these numbers. 

American Legion Criticizes Dem Iraq Plan

Here's a press release from the American Legion condemning the Democrat's Iraq withdrawal plan:

“Sad but necessary,” was the way The National Commander of The American Legion Paul A. Morin described President Bush’s veto earlier today of an Iraq war spending bill that included timelines for withdrawing troops from the region.

“The American Legion is glad that the president vetoed this irresponsible legislation but saddened that Congress let it get this far,” Morin said. “First the House passed a blueprint for disaster and then the Senate passed a recipe for surrender. There can only be one commander in chief and he should be the one to determine when the mission is complete.”

Morin said it is essential that Congress immediately pass a bill that the president can sign - one that contains the necessary funding but not the deadlines. “The troops need Congress to fund their mission. It is immoral for Congress to approve a military mission and then not want to pay for it once the troops are in harm’s way. You can not possibly say `I support the troops but I don’t want to pay for their bullets, beans and billeting while in combat.’”

Morin pointed out that the bill contained billions of dollars in unrelated pork. “The congressional leadership knew that the only way they could pass this cut-and-run proposal was to entice members to vote for funding unrelated projects. Congress needs to pass a serious funding bill to win the war and it needs to pass it now,” Morin said.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq, has voiced concern that the timeline would send a message to the enemy to keep fighting. “Just a few months ago the Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. Petraeus to lead the Iraq mission. Let’s give him a chance to succeed,” Morin said. “We also can not send a message to our allies that we will abandon them in their time of need. We made that mistake in Vietnam and Somalia - examples that were cited by Osama bin Laden himself.”

Intellectual Diversity

The Missouri House of Representatives has passed an "intellectual diversity" bill, which South Dakota also debated a few years ago:

Students at Missouri's public colleges would have some legal protection against professors who bully students with their political or religious beliefs under a bill approved by the state House.

The House earlier this month overwhelmingly approved the Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act in a 97 to 50 vote. However, lawmakers predict it won't win approval in the Senate this session.

Still, supporters say the House measure draws attention to a problem on college campuses and hope that schools will take it upon themselves to deal with the issue. Critics say it amounts to academic meddling.

Supporters like state Rep. Nathan Cooper, R-Cape Girardeau, don't view it as classroom censorship.

"I am not for dictating curriculums on campus or what teachers can teach and cannot teach, but there has to be some type of self regulation among the universities," Cooper said. He and state Rep. Scott Lipke of Jackson both voted for HB 213.

"The message needs to be sent to rogue professors who indoctrinate rather than teach that this activity will not be tolerated at universities," Cooper said.

Even if the bill goes nowhere in the Senate, Cooper said he hopes it will prompt universities to police the situation on their own.

Health Care Spending And Infant Mortality

I find Prof. Blanchard's post on infant mortality intriguing.  First, one wonders what is the precise complaint.  Usually the complaint is that Americans spend too much money on health care.  But the complaint Ken addresses is that we don't spend enough.  Perhaps people ought to get their play books straight before complaining.

I did something other bloggers apparently did not do: research.  It was really hard.  What I am to link to below took me all of five minutes to find.  First, there is this story I found off the Health and Human Services page  that says premature birth accounts for about one-third of our infant mortality.  It is hard to say if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  For example, due to our almost miraculous technology and, it must be said, extraordinary compassion, we spend a great deal of money on babies with serious health problems.  In fact, we treat them quite aggressively in utero. If a baby is born who would have been a miscarriage, say, ten years ago, and then the baby dies two weeks later, that is an infant mortality statistic, but is it therefore a reason to adjust our public policy?  I don't know. 

How about health care budgets.  This one is a bit ponderous, but go here for the 2008 Bush administration budget. On page 133 you see that in the first Bush budget (FY 2002), we spent $280.8 billion on "means tested entitlements," which includes Medicaid and State children's health insurance.  There is an increase every year and in the last year of hard numbers (2006) we spent $354.3 billion, for an increase of 26%.  To be sure, from 2005 to 2006, spending is almost stagnant, but this is hardly enough to create a crisis in infant mortality and spending is then set to take off again and 2012 estimates are to spend $468.9 billion, or an increase of 32% over 2006 budgets.  For Medicaid alone, go to pages 141 and 142.  In FY 2002 we spent $147.5 billion on Medicaid.  In 2006 it was $180.6 billion, an increase of about 22%.  Again, to be sure from 2005-2006 Medicaid spending is essentially stagnant, but as as noted above, it is unlikely this would cause a sudden increase in infant mortality.  Spending is again set to take off and in 2012 it is estimated we will spend $270.2 billion, an increase of 49.6% over 2006. 

This article states that there are about 47 million Medicaid recipients.  That means we spend about $3,800 in federal dollars for each recipient ($180.6 billion divided by 47 million).  This does not count any other federal or state health program.  States pay a large portion of the Medicaid bill, and the numbers quoted above only pertain to the federal commitment.  It is impossible to say what "enough" money is for public health, but it is difficult to say that the Bush administration or American society is parsimonious when it comes to public health. I conclude with snippets from the USA Today article:

Today, a family of four can earn as much as $40,000 a year in most states and get government health insurance for children. The nation's median household income was $43,318 in 2003, the Census Bureau says...

More children insured. The portion of children without insurance fell from 14.8% in 1997 to 11.7% in 2004, the Health and Human Services Department reports. The rate of young children being vaccinated has increased from 72% in 2000 to a record 81% in 2004.

Mainstream Porn

I knew pornography had become mainstream when I saw an episode of Friends in which Joey and Chandler are mistakenly getting the porn cable channel for free.  They refuse to turn off their TV or even turn the channel for fear that somehow they will lose this magnificent gift.  None of their friends finds this the least unusual or, well, creepy.  In fact, it's taken to be kind of funny.  After all, these are our "friends," and we are asked to see Joey and Chandler's obsession with porn as something amusing, rather than as a sign of moral failure. 

Maggie Gallagher has more insights (hat tip Julie Ponzi) on what happens when fetish goes mainstream.  As she laments, doesn't anyone want illicit sex anymore?  I mean, if it isn't a little dangerous, it isn't fun.  Oddly enough, pornography, rather than stimulating eroticism, is the death of the erotic.  Eroticism thrives on mystery and danger, the quest of discovering something new.  As David Amsden and Naomi Wolf point out, those (mostly men) who consume large amounts of pornography have a hard time "performing" when they find themselves with a real human being.  So leave aside the moral arguments against porn.  In one of life's great ironies, pornography is bad for your sex life. 

Infant Mortality and Social Policy

My friend Chad at CCK had a post a while ago that I have been meaning to respond to.  Here it is:

Cut access to health care as much as possible.  Let babies die in increasing numbers.  I guess that's what they mean by "pro-life."

I am not sure who "they" are, but the article Chad cites is important.  After decades of decline, infant mortality in some states has stalled and even ticked up a bit.  From the New York Times article that Chad directs us to:

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Chad's knee jerk reaction is to blame cuts in health care spending.  But the article he cites does not support that. 

“I think the rise is real, and it’s going to get worse,” said Dr. Bouldin Marley, an obstetrician at a private clinic in Clarksdale since 1979. “The mothers in general, black or white, are not as healthy,” Dr. Marley said, calling obesity and its complications a main culprit.  . . .

Another major problem, Dr. Marley said, is that some women arrive in labor having had little or no prenatal care. “I don’t think there’s a lack of providers or facilities,” he said. “Some women just don’t have the get up and go.”

I know a little bit about this issue, having followed it over the years; but I am guessing that this is a lot more than Chad knows.  The infant mortality rate is defined as the number of children who die in their first year per thousand live births.  The United States has a very high IMR compared to other developed nations.  This is certainly something we should be concerned about.  But in fact, it bears no relation to the availability of heath care.  An article in Slate by Darshak Sanghavi very clearly explains why.   

According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half. Thus—at the risk of oversimplifying—infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.

To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born. . . . But modern medicine isn't good at preventing prematurity—just the opposite. Better and more affordable medical care actually has worsened the rate of prematurity, and likely the rate of infant mortality, by making fertility treatment widespread.

Infant mortality is indeed something we should worry about.  But if we really want to do something about it, and not merely use it as a weapon to bash our political opponents, we need to understand it.  More spending on health care will only worsen the problem unless it addresses the issues mentioned by Dr. Marley and Darshak Sanghavi. 

To the Contrary: The Middle East Doesn't Matter

Edward Luttwak wrote one of the best books I read in graduate school: The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire.  In that book Luttwak not only clearly explained Roman foreign policy, but solved one of the most important puzzles of History, writ large: why the Roman Empire ultimately fell.  In a nutshell, Rome fell because it stopped expanding.  Roman power was based on superior organization.  The Romans had a number of legions at their disposal, and could shuffle enough power to any one place, marching down carefully laid roads, overwhelm any threat.  But peoples just across the borders of Roman control inevitably became more sophisticated and organized through cultural osmosis, and thus they became more of a threat.  As long as Rome was expanding, neighboring peoples could be controlled by fear: behave, and we will eat you later.  Once Rome stopped expanding, the fear was removed and the pressure along the borders steadily grew until the legions could no longer hold it.  I suspect that this is only part of the solution to the puzzle, but it is a big part.

In a recent article for the British Prospect, Luttwak argues that the war in Iraq is a symptom of a general mistake: we think that the Middle East is important, but it's not.  We need the oil beneath them, but they need oil revenue all the more.  The nations of the Middle East cannot represent a military threat to any other region, because military power depends on a productive economy and soldiers willing to fight.  The Middle East has neither. On the economic side:

We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.

Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.

I would add that the societies and economies of that region are retarded largely because of oil.  Why bother to build or invent anything when you can trade that black gold for cushy pensions and vacations in Europe.  As for military power:

In 1990 it was the turn of Iraq to be hugely overestimated as a military power. Saddam Hussein had more equipment than Nasser ever accumulated, and could boast of having defeated much more populous Iran after eight years of war. In the months before the Gulf war, there was much anxious speculation about the size of the Iraqi army—again, the divisions and regiments were dutifully counted as if they were German divisions on the eve of D-day, with a separate count of the "elite" Republican Guards, not to mention the "super-elite" Special Republican Guards—and it was feared that Iraq's bombproof aircraft shelters and deep bunkers would survive any air attack.

That much of this was believed at some level we know from the magnitude of the coalition armies that were laboriously assembled, including 575,000 US troops, 43,000 British, 14,663 French and 4,500 Canadian, and which incidentally constituted the sacrilegious infidel presence on Arabian soil that set off Osama bin Laden on his quest for revenge. In the event, two weeks of precision bombing were enough to paralyse Saddam's entire war machine, which scarcely tried to resist the ponderous ground offensive when it came. At no point did the Iraqi air force try to fight, and all those tanks that were painstakingly counted served mostly for target practice. A real army would have continued to resist for weeks or months in the dug-in positions in Kuwait, even without air cover, but Saddam's army was the usual middle eastern façade without fighting substance.

The Iraqis are clearly capable of producing deadly insurgents, but altogether incapable of fielding a real army.  Luttwak's view is a contrarian one, but it is a good one and for that reason worth reading all the way through. 

A Scandal in Plain Sight

Historian Mark Moyer, author of Triumph Forsaken, a reinterpretation of the Vietnam War, is the subject of this New York Sun article that discusses his unbelievable difficulty in landing an academic position.  Excerpt:

Mark Moyar doesn't exactly fit the stereotype of a disappointed job seeker. He is an Eagle Scout who earned a summa cum laude degree from Harvard, graduating first in the history department before earning a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England. Before he had even begun graduate school, he had published his first book and landed a contract for his second book. Distinguished professors at Harvard and Cambridge wrote stellar letters of recommendation for him.

Yet over five years, this conservative military and diplomatic historian applied for more than 150 tenure-track academic jobs, and most declined him a preliminary interview. During a search at University of Texas at El Paso in 2005, Mr. Moyar did not receive an interview for a job in American diplomatic history, but one scholar who did wrote her dissertation on "The American Film Industry and the Spanish-Speaking Market During the Transition to Sound, 1929-1936." At Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004, Mr. Moyar lost out to a candidate who had given a presentation on "promiscuous bathing" and "attire, hygiene and discourses of civilization in Early American-Japanese Relations."

It's an example, some say, of the difficulties faced by academics who are seen as bucking the liberal ethos on campus and perhaps the reason that history departments at places like Duke had 32 Democrats and zero Republicans, according to statistics published by the Duke Conservative Union around the time Mr. Moyar tried to get an interview there.

Read the whole thing.  HT to Power Line.

Meet The New Boss, Part II

Dianne Feinstein as corrupt as Duke Cunningham?  The Hill says no, she's actually more corrupt.  Some will use this to call for more ethics reforms. Will Congress use this as a reason to take the idea of limited government more seriously?  I bet Dianne Feinstein's husband's income that it doesn't. 

Calling The Pot

As the Minnesota legislature moves toward legalizing medical marijuana, new reports indicate pot is linked to "psychotic episodes." 

AQ Leader Dead?

Unconfirmed reports out of Iraq are saying that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, reportedly died in a battle with other insurgents today.  They have yet to perform a DNA test.  We'll know for sure once the American military announces it.  If true, the tables have turned on al Qaeda.  We captured the man who would have replaced al-Masri last year, captured seventeen of their people just three days ago, and now possibly have killed al-Masri.  More later as it develops.

Tom Daschle: Still a Flip-Flopper

From the Argus Leader:

In a discussion on climate change with Georgetown University students, Daschle said he regrets his vote nearly 10 years ago in favor of a resolution that opposed the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement to reduce air emissions that are causing climate change. Senators were concerned the treaty would undermine the U.S. economy and the vote in the Senate was 95-0. The U.S. is the world’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“Obviously when you cast as many votes as I did over 26 years, some stand out as remarkably ill-informed and wrong,” said Daschle, a visiting professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. “For me, two that come immediately to mind is the vote on (the war in) Iraq and the vote on Kyoto. Had I known then what I know now, obviously, in both cases, my vote would have been dramatically different.”

Rhetoric Pet Peeves

Allow me to vent on some abuses of the English language that I have been observing lately.  We all make verbal gaffes from time to time, but here are a couple common ones that we should strive to eliminate.

The first derives from good intentions.  We are constantly being told as kids that it isn't "Sally and me went to the store" but "Sally and I went to the store."  The problem is that now people use "I" when "me" is appropriate because they think "I" sounds more educated.  Example: "For Sally and I the trip to the store was enjoyable" should be "For Sally and me the trip to the store was enjoyable."  Because there is a preposition ("for"), you need the objective case of the first person pronoun, i.e., "me."  You would not say, "For I, the trip to the store was enjoyable." 

I also hear people misuse the term "begging the question" a lot.  Usually what they mean is "what you just said demands a certain question be answered."  For example, "The U.S. intervention in Iraq has not been successful" demands a definition of what "successful" means.  But that is not "begging the question."  Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which a premise presumes the conclusion.  It is thus related to circular reasoning.  If I say, "Republicans shouldn't be elected because they don't deserve it" I am begging the question. Me conclusion (Republicans don't deserve to get elected) basically restates my premise (Republicans shouldn't be elected).  It is akin to "I don't like that TV show because those kinds of shows are stupid."  Well, why is it stupid?    

The Unfairness Doctrine

Ed Morrissey:

The Left blames talk radio for many of the nation's ills. After the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton and other Democrats openly accused conservative talkers of complicity in generating the hate behind the attack -- even before the Clinton administration had fully investigated the terrorist attack. Tom Daschle, then Senate Majority Leader, said that Rush Limbaugh indirectly encouraged people to threaten public officials by stirring up anger. 

But that's not the reason they want to slam the lid on talk radio. The most compelling reason is their inability to compete in the field. With the exception of a couple of national talkers like Ed Schultz and Michael Jackson, they have built no market. Part of that is because the mainstream media has done a much better job disseminating liberal punditry than conservative. That market also gets served on the radio waves by NPR, which normally has good signal coverage in every major market, and which cares little about competition because of its government support. Conservatives turned to talk radio because the mainstream media didn't meet the market need, and the explosion of growth stunned those who thought that conservatism had petered out in the second term of Ronald Reagan.

Instead of offering a compelling product, liberals want to shut down the market. They want to put government in charge of deciding what comprises each side of an argument, how much time each gets allocated, and so on. In practice, it's completely unworkable. Radio stations don't have the time and resources for that kind of accounting, and their already-thin profit margins will disappear entirely if they are forced to air broadcasting that interests no one -- as Air America has proven over the last few years. Stations will either go off the air or offer informercials, sports talk, or more top-40 broadcasting.

That's apparently what people like Kucinich want -- an end to debate that operates outside the control of the government. The fact that they complain about their lack of success in a free market for opinions and debate should inform the debate over the Fairness Doctrine. And if not, I expect business to get very brisk at Blog Talk Radio.

Kranz: Dusty Johnson, Joel Dykstra for Congress?

Yesterday, Argus Leader political columnist Dave Kranz reported that Dusty Johnson and Joel Dykstra are being considered as Republican challengers to face either Stephanie Herseth or Tim Johnson:

Republicans have been in somewhat of a flux since the hospitalization of Sen. Tim Johnson as they try to get movement from possible candidates for those top 2008 races.

There are now at least two Republicans who have gotten to the point where they are weighing their sensitivity to Johnson's illness, but they also recognize they must start exploratory ventures.

Dusty Johnson, first-term Public Utilities Commissioner, and state Rep. Joel Dykstra, R-Canton, are at that point of soul-searching their political futures.

For Johnson, it is a possible U.S. House race. Dykstra contemplates the House and the U.S. Senate.

"It is something I am considering. Any time you have a realistic opportunity to make South Dakota better, you have to take a look," Dusty Johnson says. "The thing for me: Can you be a good congressman and a good father?"

...

"I have tremendous respect for Rep. Herseth Sandlin, but this is not about her. It is tough to sit on the sidelines as we deal with security and economic issues. It would be an opportunity for me to make a difference," Johnson said.

Rep. Joel Dykstra is opening the door to a possible U.S. Senate campaign regardless of what Johnson decides to do.

It would be an interesting lineup for Republicans, who might have a solid congressional field going into the next election cycle.  Also, as SDWC noted, "When faced with a choice of this nature, it means that the Congresswoman is not going to get the luxury of ducking debates for a third election in a row."  Speaking of SDWC and the election, head over to his blog and weigh in on who you'd like to see run in 2008.

Johnson Released from Rehab

In South Dakota News, the Argus Leader is reporting that Tim Johnson is being released from rehab as he prepares for more therapy:

"As I continue with my therapy, I also get more and more work from the office," he said. "The doctors tell me to pace myself and prepare for the long road, but I am determined to get back in the saddle."

Johnson will continue speech, physical and occupational therapy five days a week for several hours each day on an outpatient basis, according to the statement.

Robotic treadmill training is an important part of the senator's recovery, according to Dr. Michael Yochelson, director of brain injury programs at the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

We wish Senator Johnson continued success in his recovery.

Totten

Don't miss this Michael Totten interview with Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga Colonel Salahdin Ahmed Ameen, which discusses, among other things, what would happen of the U.S. pulled out of Iraq.  I'm convinced that bloggers like the guys over at the Counterterrorism Blog, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, Michael Yon, Mohammed Omar, and the Mudville Gazette do better reporting on Iraq than the mainstream media.

Tax Freedom Day

Celebrate Tax Freedom Day.

Terror in Britain

New York Times:  "Five Britons were found guilty on Monday of plotting to carry out al Qaeda-inspired bomb attacks across Britain potentially killing hundreds at targets ranging from nightclubs to trains and a shopping centre."  Don't miss this analysis by Lorenzo Vidino over at the Counterterrorism Blog entitled "Lessons from Madrid and London."

Obama's Religion

Today's New York Times is exploring Barack Obama's religion:

“He comes from a very secular, skeptical family,” said Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty activist and longtime friend of Mr. Obama. “His faith is really a personal and an adult choice. His is a conversion story.”

The grandparents who helped raise Mr. Obama were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists.

His mother was an anthropologist who collected religious texts the way others picked up tribal masks, teaching her children the inspirational power of the common narratives and heroes. His mother’s tutelage took place mostly in Indonesia, in the household of Mr. Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.

“My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s younger half sister. But Mr. Obama attended a Catholic school and then a Muslim public school where the religious education was cursory. When he was 10, he returned to his birthplace of Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attended a preparatory school with a Christian affiliation but little religious instruction.

Years later, Mr. Obama met his father’s family, a mix of Muslim and Christian Kenyans. Sarah Hussein Obama, who is his stepgrandmother but whom Mr. Obama calls his grandmother, still rises at 5 a.m. to pray before tending to her crops and the three orphans she has taken in.

“I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith,” Ms. Obama, 85, said in a recent interview in Kenya.

It's an interesting story, so read the whole thing.

The Dance in France 4

A week from today the French people will elect the right man as president and it will do no good. Mathew Parris (whose name is not exactly a pun), explains why in the London Times.  The French desperately need their own Margret Thatcher: someone who will dismantle their dysfunctional welfare state and expose the economy to shock treatment.  It worked for the English, in 1979.  But it won't work for the French, not yet. 

The Britain I remember in 1979 had that impatience. It would be wrong to say the Tories had persuaded the country of Thatcherism – we hardly knew what that was – but of one thing we were sufficiently persuaded: that the old way wasn’t working, wouldn’t work, and had to be abandoned. In the air was a hatred and fear of the trade unions, a detestation of suffocating state bureaucracy, and a furious contempt for the incompetence of nationalised industries and utilities. Britain, it seemed to many of us, was sick, and might even be dying.

I don’t think France is anywhere near that state of mind. I don’t think France is ready. I don’t sniff in the wind in la France profonde (though I begin to in urban Paris) that palpable sense of having reached the end of a road. The changes France needs to embrace will be convulsive. The pain will be intense, the dislocation bewildering and cruel. We British found that when Thatcherism arrived. But even at the low point of Thatcher’s first term, even when she personally had become a figure of loathing across much of Britain, you almost never heard anyone suggest a return to what had gone before.

The British were ready to rationalize their economy in 1979.  Almost ten years later I spent a week in Oxford, England.  In addition to learning that I could drink one pint of bitter every two hours and still stay sober enough to visit the museums, I witnessed the Thatcherite economic revival.  Everywhere you looked everything was being rebuilt.  Everything was buzzing with energy.  The old bull dog had come out of its socialist hibernation. 

On the other hand, I could see that it was still a less competitive economy than the U.S.  At 11 pm there were maybe three thousand Italian and German teens on the streets of Oxford, all of them trying to crowd into just three open businesses: McDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  No indigenous British business would stoop to keep its doors open for that market. 

A few years ago I attended a speech by former PM John Major at Augustana College.  He told a revealing story about democratic culture in Britain.  He was walking in the British countryside with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev when the Russian became thirsty.  They rapped on the door of a pub, which was closed, as pubs back then were, for several hours every afternoon.  As Gorbachev rattled the door he yelled: "Let me in, I'm the President of Russia."  A voice from inside responded: "I don't care if you're the bleedin' Czar.  We're closed!"  It's hard not to admire that kind of stiff necked independence, a bit. 

The French are still stubbornly refusing to open the doors of their economy, even though conditions inside the Republic are becoming more and more dire.  Parris doesn't think Paris is yet ready to come out of hibernation.  I suspect he is right.