Andrew Sullivan posting nine times in two days on Mel Gibson's drunk-driving meltdown is disturbing. The man doth celebrate too much, methinks. I would borrow a line from another book by a famous author, "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," but that would probably make me a "theocon" or a "Christianist" in Sullivan's eyes.

The best way to win most conflicts is to stay out of them. This point was hammered home while in a bar--home to the world's freest, and stupidist, speech--this weekend. With coverage of the Israel-Lebanon war blaring on the flat-screen televisions, one patron discoursed on whether Israel had a "right to exist." Why every other country possesses this right, but Israel does not, the African gentleman did not say. Another patron, an Israeli, perhaps channeling the spirit of Phil Sheridan, explained that "the only good Arab is a dead Arab." There's no reasoning with unreasonable people. Sometimes it pays not to get involved.

Killing 56 civilians, most of whom were women and children, doesn't help you win a war. It galvanizes the enemy. It turns world opinion against you. There are strategic reasons, as well as the obvious humanitarian ones, for being extremely careful with giant bombs. That this kind of tragedy routinely happens in war is one of the best arguments for avoiding war whenever possible. War is that horrible. What Israel did by accident is routinely done on purpose by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist enemies of the Jewish state. But it is not by the standards of such vermin that civilized nations are judged. If the denunciations of Israel's actions are louder than the denunciations of the terror conducted by Israel's enemies, hypocrisy is one explanation. Another is the tacit admission within such protests: we expect better. Israel's 48-hour timeout on bombings in southern Lebanon suggests that they expect better too.

.12?

That's not a whole lot of alcohol. The state says it's enough to make one impaired in driving an automobile. But is it enough to make one lose control of one's tongue? That usually occurs well beyond the legal limit. But .12? That's barely drunk. Drinkers have to let bygones be bygones when it comes to the words said the night before. But when the words are said after a not particularly heavy night of drinking, do we say that's the alcohol talking or do we say that's Mel Gibson talking? Perhaps that blood alcohol test, which might excuse Mel Gibson's late-night rant for some, is actually the most damning item: Gibson's tirade against the police and Jews happened not in an incoherently drunken state, but happened at a level of drunkeness that just exceeds the threshold for drunk driving.

On the other hand, many drunks that I know--real drunks, hardcore drunks--contradicting conventional wisdom, actually get sauced really, really, quickly. In other words, their tolerance level is lower than the average person's. Their buzz happens immediately and it quickly evolves to complete inebriation. Is this because alcohol is always in their bloodstream? Is this because their tolerance level, once it reaches a lifetime peak, comes down, or, to put it another way, comes full circle to that of an inexperienced drinker's? I don't know why it is. I just know it is. Big drinkers may take many, many drinks to get drunk. But drunks get drunk easily.

Is Gibson done? No. He's too talented, too driven, and too powerful. He can bankroll, as he proved with The Passion of the Christ, his own movies. If Elvis Costello can have a career after calling Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant n-----" from his barstool, if Ted Kennedy can win reelection at will after driving a woman off a bridge, if Norman Mailer can write bestsellers after stabbing his wife while drunk, then Mel Gibson's career will survive this.

A more important question than "what of his career?", particularly for a man of Christ such as Gibson, is: What of his soul? Hate, not to mention too much drink, can be soul consuming. Why waste time hating anyone, let alone any massive group of people? The quirk is usually worse for the hater than the hated. Alas, to put a man on the couch when he's not actually on the couch is unfair. This is particularly true when we're examining that man (who's not actually there to be examined) at a low moment--relapsed, drunk, and under arrest certainly qualifies.

We don't know what's in Mel Gibson's heart. We do know what came out of his mouth. And for those believing in the old dictum "in wine there is truth" what came out of his mouth says something bad about his heart.

Like most healthy American boys, I collected baseball cards (The unhealthy ones generally went for comic books.). I traded with other kids. Occasionally, I would catch would-be thieves. Occasionally, I wouldn't. I went to baseball card shows. I went to baseball card stores. I went to baseball card auctions, where I would bid on items I couldn't afford just for the adrenaline rush of it. Once, some friends and I even spied another kid washing his baseball cards, an offense that resulted in deserved ridicule. Had he placed a few journeymen players in the spokes of his bicycle, we might have thought nothing of it. But he had the imprudence to wash his baseball cards, which, even at six-years-old, you should know better than to do.

I liked certain years: '83 Topps gave an action and a face shot; the colored border on the '75 cards appealed to me; any card before 1973 appeared ancient, and thus, worthy of reverence. Bruce Sutter, Joe Rudi, Fred Lynn, George Brett, and Carlton Fisk were a few players that I "collected" in 8 1/2 by 11, 3x3 paneled, double-sided plastic sheets. I preferred playing football, basketball, and hockey to playing baseball, but I wouldn't have been caught dead collecting Richard Todds, Rick Mahorns, or Dale Hunters. Don't ask me why. Non-baseball sports-cards just weren't cool.

Apparently, baseball cards are no longer cool, either. "Baseball cards peaked in popularity in the early 1990s," Dave Jamieson writes on Slate.com. "They've taken a long slide into irrelevance ever since, last year logging less than a quarter of the sales they did in 1991. Baseball card shops, once roughly 10,000 strong in the United States, have dwindled to about 1,700."

Baseball's relative decline in popularity as a kid's game has something to do with this. Another factor in undermining the hobby among children is its popularity among adults. Nothing kills the cool factor more for kids than seeing balding, 51-year-old men with the back of their pants two inches too low partaking in something that's supposed to be for them. A third factor was evident to me even in the early 1980s. In the 1970s, outside of collector sets such as Kellog's or Hostess, Topps had a monopoly on the baseball card market. Then, around '81 or '82, Donruss and Fleer turned up. If, say, you collected Steve Carlton, now you had to find a Donruss Steve Carlton, a Fleer Steve Carlton, and Topps Steve Carlton to complete your set. This got confusing, and expensive, as more and more companies got into the baseball card business. Kids threw their hands up, I guess.

Kids have changed. But baseball cards have changed too. When a hobby becomes a business, not too many ten-year-olds will stick around. Now that the bottom has fallen out on the baseball-card business, maybe the kids will crawl back in again. Or, maybe they won't.

Will you join my movement to ban the Sun? It causes skin cancer, blindness, sun burns, premature aging, and moles, among other maladies. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to the Sun kills 60,000 people annually. In other words, every year the Sun drops the equivalent of a Nagasaki-like bomb on the Earth. And what do we Earthlings do? Stop-gap measures: sun screen, sun glasses, parasols. Something more drastic, I'm afraid, is needed.

We need to keep the Sun off the streets and away from kids. Some in the Sun-Control movement suggest a Sun buyback program, where people turn in their tanning booths, beach chairs, and other deadly products--no questions asked--at innercity locations in exchange for a token amount of money. Others demand that we sue the Sun, and the manufacturers of Sun-worshipping products. Still others raise the idea of a five-day waiting period for anyone foolish enough to want to go out into the Sun.

All of these ideas send us in the right direction, but not fast enough. The only plan that will truly put an end to solar deaths is a total ban on the Sun. This ban must be complete. If, say, Washington, DC bans the Sun, and Virginia doesn't, some of the Sun's harmful rays will find their way across the border and into the nation's capital. Fixating on states and localities just won't cut it. What's needed is a national, or perhaps, a world ban on the Sun.

Whether this is to be accomplished through a galactic firehose or a giant waterbucket, I really don't care. All I care about is forever extinguishing the Sun's deadly rays. Think of the unnecessary deaths we will prevent. Saving 60,000 lives is certainly worth your "fun" day at the beach.

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," Howard Dean told business leaders in West Palm Beach on Wednesday. The national chairman of the Democratic party also called U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris a "crook" and compared her to Josef Stalin. Every twice in a while Democrats remind Americans why they have lost three elections in a row.

"And as long as any survive who have had experience of oligarchical supremacy and domination, they regard their present constitution as a blessing, and hold equality and freedom as of the utmost value. But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children's children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich. So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilization, it has once more found a master and a despot."
--Polybius, The Histories, 146 BC

A note to women everywhere: avoid dating, at all costs (or at least at half costs), this guy.

Why is anyone surprised that a Republican courting African American votes in a liberal state would run away from the president? That's just good politics. How did Southern Democrats fare who stood by President Clinton in 1994? Jack Brooks? Jim Sasser? Ann Richards? Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele's immediate goal is winning an election, and doing that's a little tough with all of the president's baggage weighing him down. What's all the fuss about? Do loyal Republicans want Steele to campaign with Dick Cheney in Baltimore? Or, alternatively, do they want him to win? Go against political principles, and political parties and political personalities won't bother you. Go against your political party and its leading personalities, and watch people act as though you've betrayed your principles.

A note to naive people everywhere: when a political party fields its own army, that's a sign that its interest in the democratic process is a sham. Maybe the next time there is a Purple Orange Tulip Cedar Revolution, those projecting magical powers upon democracy will pay attention to how the people marked their ballots rather than the mere fact that they cast them.

The headline reads: "ABA: Bush Violating Constitution." It's not until deeper into the article that the reader discovers that the American Bar Association is opposed to Bush violating the Constitution. They certainly haven't been too vocal in criticizing other presidents, or judges or congressmen for that matter, for lapses in fidelity to the Constitution. In fact, the organization actually celebrates Roe v. Wade, a decision based not on the Constitution but judicial whim, and demands that the government ignore the Second Amendment.

The American Bar Association is a political advocacy group. It gets religion on the Constitution when its political opponents get power. In that way, it's no different than a great number of "conservatives" you may know.

As to the ABA's charge against George W. Bush: it's probably true. If not on what the ABA cites (the use of "signing statements" to disregard parts of laws), then certainly on campaign-finance reform (First Amendment), No Child Left Behind (Tenth Amendment), and the usurpation of Congress's war-making powers (Article 1, Section 8). On that last one, Congress itself is probably a lot more to blame. But there's enough blame to go around.

Perhaps 43 is just following the example of 41--or the examples of 42, 40, 39, 38, 37, etc. for that matter. Every president in our lifetimes has violated the Constitution in numerous ways. The rap once was that Republicans didn't care for the First and Fourth Amendments, while Democrats disregarded the Second and Tenth Amendments. Now it seems that both parties, perhaps as an attempt at bipartisanship, have come together to ignore the entire document.

It's "antiquated." It's a "living document." It's constantly "evolving." Those are some of the tired excuses the Constitution's enemies make for jettisoning it. But when leaders of the rival party foresake parts of the Constitution that the "living document" crowd happens to favor, then the choir sings from a very different sheet of music. This is what is occuring with the American Bar Association. It rings hollow when a group committed to the transformation of the Constitution through legal legerdemain, rather than the amendment process, slams a political enemy for doing what it regularly advocates. Oh well, that's politics.

An old joke among supporters of Barry Goldwater posited that upon their candidate taking the presidential oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren would respond by instructing Goldwater to now raise his left arm as well and then tell the newly sworn-in president: "You're under arrest." In other words, a president who actually preserved, protected, and defended the Constitution would be more offensive to liberals like Warren, and the ABA, than presidents who act as though it no longer exists.

Just wait for the scathing reports the ABA releases when America has a president who abides by the Constitution. A man can hope, no?

A potential silver lining on the dark cloud that is the war between Israel and Lebanon: if they don't already, intelligent Muslims will realize that their coreligionist enthusiasts of terror are more trouble for them than they are for the people they claim to be fighting. In Lebanon, Hezbollah provoked an invasion that is proving disastrous for the Lebanese people. Currently, they are in effect using civilians as human shields by forgoing uniforms, storing munitions within homes, and launching strikes from population centers. In Iraq, Muslim terrorists have killed many times more Iraqi Muslims than they have Americans. Terrorism is a problem for Western civilization. It is a greater problem for Islamic civilization.

Gas prices, at least in non-inflation-adjusted terms, just hit an all-time high. A gallon of gasoline cost $1.72 on March 18, 2003. Today, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is $2.99. Put another way, Americans will pay roughly $457,500,000 more for gasoline today than they did on the day before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Sure, many factors have contributed to the spike in prices. One those factors is the Iraq war.

Hell hath no fury like a talking-head scorned by the viewing public. Keith Olbermann's obsession with Bill O'Reilly, like most obsessions, is discomfiting. Olbermann regularly names O'Reilly "worst person in the world" on his show. Confirming that it's not an act, Olbermann emailed a viewer: "You 'Americans' still watching that evil f--- O'Reilly?" And this weekend, Olbermann showed up at the Television Critics Association convention wearing an O'Reilly mask and giving a Nazi salute. I can't recall Olbermann's name coming up on O'Reilly's program, and perhaps that's the point. Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Olbermann won't be ignored, Bill. Note to O'Reilly: hide your children's pets, particularly rabbits.

"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," William F. Buckley said about George W. Bush to CBS News. "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious.... his legacy is indecipherable." That's polite, English-boarding-school talk for Bush is horrible.

Add Milton Friedman to the Right's long list of opponents of the foolish war in Iraq. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq," Friedman explains to a reporter, over the objections of his wife Rose, in a charming Wall Street Journal profile. "As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression."

To further examine the question, "Is There a Conservative Foreign Policy?," it's worth examining the vastly different reactions from folks on the Right to the current event dominating discussion, the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

"Iran is our enemy," Andrew McCarthy writes at NRO of the hostilities between Lebanon and Israel. "This is our war. Israel is doing our heavy-lifting." Larry Kudlow believes Israel is "defending America’s homeland" in its fight against Hezbollah. "All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous thank-you for defending freedom, democracy, and security against the Iranian cat’s-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel is doing the Lord’s work." Bill Kristol writes in a provocative Weekly Standard editorial entitled, "It's Our War," that "what's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States." Kristol calls Hezbollah's incursions into Israel "an act of Iranian aggression," which should be answered by the United States with "renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran."

But other voices, also speaking from the right side of the political divide, offer assessments that clash with those of McCarthy, Kudlow, and Kristol.

Ivan Eland puts most of the blame on Israel for the current violence. "Even if Israel is given the benefit of the doubt for an explosion in Gaza on June 9 that killed a family of seven (witnesses blame Israeli artillery but Israel denies causing it), Israel clearly killed 11 Palestinians, including nine civilians, in Gaza on June 13 using a missile strike on a van," the Independence Institute's Eland writes. "In the latter case, the Israelis would argue that they were going after 'terrorists' in the van and that the civilians just happened to be in the way. But Hamas could claim that its later June 25 killing of two Israeli soldiers and capturing another was an attack on legitimate targets in retaliation for the first two Israeli actions." Lou Dobbs, who may disagree with the libertarian Eland on trade and immigration, nevertheless finds at least some common ground regarding the Israel-Lebanon war. "In the Middle East," Dobbs asks, "where is our sense of proportion? Where is our sense of perspective? Where is our sense of decency?" Pat Buchanan writes: "there is no evidence Iran has any tighter control over Hezbollah than we have over Israel, whose response to the capture of two soldiers had all the spontaneity of the Schlieffen Plan. And, again, Hezbollah attacked Israel, not us. And there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has signed, but Israel refuses to sign."

Obviously, some of these perspectives represent extremes, and there are plenty of opinions in between the Israel-as-bad-guy position and the Israel-is-fighting-for-America position. I reference the diverse views not to persuade the reader of the rectitude of one view over another, but to persuade the reader of the confusion the labels "conservative" and "right" unleash when it comes to foreign policy. The issue needn't be Israel and Lebanon. Just about any foreign policy controversy will demonstrate the wide chasm in the thought of right-leaning figures on America's role in the world.

There's something stale when conformity of thought reigns in a movement. There's something artificial when the diversity of thought is so great as to leave no room for uniting themes. The latter is the situation the Right finds itself in today regarding foreign policy.

Vaguely citing the federal Constitution, and a federal court decision, a state judge in North Carolina, at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, has nullified a state law banning unmarried couples from cohabitating. North Carolina isn't Vermont, and if the state's laws reflect the views of the people who live there--even if they're not my views, or the judge's views, or the ACLU's views--why should anyone have a problem with that? We live in a republic, right? The right to live with your girlfriend, I confess, is a part of the Bill of Rights that escaped my notice.

Self-government means just that. It doesn't mean enlightened government.

The organization bringing the suit, the ACLU, interestingly has been involved in a number of housing suits aimed at curtailing the rights of individuals. Landlords who don't care to rent their property to non-married couples, for instance, have been sued by the organization. Freedom of association? Property rights? To loosely paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, these are not the rights the ACLU was looking for. The ACLU embraces the rights that embrace their agenda, and rejects the rights that reject their agenda. They are cafeteria Constitutionalists, picking and choosing what suits their appetites. They are not a group interested in civil liberties (particularly not the civil liberties of landlords) despite their name. The ACLU is interested in using the legal system to impose an agenda that would never pass muster through the normal, democratic process. Using the courts to repeal a law passed by the duly elected legislature of North Carolina, and not repealed by any of the duly elected legislatures in the 200 years since, demonstrates this.

Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr is suing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for $400 million. Good. The suit responds to Bloomberg's own lawsuit against fifteen gun shops, including one in Georgia, that sold firearms later used in crimes. Bloomberg's office calls Barr's suit a "public relations stunt." They would know.

"American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion," implored the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom: "does it serve the just interests of the United States?" Forty-six years later, no diverse gathering of conservatives would be able to agree on a concise articulation of the desired aim of American foreign policy. One group wants America to serve as a means to other nations' ends. Another group believes America an end in itself. Both groups call themselves conservative.

A frontpage story in the Washington Post details "conservative anger" over the Bush administration's foreign policy. "Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency," the piece contends. "They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon."

George Will, who labels such criticism "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature," subscribes to a different brand of conservatism that has been critical of Bush's visionary foreign policy, citing the disastrous Iraq campaign as evidence of the dangers of nation building. Will writes in his current column that "elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament."

YAF's Sharon Statement, penned by M. Stanton Evans at a gathering at William F. Buckley's Connecticut estate, brought traditionalists, libertarians, and anti-communists together under a common banner. Might the seeds of the current conservative foreign policy schism be the natural consequence of uniting the crusading, liberation-oriented brand of anti-communist with the Washingtonian, non-interventionist libertarians and traditionalists?

"Pagan civilization was founded upon the state, Christian civilization upon religion. To a Roman his religion was part of the structure and ceremony of government, and his morality culminated in patriotism; to a Christian his religion was something apart from and superior to political society; his highest allegiance belonged not to Caesar but to Christ. Tertullian laid down the revolutionary principle that no man need obey a law that he deemed unjust. The Christian revered his bishop, even his priest, far above the Roman magistrate; he submitted his legal troubles with fellow Christians to his church authorities rather than to the officials of the state."
--Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, 1944

George Bush has brandished his veto pen. He will likely mark his name on the offending piece of legislation today. George, what took you so long?

There hasn't been a presidential veto since 2000. One has to go back to the 1820s--starting during the presidency of James Monroe, continuing throughout the administration of John Quincy Adams, and finally ending with Andrew Jackson--to find a longer period without a president vetoing a bill. Given that the likes of the No Child Left Behind Act, McCain-Feingold, and the Prescription Drug Bill never passed the desk of John Quincy Adams, we can forgive him for keeping his veto pen in his sock. What's George W. Bush's excuse?

The bill Bush will block seeks to expand federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research. As the White House puts it, the bill "uses taxpayers' money to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos," and "overturns the President's policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction." On moral, budgetary, and Constitutional grounds, the veto is justified. The president is not banning stem-cell research. He's just saying no to stem-cell research on the taxpayers' dime when it's done on aborted life.

All of this comes after George W. Bush became the first president to approve the funding of such research through the federal government. Perhaps the president thought this would win over liberal critics. It didn't. Liberals still regard him as an anti-science troglodyte and dismiss any compromises he's made to satiate them as not going far enough. It's all the way or nothing with them.

With attacks coming instead of gratitude, the president perhaps is wondering why he didn't use his veto pen when this issue first came up in 2001. Oh, well. It's better late than never.

Older Lebanese probably feel as though they have emigrated even though they have never left home. Once majority Christian, Lebanon is now majority Muslim. The place has changed, for the worse, with the altered religious demographics since World War II. Beruit was once called the Paris of the Middle East. Let this be a lesson to the Paris of Europe: changing demographics can really, really change a city. They can change a country, too. Just ask Hindus in Bangladesh or Christians in Nigeria.

George Bush, 2004: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other." George Bush, 2006: "[W]hatever Israel does, though, should not weaken the Siniora government in Lebanon. We're concerned about the fragile democracy in Lebanon." Democracy, or whatever name one applies to representative government, is an excellent method of governance. But as an antidote to terrorism, war, and and any other modern horseman of the apocalypse, democracy is found wanting.

I decided to title my post World War Ten not because it has any relevance to its actual content, but because I hope it will get your attention. Along the same lines, some folks want to rename the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan World War III. What similarities they hold to World Wars I and II, I don't know. Why is Newt Gingrich so adamant in calling the wars America currently finds itself in "World War III"? (Why such titles call for Roman numerals, a la the Super Bowl, is the subject for another post.) I suppose Gingrich's label is an improvement of Norman Podhoretz's insistence that America is embroiled in World War IV (forgive me for missing school on the day World War III was covered and for being ignorant of when World War IV even began). World War III is too Madison Avenue for me. Killing the enemy, not naming the conflict, should be the primary concern. That it's not suggests that concerns with the perception of the two wars at home trump the effectiveness of the two wars abroad. It is an election year, you know. Labels matter. But accurate labels matter too. Both world wars witnessed dozens of nations at war and the loss of tens of millions of lives. Thankfully, we're not there yet--not even close.

The Big Dig, Boston's (largely) federally-financed tunnels underneath the city's famous harbor, was a scam conducted by powerful Massachusetts politicians who fleeced the taxpayers of other states to pay for a purely local concern. Now the Bay State's politicians are shocked, shocked that contractors fleeced them. Swindles beget swindles. The scam cost taxpayers $14.6 billion dollars (so far). The scam cost one woman her life. The lesson? When other people pay the tab, not only will the recipient countenance wasteful items on the bill, but will neglect what's given. People who pay for their own stuff are on guard against rip-offs and generally take good care of their purchase.

Four in ten Lebanese citizens are Christians. Might we hope that their neighbor's aerial bombardment misses them and strikes those Shiite Muslims involved in the Hezbollah terrorist organization? Murderers and kidnappers, and not the Lebanese population so long victimized by such barbarism, deserve to feel these military strikes. Killing these brigands will probably do Lebanon more good than Israel. Not killing them and instead killing innocents will probably do Israel more harm than Lebanon. Caught in the crossfire, many in Lebanon find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

It's another open-thread Friday. Bring it on in the comments section.

Lines, like fashions, change. Last year, a triumphalist Bush administration declared that Lebanon's rebuff of their Syrian overlords proved that "democracy and freedom are on the march." "Across the Middle East--from the Palestinian territories, to Lebanon, to Iraq, to Iran--I believe that the advance of freedom within nations will build the peace among nations," the president proclaimed. "We support the spread of democracy in the Middle East--because freedom leads to peace."

A year later, a state of war exists between Israel and Lebanon. "I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act, but an act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the kidnappings and killings of his nation's soldiers. "The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to shake the stability of the region."

If the Bush administration didn't speak too soon, what's Israel doing inside Lebanon? Democracies don't invade one another, do they? How did Hezbollah become part of an elected government? Democracy is to terrorists what water is to the Wicked Witch, right?

"Small nations have therefore always been the cradle of political liberty; and the fact that many of them have lost their liberty by becoming larger shows that their freedom was more a consequence of their small size than of the character of the people."
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

The story of Syd Barrett is legendary. Now it is over. Pink Floyd's founder has died in seclusion. Syd Barrett, 60, rest in peace.

Strangely, I spent two hours reading about Barrett last night as I listened to Wish You Were Here and early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd. I woke up this morning to find that Barrett had passed away. For the uninitiated, Syd Barrett was Pink Floyd's first lead singer/songwriter/guitar player. He led the band from 1965-1968. That Pink Floyd is like nothing you have ever heard, unless of course, you've heard that Pink Floyd. Musically, they have a mid-sixties Beatles flavor, mixed with pop, random screams and click-clacking noises, and an occasional proto-punk sound (Punk is the last word that one would use to describe the later, classic Pink Floyd lineup.). Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd is anything but mellow--the word that comes most to mind in describing post-Syd Pink Floyd. Lyrically, Syd Barrett's songs resemble catchy, psychedelic nursery rhymes.

Barrett fronted the band on such early singles as "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" (a few notes of which can be faintly heard on Richard Wright's keyboard at the close of the Wish You Were Here album), and on the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album, Pink Floyd's first. He also contributes to a few songs on the Saucerful of Secrets sophomore effort. But then he was gone.

The freak-out, psychedelic, drug scene that gave rise to the band led to the demise of its most important member. As one band associate put it: "Syd took a lot of acid. Lots of people can take some acid and cope with it in their lives, but if you take three or four trips a day, and you do that every day..." Nuff said.

A thousand incidents alarmed Syd's bandmates: Roger Waters finding Syd asleep with a cigarette, still clutched, singeing his fingers; Syd suggesting the band add two young female saxaphone players; Syd removing the strings to his guitar during a performance; and Syd mixing tranquilizers with a large quantity of hair gel, only to have the concoction ooze onto his face under the stage lights--giving him a ghoulish, melting appearance as the drugs seeped into his brain--all of this bizarre behavior led to David Gilmour's addition, and shortly thereafter, to Barrett's departure.

"Things came to a head in February [1968] on the day we were due to play a gig in Southampton," drummer Nick Mason, the only continuous member of Pink Floyd, writes in his excellent, excellent book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. "In the car on the way to collect Syd, someone said, 'Shall we pick up Syd?' and the response was 'No, f--- it, let's not bother." The upper-class Englishmen left their friend behind to deal with a permanent hangover from '60s excess.

What might have been had drugs not sent Syd Barrett over the edge of sanity? A totally different band, with a totally different sound, called Pink Floyd.

For five years, Pink Floyd struggled to find a new sound. There are bizarre sound effects and animal noises on Ummagumma. There's a Beach Boys-inspired track on Atom Heart Mother. There's a 26-minute song on Meddle. There are some short, radio-ready, three-minute rock songs on Obscured by Clouds. Throughout, there's a band struggling to find a new identity, and perhaps lose the guilt of which their old identity served as a reminder. Finally, after multiple attempts, any one of which would have resulted in a record-contract severance today, Pink Floyd hit it big, really, really big, with The Dark Side of the Moon, the longest charting album in history. Insanity, curiously, serves as one of the album's themes. That theme would come back again and again in Pink Floyd music.

Syd had faded out of his bandmates' lives. But in 1975 he--or at least a shadow of what he once was--famously faded back into Pink Floyd. "I strolled into the control room for the studio, and noticed a large fat bloke with a shaven head, wearing a decripit old tan mac," drummer Mason recalls. "He was carrying a plastic shopping bag and had a fairly benign, but vacant, expression on his face. His appearance would not have generally gained him admittance beyond studio reception, so I assumed he must have been a friend of one of the engineers." But he wasn't. He was the man who, just seven years earlier, was the lead singer, lead guitarist, and chief songwriter of Pink Floyd. His bandmates didn't recognize him. The jarring meet-up led to confusion, tears, and much of the subsequent Pink Floyd catalogue. It would be the last time any member of Pink Floyd would put eyes on Syd Barrett, who, legend has it, spent the remainder of his days wandering about Cambridge, England.

Ironically, the song Pink Floyd would play for an eyebrow-less Barrett was Shine on You Crazy Diamond: "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun/Shine on you crazy diamond/Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky/Shine on you crazy diamond." It's about Syd. That Syd, who wandered into the studo with his eyebrows shaved, helped inspire the "Pink" character in The Wall. Brain Damage? In the Flesh? Syd is present even in his absence.

Pink Floyd spent a career losing that distinctive, Syd Barrett Pink Floyd sound. They never suceeded in fully losing Syd Barrett.

On the eve of tonight's all-star game, the Science Channel aired an excellent documentary, "Baseball's Secret Formula." What's the formula? It's the integration of the ideas of Bill James and sabermetrics into managerial and player-personal decisions. Who's practicing the formula? According to the documentary, the Oakland A's of Moneyball fame and the Boston Red Sox, a team that not only employs James on its payroll, but that has moved several players--impatient hackers Nomar Garciaparra and Shea Hillenbrand (both currently hitting above .300), to name two--who don't fit James' philosophy.

What's this all about? Think American League baseball, or, at least a variant of the stereotype of American League baseball. James's philosophy posits that preserving outs, rather than advancing the runner, matters most. So steals, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks are no-nos. The occasional cry, "a walk is as good as a hit" is taken perhaps too literally among the Jamesites, who discard batting average for on-base percentage. The RBI, one of the big three in batting statistics, gets downgraded because where one hits in the batting order, rather than how one hits, plays a major role in the accumulation of them (but isn't where you hit in the order determined by how you hit?).

Perhaps the most interesting admission of the program was James's concluding statement that statistics can only tell us so much. There are too many situational variables to judge a player solely by the back of his baseball card--no matter how many of the nerdish baseball fanatics featured in the documentary wish it were so. How do statistics quantify Derek Jeter's clutch performances? Don't defensive statistics lie in placing Doug Mirabelli at the bottom of catchers when he actually does a masterful job catching knuckleballer Tim Wakefield? Where do statistics measure how the mere basepath presence of a Ricky Henderson, or a Lou Brock, or a Jose Reyes for that matter, sends pitchers into frenzies and puts defenses out of position?

In addition to forwarding the controversial ideas that teams would be better served using their closers in the seventh inning than in the ninth and that batting order really doesn't matter all that much, James offers in the Science Channel program his all-time all-star team based on his statistical analysis. They are:

C Yogi Berra
1B Lou Gehrig
2B Joe Morgan
SS Honus Wagner
3B Mike Schmidt
LF Ted Williams
CF Willie Mays
RF Babe Ruth
P Roger Clemens

No Ty Cobb? Barry Bonds? Hank Aaron? Johnny Bench? Rogers Hornsby? Even the most scientific, most well-thought-out statistics can't settle a baseball debate.

An adjunct professor at the University of Arizona who shared sexual and violent fantasies about a blogger's child has resigned her position. Now she's claiming victim status, and the blogger's site has been shut down several times by web attacks.

"Ooh. Two year old boy. Sounds hot. You live in Colorado, I see. Hope no one Jon-Benets your baby," wrote Dr. Debbie Frisch, a psychology instructor (Got any guesses what attracted her to that field?) at the University of Arizona. Elsewhere she wrote to Jeff Goldstein, "if I woke up tomorrow and learned that someone else had shot you and your 'tyke' it wouldn’t slow me down one iota. You aren't 'human' to me." Another of Frisch's posts on Protein Wisdom requested, "Give your pathetic progeny (I sure hope that mofo got good genes from his mama!) a big fat tongue-filled kiss from me! LOTS AND LOTS OF SALIVA from Auntie MOONBAT, if you don’t mind!"

Frisch calls herself an "expert in decision science." I'd hate to see the decisons novices in that field make. To think such madness, to write it down, to attach one's name to it, to repeat it--the chain of bad judgment is long. Is it at all shocking that this troubled woman thinks that Ward Churchill's observations about 9/11 are "brilliant"?

Despite the cybertrail, Frisch has the temerity to label her detractors "rightwingnuts," "nutcases," "nutty," and, perhaps with the aid of a thesaurus, "looneytunes," "whackjobs," and "unhinged." I believe the term they use in psychology is "projection."

Frank Zeidler, the last Socialist Party mayor of a major U.S. city, passed away over the weekend at 93. Every so often an obituary comes along that strikes the reader with the thought that surely that man died ten, twenty years earlier. Zeidler's obit did that for me. A Socialist Party mayor? Will they next tell us that the last tyrannosaurus rex just died?

Certainly many lower-case "s" socialists still serve as mayors in American cities. But a Socialist Party mayor? That's a real throwback. The party's heyday was in 1912, and even then, it wasn't much of a heyday. That year the Socialists boasted a congressman from Milwaukee, mayors from Schenectady, Milwaukee, Flint, and dozens of other cities, and six percent of the presidential vote. But if six percent was the high-water mark, then the waters never reached very high.

Not so in Milwaukee, where Socialists learned that to win office, and govern effectively, discarding socialist principles was often necessary. In other words, establishing state ownership of the means of production dropped on the list of priorities below regular trash pick-up, clean water, good schools, and safe streets. For a Socialist, this was a dangerous balancing act. If a Socialist adhered to doctrine at the expense of governance, the electorate might throw him out of office. If a Socialist governed at the expense of doctrine, the Socialists might throw him out of the party--as they did to mayors in Canton, Lima, and Lorain, Ohio. By the time Frank Zeidler came along, Norman Thomas's Socialist Party was a shadow of Eugene Debs's Socialist Party, and no longer could afford to eject members that had actually attained office (not that it made sense for Debs's less tiny SP to issue such expulsions).

"One of the most serious errors of the Socialist Party was its failure to behave the way political parties in the United States must in order to be successful," notes historian David Shannon in The Socialist Party of America: A History. "The Socialist Party never fully decided whether it was a political party, a political pressure group, a revolutionary sect, or a political forum." And that, along with the unpopularity of socialism itself, stood as a cause of the Socialist Party's failure as a party. But in Milwaukee, where Frank Zeidler reigned as mayor from 1948 to 1960, and Socialists--including Zeidler's brother Carl, the city's mayor who died at sea during World War II--ruled the city for nearly the entire fifty-year perioed between 1910 and 1960, the party adapted to local conditions and thrived. Tip O'Neill postulated that all politics is local. The Socialists of Milwaukee, who won election after election as the national party faded into history with the Know-Nothings, Greenbackers, and other failed third parties, are proof of this. But now, even the Socialists of Milwaukee are history. All bad things must come to an end.

Frank Zeidler, rest in peace. Socialism, rest forever.

Italy beat France on penalty kicks to win the World Cup. Penalty kicks? Is that any way to win a championship? Penalty kicks seem a bit like the three-point shot, the designated hitter, and other affronts to purists. But someone has to win, right? Like the Astrodome fans of the Bad News Bears, I found myself chanting: "Let them play." Oh, well.

Justice prevailed in the outcome, as Italy got jobbed on an offsides call that negated a goal in regulation. From France's perspective, however, they were coming on late whereas Italy was gassed and depleted. After dominating early, Italy came across as a prizefighter who had taken one too many shots to the body. Italy seemed built for a sprint whereas France was ready to run the marathon.

The story of the game, on so many different levels, was Zidane. He scored a goal. He went down with an injury, but unlike Real Madrid teammate and English captain David Beckham, France's captain dramatically stayed in the game. The hero morphed into the goat. Through frustration(?), fatigue(?), or some inexplicable reason, Zidane headbutted an Italian player in the chest resulting in a red card. Even in his absence, Zidane was the story, as France's chances would have been better during penalty kicks had Zidane not lost his head in an opponent's chest. It was not a storybook ending for the French star.

A few mysteries, questions, and observations: Why were refs awarded medals following the big game? Could Americans learn something from the sportsmanship of soccer that results in teams kicking the ball out of bounds when an opposing player goes down? Did you catch when announcer Dave O'Brian identified Bill Clinton as one of the "celebrities" in attendance, and then quickly rebounded by calling the former president one of the "dignitaries" on hand? Did you think the first label a better fit? Why do people who equate football fans with primitives think watching a soccer game with glass of wine in hand the height of culture? Isn't all the faking and acting that goes on (nothing in the NBA even compares) revolting? Doesn't Italy's victory put a silver-lining on America's early exit, as Team USA can now say they played with the best of the best? Why did they use soccer balls that look like this instead of ones that look like this?

See you in South Africa in 2010.

The World Cup final game arrives this Sunday: Italy versus France. In anticipation, the FlynnFiles open-thread on the big game arrives a few days early. Got a problem with France? Italy? Soccer? Rooting for France? Italy? Soccer? Got a prediction on the big game? Any special tournament moments you care to share? Will you be glued to the tube Sunday at 2 p.m. EDT? Let's hear from everybody, especially Pele, Maradona, and Mr. Posh Spice, in the comments section.

A pre-cut book has its advantages, but there's something to be said for the old days when a book buyer had to cut the pages of the book to read it. That "something" to be said is that readers, many, many years down the line, might learn about the book's history.

Two weeks ago, I got a copy of William James's Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (buy it here) from Georgetown University's library. It is a beat-up, 1925 edition that belonged to a Mr. Weeks of Alexandria, Virginia as of December 1, 1943. It seems to have come into Georgetown's possession in 1984. In the book's 81 years of existence, I don't think it has ever been read. I'm sure some people skimmed through a few pages. I'm sure some other people read passages. But that's not reading a book.

My evidence for writing this is that several of the pages haven't been cut. In the home-stretch of the book, I had to cut, sloppily so, pages 285-288, and then, 297-300. Pragmatism is one of the most talked about philosophy books of the last hundred years. But books talked about are not always books read.

Pragmatism is best when first read and then talked about. All books are. But it's perhaps true that it is one of those rare books, because of its simplicity of message, that doesn't lose too much if talked about without a read. Perhaps the uncut pages of this particular volume add credence to this view.

James's philosophy urges judgment on ideas based on practical consequences. This wisdom yields to sophistry. Pragmatism shows flashes of anti-dogmatism, but, in the final analysis, shows itself to be yet another dogma. What works, in pragmatism, becomes what's true. James defines the philosophy's methodology as an "attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts." Its definition of truth is "whatever proves itself to be good."

It might prove "good" to tell a reincarnated version of Mr. James that students have been reading this particular version of Pragmatism non-stop since it came into Georgetown's possession. But that wouldn't be true, would it? What proved "good" for the past owners of this heretofore uncut copy of Pragmatism perhaps has been to prominently display the book, but to never have read it--itself a type of dishonesty (at least it can be). What proves "good" for me is to read the book, and then quickly return it to its current owner, Georgetown University (to display for decades longer without marrying it to an actual reader) before fines accrue in excess of the volume's actual cost.

The unkindest cut of all for an old book is no cut at all. To boast the famous name "William James" and the title "Pragmatism" on the spine, to drop mention of "Harvard University" on the inside, to list the dates of nineteen previous printings, to impress with all this and not interest a single reader to finish the book in more than eight decades seems a magnificent failure. It's the curtain being lifted on the wizard. Alas, all talk and no action is the destiny of so many famous books.

After 81 years of serving as a conversation piece, this copy of Pragmatism, finally, at about 10:15 p.m. last Wednesday night, realized the ambition of all books: to be read.

"The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West."
--Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, 1996

Are there benefits to cultivating the idea that you have AIDS? Cassey Weierbach thought so, correctly, and allegedly defrauded the state of Pennsylvania of $66,000.

In addition to medical benefits, Weierbach's fake AIDS status inspired do-gooders to pay her rent, wash her clothes, and buy her groceries. It gave her a degree of celebrity. It allowed her to make an income on the lecture-circuit, partly through a group called Hope's Voice. "All I've ever wanted was to educate people about an illness that I live with every day," Weierbach told HIV Plus magazine. "I'm at the end of the disease, and I want to use the time I have left to put all I have into this project." She did that by speaking at colleges, high schools, and churches. The executive director of Hope's Voice cut ties with her when one night at a bar, during a speaking tour, Weierbach, supposedly in the final stages of full-blown AIDS, rose from her wheelchair, began dancing, and pounded shots.

But it was a local pastor who "outed" Weierbach as an HIV-negative individual. Reverend Lois Randolph, after leading efforts to help Weierbach, suspected that she was perfectly healthy, physically at least. She persuaded Weierbach to take an HIV test, and it came back negative. Weierbach denies she is HIV negative, and claims that her life as a lesbian caused a hateful preacher to destroy her life.

''It seems like she is going to make my life living hell,'' Weierbach told Allentown's Morning Call newspaper of Reverend Randolph. ''Do you hate me so much because I'm gay that you are willing to destroy my life?''

While it's easy to jump to the conclusion that the overall story supports the idea that AIDS no longer bears a stigma, a part of Weierbach's imaginative yarn, at least, undermines that notion. Weierbach claims she contracted the disease by being raped as a child. In other words, she didn't get the disease through behavior that parts of the population find objectionable. She became an AIDS victim through innocence--as a child, as a rape victim.

It's this part of the story that, psychologically speaking, is more intriguing, and perhaps more insulting to the groups traditionally afflicted with HIV. Weierbach felt comfortable claiming HIV status, but, for whatever reason, didn't concoct a more believable story about contraction, i.e., through drug use or chosen sexual activity. She said she was not only raped, but raped as a child. Naturally, this absolves her of the stigma of the disease even in the eyes of those most liable to stigmatize AIDS. Or, perhaps this con-woman knew, from observing the sympathy poured upon Ryan White, Mary Fisher, and others who had contracted the disease from means other than sex or intravenious drugs, what AIDS victims the public fawns over most. Since Weierbach still denies her clean bill of health, it's not likely that these answers will be forthcoming. Even if they were, deconstructing the motives behind those answers, rather than accepting the answers at face value, might be the unsatisfying result.

We know that Miss Weierbach claimed that she had AIDS when she didn't. We don't know why she claimed that she contracted the disease through a fantastic set of circumstances, when more readily believable explanations existed within her real life's behavior.

But why AIDS? Why not heart disease, multiple sclerosis, or some other horrible disease? Do they not pay, in terms of sympathy and dollars, the way AIDS does? Is there no lecture-circuit cash for, say, victims of cancer? Won't the government pay for the health care of all carriers of fatal illness? Cassey Weierbach knows the answers to these questions better than most.

HIV isn't what it used to be. It doesn't develop into AIDS and kill so quickly, and it no longer elicits such an awful stigma. Freddie Mercury, Eazy E, Liberace, and Rock Hudson saw no benefit in declaring their AIDS status to the world. But, unlike most other diseases, which inspire privacy in the afflicted, there is today a cottage industry of professional AIDS victims. That the disease is preventable, and can make life lonely among those in whom the disease is no longer preventable, makes such activity quite honorable and necessary. But, like everything, there's another side to things, another side where making a buck off such a horrible disease--a horrible disease that has an exalted status among diseases--stikes many as off-putting and unseemly.

AIDS isn't just a death sentence any more. For Cassey Weierbach, AIDS is a living--and a lucrative one at that.

rules.

The World Europe Cup soccer tournament continues today. Portugal, France, Germany, and Italy--four countries within a few hundred miles of one another--battle for supremacy in what really isn't the world's sport, after all. Soccer is Europe's sport, and some Europeans believe, like the song says: "We are the world."

Sure, soccer is played, and watched, just about everywhere. But so is basketball and baseball. In baseball's newly created World Baseball Classic, teams from Latin America, North America, and Asia all had fighting chances to win. But in the World Europe Cup, only teams from Europe and South America were expected to challenge for the title. In fact, since 1930 just seven nations--Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, and England--have won the soccer tournament. Of the sixty-eight teams that have made it to the World Cup semifinals, just two have been from outside Europe and South America. The tournament itself has been held outside Europe and South America twice.

Perhaps labeling the "World Cup" the "Europe Cup" is unfair to South Americans. But labeling it the "World Cup" is unfair to North Americans. We don't really care all that much about soccer--at least not as much as football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and several other sports.

Is soccer the world sport? The United States of America is in the world, right? In the United States, soccer has not caught on as a professional sport. There is a niche audience of immigrants and people who played the game. But there are few broadcasts on national television, no million-dollar contract, and no sold-out stadiums. The average attendance for MLS games last year was 15,108. Put another away, NFL Europe draws greater numbers than U.S. soccer.

The game is popular among kids, and its simplicity--a ball, a net, your feet--lends itself to accessibility. Thus, any cash-strapped high school can field a team, just as impoverished Africans, Arabs, and Latin Americans can generally start a pick-up game. In that sense, it is universal, and universal in a way that hockey and football can never hope to be. It's a game that requires athleticism, endurance, and skill. I watch it, at least when the Olympics and World Cup roll around. But what's the point of projecting one's personal tastes upon the rest of humanity? Boasts of the "world sport" tell us less about soccer's popularity than they do about the unpopularity of a certain part of the world with the boaster.

Let the soccer fans have the World Cup. Just don't give us baseball fans a hard time when we watch players from around the globe compete in the World Series. It's our world, too.

Days after tens of thousands of drunken Brits saw their World Cup hopes dashed after England's star player decided to stomp on an opposing player's groin comes word that a majority of Brits find America "uncultured" and "vulgar." On the eve of the Fourth of July, which celebrates our shaking off the imperial chains of England, two-thirds of Brits lambaste the United States as an imperial power. Will a survey of Brits next lament how Americans have teeth that look like Raisinets? Will a majority of Brits decry the many boarding schools that introduce the youth of America to sodomy? Will a poll find that Brits think that American women look like they haven't seen the sun for six months, talk like they are in a prison yard, and constantly sweat Newcastle Brown Ale through the pores of their bloated beer bodies? Before you look across the pond, look down at your reflection first.

While we're on the subject of science, as well as the subject of the festivities associated with a proper celebration of the Fourth of July, a new study claims that one drink can be dangerous. Excellent, excellent news for those of us who prefer eight or nine drinks. To avoid the scientifically-proven dangers of just one drink, remember to double fist on the first round. Don't argue with science. Just do it.

An MIT scientist disputes Al Gore's claim that there is no debate over global warming in the scientific community. More interesting than the science offered, which can be headspinning, is Richard Lindzen's attempt at answering why Gore, and other environmentalists, make such a point of declaring scientific unanimity when difference of opinion clearly exists on the issue. Lindzen offers three reasons: "First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists--especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a 'moral' crusade." And finally, "there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition." This final method, more Goebbels than Gore, is ill-suited to debate in a healthy democracy. But not everyone seeks debate.

Superman has saved the world so many times. Too bad the world can't save Superman. Kryptonite isn't his biggest weakness. Bad writing is. On Fourth of July weekend comes word that the makers of the new Superman movie have airbrushed, like the guns in the ET rerelease, a politically inconvenient part of the man of steel's most memorable catchphrase. "Truth, justice, and the American way" becomes "truth, justice, and all that stuff." What's next? Will Captain America become Captain Humanity? Superman is "an international superhero," contends screenwriter Dan Harris. Fellow screenwriter Michael Dougherty concurs: "He's here for humanity."