First Stephen Bainbridge, and now Mike Rappaport of The Right Coast, have taken the latest politics survey. I am unimpressed. To amuse myself, I took the test, and came up with this as the end result:

The survey is exasparating because it claims to distinguish two kinds of issues, left versus right, and pragmatic versus idealistic, but gives no indication how the statements you are asked to agree or disagree with connect to these issues. The statements, moreover, are often so broad or vague that is often difficult to figure out how to answer them. (For some examples, see below the fold.)

UPDATE: Although the survey takes itself seriously, Mike Rappaport and Stephen Bainbridge have both written to say they thought of the survey more as a lark.

Richard Cohen busily denounces George Bush:

At the moment the issue is Kerry's Vietnam service. He was first attacked for being a hot dog and a phony who did not really earn his medals. George Bush himself has now sort of put that matter to rest by conceding that Kerry is a hero -- although apparently not enough of one for Bush to denounce the ads.

Recently, a combination of building a house, work obligations, and some other issues have left me grumbling about life is hard, blah, blah, blah.

Wednesday night, a chartered flight took off from Dublin for Nigeria with 28 people, 25 of them Nigerians and three of them children who were born in Ireland and Irish citizen. RTE interviewed Said Bolagan, one of the people being deported. Bolagan had come to Ireland a couple of years ago, and had a child. Listening to a man break down in tears because he has failed in attempts to give his family a reasonably safe life, something he could get in Ireland but not in Nigeria (he says his first child was murdered there), or as puts it, "they have taken the joy out of me", can only be described as awful.

There are difficulties in sorting out immigration issues, and it is clear that the European welfare state and open immigration are politically and economically unsustainable. But no one should doubt that how well off you are depends heavily on your choice of what country to be born in.

I arrived in Ireland in 1992, and shortly thereafter was out of the country for a couple of weeks. When we returned, I had the bad luck to learn that there were errors in my paperwork from an immigration officer who was clearly in a foul mood, probably because he had to work on Good Friday. For about 15 minutes he gave me a lot of grief and made a variety of threats, mostly to refuse me entry and send me back to the States. In the end, he let me through. Why? I had a US passport, which meant someone reasonably influential in Ireland wanted me there. So if he refused to let me in, I would have made a phone call to someone who would have made another phone call, and in the end his boss would have eaten him alive for having his day off interupted. If I had, say, a Kenyan passport, things would have worked out differently.

Police work is often dangerous and often boring. And sometimes, it is really, really icky. The Chicago Tribune (registration required) posts a picture of a group of self-described AIDS activists marching naked in New York, about to arrested by the police for, among other things, obstructing traffic.

It is not a pretty sight. Those cops have my sympathy, and they will need to take shower when they get home.

A couple of weeks there was a nasty incident in Chicago, when a bus emptied a reservoir of human waste into the Chicago River, the bulk of it landing on a tour boat passing underneath. So who was the culprit? According the Chicago Tribune (registration required), it was the trendily green Dave Matthews Band.

The Dave Matthews Band, a rock group so "green" it has its own flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, could face $70,000 in fines after one of its tour bus drivers allegedly dumped a tankful of human waste on a Chicago River sightseeing boat earlier this month.

After a two-week investigation into an incident that prompted outrage from Chicago's mayor and snickering from late-night television hosts, Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan on Tuesday accused the band and driver Stefan A. Whol of illegally dumping foul-smelling muck into the river and creating a public nuisance.

About two-thirds of the passengers on the upper deck of Chicago's Little Lady were doused with a brownish-yellow liquid as the tour boat crossed under the Kinzie Street bridge during an Aug. 8 architectural sightseeing cruise.

Some of the passengers suffered nausea and vomiting after the waste cascaded into their eyes and mouths and soaked their hair and clothing. Five went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for tests.

The Guardian runs a piece a hit piece on Israel by Ewa Jasciewicz that makes for compelling reading. Reading it, you are compelled to ask whether she has a pathological hatred of Israel or whether she is simply incapable of thinking her way out of a paper bag. Jasciewicz is the latest martyr to the horrors of Israeli justice, locked up a in hot dry prison cell, suffering daily from its cold dampness, all because she believes, believes I tell you, in social justice and human rights. Well, not exactly.

Life for journalists wanting to report from Israel has just become harder. I was detained two weeks ago by the Israeli authorities while trying to enter the country in order to complete a number of commissions for the British magazine Red Pepper. I have been held in custody at Ben Gurion airport ever since, while appealing against deportation.

Then we get a whole series of non sequiturs.

During my initial interrogation at the airport in Tel Aviv I was asked if I knew any violent Palestinians. Responding in the negative, I was told: "We think you do, but we can accept that you don't know that you do."

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that the Israeli state sees all Palestinians as potential terrorists. Thus anyone who associates with them is, at best, an unwitting associate.

She provides evidence that Israeli security might be on to something.

I believe that I was particularly targeted because of my involvement with the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent, Palestinian-led organisation that stages protests against the occupation. I am proud to be associated with it. White westerners are not supposed to leave their comparative comfort zones and get involved in violent conflicts in the Middle East. Nor are they supposed to put their bodies between bullets, tanks and children. They are not meant to dismantle government security walls, accompany ambulances, live and laugh with, and grow attached to, "security threat" families and communities.

Yesterday I accepted in court that I had interviewed terrorists as part of my journalistic work, but maintained that I had not been duped into helping them. I am a journalist and I know when people are being manipulative. I know myself.

I am happy to declare that my writing has a biased and loaded agenda: the promotion of human rights and social justice. I am motivated by the belief that writing can serve as an agitational tool for those who wish to challenge oppressive realities, demand grassroots power and reclaim lives lost to racist and colonialist agendas.

The reference to white westerners and racism reminds me of Mandela's comment:

Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white.

I have not been altogether kind to the badly politicized American Sociological Association, with good reason, but I do not wish to suggest that the failures of professional sociology are somehow unique. The American Political Science Association meets next month. Their featured speakers from outside the profession are George Soros, Mary Robinson, Paul Heinbecker, Lani Guinier, and Joseph Stiglitz.

George Soros is famous partly because he is really, really rich. The other part is stuff such as blaming Jews for rising anti-Semitism (or as Michael Steinhardt, who hosted that famous lecture put it, "George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be") and his funding of MoveOn.

Mary Robinson departure from the UN was described by a fawning Salon interviewer this way:

It's common knowledge that her defense of the Durban Conference against Racism, which U.S. and Israeli representatives walked out of, her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and her condemnation of the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Camp X-ray at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay provoked the Bush administration to oppose the extension of her term.

Paul Heinbecker is the former Canadian ambassador to the UN who crafted one of the "give Saddam one more chance" resolutions. He was vehemently opposed to the war:

“To me, motives matter,” he added. “Saddam was evil. But I respectfully disagree that war was necessary.” The Iraq government had committed atrocities in the past – gassing Kurds in 1988, viciously suppressing a Shiite uprising following the first U.S.-led war, led by Bush Sr.

But in 2003, Iraq was not planning any mass killings. “Saddam should have been prosecuted” for his previous atrocities, “not attacked,’ Heinbecker said.

It has been said, he added, that anti-Americanism is really anti-American foreign policy, and isn’t directed against the American people. But if the American people keep electing governments that promote a foreign policy that is at odds with the rest of the world, how long can the argument be upheld that there is a divide between the people and the government?

After that line-up, a layman might be forgiven for suspecting that the Stiglitz invitation was driven by his attacks on the Bush administration and his apparent belief that world poverty can be explained away by corruption at the IMF.

None of this says that the APSA has put together an inept bunch of featured speakers. Guinier and Robinson are experienced, articulate and smart lawyers. Whatever his failings as a policy maker, as an economic theorist Stiglitz is a genius. Granted, Soros is a few cards shy of a full deck, but he is a billionaire, so maybe he will pick up the lunch tab. What is depressing is remarkably narrow range of ideas present. If this were the annual banquet for The Nation, it would be hardly out of place. But for the APSA featured speaker line-up, it is seems as if the organizers are indulging in aggressive ideological narrowness.

Polly Toynbee insists that rising hostility to America (which of course she delusionally blames on Bush) can be seen in the fall off in American Studies programs.

Due to lack of demand, five universities have closed American studies departments while others have cut staff. Keele, traditionally the top-ranking American studies department, with a maximum, grade five ranking for research for the past few years, has had to fire half its staff. Professor Ian Bell at Keele says: "Students don't want to be branded by doing American studies. They still want to do American modules as part of English or history but, after Bush, they shy away from being labelled as pro-American - not after the obscenity of Iraq."

UPDATE: Scott Burgess of The Daily Ablution has much, much more on the frivolous Miss Toynbee.

In the Guardian, Emily Bell explains life raising three sons, but no daughters.

My husband who, when our second son was born, confessed to being fractionally disappointed it was not a girl, has since changed his mind, discovering that two allies are better than one and three would be better still. He looks at our baby, who gazes at me still with the desperate adoration of an alcoholic looking at a brewery, and confidently asserts,"You will come over to my side eventually."

There was further reason for medical cheer over the holidays with some scientists discovering that giving birth to boys gives women traces of Y chromosomes in their bones which may help guard against osteoporosis. At least I think this is what the report said, but as the radio news report was drowned out by the sound of a Megazord battling a nude Action Man, I can't be totally sure. The fact that men leave genetic material lying around in their mothers' bones should come as no surprise to those who have had to fish their socks out from under the sofa or retrieve stray shin pads from the top of a bookcase.

.      .      .

Alarmingly, a colleague asked, "Who is going to take care of you when you are old?" Being optimistic (apparently), I like to think that despite being male, my sons will not in fact abandon me in what will be an unbelievably extended old age, but will have inherited their father's unlimited patience with small children and old people. I am resigned however to making most of the phone calls - there is only so much nurture can undo.

Bret Stephens points out that Bush's lefty critics cannot make up their minds whether to accuse Bush of being an Israeli shill or a Saudi shill, so they just go ahead and accuse him of both.

At the same time, alarms were being sounded about some of the lunatic ideas making the rounds at Club Neocon. In July 2002, Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec gave a briefing to Mr. Perle's Defense Policy Board, in which he called Saudi Arabia "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" of American interests in the Middle East. Tom Ricks, the Washington Post reporter who broke the story about the briefing, noted the anti-Saudi line was gaining traction in such magazines as The Weekly Standard and Commentary, which, he helpfully added, "is published by the American Jewish Committee."

The president's critics went into a tizzy. Crown Prince Abdullah had only recently proposed an Arab-Israeli peace plan, and the Saudis were still in pretty good odor. Mr. Murawiec, wrote Jack Shafer in Slate, "lights out for the extreme foreign policy territory," and sounds like "an aspiring Dr. Strangelove."

Finally, 2002 was the year when administration critics rediscovered the sublime genius of Bush pere and his foreign policy team. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Larry Eagleburger, and retired General Norman Schwarzkopf all cautioned against the rush to war. Invidious comparisons were made between their statesmanlike prudence and the callow impetuousness of Bush fils.

HOWEVER, THAT was then. These days, everyone knows that President Bush is nothing if not his father's son — not to mention Prince Bandar's poodle.

"The links between the House of Bush and the House of Saud," wrote Michael Steinberger in the October 2003 issue of the American liberal monthly, The American Prospect, "are deep, overlapping and notoriously opaque: The Saudi investment in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm whose rainmakers include George Bush Senior; the Saudi bankrolling of Poppy's presidential library; the lucrative contracts the Saudis doled out to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was at the company's helm. The main law firm retained by the Saudis to defend them against the 9-11 families is Baker Botts — as in James Baker, the Bush family consigliere. And, of course, there's oil, the black glue connecting all the dots."

.    .    .

But never mind. What's really interesting is how much Messrs. Moore, Unger and Steinberger sound like those scary neocons of yesteryear. "The desert kingdom leads the way in financing and inciting Muslim holy warriors the world over," wrote Mr. Steinberger in his American Prospect article. So what's the difference between him and Mr. Murawiec? Answer: politics.

In an otherwise dull piece in the Guardian on the latest convention of the American Sociological Association, Jonathan Steele notes:

The US has 13,000 career sociologists, a potential for extraordinary intellectual hegemony. They flexed their muscles last year, becoming the only US professional association to oppose the invasion of Iraq. A few unions denounced the war and even the normally conservative trade union federation, the AFL-CIO, passed a mildly worded vote of criticism. But with the exception of the sociologists, America's professions were coy about raising their collective voice.

There is also the resolution itself, with this adolescent whine:

This statement is not issued, and should not be construed in any way, as supporting the dictatorship of President Hussein or his regime. Our major concern with Bush and Blair’s policy is not the stated end but with the means.

But most disturbing is the utter contempt the resolution shows for free inquiry, and this from people who would get all snotty about Galileo and the Catholic Church. A professional association is like a university. Its responsibility is to lay the foundations of free inquiry. When it calls for votes on issues not central to its functioning, it becomes an advocacy group, decreeing what ideas are welcome and which are not. The Kalven Report, issued at the University of Chicago in 1967, remains the best statement of academic freedom I know of. In calling for universities to neutral on issues outside its actual functioning, it says this:

The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.

Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.

The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest. It finds its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.

It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted.

By contrast, a similar resolution circulated in 1968, during the Vietnam War, was also voted on by the ASA membership, but defeated. This earlier resolution had called for an end to the bombing of Vietnam and the immediate withdrawal of American troops. While a simultaneous poll of opinions indicated that a majority of the Association’s voting members favored the resolution’s policy position, a majority was not willing, at that time, to view a policy position on such an issue to be consistent with the role of a scientific and professional society, thus defeating the resolution.

The Scotsman reports:

The RSPCA said today that it was hunting for a heartless owner who dumped a cardboard box containing 15 kittens in the street.

The kittens – all less than a month-old – were found in Chart Sutton, Kent, at the weekend, and are the third litter abandoned in the area over the last seven days.

RSPCA inspector Steve Dockery said whoever left the animals had committed a criminal offence.

Simon Coveney used to be an unimpressive member of the Irish Parliament (he got the seat after his father, a more impressive TD, died). Now he is an MEP, a member of the European Parliament. According to the Irish Independent (registration required), he has decided that relations between the US and the EU need some patching up, and he is just the man to do it.

He warned that as long as the potential for political friction and economic strife between the EU and the US remains, there is a danger Ireland could be caught in the middle, economically, politically and emotionally.

"This has already arisen with the difficult positions taken in relation to the war on Iraq and the continued so-called war on terrorism. Ireland found itself in a difficult position, resulting in our government taking an ambiguous and gutless stand, trying to keep all sides happy.

"There is a vital national interest for Ireland in promoting the maximum level of co-operation, understanding and integration between the US and Europe."

I recall back in 1968 in Chicago, South Park Way and Avenue was renamed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. (The street was in an entirely black section of the city, and the incident was a marvelous example of the tokenism tossed to blacks by the Democratic Party.) An easy way to spot a bigot back then was his reference to "the so called Martin Luther King Drive".

By the way, near the bottom, the story adds this:

Deputy Coveney said Ireland needs to push for the setting-up of an institute for transatlantic co-operation in this country.

The New York Times Magazine interviews artist and film maker Vincent Gallo on, among other things, why he is a Republican. His answer is unusual, but utterly persuasive.

I know you are fond of our president.

I relate to him in that he has become easily unlikable. In a perfect world, John Kerry would own a restaurant in Connecticut.

And Teresa?

It just makes you wonder how the money ends up in certain places.

Have you met Bush?

I've met his daughter, Barbara. Zac Posen, the designer, invited me to his show and said he would seat me next to the Bush girl because I'm a Republican.

Why are you a Republican?

If we were going to see a show of Dennis Hopper's photographs, do you think Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton would be more sensitive to the work? I see Nixon as an intellectual. I consider Bill Clinton a huckster.

There are so few right-wing actors like yourself, now that the generation of John Wayne has died off.

I agree with you. It is not an interesting group. But I would rather have dinner with Newt or Dick Armey than with Bruce Springsteen.

Perhaps you can speak at the Republican convention.

I would like to. They haven't invited me yet.

James McGreevey, the liar and cheat who is not surprisingly the Democratic governor of New Jersey, is given space by the New York Times to try a scam that might even embarrass the master scammer himself, Bill Clinton. He cheats on his family and puts his lover in a taxpayer financed job he cannot do, so what does McGreevey try? He declares himself a victim.

Ten days ago, I made a very difficult personal decision to announce my sexuality and resignation as governor of New Jersey. I also apologized to my wife for my failure to respect the covenant of our marriage, and to the citizens of New Jersey for allowing my professional decisions to be distracted by my personal life. I accepted full responsibility for the sins, transgressions and errors in judgment I exhibited during my tenure and will work to correct the consequences.

To all those many thousands of individuals, Republican and Democrat, who called with words of kindness, I simply say thank you. If any good is to come from this episode - as distinct from the accomplishments of my administration - hopefully, it is that New Jersey and increasingly America recognizes that sexuality is an individual imprint and not a statement of competency and capability.

While there are many different and sometimes competing influences, it is my humble hope that my "coming out" could, in some small way, help those gay Americans who have yet to become open with their sexuality. To be gay, for me, was not a choice, but simply stating a reality. Now at peace with arguably one of the most important truths of my life, it is my prayer that I will now be free to live openly and integrate my sexuality with my daily life. This integration will hopefully help my actions, my thoughts and my heart to be in alignment going forward, keeping me from the pitfalls of a divided self or secret truths.

So why doesn't he resign now? Not to pull a scam on the voters, but, you see, for their own good.

I made this decision in the context of what I thought was in the best interest of the state. I truly believe that an orderly transition is important for continuity and stability. An acting governor is more inclined by title to finish the good work that has been started. Moreover, in this case, there will still be an election next year as called for in the constitution. There is a great cost to staging an election hastily; even a statewide race could get lost in a national election year and the momentum and investment made in still developing initiatives would most likely be diminished.

This decision was a difficult one and it was made with serious deliberation. While I see the merits of both sides of the debate, I stand firm with my decision. My obligation is to complete the important work already started and to achieve an effective transition of state government.

Moreover, security concerns in light of the heightened level of terror alerts surrounding the Republican National Convention also argue for continuity of leadership.

Is there no end to the crap that New York Times will try to pass off?

One of the annoying features of much popular discussion of environmentalism is the pretense that it is a conflict between business and the environment. There is a conflict over the ways resources are used, but those conflicts can show up in a variety of subtle ways. For example, it has long been known that Robert Byrd's attachment to mandatory emission control equipment on coal burning, of the sort in the 1977 Clean Air Act, is a way to protect the coal industry in West Virginia. It produces soft coal, which needs lots of scrubbers to clean up. Hard coal from the west does not need as much equipment. The Act required all the technology to be used, eliminating the cost advantage of hard coal.

In the same vein, the Chicago Tribune (registration required) carries an unusually insightful piece on road building in national forest areas, noting reasonably carefully who gains and who loses (link courtesy of an old college friend).

Mark Woodall is an unlikely environmentalist. After all, he makes his living growing trees so he can cut them down.

But Woodall and other small tree farmers are aligning themselves with the Sierra Club and other "green" groups as the White House proceeds with its plan to open roadless forests to commercial logging.

While they care about the earth, Woodall and his counterparts care about their livelihoods too.

They're expecting to get aced out of the big government contracts by the timber, oil and gas goliaths. And if that happens, the ensuing lumber glut means lower prices for the little guys.

"It's bad for the environment and bad for the pocketbooks of the tree farmer," said Woodall, who grows about 6,000 acres of trees near LaGrange in west Georgia.

.    .    .

Although the decision affects more than 30 percent of national forests, the more than 700,000 acres in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are a relatively small portion compared with the huge tracts in the West.

Those forests are worrisome to farmers such as Woodall, who has enjoyed the rising price of sawtimber pinewood over the last 15 years. Prices now reach almost $40 a ton.

"The restrictions doubled our prices, so if you went back it could cut our prices in half," he said. "A 50 percent cut in our paycheck could not be good."

The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has offices in Atlanta, Chapel Hill, N.C. and Charlottesville, Va., and similar groups are hoping to harness the power of concerned loggers before the two-month comment period on the roadless restrictions ends Sept. 14.

"I think here in the South all the governors we've talked to have said this could be bad for the economy down here," said Woodall, a member of the Sierra Club.

When Bush proposed a troop realignment, Kerry was required to denounce it. If Bush rescued a drowning baby, Kerry would be required to denounce Bush for interfering with its mother's right to choose, and denounce Bush for blocking funding for proper water safety. Wesley Clark knows better, but as a Kerry advisor, he is required to say similarly silly things. Mark Kleiman is neither a candidate nor an advisor, so he has even less excuse. Is he expecting the US troops in South Korea to stage an invasion of North Korea to take out nukes?

Charles Krauthammer offers a bit of sense on the issue.

The Democrats' response is a classic demonstration of reactionary liberalism, the reflexive defense of the status quo long after its raison d'etre has evaporated. Kerry adviser Wesley Clark protested vigorously: ``As we face a global war on terror with al Qaeda active in more than 60 countries, now is not the time to pull back our forces.''

He cannot be serious. How exactly are the 72,000 American troops in Germany fighting al Qaeda? A lot of good they did in uncovering the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg that carried out 9/11. This hugely expensive deployment -- with its large logistics tail and tens of thousands of dependents added to the bill -- could be put to infinitely better use elsewhere.

Critics are particularly vociferous about drawing down 12,500 of our troops in South Korea. We all know what our troops are doing there. They are intended to be sitting ducks. Thirty-seven thousand Americans are not going to repel a million-man North Korean army. Their purpose is to die in the first hours of a North Korean invasion -- setting off a tripwire that forces the United States to enter the war.

This invitation to suicide might have made sense when South Korea was weak, impoverished and war-ravaged. Today it is an industrialized tiger with a large and superbly equipped army. It makes far more sense to redeploy these troops to where they are really needed -- to support weak, impoverished and war-ravaged countries in the Middle East front whose governments cannot yet carry the burden of their own defense.

The New York Times editorial page offered this reason for maintaining the status quo: Otherwise, ``the military will also lose the advantage that comes with giving large numbers of its men and women the experience of living in other cultures.'' Seventy-thousand GIs parked in Stuttgart practicing their German and listening to Wagner. Finally a military deployment The New York Times can support.

I know, I know. It is just awful that terrorist watches stop some people from flying by mistake. And it is worrisome that there is a watchlist that can do no better to spot a terrorist than by noting he travels under the name "T. Kennedy". The Chicago phone book has 19 of them (according to the handy but incomplete InfoSpace). But if anyone really deserves to be the victim of such a mistake, it is Senator Teddy.

U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list.

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed.

A senior administration official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said Kennedy was stopped because the name "T. Kennedy" has been used as an alias by someone on the list of terrorist suspects.

While he worked to clear himself, Kennedy kept having to wait in terminals at Reagan National, Boston's Logan International and at least one other airport, his staff said. All of the flights were on US Airways. When the senator checked in at the counter, airline employees told him they could not issue him a boarding pass because he appeared on the list. Kennedy was delayed until a supervisor could be summoned to identify him and give approval for him to board the plane.

Two years ago, Kennedy helped persuade US Airways officials to reinstate the airline's "executive service" at Reagan National, which allows VIPs to be escorted to private lounges by airline employees.

And maybe the system is working well. It not only stopped Kennedy, who has to sit in airlines when he could places causing even more damage, but note this as well.

The ACLU has sued on behalf of six Americans who have had experiences similar to Kennedy's. The travelers suing the government include a Vermont college student, a retired Presbyterian minister and an ACLU employee.

UPDATE: If you think I'm mean, check out Professor Bainbridge.

Thomas Sowell writes about Alan Keyes.

Back during the first Bush administration, the President invited some civil rights leaders to meet with him at the White House. They set a precondition -- that neither Alan Keyes nor Thomas Sowell be present at that meeting.

The Wall Street Journal was incensed that the elder President Bush agreed to these preconditions but I was more amused than anything else. For one thing, I had been to the White House the previous week and said what I had to say, not that it did any good.

Had there been a meeting that included Alan Keyes and myself, I could have sat back with folded arms and enjoyed watching Keyes make mincemeat of the intellectual lightweights who call themselves black "leaders." Keyes is both savvy and fearless, and is wholly undeterred by the name-calling that black "leaders" direct at other blacks who dare to disagree with them.

.    .    .

On today's issues -- especially education, jobs, and crime -- the Republicans have more to offer blacks as well as whites. Democrats are too much in hock to the teachers' unions to allow the fundamental changes needed to give black children a decent education, which is increasingly the ticket to a decent life. Democrats are too much in hock to other special interests like the environmental extremists and trial lawyers, whose activities have the net effect of destroying jobs for everyone.

On crime -- a major concern in black communities -- Democrats appoint the kinds of liberal judges who are quick to turn criminals loose and slow to impose the kind of serious punishment needed to take them off the streets and deter others.

Democrats have inertia and racial demagoguery on their side. Republicans need someone like Alan Keyes who can talk sense.

Loury's problems began with the left. Although his dissertation was written only a dozen years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, he saw clearly that the problems facing African-Americans had changed. The biggest barrier to progress was no longer active racism of whites but internal social problems of the black community. But black leaders, and to a lesser extent liberalism as a whole, flatly refused even to contemplate that possibility. He also found powerful pressures--"loyalty tests"--operating against any black intellectual who tried to challenge the orthodoxy.

Let's face it: Any articulate minority intellectual who reliably espouses conservative positions is automatically offered a ticket to a very nice lifestyle. No more rejections from picky academic journals or grubbing for sabbatical time. Instead there are cushy fellowships at Hoover, guest editorials in the Wall Street Journal, and invited articles in Commentary--maybe even a regular column in Forbes--and a steady stream of invitations to plush conferences in nice places.

I have learned a lot from reading Loury, but witness just how sad his recent shift in politics has been:

One Sunday evening early in the fall, Glenn C. Loury arrived at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., where a group of distinguished black intellectuals, including Cornel West, Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., was gathering to discuss the Sept. 11 attacks. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the keynote speaker, had flown in to talk about possible shuttle diplomacy with the Taliban. Loury, an economist at Boston University who first achieved prominence as one of the nation's leading black conservatives in the Reagan years, was there on a diplomatic mission of his own: to mend the rift that has long separated him from liberal blacks like Jackson. He knew he might elicit more than a few hostile glances. ''I've been trying to figure out who you were for the longest time,'' one woman said coldly when they were introduced, according to Loury. But he decided to brave it.

Shortly before the meeting, Loury walked into a conference room where Jackson was chatting with Gates. As Loury shook hands with Jackson -- a man he had taken to task in print throughout the 1980's -- Gates effusively praised Loury's book ''The Anatomy of Racial Inequality,'' which will be published early next month by Harvard University Press. In it, Loury makes a striking departure from the self-help themes of his earlier work, defending affirmative action and denouncing ''colorblindness'' as a euphemism for indifference to the fate of black Americans.

Jackson said to Gates: ''This man is smart. Whatever his politics, he's always been smart.'' When the conversation turned to the Middle East, Loury sheepishly reminded Jackson of an article he wrote more than 15 years ago in Commentary attacking him for embracing Yasir Arafat.

''You probably don't remember the piece,'' Loury said.

''Oh, yes I do,'' Jackson fired back.

''I looked him in the eye,'' Loury recalled a couple of weeks later, ''and said: 'I really wish I hadn't written that. It was a mistake, and I really regret it.' Jackson didn't say anything directly in response to it, but during his formal presentation he made a point of singling me out. He said: 'To say that Glenn Loury isn't black because he disagrees with me, well that's just stupid. We can't afford to leave brilliant minds like that by the wayside.'''

The next day, Loury e-mailed Charles Ogletree Jr., the Harvard Law professor who had organized the meeting. ''I came close to not showing -- for a variety of invalid reasons that have more to do with my scarred psyche than with anything in the real world,'' he wrote. ''You should know that I was deeply gratified by my reception on Sunday. Jesse was very generous. (I guess my 'political rehabilitation' is more or less complete now!)''

''That meeting was the defining moment for Glenn,'' his friend Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociologist, later said. Or, as another scholar put it to me, ''Glenn is finally able to walk into a room full of black people who don't all hate him.''

Kieran Healy went to the American Sociological Association meetings and got to hear Paul Krugman. He discovers what economists have known for a long time: Krugman is a very smart, very articulate, and often quite funny international trade economist. Krugman is also a very talented writer. And so Healy comes up with a non-sequitor.

I hadn’t seen Krugman speak before. He was refreshingly nerdy. His detractors work incessantly to make the “shrill” label stick, but in person he comes off more like Woody Allen’s accountant brother.

Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.

What depresses some of us about Krugman is that he has become a one trick pony. He has become so unhealthily obsessive about George Bush that he cannot seem to think about anything else. George Bush has become his great white whale. Robert Solow once took this shot at Milton Friedman: "Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper." Krugman is determined to blame George Bush for everything, which keeps reminding me of
Joseph Schumpeter's remark that the most remarkable thing about the Japanese earthquake of 1924 was that it was not blamed on capitalism. Sometime this fanatical urge to believe that the Bush administration is alway, always wrong leads him to say things that should embarrass a professional economist.

The man has a regular column in the New York Times. Can't he think of anything else to write about? If Kerry wins, is Krugman going to give up his column because he has nothing to say?

Granted, Krugman is hardly unique. Kieran Healy should know better than to tell us that Krugman's nerdy style is somehow inconsistent with being shrill. Einstein was an apologist for Stalin, and William Shockley's views on eugenics and Noam Chomsky's politics are bizarre. But all of them are (or were) hugely talented in their own area of expertise, and none of them were particularly worldly.

The Daily Telegraph (registration required) reports that life is becoming unbearable for British university students.

Average student debt has doubled since Labour came to power.

And the price of a pint in the student union bar has also jumped 58 per cent since 1997, to average £1.89, according to a money guide to campus life.

Variations in living costs, particularly rent, meant some people graduated with debts in the low thousands, while others ended up owing £15,000 or more.

Average debts were building up at £3,523 per year, said The Push Guide to Money 2005-6: Student Survival. Graduates were finishing three, four and five-year courses owing an average of £11,830, up from £5,792 when Labour came to power.

With the introduction of top-up fees two years away, debts were set to increase even more, the guide warned. One in 10 students graduated owing £15,000 or more, while three per cent had debts of £20,000-plus.

But I am more interested in the story's implicit premise that student debt is somehow a bad thing. I am finishing up buying a house, and when my wife and I decided what house to buy, we went through our income and expenses to see how much of a mortgage payment we could manage. Had our incomes been higher, or had we expected big pay hikes in the future (no such luck), we would have bought a bigger house, had a bigger mortgage, and been happier about being more in debt. Schooling is an investment.

I gathered a few numbers from an Excel sheet on the OECD web site. It lists the after inflation growth in average compensation.

My central point remains this: why do newspapers, staffed by people who happily go into debt to buy cars and homes, write as if students are clearly worse off going into debt to pay for university education?

The Irish Independent (registration required) reports a growth in fee paying schools in the Dublin area, along with a drop in numbers attending free schools.

The great social divide in Irish education is revealed in new figures today.

They show how fee-paying schools in the Dublin area are booming while the majority of Free Education schools are facing massive declines in enrolment.

One-in-three pupils attending a voluntary secondary school is now paying fees of up to €4,000 and more per year, compared with one-in-four two decades ago.

.    .    .

One result is that there are anything up to 20,000 empty desks across all Free Education second level schools in the Dublin area while fee-paying schools are turning applicants away in record numbers.

Prominent educationist Prof Kathleen Lynch from UCD suggested that "anxious middle class parents" were taken in by much of the hype about fee paying schools and their supposed advantages which was believed without any empirical evidence.

She claimed some of the fee-paying schools used "discreet selection" to keep out pupils they did not want such as those with dyslexia. Prof Lynch, Director of the Equality Centre at UCD cited the example of one prominent south side fee-paying school that contacted a free education school asking it to take in a particular applicant "who is not our type of girl".

UPDATE: Dick O'Brien at Back Seat Drivers tells us that Irish schools are good, because they are better than the government schools provided in most other countries. In other words, I should be happy with the bad service I have gotten from Ireland's mediocre state airline, Aer Lingus, because, heck, it is way better than SABENA, the Belgian state airline so bad it was dubbed S(uch) A B(ad) E(xperience) N(ever) A(gain).

Ali Dizaei, a chief superintendent in London's Metropolitan police and legal adviser to the National Black Police Association, takes to the pages of the Guardian to advise us all that the Middle East is a fine place to start learning about the right way to carry out police work.

Western journalism focuses on the troubles in the Middle East and has helped to build a caricature of Muslim countries as hotbeds of despotism whose law enforcement agencies are renowned for human rights breaches and corruption rather than for good policing innovations. The British public can be forgiven for believing that, once one enters the Middle East, sensitive, innovative and efficient policing is replaced by that of corrupt, camel-hoarding officials and feudal warlords who chop off the hands of thieves and stone adulterers to death.
The implication is that Islam and harmony don't mix; that freedom and choice cannot be found in a Muslim country.

Dubai is one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the world and, by examining the governance, structure, accountability and legitimacy of its police force, it was patently obvious that British policing can learn an enormous amount about how law enforcement can help achieve community harmony.

So how does Dizaei make this claim? Start with immigration:

Unlike in Britain, the host community is in a minority and the majority of the population are there to work - invited for their skills. Hence immigration and asylum is celebrated rather than demonised.

Dizaei has some choice words for the way the British treat their immigrants, compared to wonderful Dubai.

Dubai has transformed its standing as a centre of commerce by utilising the skills of migrant workers and professionals, who are subject to stringent but realistic conditions. Their welcome does not include placing them in holding centres and giving them food vouchers; there is no daily tabloid press portraying them as parasites.

Freedom of expression is protected under the constitution, but strictly limited in practice. Broadcast media are almost entirely state owned and adhere to official guidelines. Journalists and academics exercise self-censorship regarding governmental policy, national security, and religion. Most print publications are privately owned, but receive government subsidies and often publish verbatim articles from the state-run Emirates News Agency. Foreign publications are censored, though satellite dishes are widely owned and provide access to uncensored foreign broadcasting. The state maintains a monopoly on Internet service and blocks access to radical Islamic Web sites.

There are, however, a number of conditions. For example, they cannot buy property unless it is in designated zones. These zones are not ghettos - the aim is to ensure that the country's Islamic values are not undermined by western mores.

But now to maybe the best bit.

Every police district employs a team of officers whose job is to ensure compliance to human rights. Senior police officers and politicians welcome these rights rather than see them as a hindrance.

Although the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest, UAE laws permit incommunicado detention if police believe that communication between a suspect and third parties may compromise an ongoing investigation. Suspects in police custody can be detained without charge indefinitely upon court order and are not entitled to legal counsel until an investigation is completed.

The judiciary is not independent, as most judges are foreign nationals appointed to renewable terms and court rulings are subject to review by the political leadership.

The Irish Examiner (registration required) reports that the Northern Ireland group Peace People came down to Dublin to protest outside the Israeli embassy. It seems they want Ireland to give asylum to Mordechai Vanunu.

The Northern Ireland-based Peace People group has called on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to appeal to the Israeli government to allow Mr Vanunu to come to Ireland to seek asylum.

Under the terms of his release, Mr Vanunu is not permitted to talk to foreigners and has to remain in Israel for a year because he is still a "security risk".

The Department of Justice said yesterday that any non-national seeking asylum here must first be temporarily resident in the country before they can begin the application process.

"That asylum application will then be considered by the Minister for Justice," a department spokesperson added.

Dublin representative of the Peace People Justin Morahan believes Israel may drop the restrictions on Mr Vanunu if Ireland makes moves to grant his asylum.

Mr Morahan, who travelled to Israel for Mr Vanunu's release in April, said: "If the Irish Government decides to take him in, it would be a humanitarian gesture to show to the world that we are a peaceful, caring country."

On the off chance that Mr. Morahan and his ilk are seen protesting nuclear weapons outside, say, Dublin's Iranian embassy, I will let you know. Don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: On an Irish Indymedia post about demonstrations at Shannon airport, one commenter, Des Sallynoggin, asks whether anyone is interested in a demonstration in support of Iranian students protesting against their government. Among the attacks on him for the suggestion was one by Justin Morahan:

To Des Sallynoggin: maybe you should ring up the US embassy. I think they will be very interested in helping you to organise such a march.

Britain's Department of Health has recently decided that girls under 16, although not yet at the age of consent to decide whether to have sex, may decide whether to have an abortion without informing their parents. Theodore Dalrymple picks up the agenda at work here.

The Department of Health ruling all but admits this point, for while it insists on an under-aged girl’s right to have an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, it also suggests that the doctor performing the abortion would be wise to tell some adult or another connected with the girl—or at least the social services.

Here we see the real purpose of this ruling. It is not to serve the interests of the girls who have the abortions but to undermine the family still further—to end it as the primary locus of responsibility for the socialization of children. After all, if girls under 16 were truly “autonomous,” to use the cant word favored by contemporary bioethicists, why should any adult be told about her abortion? Nearly a decade and a half after the downfall of the Soviet Union, therefore, the British state wants to replace parents with itself, to insinuate its agents into the most intimate aspects of the life of its citizens. Parents are the great obstacles to this goal. And at a time when health officials can make such a ruling, the number of people on the public payroll is of course rising inexorably.

A girl of 14 who wanted an abortion greeted the news of the ruling with relief. “If my mother knew,” she reportedly said, “she’d kill me.” A nation that can take such childish relief seriously as a guide to its ethics or its policy on so serious a matter is a nation in serious trouble.

A Swedish geographer, Ulf Erlingsson, believes that Ireland is the lost continent of Atlantis.

Atlantis, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in 360 B.C., was an island in the Atlantic Ocean where an advanced civilization developed 11,500 years ago until it was hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster and sank beneath the waves.

Geographer Ulf Erlingsson, whose book explaining his theory will be published next month, says the measurements, geography and landscape of Atlantis as described by Plato match Ireland almost exactly.

“I am amazed no one has come up with this before, it’s incredible,” he told Reuters. “Just like Atlantis, Ireland is 300 miles long, 200 miles wide, and widest across the middle. They both have a central plain surrounded by mountains. I’ve looked at geographical data from the rest of the world and of the 50 largest islands there is only one that has a plain in the middle — Ireland.”

Sinking of North Sea shoal
Erlingsson believes the idea that Atlantis sank came from the fate of Dogger Bank, an isolated shoal in the North Sea, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the northeastern coast of England, which sank after being hit by a huge flood wave around 6,100 B.C.

“I suspect that myth came from Ireland and it derives from Dogger Bank. I think the memory of Dogger Bank was probably preserved in Ireland for around 3,000 years and became mixed up with the story of Atlantis,” he said.

In today's Washington Post, Eliot Cohen writes about the serious cutbacks in the British military.

As it is, of course, the entire British armed forces, slightly over 200,000 strong, number little more than the smallest of the American armed services, the Marine Corps. But that fact disguises the real significance of this erosion of British strength, and the stake the United States has in stopping it.

First, Britain is the only considerable state that can send substantial forces in the field to operate alongside ours. Others -- the Australians or the Norwegians, to take two very different examples -- have superb niche capabilities, but only the British have the size and sophistication to take on large military tasks. If Iraq has taught anything, it has been the extreme desirability of bringing along a coalition, with all of its awkwardness, to a large geopolitical problem. But to have a coalition one needs at least one large partner. The issue is not just capability in some narrow, mathematical sense but the legitimacy and reassurance that comes from knowing a substantial partner is in the fight with us. And the American military has gotten to be so good, so technologically advanced and so tactically adept that only a handful of militaries can operate alongside ours and hope to keep up. Foremost among those who can are the Brits.

Second, Britain brings to bear real military expertise. Particularly in the field of counterinsurgency, its soldiers have the hard-won knowledge of decades of frustrating small-war experience, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Their soldiers and generals have learned a great deal about pacifying distant trouble spots, knowledge from which the Yanks could and have benefited. But as we have learned in the Persian Gulf, numbers of boots on the ground count in this kind of fight -- even when it comes to training indigenous forces.

Finally, Britain is a European power. In NATO it is unique among the militarily serious states. France is hostile to us; Germany is increasingly so, and has debilitated its armed forces by putting them on starvation rations for the past decade. Spain has tilted to France, and Italy, despite pockets of excellence, is an uneven power. The other states are either too small or as yet too poor and inexperienced to provide both muscle and leadership in complex fights.

This morning on the drive to work I was briefly listening to The Full Irish, a 2FM radio morning show hosted by Ryan Tubridy. The newscaster ey announced that Starbucks is coming to Ireland. Tubridy's response: "Bring 'em on. Global scum. We want them here."

Last week I amused myself by describing John Kerry as a Euroweenie for hiding behind his lawyers' skirts. Among other things, it is the sort of thing that blows up on a candidate, because it indicates he is hiding something. Now Kenneth Baer, a Democratic Party PR flack, takes to the New Republic to suggest that Kerry should sue the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for libel. Baer begins with a flicker of sense.

Now, any political consultant worth his retainer would say that for any candidate--much less a presidential candidate with a trial lawyer running-mate--to sue his opponents is political suicide. Doing so would magnify the impact of the charges made in the ads, which as of now are only playing in seven small media markets, and keep them in the news for the duration of the campaign. It would also derail the campaign from its message, underscore the litigious history of his vice presidential pick, and open the candidate up to a possibly invasive subpoena.

But the Kerry campaign--and a potential Kerry presidency--may not be able to afford to keep silent and allow the right to practice this kind of character assassination with impunity.
.    .    .
If Kerry does not pull these right-wing weeds now, they may choke his candidacy--and overrun his presidency.
.    .    .
In an environment where the president and his allies believe that he is on a divine mission, the right will stop at nothing to win this race.

A far more skillful politician than John Kerry, Bill Clinton, when faced with the Paula Jones allegations, publicly proclaimed that an end was needed to the politics of personal destruction. Then he sent attack dog James Carville off to use exactly those tactics on Jones.

George Bush has sent the Democrats out of their minds. Another good reason to vote for him.

I have never been a Clint Eastwood fan, and I especially disliked Escape from Alcatraz. Poor, decent Clint and his friends are picked on by the mean warden. What did they do to get plunked in Alcatraz? The movie is silent. (In the same vein, I remain baffled by Stephen Bainbridge's attraction to the remake of Ocean's Eleven, a movie whose premise is that violence and theft are okay, because George Clooney and Brad Pitt are just so cute.)

The Guardian gives us today columns by Paul Carter-Bowman and Erwin James. They are both ex-prisoners, and both write about how awful prison life is, tossed in among violent prisoners and cruel guards. No doubt prisons badly need reform, but curiously the Guardian declined to mention why either one was actually in prison.

Part of the reason I gave up on the left was weariness with the incessant sneering. Mark Leibovich, a Washington Post staff writer, has a piece today on Laura Bush's campaigning. That he is hostile to Bush is hardly a surprise, but his trendy left, sneering hostility to anyone who might support him is not even remotely disguised.

Mrs. Bush visited six midwestern battleground states over a 36-hour period on Monday and Tuesday, speaking in cookie-cutter hotel ballrooms, in cookie-cutter phrases, in cookie-cutter suburbs and exurbs of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Detroit, among other stops.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

For some reason, there seemed to be a lot of silliness from bloggers who ought to know better.

Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber has a fit over James Miller's unremarkable suggestion that a substantially higher bounty on bin Laden might bring out professional bounty hunters. Since he does nothing more than have a fit, it is not clear what he is unhappy about, although I gather it is the idea of using a bounty to get bin Laden. But it was a $5 million bounty that helped Microsoft catch the writer of the Sasser worm. More famously, in the Mississippi Burning case, it was rewards that brought out information. In Helland and Tabarrok's study of bounty hunters, they found:

Defendants released on surety bond are 28 percent less likely to fail to appear than similar defendants released on their own recognizance and if they do fail to appear they are 53 percent less likely to remain at large for extended periods of time.

Bertram's comment reminded me of a parody that ran years ago in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, in the author dismissed as laughable nonsense that commutative law of multiplication. How, he asked, could it be anything other than the wildest chance that 6 x 7 = 7 x 6?

Meanwhile, Mark Kleiman is shocked, shocked, that Rep. Rodney Alexander switched from the Democrats to the Republicans, calling it "the sleaziest, most cowardly thing I've ever heard of a politician doing". Give us all a break. Apparently, James Jeffords decision to switch from Republican to Independent acting as Democrat just after the election was okay. Apparently, Kleiman does not the think the Plame affair, on which he has waxed indignantly in over 100 posts, is a big issue after all. Nor does Watergate bother him anymore, I guess. All the years of machine politics in American cities cannot come up with a worse example.

A candidate switching parties three months before the election is the worst Kleiman can come up with for sleazy and cowardly behavior by a politician? And this from a professor of government. Yeesh.

UPDATE: Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, who is an expert on bounties, gives a better wacking to the Crooked Timberites.

As an academic, I spend way too much time with intellectuals, but unlike Irwin Stelzer of the Weekly Standard, my job does not require me to hang out with the chattering classes. Just as well.

Which brings me to a dinner party my wife, Cita, and I attended in a fashionable London town house. The usual assortment of media folk, City (financial) types, and professionals, with the odd (very) member of Parliament. It was a group put together by a very gracious hostess and her very conservative husband. Sounds like fun. But, at least for pro-Bush, anti-Saddam Americans, it was the sort of evening that makes one long for a good dose of Fox News, followed by readings from the works of Donald Rumsfeld.

THE WAR ON TERROR, announces one guest, could have been avoided if the Americans hadn't invaded Iraq. But the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon--not to mention various embassy bombings and the assault on the Cole--preceded the invasion of Iraq, I noted, in a gentle effort to help this guest reorganize her calendar of events. Ah, but original sin, the event that preceded all of the ones I cited, is the Jews' beastly treatment of the Arabs.

We are gluttons for punishment, not to mention for wonderful puddings of the sort being set before us. So we decided that the guestly thing to do was to stifle our desire to leave, running the risk that continuing the discussion might result in the violent response many Brits assume comes naturally to gun-totin', SUV-drivin', Americans. (They couldn't work their God-fearing epithet into that litany, as it might have impelled us to turn the other cheek, which they for some strange reason don't expect of God-fearing Americans.)

Besides, rational argument will conquer all, I was brought up to believe. So I gently inquired, "What would you have done after September 11 if you were president of the United States?" The answer did more than even a steady diet of BBC broadcasts can do to make us realize just what Tony Blair is up against: "I would have been nicer to the Arabs, and made the Jews be nicer to the Arabs."

Mind you: this is not Nancy Astor explaining the virtues of Adolph Hitler to her anti-Semitic friends in the run-up to World War II. This is Great Britain, circa 2004.

Richard Cohen reflects on just how singularly amazing and extraordinary life is.

The arrival of Layla, at 6 pounds, 6 ounces, shortly before midnight on Aug. 4, was preceded by a good deal of stress and an appropriate amount of panic. She had stopped growing in the womb, and so the decision was made to induce labor, moving up the schedule by four days. Even then, there was a problem and then another, and all sorts of horrible thoughts were suppressed as relatives and other interested parties rushed for airplanes, while here, at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center, a cool miracle occurred. If you doubt me, you should see her face.

It is one of unsurpassed beauty. It sports a nose that is such perfection it will undoubtedly set the standards for beauty from this day forth. Above the nose and flanking it are eyes -- color still to be determined -- that even by Day 2 are amazingly alert -- curious, kind and intelligent. And capping all this, literally, is a shock of black hair of the sort noticed, generally and anecdotally, at the birth of future Nobel Prize winners of either sex, although not in economics. This, of course, can be looked up in the appropriate medical journals -- or so I am told.

.    .    .

The first days of Layla's life have been amply documented -- on videotape, on digital devices, on gizmos I could not begin to work. She was photographed at birth, and when she is changed and when she burps. It seems her every move is recorded and then downloaded and then digitized or something and then whisked around the country and the world. Her birth is a grand occurrence, a momentous renaissance of life itself. She is the oblivious center of a very big deal, a total mystery to those who try to interpret her every move. What does she understand? What does she feel? What can she see and what can she hear? She is precisely as we all were once and yet, frustratingly, not a single one of us can remember what we were like at the time. To say we were all once infants is like saying we were once all chipmunks in a previous life. Okay. If you say so.

At the time Layla was born, many important things were happening in this country and around the world. I know that. I know, too, that the birth of a child is commonplace. But this one was as different and unique as all the others, yet another miracle in a world that never gets inured to them -- a happy repository of the feeling that affects us all.

Thank God, someone else to love.

In the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria poses questions for Kerry's claims that Europe likes him better than George Bush.

Who could have imagined that alliance management would be a hot election issue? But it is. John Kerry's repeated pledge to restore relations with U.S. allies has struck a chord. The trouble is, if he is elected president, Kerry is going to find that promise hard to keep -- at least with America's allies in Europe. Most of them would be delighted to see Kerry win, but that doesn't mean they will be more cooperative on policy issues.

In the face of these stark dangers, Europe seems remarkably passive. Having burst into action last fall, it does not seem to know what to do now that Iran has rebuffed its efforts. It is urging negotiations again, which is fine. But what will it tell Iran in these negotiations? What is the threat that it is willing to wield?

Last month the Brookings Institution conducted a scenario with mostly former American and European officials. In it, Iran actually acquires fissile material. Even facing the imminent production of a nuclear bomb, Europeans were unwilling to take any robust measures, such as the use of force or tough sanctions. James Steinberg, a senior Clinton administration official who organized this workshop, said that he was "deeply frustrated by European attitudes." Madeleine Albright, who regularly convenes a discussion group of former foreign ministers, said that on this topic, "Europeans say they understand the threat but then act as if the real problem is not Iran but the United States."

This is depressing. The Guardian reports that there are four contenders to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.

                   
          Eric Bana             Clive Owen              Jude Law             Ewan McGregor

Is this really the best they can do? Eric Bana is an adequate actor, but even though he is close to 40, he looks like a permanent teenager. Clive Owen actually has the right look, and he is British, but he has the tiny drawback that he cannot act. In King Arthur, Keira Knightley came off as more dominating and threatening. Jude Law is an excellent actor, but he is pretty, which is simply not the Bond look. Ewan McGregor is like Bana, a passable actor who deeply embarrassed himself in the latest round of Star Wars movies. (Granted, the movies were bad, but at least, say, Natalie Portman hung on to her dignity.)

So who to play Bond? In King Arthur, Clive Owen was blown off the screen not only by Keira Knightley, but also by the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, who was superb as Horatio Hornblower. Or if Gruffudd is (probably) too young, perhaps Jeremy Northam and Rupert Everett. Both are excellent actors and have the right look. Okay, so Everett made a movie with Madonna, but, hey, a guy has to eat.

Fay Wray has died at 96. Although there are adequate obituaries in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the LA Times. But the best one is in the Chicago Tribune.

The book party for her autobiography was held at the Empire State Building, the skyscraper that the hairy beast scaled to rescue his writhing beauty from the flash-bulb popping crowd of journalists who were chasing him. His great power weakened by love, unable to swat away the pesky airplanes that were attacking him, King Kong finally falls to his death.

"The final scene is really moving, where Kong is shot as he stands on the Empire State Building, and clutches his breast, but then stretches out his hand to where I am," she told an interviewer 1998. "A great piece of acting from that little fellow."

And Wray did mean little — although King Kong was several stories high in the film, he was in reality 18 inches of cloth, metal and rubber brought to life by special effects genius Willis O'Brien. The only part of the monster that was life-size was the 6-foot-long arm and paw. (The limb was on display for a time at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.) "I'd jump on board and be towed up and pretend to be screaming at this 40-foot monster," Wray told an interviewer.

.    .    .

The original "King Kong" "was so extraordinary, so full of imagination and special effects that it will never be equaled," she told columnist Roderick Mann in 1987. "They shouldn't have tried."

She later told another interviewer, "Every time I'm in New York, I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there."

The other day I used my guest slot at The Daily Ablution to express disgust at the attempts by the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland to delay doing anything about the Darfur genocide. In today's Washington Post, Bob McPherson, a retired Marine who is CARE's security director, emphasizes just how much the Freedlands of the world have blood on their hands.

Aid workers have seen hungry people before, but even those directly involved in emergency humanitarian assistance seldom encounter starvation and virtually never witness the starvation of tens of thousands of people.

The cruel irony in all of this is that the world has been down this road before, in both Somalia and Rwanda.

In fact, I thought I'd seen it all before going to Darfur last month. I'd been to Baidoa, Somalia, in December 1992 and to Rwanda two years later. In both countries I saw mass starvation and murder. But what I saw in Darfur is worse. I walked into camps and saw women and children in every state of human misery. Too far gone to eat, many would be dead by morning. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I heard about the systematic rape of women. It was not two or three women telling me this. Virtually every woman I met in a camp had a story of brutal violation. This is what the world faces in Darfur.

The United Nations has given the Sudanese government 30 days to disarm the mounted militias known as Janjaweed and bring the war-torn Darfur region under control. That's 30 days too late for more than 13,000 women and children. More than 440 people a day are dying from starvation in Darfur. And this does not include people who will be murdered outright.

"In Darfur, it would be better to help the Sudanese get over the crisis so their country is pacified rather than sanctions which would push them back to their misdeeds of old," junior Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told French radio.

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, France also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide in Darfur.

"I firmly believe it is a civil war and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier