Nobody, but nobody, does invective like Ann Coulter does invective.

For over 30 years, Kerry's primary occupation has been stalking lonely heiresses. Not to get back to his combat experience, but Kerry sees a room full of wealthy widows as "a target-rich environment." This is a guy whose experience dealing with tax problems is based on spending his entire adult life being supported by rich women. What does a kept man know about taxes?

In 1970, Kerry married into the family of Julia Thorne -- a family estimated to be worth about $300 million. She got depressed, so he promptly left her and was soon seen catting around with Hollywood starlets, mostly while the cad was still married. (Apparently, JFK really was his mentor.) Thorne is well-bred enough to say nothing ill of her Lothario ex-husband. He is, after all, the father of her children -- a fact that never seemed to constrain him.

When Kerry was about to become the latest Heinz family charity, he sought to have his marriage to Thorne annulled, despite the fact that it had produced two children. It seems his second meal ticket, Teresa Heinz, wanted the first marriage annulled -- and Heinz is worth more than $700 million. Kerry claims he will stand up to powerful interests, but he can't even stand up to his wife.

Heinz made Kerry sign a prenuptial agreement, presumably aware of how careless he is with other people's property, such as other people's Vietnam War medals, which Kerry threw on the ground during a 1971 anti-war demonstration.

Chris Foote, an economist at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, spent last summer working as an economist in Baghdad. His job was to help Peter McPherson, director of economic policy for the coalition, answer macroeconomic questions. He writes about the experience in the Boston Fed's Regional Review.

My typical workday starts at 8:00 a.m. and lasts until 11:00 p.m. (Everyone in the palace works long hours.) My job is to help Peter McPherson, the coalition’s director of economic policy, answer macroeconomic questions. In many ways, the job is similar to the one I held at the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) before coming to Iraq. There the economic questions changed from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. Baghdad is the same. What is the best way to fix Iraq’s currency? How could foreign investment help Iraq? What tariff regime should we recommend? The questions are all over the map, so I draw more from my experience teaching macroeconomics to undergraduates, and less from my own specialized research.

The macroeconomic model I take with me to Iraq is simple: In the long run, markets and prices allocate resources efficiently, so it’s best to keep government interventions in the market to a minimum. But in the short run, prices don’t adjust to changing circumstances right away, leading to temporary problems like recessions. Because the U.S. economy is set up well, the problems at the CEA were usually of the short-run variety. Iraq is different. Under Saddam, Iraq’s economy was riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and waste. The looting and sabotage to the country’s infrastructure immediately after the war made things worse. The job of the economists I work with is to stabilize the economy from the immediate effects of the war, then help to put the country on a solid long-run foundation.

One of the toughest problems Iraq faces is what to do about its state-owned industries. After the British-installed monarchy was overthrown in 1958, successive Iraqi governments tried to diversify the economy by building state-run factories. Because these factories were owned by the government and not by private investors, many of them became models of inefficiency, surviving only through government subsidies. An important part of economic reform will be to reduce these subsidies and divert government revenue to more productive uses, such as investments in education, transportation, and the oil industry. But reducing subsidies too quickly or too much would force many state-run factories out of business, worsening the unemployment problem.

Cutting the subsidies to consumers may prove even more difficult. Iraq’s oil exports were prohibited by the United Nations after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Since 1996, Iraq has been able to export specified amounts of oil under an “oil-for-food” program run by the United Nations. Iraq’s government distributed the food and other goods it purchased through this program at prices far below their market values. A nominal fee of 250 dinars (about 15 cents) buys a month’s food ration. Subsidies also extend to goods produced inside Iraq—four cents gets a gallon of gas. In the long run, these prices will have to rise if the economy is to have the right market incentives, but price increases will also have to come about as part of an overall program that maintains Iraqis’ living standards.

In the hotel coffee shop one day, a woman who grew up in the Kurdish part of Iraq spends two hours telling me of life under the Baathists. When she was a girl, her father had to flee for his life, and his family hid from Saddam’s men for months in their own house. They later escaped by foot over the mountains to Iran. She also tells me of a 16-year-old boy she knew. At school one day, the boy made a single, offhand comment disparaging the regime. After he got home, policemen visited his house, called him outside, shot him dead, and threw a piece of paper on his body—an order to his family not to give him a proper Islamic burial. His father disobeyed and buried his son with the appropriate ceremony. The men came back later and shot the father.

Newmark's Door links favorably to Right Wing News' interview with Thomas Sowell. I have no quarrel with his approval, but I want to raise some worries about Sowell's advocacy of a flat tax.

John Hawkins: Do you believe a flat tax would help produce more economic growth than the progressive tax system that we currently have? If so, can you explain why?

Thomas Sowell: A flat tax would not penalize additional efforts at an increasingly higher rate. This would reduce the discouragements to such efforts and to the taking of risks.

Eric Rasmusen (of Indiana University, and a blogger) and Frank Buckley (of George Mason University's law school) make this argument in The Uneasy Case for the Flat Tax. This is the abstract:

There is a secret paradox at the heart of social contract theories. Such theories assume that, because personal security and private property are at risk in a state of nature, subjects will agree to grant Leviathan a monopoly of violence. But what is to prevent Leviathan from turning on his subjects once they have lain down their arms? If Leviathan has the same incentives as his subjects in the Hobbesian state of nature, he will plunder them more thoroughly than ever they plundered themselves in the state of nature. Thus the social contract always leaves subjects worse off, unless Leviathan can fetter himself. And how can Leviathan bind himself, if he can always impose confiscatory taxes or choke off trade through inefficient regulations? This Article suggests that schemes of progressive taxation, in which marginal tax rates increase with taxable income, may be seen as a useful incentive strategy to bribe Leviathan from imposing inefficient regulations. Income taxes give Leviathan an equity claim in his state's economy, and progressive taxes give him a greater residual interest in upside payoffs. Leviathan will then demand a higher side payment from interest groups to impose value- destroying regulations. Of course, progressive taxation imposes its own incentive costs, by reducing the subject's private gains. However, these costs must be balanced against the gains from correcting Leviathan's misincentives, and it may that such gains exceed the costs of progressive taxation.

Another worry is that simple flat tax regimes are more efficient, and thereby make it easier for the government to extract higher taxes, and thereby lead to bigger government. Gary Becker and Casey Mulligan, both of the University of Chicago, make this argument in Deadweight Costs and the Size of Government. This is how the NBER describes their study.

In addition to putting hours into record keeping and completing their tax returns, most people spend their incomes and assets in ways that would make little economic sense with a simpler tax structure. Complaints about the complexity and inefficiency of the federal tax code explain the support for a simpler, flatter, and broader tax, such as a proportional tax on consumption, or a fixed percentage tax on incomes above a given level. Unlike an income tax, a consumption tax does not double tax savings, while a relatively low flat income or consumption tax rate does not have the same distorting effects on hours worked and other decisions of the marginal income tax rates of 40 percent and higher in the current American tax system.

However, these advantages alone do not make the case for tax reforms because of the failure to consider their effects on government spending, according to a recent NBER Working Paper by Gary Becker and Casey Mulligan. In Deadweight Costs and the Size of Government (NBER Working Paper Number No. 6789) , they conclude that flatter and broader taxes also tend to encourage bigger government because taxpayers offer less resistance to increases in flat tax rates than in rates of more onerous and less efficient forms of taxation. Any decline in the resistance of taxpayers leads to larger government budgets since an endless number of groups agitate for greater government support.

Flat tax rates, such as the VAT and Social Security taxes on earnings, usually start at very low levels but invariably increase over time. The VAT is now 20 percent and higher in some countries. And payroll taxes began at a modest 2 percent in the 1930s in the United States, but have been increased 21 times to the present 15 percent combined rate on employees and employers. Social security taxes are even higher in some European and Latin American countries. As a result of such increases, countries that receive a larger fraction of their tax revenue from flat taxes tend to have considerably bigger governments. More generally, there is a close link observed by the authors between the ease of collecting tax revenue and the amount of government spending. For example, governments in oil producing nations tend to spend a lot more when the world price of oil is much higher.

Does this mean that Brad DeLong is a closet libertarian? [Warning: that last remark was a joke.]

What kind of political junkie are you? The Washington Post lists seven quotations from the Democratic contenders, all on the theme of "I am the only candidate who . . ." and asks you identify who said it. I got a sad four out of seven correct, but I have the disadvantage I get to read only American newspapers, and do not get American network news. Yeah, I know, a pitiful excuse.

The New York Times has an intriguing piece on spelling problems at eBay.

Such is the eBay underworld of misspellers, where the clueless — and sometimes just careless — sell labtop computers, throwing knifes, Art Deko vases, camras, comferters and saphires.

They do get bidders, but rarely very many. Often the buyers are those who troll for spelling slip-ups, buying items on the cheap and selling them all over again on eBay, but with the right spelling and for the right price. John H. Green, a jeweler in Central Florida, is one of them.

Mr. Green once bought a box of gers for $2. They were gears for pocket watches, which he cleaned up and put back on the auction block with the right spelling. They sold for $200. "I've bought and sold stuff on eBay and Yahoo that I bought for next to nothing" because of poor spelling or vague descriptions, he said.

And then there is this.

When Mr. Scroggins, who has been helping his parents sell off the contents of his father's jewelry and watch repair store, recently listed "a huge lot of earings," it attracted only three bids, and sold for just $5.50.

And then there was the time he sold the family's flatwear.

So Kerry wins the second one. Wait until his wife gets some air time. Michelle Malkin has fun with this:

It's only a matter of time before we witness another Howard Dean Moment in the Democratic presidential race -- but not, I predict, from any of the Democratic presidential candidates. Skulking in the campaign background is a ticking time bombette with a volatile temper and acid tongue who makes Dean look like Mr. Rogers on Prozac.

She's the wife of front-runner Sen. John Kerry, Teresa Heinz. Formerly known as Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira, the hot-headed widow of the late Pennsylvania GOP Sen. John Heinz is self-aggrandizingly known among her wealthy liberal friends and fellow environmental radicals as "Saint Teresa" (and that's pronounced Teh-RAY-zah, you ninny!).

Though she has been married to Sen. Kerry since 1995 -- "I would have bashed him over the head" if he hadn't proposed, she, uh, joked -- she only recently and reluctantly allowed herself to be known as "Teresa Heinz Kerry" in hubby's political brochures and during campaign events and press interviews. "They'll call me Mrs. Kerry, because that's what's natural to them," she complained to Elle magazine last summer. "I don't tell them to shut up. . . . I don't give a s--t, you know."

Okay then. We'll just call her Howard Dean in haute couture.

Boston Magazine reports that she once snapped on Halloween, yelling at three children who had rung her doorbell on Beacon Hill: "I had a big barrel of candy, and it's all gone!" she ranted, shutting the door on the bewildered youngsters. Yeeearghh! She has reportedly chewed out members of her late husband's campaign staff, her current husband's campaign staff, her children, her stepchildren, waiters and sales clerks.

Sympathetic media profilers attribute this anger to the tragic losses she has suffered in her life; several family members died of disease or accidents. A more honest explanation for why she acts up and lashes out at the little people as often as she does is that she has felt entitled to do so all her life. The daughter of a prosperous Portuguese doctor based in Mozambique, she married into the Heinz ketchup fortune and has lived in a privileged, fawning echo chamber ever since.

The Times published a letter today from the Council of Christians and Jews, signed by Rowan Williams, the (Church of England) Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the (Roman Catholic) Archbishop of Westminster, and Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, denouncing anti-Semitism in the guise of being anti-Israel. (The letter is also available at the CCJ website.)

Today, however, anti-Semitism is resurfacing as a phenomenon in many parts of the world. Incitement to hatred and actual violence against Jewish people has increased.

Britain has been less affected than many other countries but has certainly not been immune. We recognise that many in the Jewish community feel vulnerable and afraid.

As presidents of CCJ, we agree that anti-Semitism is abhorrent. It is an attempt to dehumanise a part of humanity by making it a scapegoat for shared ills. We pledge ourselves once more to combat all forms of racism, prejudice and xenophobia.

We recognise that the suffering of the Jewish people is a stain on the history of Europe and our total rejection of anti-Semitism, amid evidence of its resurgence, is a signal that we will not permit it to stain our continent’s future as it has its past. Criticism of government policy in Israel, as elsewhere, is a legitimate part of democratic debate. However, such criticism should never be inspired by antiSemitic attitudes, extend to a denial of Israel’s right to exist, or serve as justification for attacks against Jewish people around the world. Achieving peace, justice and reconciliation in the Holy Land would help to make it harder for anti-Semitism to flourish.

In an article about the letter, The Times notes, accurately:

The statement is unprecedented in its strength. The country's senior Christian and Jewish religious leaders have previously issued such joint statements at times of crisis such as just after the September 11 attacks in America and on the outbreak of war in Iraq. It is an indication of the depths of concern about increasing numbers of attacks on Jewish people and property and of how anti-Semitism has emerged in recent years in a new form, masquerading under the guise of anti-Israel rhetoric.

I finally got to see the famous Howard Dean scream. That was a cause for raising a stink? Big deal. Howard Dean would make an awful president, even by the low standards of the Democrats. But that was obvious from the things he actually said, not from venting some emotion after a hard fought primary. The press notices an inconsequential scream, but pays virtually no attention to his inability to notice that the Soviet Union no longer exists. Bah.

John Kass in the Chicago Tribune (registration required) points out the obvious:

It's not only unfair to Dean, it is terribly unfair to his supporters, many of them young people getting involved in politics for the first time.

The same TV talking heads who now gorge on the Dean video will complain that young people don't care about politics as did they when John Kennedy's presidency and their own adolescence was wrapped up in the trappings of Camelot.

Those 18-year-old Dean supporters may turn away from politics just as they were approaching it. What's unsettling is that they may become as cynical as the political actors who spin on those cable talk shows.

Jeff Jacoby writes about more attacks on the First Amendment, coming from school administrators and "civil rights" activists (no surprises there) trying to write European style "offensive speech" clauses into the First Amendment .

A message is not "inappropriate and insensitive" merely because some people complain about it -- not even if those people aren't white, and not even if the message is politically incorrect. The real outrage at Westside High last week was that four students were disciplined for exercising a freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Other students may not have liked what they had to say. That didn't entitle them to suppress their speech.

The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended. The risk of finding someone else's speech offensive is the price each of us pays for our own free speech. Free people don't run to court -- or to the principle -- when they encounter a message they don't like. They answer it with one of their own.

Down with a cold, I caught the remake of The Music Man starring Matthew Broderick. As a rough rule, I do not like remakes. In spite of the presence of John Goodman, I did not like even the idea of remaking Born Yesterday, much less the remake itself.

The original film version of the The Music Man, with Robert Preston, is probably my favorite movie, so I rebelled even more at the idea of a remake. But the casting of Matthew Broderick broke through my objections. He is too good an actor to pass up, even in dreck such as Godzilla, so I watched. Good thing, too. So what if Robert Preston was born to play Harold Hill, and will never be surpassed. Broderick did a splendid job. I did not know he can sing and dance. I had never heard of Kristin Chenowith, because she is mostly a stage actress, but she was a good and charming Marian Paroo, and she has a lovely voice to boot.

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe submitted five questions to the Democratic contenders for president. Gephardt did not respond, for reasons unknown and now irrelevant. Kerry did not respond either, probably because the Massachusetts senator's staff had never heard of the Boston Globe.

Jacoby's summary of the responses can be found in his columns (part 1 and part 2).

But to the actual responses, you can find them under the five questions:
Please summarize the most important lesson(s) of Sept. 11, 2001.
Have federal courts gone too far in requiring the removal of religious symbols or language from schools and other public places?
What is the best way to achieve the colorblind society that Martin Luther King dreamed of?
Is there any serious problem in American society that you do not believe calls for some kind of government response?
In 1981, President Reagan hung Calvin Coolidge's portrait in the White House Cabinet Room. If you are elected, which president's portrait will you hang, and why?

(Alternatively, you can go here for links to the columns, and the answers listed by candidate and by question.) Much of it makes for interesting reading. Lieberman comes across (I think tolerably accurately) as thoughtful, the only candidate not to answer the religion question by sounding as if he is picking bits from the How to Talk to the Different Constituency Groups book, and the only candidate with any sort of clue about the dangers of terrorism.
Wesley Clark manages to convey, quite accurately, just how much of a windbag he is.
Sharpton manages to do a decent job of hiding from the ignorant the simple fact that he is the most thoroughly evil man in American politics, including Ted Kennedy.
But my favorite part is reading the ramblings of Kucinich. It must be pure agony for the satirists to read this stuff, trying to figure out how to satirize the guy.

And so I would say that the most important lesson we should have learned from 9/11 is that the world community of nations, the world community of humankind everywhere, will reach out to and embrace us when we’re in pain, will enfold us into a protective and compassionate embrace: if we but let them. Which is why, as President, I will work to heal the wounds we’ve opened in our national psyche, the sabotage we’ve inflicted on ourselves and our fellow nations throughout the world.

I do not have much sympathy with the anti-smoking crusaders, but you can go too far in the opposite direction (from the Irish Independent, registration required).

Publican and nightclub shareholder John Cox (30) of the Old Quarter, Little Ellen Street, Limerick, committed what Judge Tom O'Donnell described as an "absolutely and utterly outrageous" act in The Market nightclub, Limerick, on March 30.

Cox admitted at Limerick District Court to an assault on Limerick woman Claire Lyne (21).

.    .    .

Garda James Ahern said Ms Lyne and a friend went to the DJs box in the nightclub to request a song and the defendant offered them cigarettes. Cox went to put one in Ms Lyne's mouth but she declined. At this stage Cox became aggressive towards her, grabbed her hand and bit her.

Every family in Ireland gets a monthly child allowance, called Child Benefit, currently €125.60 each for the first two children, and €157.30 for each subsequent child. This requires government bureaucrats to take from the taxpayer and give to the parents. The Irish Independent (registration required) report that the government then turns around and pays more government employees to take the money back again.

Dunnes and Tesco were yesterday convicted of breaches of the Grocery Order and fined €2,100 each for below-cost selling of baby food.

The cases were taken by the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs relating to babyfood promotions in which Tesco offered 51pc discounts and Dunnes followed suit, slashing their prices by 61pc.

Victoria Gotti, the daughter of mobster John Gotti, has been named editor of a new celebrity magazine called Red Carpet. I would have thought, with her upbringing, she would have been more comfortable in the academic racket. Then again, maybe she is sick of mobsters.

The Irish Independent (registration required) reports that Lenin's corpse is still intact.

Eighty years to the day after his death, Lenin's embalmers gave him a clean bill of health yesterday and said his preserved corpse could last at least another century.

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"We guarantee the body of Lenin can be preserved as it looks now for an indefinite length of time," said Valeri Bykov, head of the Biomedical Technology Centre, which treats his corpse every 18 months in a special biochemical bath and changes his clothes every three years. "More specifically, the body could be preserved for at least 100 years or longer."

One of the things to hold against Freud is that he gave an outlet for high school students who are bright, but nowhere near as smart as they think they are, to make asses of themselves. In a fit of adolescent priggishness, Alex Cox of the Guardian offers up this:

It is no coincidence that Ford "discovered" the magnificently phallic buttes of Monument Valley and made this the archetypal western landscape. It is the most masculine landscape imaginable.

On the 31^st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, FindLaw digs up "human rights lawyer" (for Human Rights Watch) Joanne Mariner to brag about being a killer and a thief, but see, it was okay, because it did not inconvenience her.

With my pay stubs, proof of residence, and the dismaying results of a pregnancy test, I paid a visit to the welfare office and qualified for emergency Medi-Cal, California's program for the public funding of medical care.

The abortion procedure was fast and relatively painless [for her, anyway]. I faced a couple of anti-abortion protesters in the parking lot when I arrived that morning--they held up pictures of fetuses for my inspection--but they were gone by the time I left. My recovery from the procedure was quick and without complications [presumably someone else did the work of throwing away the body parts].

Frank McGahon, who runs the excellent Irish blog Internet Commentator, has moved off blogger to a nifty new site here. Update your bookmarks and blogrolls. If you haven't read Frank's blog, well, don't just stand there, get moving. Of course, now I have to update my own blogroll. Sigh.

Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber unleashes a blast at Gerry Adams and the IRA that is way too soft on Adams (but only because the English language does not have words sufficient to describe the evil and depravity of Gerry Adams). She also rips into Americans who are soft on the IRA, a group who deserve every bit of criticism they get, and then some.

But I think she damages her argument by offering up the race card.

Is it simply the case that only atrocities committed against Americans are vile acts of terrorism to be condemned to the end of time? Do atrocities against others have a time limit beyond which we should ruefully admit it’s time to put all of that behind us and pretend the un-met consequences don’t leak into and poison our political discourse? Or maybe it’s just that white, English-speaking people with the same surnames as us can’t really be terrorists.

I have no good explanation for the staggering romanticism about the IRA in the America, but race does not seem to explain it. (I am reminded of Mandela's attempt to say that US support for Israel and its war on Iraq were the result of American toward "black" Iraqis, as opposed to "white" Israelis.) I note that Irish intellectuals who will apologize for any fascist terrorism directed against the US, including al-Qaida, are quick to condemn the IRA, perhaps because it is too close to home.

Paul Krugman is becoming a bore. He is now denouncing Bush's State of the Union address before he has even seen it, based on "advance reports". His latest column, presumably scripted by Terry McAuliffe while Krugman is out peddling his books, begins this way:

According to advance reports, George Bush will use tonight's State of the Union speech to portray himself as a visionary leader who stands above the political fray. But that act is losing its effectiveness. Mr. Bush's relentless partisanship has depleted much of the immense good will he enjoyed after 9/11. He is still adored by his base, but he is deeply distrusted by much of the nation.

I have no intention of guessing the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, except to say that whatever prediction I make will be wrong. But I feel like writing about the experience of being at the much later Republican caucuses in Washington, which I attended in 1980 and 1984. In 1980, I lived near the University of Washington, so the caucuses was dominated by the kinds of people who were student activists. By the time of the Washington caucuses, Carter had driven back Kennedy's challenge, so there was nowhere to go if you were a dedicated lefty except John Anderson's improbable candidacy. I had arrived planning to vote for Bush, even though I preferred Reagan, because I had doubts that Reagan could beat Carter (note my formidable track record as a forecaster). But the meeting began with the chairman saying something like "I assume we are all here to vote for Anderson", sending the pragmatist inside me into deep cover, and of course I just had to go and say something that started with "Certainly not", and proceeded to spend the evening as something of a right-wing stone thrower. In 1984, I had moved far away from the university, so the Republican caucus was a more conventional and useful affair. But not as fun, not by a long shot.

The Irish Independent (registration required) is usually a pretty bad newspaper. Today it ran a story on the Delta flight that made an emergency stop at Shannon Airport because of a bomb scare. This is the headline:

Hunt for hoaxer who caused airport chaos

Everything was very calm and orderly , said Anthony Kiss from Atlanta, Georgia. "Everybody followed the crew's instructions."

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Gardai confirmed that the evacuation was "very orderly" and that there was no panic. None of the passengers was injured in the evacuation and none required medical attention.

Shannon airport remained fully operational during the emergency and no flight delays were reported.

While I am picking on the Irish papers, I might as well note this story from the Irish Examiner on the Iowa caucuses (registration required). Here is the headline:

Kerry clings to slight lead on eve of Iowa caucus

FOUR Democrats were locked in a tight race last night on the eve of Iowa’s presidential caucuses, with John Kerry clinging to a narrow lead, according to a poll released yesterday (Pic: Howard Dean).

UPDATE: Don't miss The Daily Ablutions takedown of British papers on the same point.

On a recent trip, I forgot to pack a pocket knife I carry into my check-in luggage, and so I lost it at security. It was a cheap knife, so it was not really a big deal, but I was annoyed with myself for being careless. Sometimes carelessness is a bigger deal. The AP reports:

A man going through a courthouse metal detector emptied his pockets, tossing a small bag of marijuana into the security tray.

When Clyde Lamar Pace II realized what he had done, he tried to flee. But he ran the wrong way from Polk County deputies into a locked revolving door.

Did you know that Nigeria has a big film industry? Me neither. In the Guardian (in a rare useful moment), Nick Moran explains why it is not a lot bigger.

Day five. It's 12.30pm and there is still no sign of Jim. There is nothing I can do without him, so we all head off to the beach to film an open-air church scene. As we head off Jim pulls ups, drops his aviators and winks, "Sorry, man." It's very amusing to me that all of the bad habits I've seen at home and in America have blossomed in Nollywood. Mel Gibson might turn up half a day late, but he's on $15m. Jim's getting about 600 quid.

We get to the set. There is no set. With a little help from Jonathan, I build one out of driftwood, some sacking and a roll of tape. The beach is a rough place, and the people that work there live there. One guy tells me he owns the driftwood and the sacking that I find washed up. I wearily give him some money.

Back at the hotel, disaster strikes. One of the guild heads calls and he is unhappy. It seems that although fees have now been paid, they are still angry that the BBC did not go through proper channels, and now they have the power to close us down, fine everyone working with us and ban Jeta for life. As I said before, this administration is determined to be taken seriously. We are summoned to appear at two o'clock tomorrow.

The Guardian describes Clive Stafford Smith as a famous opponent of the death penalty in the US. But apparently what really gets him worked up are student loans. He offers up this in the Guardian today.

I have worked against the death penalty in the United States for nearly 20 years. I have watched six men die in the execution chamber - two have been gassed, two electrocuted, and two killed by lethal injection. For me, capital punishment is a symbol of everything wrong with this harsh society.
And yet, if I were forced to choose, I would rather see Britain reintroduce the death penalty than follow the American path of pawning the future of a generation with student loans.

Every year our US office attracts a dozen law students who volunteer to work against the death penalty. The threat of loans stopped none going to university, because they never thought that far ahead. Yet every year I ask who will come back after graduation, and receive the same answer: how can we pay off student loans on $18,000 a year? The decision is forced on them.

.    .    .

If students want to spend their lives working for faceless firms such as ICI or IBM, that is their decision. But I resent the fact that I cannot hire talented young people because they owe student loans. I abhor the fact that a generation will be coerced into a corporate lifestyle. How can a government which prides itself on inspiring youth to public service conspire to rob our children of this choice?

I was driving round Texas with a British student who is currently volunteering to work with my office. He told me how he has to pay £15,000 in university debt, and a further £25,000 incurred qualifying in law. This debt has already stolen his future. For the last month he has worked to help save the life of Linda Carty, a British woman on Death Row in George Bush's home state. He has loved the experience and would dearly like to continue. But he cannot. He is a debt slave. Not surprisingly, he is going to work for a major City law firm. He will probably never be emancipated.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I just got my credit card bill from Citibank, and was puzzled by a 48 cents credit, under Schwartz Settlement Refund. Wow. 48 cents. I promise not to spend it all in one place. But I had no idea what it was all about. It turns out to be a way to enrich lawyers. Jacob Sullum has the gloomy details.

Asta and Mazal are getting along quite nicely, thank you very much.

So, if a dog and cat can get along, why can't people. (My apologies for that Rodney King moment.)

That was silly. When City Journal published James Q. Wilson's article on the sources of terrorism, I wanted to read it first before recommending it. I don't know why I bothered. Everything Wilson writes is worth recommending. I won't bother excerpting; just read it all.

In the Jerusalem Post (registration required), Bret Stephens takes on Brian Whitaker, the Guardian's Middle East editor, for Whitaker's attack on Robert Kilroy-Silk.

There was a touching meditation in The Guardian the other day by Brian Whitaker, the paper's Middle East editor, on the subject of racism and stereotypes, racist Arab stereotypes in particular. "People happily write and say racist things about Arabs that they would not dream of saying about blacks and Jews," he says, "and usually they get away with it."

.    .    .

This brings Whitaker to his larger theme, which is that while Kilroy has a right to free speech, "where racism is concerned," the right "has to be tempered by restraint."

"If the freedom-of-speech argument is taken to its logical conclusion," he says, "then all kinds of racial abuse become permissible.... That becomes a recipe for communal disaster."

I agree entirely. So now let's talk about Brian Whitaker's sense of restraint.

According to Whitaker, Israeli setters are best described as "thieves and brigands," who "live on stolen land and have been known to shoot Palestinian neighbors for quietly going about their own business picking olives." As for Palestinian attacks on settlers, these can be excused because settlements are "quasi-military targets."

According to Whitaker, Israeli security checks at Ben-Gurion airport are an exercise in gratuitous humiliation. He considers the question "Have you met any Arabs?" to be "fundamentally racist," akin to a traveler at London's Heathrow airport being asked, "Have you met anyone with an Irish accent?"

.    .    .

According to Whitaker, the following poem, by Saudi ambassador to Britain Ghazi al-Gosalbi, is not necessarily about "praising suicide bombers"; its real message, Whitaker says, "is a matter of interpretation." Gosalbi writes:

When the call comes for Jihad
It is a time for the ink and paper,
For the books and the 'Learned men'
To be silent.
When the call comes for Jihad
There's no need for a referendum or a 'Fatwa'
The Day of Jihad is the Day of Blood.

According to Whitaker, "the hardship and inconvenience faced by Israelis" in the past three years "is, of course, pretty minor in comparison with what the Palestinians have to endure."

.    .    .

Then there's Whitaker's plea for "restraint." But where is the restraint in his reporting about Israel, or his effort to understand Israeli thinking? Might there be a reason why security at Ben-Gurion airport is somewhat tighter than it is at Heathrow? (I mean, some reason other than the joy Israeli airport personnel take in picking through Whitaker's underpants.) Does he consider that Israelis have cause to be alarmed by Arab anti-Semitism, even if, as he believes, the phenomenon is exaggerated? Does he have anything stern to say to Palestinians who cheer the murder of Israeli women and children (within the Green Line, that is)?

He does not. His characterization of Israelis is every bit as one-sided and caricatured as Kilroy-Silk's is of Arabs. Indeed, it is infinitely more so. Kilroy-Silk may have written crassly, but what he says is abundantly substantiated by the UN's 2002 Arab Human Development Report, written by a team of Arab scholars led by former Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Rima Khalaf Hunaidi.

.    .    .

The charge of racism is particularly rich coming from Whitaker, who in other contexts complains that Jews are too quick to tag critics of Israel as anti-Semites. But if we're not going to be hypersensitive when it comes to writing nasty things about Israelis, why be hypersensitive about writing nasty things about Arabs? Maybe Kilroy-Silk should have cleared his throat with some kind of reference to the great contributions of Arab civilization. Then again, I don't see Whitaker leavening his prose with a few throwaway lines about Israel's strong democratic traditions or its humane Jewish values.

BUT WHY am I wasting so much time with Whitaker? I met him once: He struck me as a quiet and thoughtful man. In his writing, he is every bit the bigot he claims Kilroy-Silk to be. Or, to put it another way: Whitaker will happily write and say things about Israelis that he would not dream of saying about blacks or Arabs – and he usually gets away with it.

In the Telegraph (registration required), Theodore Dalrymple again makes the case that asylum seekers should be allowed to work.

The refusal to allow them to work turns them into yet another group of dependants on whom the bureaucracy of compassion can exercise its sadism disguised as kindness, while claiming to be underfunded and understaffed. It is yet another example of the state not allowing people to fend for themselves.

It is this refusal to allow them to work, rather than the lurid provocations of the press, that turns us xenophobic. When we see large numbers of slightly foreign looking young men congregating in our streets, with obviously nothing much to do, yet tolerably well fed and well clothed (and all with mobile phones), we naturally enough feel resentful. In one respect, they enjoy a luxury that many of us do not. But it is not a luxury they enjoy, because it saps their self-respect. They end up loathing the country that is sufficiently generous not to let them die, but not generous enough to let them fully live.

Michelle Malkin catches the state of New Jersey trying to blame its incompetence on home schooling.

Last week, a Democratic assemblywoman introduced a bill to impose annual academic testing and annual medical exams on home-schooled students in the Garden State. Never mind a federal law prohibiting states requiring home-schoolers to take the state assessment designed for public school students. And never mind that no public or private school students are subject to such health regulations. The State Board of Education would be given unprecedented regulatory authority over home-schoolers.
The sponsor of this Anti-Home-schooling Act is Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg. She said one impetus for the legislation was the infamous case in Collingswood, N.J., in which four adopted boys abandoned by the state Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) were found starving last fall. The boys' parents, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, allegedly home-schooled the children when they weren't rigging up security alarms to keep their famished kids out of the kitchen.
The Weinberg proposal is a shameless smokescreen for government social workers who botched the Jackson case. Child welfare officials claimed they visited the boys' home 38 times in the past four years. Apparently the sight of a 19-year-old teenager who weighed less than a few bowling balls fazed no one. Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris admitted she had employed staff who were "either incompetent, uncaring or who had falsified records."
While New Jersey politicians attempt to punish law-abiding homeschoolers for the sins of DYFS and the Jacksons, one of every 14 children in foster care in the state is placed in a home operated by someone with a criminal conviction or documented as having mistreated a child.

Demonstrating that it is ocassionally good for something, the Guardian offers up a model for predicting the Oscar winner for best picture, based on which films win the other awards, such as BAFTA and the Golden Globe. They even generously offer an Excel spreadsheet (Excel? The lefty Guardian is not going to fight the eeeevil Microsoft monopoly?) with the data for 2003, and offer the data back to 1998, so that you can check out their predictions.

The method is really simple. Points are awarded for winning previous awards, although they do not say how the points were calculated for each award (I'm guessing a simple linear regression). The points are then added up, and the predicted winner is the movie with the highest points. I plan to test it out.

John O'Farrell's specialty is writing tripe for the Guardian. Today though he does the usual infantile lefty stomp.

Cynics have been quick to point out that the president has made these bold and exciting announcements at the beginning of an election year, but there is a good, practical reason for this. Nasa will spend months desperately searching for volunteers to risk their lives spending months cooped up flying to a lifeless desert, but no one will be mad enough to want to do it. Then in November, Bush will be re-elected to a second term, and suddenly millions of people will rush forward screaming: "Get me to Mars, the moon, whatever; just get me off this planet as quickly as possible."

Eugene Volokh reports that at least one blogger is annoyed by Volokh conspirator David Bernstein. In light of that, I want to mention that the Volokh Conspiracy is one of the best blogs around, but it nonetheless improved when David Bernstein joined it.

In a story in the Jerusalem Post (registration required) on the four Israelis murdered by a suicide bomber, this bit struck me:

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath on Thursday called the attack "justified, because it was directed at soldiers in occupied territory." Speaking from Copenhagen, Sha'ath also said the Palestinian Authority could stop such terror attacks, but Israel must first halt its attacks on the Palestinians.

An interesting combination of stories today. The LA Times (registration required) carries a piece by novelist Diana Wagman, describing her change of heart from being a gun opponent to being a gun supporter.

Guns are bad. All my life, it's been that simple. At my son's preschool, if a child pointed a banana and said "bang," he was admonished to "use the banana in a happier way." As far as I was concerned, the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to protect ourselves against invading armies, not the right to buy a gun and keep it under our beds.

So what would make someone like me change my mind? I met this gun enthusiast. As research for my new novel, I asked him many questions, all the while voicing my disgust. My character might use a gun, but I never would. "Come to the range," the gun guy said. "I'll teach you to shoot."

I expected a dungeon full of men missing teeth and wearing T-shirts decorated with Confederate flags. Instead, I found a sunny, wood-paneled lobby and guys who looked like lawyers on their lunch break.

The man behind the counter was as pleasant as a grandfather from Central Casting. "What would it take for me to buy a gun?" I asked him. He explained the California laws, some of the most stringent in the country. I would have to wait 10 days — the "cooling off" period. There would be federal and local background checks. I'd have to take a safety class. I'd have to buy a childproof lock. I couldn't purchase an assault weapon. I couldn't buy more than one handgun per month. Of course, he said, if I didn't want to wait, I could drive 10 minutes and buy an Uzi illegally out of someone's car.

When my guide arrived, he gave me a choice of handguns. I went with the .357 magnum — I recognized the name — and a traditional target with a red bull's-eye. I couldn't imagine shooting at one shaped like a man.

First lesson, respect your firearm. I got a little talk about how powerful it was. I learned how to hold it. To load it. And finally to fire it. It was terrifying. The gun was so heavy, I couldn't keep it steady. It took both index fingers to pull the trigger, and then there was a flash of flame, a loud crack, a substantial kick. It was much harder than it looked in the movies. I occasionally hit the target, but I also managed to obliterate the metal hanger that held it.

I have to admit: I loved it. I had a fantastic time. The power of that gun for me, a 5-foot, 3-inch woman, was immediately, shockingly seductive. The thrill when I hit the bull's-eye (once) was as great as making a perfect tennis shot. I felt like I was playing a careful game of darts in a small, alcohol-free bar.

Later, I was surprised to discover that some of my closest friends owned guns. People I never would have suspected confessed that their guns made them feel protected. Still, most of my friends thought handguns should be outlawed, completely, in every circumstance.

I no longer was so sure. I did some research — there are countless testimonials about guns saving someone's life. I looked into shooting as a sport. I spoke to a woman who had found a wounded deer and shot it, ending its agony. I changed my mind: Guns aren't bad.

Laura (6) and Lisa Marie (11) Keane perished in the blaze which engulfed their home in the Glendallon Estate on the morning of July 5 last. Their mother, Rita, and 10-year-old brother Patrick were rescued from the blazing building.

Butcher John Keane was at work when he received a frantic phone call from his wife shortly after 8am that their home was on fire.

On his return, he joined neighbours, who were using bricks to break down the front door and the windows of the house, as the children screamed inside. By that time, his wife was lying on the pavement, having been rescued from the house by a neighbour.

Mr Keane broke the kitchen window with his bare hand to get inside but was forced to get out immediately because of the intensity of the smoke and heat.

A weeping Rita Keane told the inquest she was sleeping with her youngest child, Laura, when she was woken by her son Patrick, who told her there was a fire in the downstairs living room.

She took the two younger children downstairs but could not find the keys to open the front door, which was locked. There were also safety catches on all the windows. The smoke was so thick she could not get to the telephone in the hall.

I have not paid close attention to the Paul O'Neill story, mostly from being too busy at that little annoyance called a day job. But now I am persuaded there is nothing interesting to report. In the Guardian, professional liar and sleezy hypocrite Sidney Blumenthal advises us that the story proves that Sidney is completely right about everything. Every day, in every way, the Guardian just gets worse and worse.

The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times (both require registration) report that Carol Moseley-Braun is dropping out of the race and asking her six supporters to back John Howard Dean. But the LA Times does not carry the story (at least online), and the Washington Post is simply cruel: it mentions her decision in the twelfth paragraph of a story about Dick Gephardt attacking Dean. Not even Ann Coulter would be that mean(although she does say that Clark is "crazier than a March hare".

UPDATE: Okay, it looks as if the Post finally gave her a story of her own. But it was fun while it lasted.

Howard Dean's campaign forgot to get its hands on www.deanforamerica.biz, which has been turned into a make fun of Howard Dean site. Some of it useful, much of it entertaining if you are not overly fond of him. But on it I found this quotation from a Joe Klein piece on Dean in Time, which left me liking Dean just a bit more.

There is a recklessness about the man, an adolescent screw-you defiance that runs much deeper than the steady stream of gaffes produced by his projectile candor.

UPDATE: One of my references to Dean originally said John Dean instead of Howard Dean. I keep doing that, for reasons unknown to me. It isn't about comparisons between the two. It is probably that I started to pay attention to politics not too long before Watergate, and I can't think of a Dean other than John Dean. Talk about showing my age.

The Jerusalem Post (registration required) reports on the upsurge in Israeli women studying martial arts.

Varda Frankel is a 73-year-old brown belt in Karate and has been studying martial arts for the past 40 years.

But when she moved from Paris to Jerusalem in 1972, she was hard-pressed to find a school in which to continue her studies. She found one Karate class at the cultural center in the Old City and a co-educational studio in Talpiot which closed down 10 years ago. But she was never able to find a martial arts center that she could call home.

All that changed a month ago when Frankel, along with 20 other like-minded female Jerusalemites, discovered the newly-established Israel Women's Martial Arts Federation (IWMAF), or El HaLev (Straight to the Heart) on Rehov Hahistadrut in the center of town.

"Having an all-women's facility is a very good thing," says Frankel, who is currently enrolled in Shotokan Karate classes at the federation, where she is working towards her black belt. "Many women feel more free when they study only with other women."

Providing women in martial arts with a space where they can feel free is the founding philosophy of the new center.

"This place is a safe space for women who want to give and receive support and grow together as martial artists," says IWMAF co-founder and Judo and Self-Defense instructor, Yehudit Sidikman. "The goal is to help women - no matter what shape or size, ability or disability, age, color, or religion - learn how to protect themselves. We hope the center will become their home, a place where they can feel safe to learn what they need to learn."

Sidikman says it's difficult being a female in the martial arts field as "you're usually in a minority. We make up 50 percent of the world; we should make up 50% of the martial arts classes. But we don't and I think that's because we're missing a support network."

According to Sidikman, the primary obstacle for women interested in pursuing this male-dominated arena is a lack of comfort.

"It takes a special type of girl to be able to fit into a group of 20 boys," she says, pointing to the high rate of female youngsters who drop out of co-ed community center lessons. "At the beginning of the year there will be 15 boys and four girls. By the end of the year it's a big deal if one girl is still in that class."

Sidikman says it's just as difficult for girls to join co-ed martial arts classes as it is for them to play soccer or basketball on a boys-only team.

In the Telegraph (registration required), Mark Steyn argues that militant Islam is trying not so much to stop criticism of Islam as it is trying to stop discussion of Islam altogether.

When Catholic groups complain about things like Terrence McNally's Broadway play Corpus Christi (in which a gay Jesus enjoys anal sex with Judas), the arts crowd says a healthy society has to have "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas", etc. But, when Cincinnati Muslims complained about the local theatre's new play about a Palestinian suicide bomber, the production was immediately cancelled: the courageous transgressive arts guys folded like a Bedouin tent. The play was almost laughably pro-Palestinian, but that wasn't the point: the Muslim community leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam was beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.

Fifteen years ago, when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was declared and both his defenders and detractors managed to miss what the business was really about, the Times's Clifford Longley nailed it very well. Surveying the threats from British Muslim groups, he wrote that certain Muslim beliefs "are not compatible with a plural society: Islam does not know how to exist as a minority culture. For it is not just a set of private individual principles and beliefs. Islam is a social creed above all, a radically different way of organising society as a whole."

.    .    .

And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins – and all the noisy types who run around crying "Censorship!" if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks suddenly fall silent. I don't know about you, but this "multicultural Britain" business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.

Describing him as "a man who positively revels in airing his anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views," the Muslim Council of Britain urged the BBC to "take the necessary disciplinary action".

"We wonder whether you would consider it proper to give the same kind of prominence to a presenter who was so openly anti-black or anti-Jewish," Iqbal Sacranie, the council's secretary-general, wrote in a letter to Lorraine Heggessey, controller of BBC1.

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, must decide if a prosecution for incitement to racial hatred is warranted, a decision he will arrive at after consideration of the facts and also what lies in the public interest. A prosecution would set a much-needed marker for social relations.

And, given Goldsmith's perception in the Muslim world as pro-Israeli, Britain's Muslims are not holding their breath that he will initiate a prosecution against someone writing for a proprietor with similar political leanings.

I do not know how big the dangerous element of Islam is. But watching too much of the supposedly liberal press cave in to threats from Muslim bigots (not all; see Will Hutton), or even pre-empting them with editorializing in news pieces suggests that Steyn's worries about multiculturalism as a temporary stage may have merit.

The president of Ireland is largely a ceremonial position, although Mary Robinson worked very hard to use it for political purposes. But it is an elected position. For now. The Irish Independent (registration required) declares that democracy is too expensive and might, well, tarnish the incumbent.

In a series of excellent presidents, Mrs McAleese stands out. It is safe to say that we may have had some equally good, but never a better one. Her dignity, her grace, her poise, are impeccable. She is a brilliant public speaker and a facilitator of worthy causes and useful contacts behind the scenes. And she has the under-stated but impressive support of her husband Martin.

Yet the idea has taken root in some quarters that we should have a contest - although the Fine Gael and Labour leaders both dislike the prospect. Fine Gael appear content to let the resident have an unopposed second term, but a body of opinion in Labour favours the nomination of Michael D Higgins.

The net result of such a move for Labour (and Fine Gael, if they put up a candidate) would be to waste time and resources on an election they could not possibly win. A worse scenario would be the nomination by Greens and others of an "environmentalist". That would risk bringing into a presidential election matters which belong properly in the domain of party politics.

There is another danger. Mrs McAleese was first elected as a Fianna Fail candidate. But like her predecessors, she proved herself a president for all the people. A contested election would force her to rely on Fianna Fail for funds and organisation and could take some, though perhaps not much, of the gloss off her image.

It would be another story if she felt she had given sufficient service and wanted to retire. She has, rightly, given no indication of her wishes and intentions, but every sign says she still relishes her job and has more to contribute.

UPDATE: Fainting in Coyles gives the editorial a good fisking.

I abandoned blogging over the weekend to go to a beach hotel in Dungarvan and relax. I got annoyed with my wife and told her to go fly a kite, so she did. Actually, we did do a lot of kite flying (and yes, I have a penchant for stupid jokes). We left the dog in the kennel, and Mazal had the house to herself for two days. Upon return, she seemed to have missed the dog the most.

Mazal is doing fine these days, having reached five months without incident, other than a rough start. As you can see, she has lost her kitten blue eyes, and has moved to standard cat green, and she has laid partial claim to the dog's beanbag.

She also has a seven foot tall scratching post, with three levels, to which she runs whenever she is feeling energetic. Unless I am taking her picture, in which case she sits still. Do cats pose?

The Irish Independent (registration required) reports that an emu escaped from a wildlife sanctuary in Londonderry, and they finally got it back. That was probably not fun. Several years ago, I was in Brno, in the Czech Republic. I was in the city zoo shortly before closing, when I saw some deer-like creature loose. My Czech phrase book inexplicably did not include "you have an animal on the loose" in it, and the staff I found spoke no English, so I got some good practice in the game of charades. They caught it, but I don't know if it could kick like an emu.

I have been getting pestered with emails from sundry outfits demanding a boycott of Israel. So it with pleasure that yesterday I got a crate (yes, a crate) of Jaffa oranges from Israel in yesterday's post. They are very, very good, much better than I find in Irish stores, and I plan to hugely enjoy all the ones my wife does not eat. I also just got introduced to halva, which I gather is basically a mix of honey and ground sesame seeds.

UPDATE: Jon Ihle at Back Seat Drivers does not approve of halva. Oh, well. We will have to agree to disagree on it, because I like halva. It does not compare, however, to liver dumpling soup, which is food from the gods. I don't know if it is Jewish, but I always get it in Jewish restaurants.

The problem with traveling is that not only do you not get to blog, but you fall behind on the comments that need a response. Just before Christmas, I linked to piece by E.J. Dionne on Christmas, eliciting some displeasure from a reader who said it effectively erased Judaism. On this point, I am woefully ignorant. I know there is Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism, and that other Jews make jokes about Reform Judaism in the way that Christians joke about Unitarians. I know the Old Testament is involved (and at least I know that the Book of Job is not in the New Testament). Even though I went to the University of Chicago (that used to be known as the Baptist university where Jewish kids went to learn Catholic philosophy from atheist professors), I never learned much about Judaism, because it was not something I paid much attention to.

So I ask, can anyone recommend something for a starter read? Don't give me the 18 volume Everything There is to Know, because I am already behind. Something maybe a bit more manageable. And introductory. And about religion, not politics. (And after mulling over the free speech issue recently, be warned that I will promptly expunge comments directing everyone to the latest edition of the Protocols.)

The Irish Independent (registration required) reports that a group of Irish soldiers in Liberia have attacked a group of Liberians.

A crack unit from the Irish Army Ranger Wing has rescued a group of captive villagers who were being beaten and raped by gunmen from renegade Government of Liberia (GOL) forces.

Twenty heavily armed Rangers, part of a special UN operations task group, stormed a container where the 35 men and women were being held prisoner and rescued them.

The Ranger patrol detained the renegade commander, known as "Prince", and the deputy commander of the GOL forces during the rescue operation.

The rest of the kidnap gang is believed to have fled across the border into Guinea.

Acting on an intelligence tip-off, the Irish troops were dropped by helicopter into the town of Gbapa in the northern sector of Nimba county and about 300 kilometres north-east of the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

.    .    .

The two suspects, who are part of a group loyal to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, were then handed over to local police following the rescue on Tuesday evening and were transferred for questioning yesterday to a police station in Monrovia.

Many of the hostages were taken to a medical centre for treatment by local doctors and Irish medics as a result of the rapes and beatings inflicted upon them while in captivity.

I expect the Irish anti-war left to be all over this. And pigs will fly.

UPDATE: Good satire is really hard to do, and should be done only if you have the talent for it, which is why I should try to avoid it. I was sufficiently unclear in the above that I misled Dick O'Brien of Back Seat Drivers into thinking I was condemning the Irish troops. Not in the least. I agree completely with Dublin Gal that the Irish troops should be commended for a job well done. The Irish also did good work in East Timor. My goal was not to pick on the Irish government or its military. It was to abuse the Irish left. The morning I posted it, I was talking to a couple of Irish academic lefties who regularly spew out International ANSWER type stuff, and demanded to know why the Irish mission could be regarded as humanitarian, since the Irish army was not in other trouble spots around the globe. Their response was that the Irish army could not be everywhere, even though they regularly insist that the US occupation of Iraq cannot have a humanitarian element because there are trouble spots in the world where the US has not intervened. They refused to explain the difference to me. As government's go, the Irish government is actually pretty good, and I have a lot of respect for the Irish military. But much of the Irish left is, well, repulsive.

Clark Judge thinks the US is involved in, and nearing the end of, another hundred years war.

The First World War led to the shattering of three imperial systems, and it is not too much to say that the world is still struggling with their demise and that of the international system of which they were so integral a part.

The three imperial systems were the uneasy German imperial brotherhood of Prussia-dominated Germany and Vienna-centered Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. From this perspective, the three major post-war struggles have been part of a single struggle about the character of the successor regimes and whether they or the democracies that prevailed in World War I—particularly the United States and Britain—would establish the norms of the international system that would eventually emerge. In World War II we dealt with Nazi Germany, the successor to the Germanic empires. In the Cold War, we dealt with the Soviet Union, the successor to the tsarist Russian Empire. Now we are grappling with those who followed the Ottomans.

In the Chicago Tribune (registration required), Eric Zorn writes about stacking things up:

In view from my desk are no fewer than 10 stacks of material--nine paper, one computer storage discs--that I aspire to sort, file and ultimately eliminate. News clippings, letters, folders, publications, directories, manuals, old notebooks, current notebooks, forms, applications, invitations, demands, suggestions and so on.

Even if these stacks were sorted by category, which they're not, really, they would still be a major drag on my life.

"Stacks hide things," said Fran Piekarski, Chicago-area chapter president of the National Association of Professional Organizers and the owner of Remedease in Batavia. "In that way, they often cause a lot more havoc and chaos than plain old clutter."

They're insidious.

"As soon as you put one piece of paper on top of another, you've just given other pieces of paper permission to sit on them," said consultant Terry Prince, Sacramento-based president of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. Then the growing stacks "steal time from you" when you can't find what you thought was in them as you paw through stuff you didn't really need to keep in the first place.

And they often lie.

"Stacks looks like a form of organization, but they're usually not," said consultant Randi Lyman, owner of A Helping Hand in suburban Winfield. "They're usually evidence of delayed decision making."

Rather than deal with pieces of paper or other office or household items as they come to us, we pile them up, sometimes neatly, until such time as we have the inclination to take whatever action they require and then either throw them away or put them into long-term, easy-access storage.

In my case, this time has often been never.

A stack is the physical embodiment of procrastination. It's where good intentions and human nature accumulate, compound and suppurate.

"Deal with your stacks now, or they will own you later," Prince said.

Which reminds me. I have always liked the old Ph.D. joke: B.S. means bulls**t, M.S. means more s**t, and Ph.D. means piled high and deep.

I started out the morning in a bad mood, but then I read this by Brad DeLong, and agreeing with it cheered me up.

Wesley Clark, the candidate of the "uh oh, we are going to lose soooo badly with Dean, so even a blowhard like Clark will do" school of Democrats, has announced his clever tax scheme: tax all the millionaires, so that everyone else can avoid taxes. The LA Times (registration required) reports:

Under Clark's proposal, a family of four making up to $50,000 a year would pay no federal income tax at all, and all families with children making up to $100,000 would see a reduction in their tax bill. The retired four-star general says he would offset the loss in tax revenue by asking millionaires to pay more.

Daniel Pipes takes apart Tom Harkin, dubious apologist for radical Islam.

Dennis Prager reports that Jimmy Carter has denounced The Lord of the Rings for war mongering.

"For three hours in this latest installment of 'Lord of the Rings,' young people the world over watch my work in the United States and your work here in Europe -- to get nations to disarm, not to make moral judgments about any nation other than America or Israel -- undone.
.    .    .
"Who knows what might happen if enough young people start thinking that war is an option, or that some people or countries can be labeled 'evil,' or that there is something noble about a soldier who kills for a 'just' cause?"
.    .    .
"When I saw the audience in the movie theater cheer when Orcs were killed, I shuddered," Mr. Carter said, visibly pained. "The message of 'Lord of the Rings' is just plain bad.

"We must do something to counteract this celebration of violence," Mr. Carter said emphatically. "To see even trees fight and kill is enough to make any right-thinking person sick to his or her stomach.
.    .    .
At the conclusion of the interview, Mr. Carter was asked if his campaign against "Lord of the Rings" had a name. The peace activist thought for a moment, and replied, "Compassion for Mordor."

This story is fictional, but not false.

Finally done with traveling, I returned to Cork to learn from my wife that it is now possible to buy A&W root beer in Cork. I have never before seen root beer of any sort in Ireland before. Now if only they bring an actual A&W to Cork, and I will be in permanent bliss.

VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE: The shop is called Rocomore, in the Savoy Shopping Centre on Patrick St. It is the first shop on the left from the Patrick St. entrance. And glory days, the woman who runs the shop is keen to learn what other sorts of things she could stock. She already has Hershey's chocolate chips, and marshmallow cream, and A&W cream soda. We told her that if she gets Fritos corn chips, we would buy them by the case, weekly.

A Happy New Year to one and all. And to those of you who celebrate the New Year at a different time, I hope you enjoyed the celebrations. I have been travelling, so posting has been pretty negligible. But I will be back up to speed on Sunday or Monday after I get over jet lag.