THIS JUST IN!! BILL CLINTON ADDS TO HIS MEMOIRS!

HE ALSO SAID HE RAISED TAXES TOO MUCH -- AND THEN TRIED TO RAISE THEM AGAIN [John Podhoretz]
Bill Clinton now acknowledges that his agonizingly boring memoir, My Life, was excessively verbose. ""Most people thought it was too long — a fair criticism," Clinton says. Unfortunately, he says it in a new paperback edition that adds something like 15 pages to the already endless 957 of the hardback.
Posted at 12:11 AM

John Lewis Gaddis on Bush's Grand Strategy

I have blogged on Gaddis before. (See February 8, 2004 entry for Gaddis' on Bush's first articulation of the grand strategy.) I heartily recommend this recent speech (given at Middlebury College in Vermont) by John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale and first to advocate the idea that Bush's war on terror, specifically, the pre-emptive war on the "axis of evil," is the first "grand strategy" of the 21st Century.

But, it's not all praise! It is a substantive, dispassionate, level-headed assessment of Bush's leadership failures and successes, his learning from mistakes, and the boldness of his vision, especially as it has been refined in his 2nd Inaugural Address.

Newsweek (flush)

Richard Brookhiser: Bush the Relentess Revolutionary

Here is a taste of Brookhiser's latest column in NY Observer.

Now President George W. Bush has gone to Moscow, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, to pay tribute to the Soviet Union’s achievement in defeating Hitler. At the same time, in very Bush-like fashion, he has been ruffling feathers.

Russia deserves Mr. Bush’s tribute. The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan were pretty scary, but in the scale of the eastern front in World War II, it was a burp. Hitler lost his vision, his war and his life on the plains of Russia and Poland. Britain and America stabbed Germany in the belly and back in Africa, Italy and France, and incinerated it from the air. But it was annihilated by the Soviet Army.

. . . President Bush added to his trip to Moscow a side trip to Latvia, a former Soviet republic enjoying a still-tentative independence. Latvia’s first tentative independence followed World War I and ended when it was obliterated by the Soviets, the Nazis and then the Soviets again during World War II. Mr. Bush’s visit is an effort to do what we could not do at the time— to say "Alas!" to the defeated. "In Western Europe," Mr. Bush said, "the end of World War II meant liberation. In Central and Eastern Europe, the war also marked … Soviet occupation."

Michael Yon's picture and blog

By now, most people probably have seen this picture of Major Mark Bieger rescuing a small girl, Farah, mortally wounded in a suicide bombing in Mosul, on Wednesday I think. She did not live. But here is a little more information about the photographer, Michael Yon, and his work documented at his blog, a really interesting, upclose perspective, including more moving pictures, of some of our troops in Iraq. More power and prayers to him, the troops, and the Iraqis.
(Click for larger image.)

for the latest on Schiavo

Father Rob Johansen's Thrownback is one the best for the most extensive and latest information regarding Terri Schiavo. He cites several medical authorities on various parts of the debate.

"We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union."

Glenn Reynolds links to this Christian Science Monitor story about the repercussions of the most recent revolution in Kyrgyzstan (for more on this and all democratic movements throughout the world see Publius Pundit). Those former Soviet states mentioned experiencing popular protests are Belarus, a couple of states within Russia, and, in the far east, Mongolia. Here is a map.




Excerpts:

Some experts see a common thread among these upheavals that began 17 months ago when Georgians overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze in a peaceful revolt and continued with Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" late last year.

"Every situation is different, but a single process is unfolding," says Valentin Bogatyrov, a former Akayev adviser and director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Bishkek. "Kyrgyzstan is a kind of trigger that will spread this unrest to our neighbors, and beyond. We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union."

----

Some argue that it's only a matter of time before the revolutionary tide sweeps over Russia. Several of the country's 20 ethnic republics have a similar political profile to Kyrgyzstan, with a long-time ruler monopolizing power and often extending corrupt tentacles into business. "Events around the former Soviet Union have raised the possibility that similar things can happen here too," says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the independent Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "The situation in several of our republics, including Tatarstan and Bashkortistan, look very much like Kyrgyzstan."

Hadley Arkes on Schiavo

For what it's worth, Hadley Arkes has opined in the Terri Schiavo legal fiasco, joining Hugh Hewitt, Scott Hinderaker, and Stephen Bainbridge on one issue and Bill Bennett on another.

He agrees with the former that Judge Whittemore read Congress' act in a "crimped way." And that Jeb Brush, on this basis, could seek, as Bennett says, to enforce a new trial, as Congress required.

The Governor can make it clear—if he is asked—that he will not accept any orders handed down by Judge Greer, for he has the responsibility to direct the marshals and police in Florida, and he feels obliged to direct them according to his earnest understanding of the requirements of the Constitution and the mandate of Congress, an understanding rather at odds with the understanding of Judges Greer and Whittemore.

Journalist Michael Malone: "Newspapers are Dead"

A high-tech journalist of newsprint for 25 years, Michael Malone, writes today that he has given up reading newspapers. This is not too surprising given the development of the Internet's myriad news resources but also the general shoddy reporting, plagarism, and rampant even virulent bias of newspaper media. But it is interesting to hear a print journalist says these things. Some key excerpts:

I've been involved with newspapers, in some form or another, for a quarter century. If I don't see a compelling reason to read them, why should anyone else?

And I'm not alone. In talking with some of my colleagues, men and women who had spent as many years, if not more, than me in newspapers, most of them have also admitted to rarely opening a paper anymore. One friend sheepishly said that he didn't even read the newspaper at which he had shared two Pulitzer Prizes.

---

In any other industry, a product that lost 1 percent of market share for two decades -- only to then double or triple that rate of decline -- would be declared dead. The manufacturer would discontinue it and rush out a replacement product more in line with the desires of the marketplace. So, let's finally come out and say: Newspapers are dead. They will never come back. By the end of this decade, the newspaper industry will suffer the same death rate -- 90-plus percent -- that every other industry experiences when run over by a technology revolution.

---

The last redoubt for the survival of newspaper was, in my mind, accessibility. Hopping from section to section, story lead to story jump, just seemed so much easier than crawling through a long story on a computer screen. Then I saw the first links embedded in blogs. There was simply nothing in the physical world that could ever hope to match the ability to leap through cyberspace from story to story, file to file, with almost infinite extension.

Looking back, it was then that I stopped reading print newspapers.

---

Needless to say, I still read the news, much of it coming from the newspapers I used to religiously read. But I am not reading the "paper," either literally or figuratively, that the publishers want me to read. Throughout the day, I construct my own newspaper in cyberspace, a real-time assemblage of wire service stories, newspaper features, blogs, bulletin boards, columns, etc.

Courtesy of No Left Turns.

"Thus saith the Judge"

Related to my post immediately below, is Jonathan Last's post, "Slaves to the Law," on the "easy faith" of some liberals--but also some religious conservatives, as I heard on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday--to take the ruling of the court (in this case, Judge Greer's findings of facts regarding Terri Schiavo) as the voice of God.

A reader sent Last an extended excerpt of Lincoln's debate with Douglas, in which Lincoln points out the sole basis for Douglas' support of the Dred Scot ruling:

because a decision of the court is to him a "Thus saith the Lord."

Lincoln goes on to say that Douglas refuses to judge the merit of the case on it own grounds. Indeed, for Douglas, neither reason nor faith address the right or wrongness of the Supreme Court's decision regarding the humanity of slaves.

This is, of course, extraordinary. Any liberal today would rightly denounce such a position as immoral or patently untrue. However, as Last points out, this is what they are doing regarding Judge Greer's decision on Terri Shiavo. They mistake the decisions of a judge (and or court) as the highest authority, above which there is no other arbiter. This casually overlooks, and in so doing, demeans the relevance, indeed, the relative importance of the American citizen's conscience and our understanding of right and wrong.

As some anonymous reader, in the comments under Last's post, says:

The law is a human construct, and it's failures are self-evident to any person who doesn't think Marbury v. Madison was revealed to Moses as an appendix to the Ten Commandments. Whenever the laws and courts fail us, as they are doing with respect to Mrs. Schiavo, the response isn't to shrug our shoulders and bloviate about Judge Greer and the wisdom of the Florida Supreme Court. The response is to change the law, or change the judges. Either one will do in this instance.

And change them we must.

Tyranny of the Judiciary

Barbara Boxer at a Moveon.org rally (17 March):

Why would we give lifetime appointments to people who earn up to $200,000 a year, with absolutely a great retirement system, and all the things all Americans wish for, with absolutely no check and balance except that one confirmation vote. So we're saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required. That isn't too much to ask for such a super important position. There ought to be a super vote. Don't you think so? It's the only check and balance on these people. They're in for life. They don't stand for election like we do, which is scary.

Hugh Hewitt pointed out Boxer's amazing admission that the liberals actually do want a super-majority votes for the confirmation of the President's judges. Evidently, the Constitution's provision for a mere majority is not good enough. But instead of offering arguments and motions to amend the Constitution, the Democrats offer instead to make use of the filibuster in an unprecedented, systematic way for all the judges that they deem out of the mainstream of America.

But I wonder whether if this doesn't show another important liberal position.

The reason that such a "super important position" needs a "super vote" now is that judges are indeed more important now than they were in the Founders days. In fact, set in the context of America's recent cultural and political history--a mainstream which is moving slowly, incrementally but definitely to the right--is that, according to its conservative nature (as Boxer notes, because of the appointment for life), the judiciary is the last federal institution to follow these recent changes.

We have seen the change in the other two branches of Federal government: the House in Gingrich's so-called revolution of '94, the Senate also recently, and the moderately liberal Democratic presidency of Clinton and conservative George W. Bush. I think it helpful to also throw in the long-term trends of the MSM's (Main Stream Media) loss of influence, culminating in the recent discrediting of CBS in "Rathergate"--and, one can add this week's revelations of ABC's making hay out a doubious Republican Schiavo memo (courtesy Powerline).

The line in the sand for the judiciary has been drawn for several years, I suppose. But, it now appears to have escalated: the Democrats have invested themselves, like the Texicans in the Alamo, in such a desperate way. This desperation over the nominations to the judiciary is in fact their last position of power (even if only slight) in our country. Through the judiciary, the Supreme Court in particular, they maintain the legitimacy of their important social and political decisions--among other things, abortion on demand being one of the most important--not to mention the looming questions, "gay marriage" primary among them.

In other words, this recent appeal for a "super majority" vote is an attempt to preserve their tyranny of the judiciary. They can no longer (at least as recently as November, '04) can win a majority of support, so they fall back to their last stronghold and pull up the drawbridge of change to the judiciary, a simple rule of the majority, the means of change available to every other branch of federal government.

Is this 'World War IV' serious?

This article by Norman Podhertz is most likely worth our time, judging by what people I trust say.

I first posted on the idea and renaming the "War on Terror" WW IV here, a year plus ago now. There I proposed that WW 4 started, not with the attacks of 9-11, but with the first of radical Muslim terrorist attacks on the West at the Olympics in Munich, Germany, September 5, 1972.

That they attacked and killed 11 Israelis was not necessarily new or an omen for the West. That they killed Israeli Olympian athletes and did this at the Olympics, the western venue for good will and good natured but spirited competions between the respectable nations of the world, is the first manifestation (as far as I can see) of their opposition to the West, indeed the rest of the world.

Chrenkoff:Iraq's Progress (Pt. 18) and Tsunami Update

If you ever find yourself at point when the MSM is depressing, and you want to get a bird's eye view of progress in Iraq, the best place to go is Chrenkoff (listed in right-hand column). He posts mammoth, comprehensive digests of the progress in Iraq. Here is the latest. Others are usually listed in his right-hand column.

If that wasn't enough--this guy is amazing--he puts together, or has been since the Tsunami struck, Tsunami updates, which, again, are exhaustive. Here is the latest.

I think Chrenkoff might be unemployed....

Bernard Lewis discredited?

To which Martin Kramer replies "Fie!" More?

Misreading Lewis. Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh has a silly piece on Bernard Lewis in the Washington Monthly, claiming Lewis fathered the idea of imposing democracy on Iraq. So read this reporter's summary of a Washington lecture Lewis delivered a few months before the war: Lewis "said flatly that the idea of third parties producing and applying modern institutions in the Arab Middle East is 'unrealistic'. If the initiative is viewed by Arabs as a 'forced change by an external force', Lewis said, it is doomed to backfire, particularly if the democratizing initiative is accompanied by a prolonged U.S. military presence. Lewis said that Israeli forces were initially warmly welcomed as liberators in South Lebanon, but before long, the perfumed rice and flowers that were thrown at them turned into rockets and bombs." Hirsh missed that because he relied exclusively on Lewis's critics, who read Lewis selectively and with malice.
Tue, Nov 9 2004 5:36 pm

Our Memorials

Rightfully thinking of honoring our fallen soldiers, Hugh Hewitt proposed the other day that we encourage Congress to build a memorial in Shanksville, PA, in the field of the first American resistance. Then I read Jonathan Last's response. Evidently, he has visited Shanksville (written up here), and he says that that would be a horrible thing. It seems that Americans (and non Americans) have, spontaneously, been building a memorial, have been making a sort of pilgrimage and leaving behind signs and symbols of gratitude and memory. The local folks maintain and monitor the site. A big, planned memorial would ruin what has sprung up there. (I wish we had pictures!)

There's more. Tonight, Powerline pointed out a website, Fallen Heroes Memorial, dedicated to listing each of our fallen soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq--with circumstances of death, home, and a place for comments for each soldier individually or a bulletin board for all. It is moving, especially comments of friends or comrades of the fallen. Much, if not all, is hard to read. It is gratifying though to see the graditude and good faith of non-Americans' (again) and many of our American youth.

UPDATE: Jonathan Last has kindly left links to photos in the Comments section.

James C. Bennett's Anglosphere

In light of the continuing unraveling of the United Nation's relevance and creditibility, I think it is increasingly important to talk about the alternatives. James C. Bennett's Anglosphere is one of those. I suppose that another would be something called "a coalition of the willing," something that, while it isn't a permanent, formal relation whose existence would stretch beyond the conflicts that sire them, is currently in operation in two places in the world.

I like Bennett's idea, however, because it is not a collective built around race of Anglos, as it is one built upon English ideas of governance, law, and freedom. So, it can (and does) include people other than Anglos. Here's Bennett's book, now available, and he has website too. Also, his essay on it is still available here.

Games Kids Play

I missed this hilarious bit, the other day, when I was scanning Lileks. It's about his daughter, nicknamed Gnat.

My wife is gone for four days on a business trip, and it’s just me and the kid until Wednesday night. Fine by me. Staying at home all day is pretty much my ideal day anyway. But it began at when Gnat crawled into my bed clutching her new Barbie as Erica Doll.

“Wake up , Daddee.”

I checked the clock. Eight. Not bad. Unfortunately, I had gone to bed at 3 AM. After several years away from my old shameful habit, I have become hooked on Hawaii Five-O again. And we’re talking the recent episodes that have that Al Harrington guy. This meant I was two hours shy of the amount of sleep I’d need to make it through the day. But she fell asleep, waking periodically to ask me to get up. “Five minutes,” I said. I got an hour more out of that one. Eventually I woke to hear her composing a little play with two Barbies.

“Erika’s dead,” she said.

“That’s too bad. Are you sure?”

Pause.

“She’s only dead in the dark.”

That was the creepiest thing I’d ever heard her say. OhKAY, let’s get up.

Ron Suskind on Bush's Certainity

For some discussion and rebuttal of Suskind see Donna at Pajama Pundits and Tom Smith. Also, Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO's The Corner has two posts: first responds to the most provocative parts that quote NRO contributor Bruce Bartlett; the second (scroll down 2 posts) takes up Suskind's piece as a whole.

A disappointed Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly offers his own take of Suskind.

UPDATE:
This from James Lileks: "Interesting piece in the NYT: according to Bruce Bartlett , conservative economist, Bush’s worst problem is that he’s a flaming Jesus nut and hence too much like OBL."

And, then, Lileks excerpts a couple of Suskind's key Bartlett quotes and follows with his usual exquisite commentary:

Got that? New York and the Pentagon are attacked, another plane goes down en route to God knows where, and the President makes a great grand crazy leap of logic: this might be war. Directed the relief effort? For heaven’s sake, did the want the Commander in Chief running down to Ground Zero and handing out bottled water? Sir! We have unconfirmed reports of troop movements in Syria, and our satellites have found unusual activity in some Afghan training camps! Not now, you fool! I have to get these sandwiches to the firefighters!

But back to the main point. I guess Bush wants to kill them all because his religious beliefs make him disinclined to be persuaded, and extreme in his convictions. Ergo agnostics want to kill only some terrorists, and atheists don’t want to kill any ? Look. The problem some people have with Bush isn’t that he believes in God, it’s that he really believes in God. To a certain stratum of our intelligentsia, you’re supposed to believe in God like you believe in continental drift, or the tides, or the yearly reappearance of Shamrock Shakes at McDonald’s. The idea that it’s a two-way conversation strikes many as nonsense, proof that we’re dealing with someone two steps removed from worshipping the moon. I don’t say this as someone who gets daily briefings from the Big Guy Upstairs; for whatever reason, I’ve never felt as if God had me on speed dial. This hasn’t influenced my thoughts about religion in the least, believe it or not. I don’t need Carl Sagan showing up at my door to believe there are billions and billions of stars.

It varies, shall we say. For every believer who feels compelled to drop to his knees you have a Gene Hackman-style priest from “The Poseidon Adventure,” yelling at God. Rational people can have many different manifestations of faith, and it’s a failure of imagination to think there’s but one way.

Duh. I know: duh . But back to the point: The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence . Well, yes. Except, well, no . It depends how you define “evidence.” Bartlett seems to think the problem isn’t what you believe, it’s that you believe. No small distinction. It’s almost a spiritual version of George Carlin’s law: anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

UPDATE:
See this helpful review of several recently published books about Bush's mix of religion and politics.

Intel on Intelligence

A good primer on intel and the intel community's view of itself.

The most remarkable thing at the Oscars last night

With all the recent hype regarding Janet Jackson and Howard Stern's indiscretions or the fear of more political stones (thank you Michael Moore) that might have been cast tonight (of which there was little), I found Aaron Schneider's speech, winner of the Oscar for Live Action Short of Faulkner's Two Soldiers remarkable. Remarkable for the way it alluded to causes of war, specifically WWII and perhaps to the War on Terror.

Though delivered like a machine-gun and running out of time for his speech, it sounded to me as if Schneider compared Pearl Harbor to 9-11, calling them attacks on American soil. He didn't get into details. But I was stirred from the lull his delivery had lead me into, and I got online to see this short was about.

From the official website and a website of one of the actors, Ron Perlman, it looks like this: a story about a small, southern family torn apart by the older of two, inseparable brothers whose patriotism leads him to sign up to defend America after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The younger brother, hardly of age (11, I think), soon follows but out of love of his brother and family. Hence, two soldiers.

At this point, until I get a hold of a transcript of the speech or see the short, it is hard to be sure what Schneider said, let alone meant. But, it was interesting to find that the websites mentioned above seem to want to apply the story to our time. They see some relevance of the WW II story to "our day." Check them out. And I will update more when I get some more info.

UPDATE:
I have just found Aaron Schneider's acceptance speech (at oscars.com) and while he doesn't name 9-11 he does call Pearl Harbor "the first unprovoked attack on the United States," alluding to 9-11 as the second. (Not sure what else could be counted. If somebody knows, let me know.) Here is the fuller quote of the last bit of his acceptance:

. . . our American treasure William Faulkner who wrote "Two Soldiers" in 1942 after the first unprovoked attack on the united states. It's the story of two brothers who fight to preserve their family and country. Like a sibling's love, a soldier's devotion is selfless and unconditional and need not concern itself with the politics of war. I dedicate this to my family and the soldiers who protect our loved ones and the freedoms we celebrate. Thank you.

Violence in the Passion

I hesitate to contribute to the discussion of Gibson's Passion before seeing it, but I came across an observation that seems worth considering when talking about violence in films.

Peter Robinson, over at the Corner, shares some thoughts of one of his friends, Bill Park, "a scholar of film and literature." He says something that seems true to me about the use of violence in films today. Gibson has made a film in the aesthetic film tradition of Samuel Peckinpah and Quentin Tarrantino. Films in which the portrayal of violence begins to look like ballet. It is orchestrated and arranged for different purposes perhaps but it is integral for the film's purpose. Hence, I wonder, doesn't it make Gibson's film the film of Christ for our day?

“[S]hould the flagellation be alluded to, the results shown, but the actual whipping and gouging removed from view? The Greeks never exhibited such sights; the Elizabethans delighted in them. Our own age favors the Elizabethans. Ever since the Production Code was abandoned in 1967, the aesthetic of Hollywood has favored sensationalism, blood spattering and explosions as a kind of ballet of gore. Gibson has merely applied the aesthetic of Peckinpah and Tarantino to the Gospels…."

I am not trying to justify the use of extreme violence in Gibson's film, or in any other. I merely offer what looks like to me as the tradition of film that Gibson (and we too, in a way) is a part of and in which he creates his telling.

Choices for the Super Power

Lots of folks are talking about this speech that Charles Krauthammer gave a few weeks ago at American Enterprise Institute. Looks like a great reflection on the choices "a commerical republic with unipolar global power" faces.

Iraqi scultpure for American Soldier

Here is a heartwarming gesture from the former sculpture of Saddam's busts. Story is included. (Hat tip: Sullivan)

Toppling Saddam a "happy error"--who's next?

The guys over at Powerline pointed out this article (use "laexaminer" for name and password) in the LA Times:

In his Sunday Los Angeles Times column ("The happy error"), Professor Gelernter advocates for the institutionalization of what he calls "the Bush method": "We publish an official list of tyrants we consider it our moral duty to overthrow. The implied next sentence is obvious: Give us an excuse and we'll do it. Play games with the U.N.; show us your true colors. Meanwhile, we might pray for the strange, accidental wisdom to make another providential mistake."

Victor D. Hanson: Weapons of Mass Hysteria

Hanson on recent developments in David Kay's report.