by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, January 9, 2003 1:19 P.M. EST

Drowning in Bathos
Charles Pierce must really hate Ted Kennedy. Pierce is the author of a piece on the Massachusetts senator that ran more than 5,000 words in Sunday's Boston Globe magazine. Tucked into it is this paragraph of pure poison:

And that's the key. That's how you survive what he's survived. That's how you move forward, one step after another, even though your name is Edward Moore Kennedy. You work, always, as though your name were Edward Moore. If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.

Pelosi's No. 1 Supporter
Whenever a new Congress convenes, one of the first orders of business in the House is the election of a speaker. The outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion, the legislative equivalent of a meeting of the Electoral College, since the majority party has already chosen its candidate, who's assured of victory over his opponent, the minority leader. But a look at the roll calls in the vote for speaker--for 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003--shows occasional cause for interest, as some lawmakers stray from the party line:

• In 2001, Democrat Jim Traficant of Ohio cast a vote for Speaker Dennis Hastert rather than his own party's candidate, Dick Gephardt. (Hastert didn't get Traficant's vote this year, since Traficant is in federal prison.)

• In 1997 three liberal Republicans couldn't bring themselves to vote for Newt Gingrich's re-election: Reps. Tom Campbell of California and Michael Forbes of New York voted for Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, while Leach himself voted for longtime minority leader Robert Michel of Illinois, even though Michel had retired two years earlier. (There's no constitutional requirement that the speaker of the House be a member of the House.) Rep. Linda Smith of Washington, a GOP dissident though not a liberal, voted for Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, who had also retired.

• This year, Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, voted for Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, as he had done in 2001, instead of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Apparently Pelosi was too liberal for three other conservative Southern Democrats--Ralph Hall and Charles Stenholm of Texas and Ken Lucas of Kentucky. They all voted "present."

What's really interesting about this year's roll call, though, is the identity of one of the Democrats who voted for Nancy Pelosi: Nancy Pelosi. As reader Tony DiLascio points out, the candidates for speaker traditionally abstain from voting, as Hastert did this year as well as in 1999 and 2001, and as every minority leader, speaker and speaker-to-be has done since at least 1991, the earliest year for which House roll call votes are available online.

It's a petty point, of course; it's not as if Pelosi cast the deciding vote (and if she had, we would have understood). But why would she dispense with tradition just to cast a vote that looks self-serving without actually doing her any good? She must really believe in herself--so much so that she views it as a matter of high principle.

Unesco: Was Bush Right?
Everyone remembers President Bush's brilliant U.N. speech of last Sept. 12, in which he transformed the debate about Iraq from one about American "unilateralism" to one about whether the U.N. had the resolve and the relevance to enforce its own dictates. A lesser noticed feature of the speech was an olive branch Bush held out to the international body:

As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to Unesco. This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.

Unesco is the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. As a White House fact sheet notes, the U.S. withdrew from Unesco in 1984 because of its "poor management and values opposed to our own." The Associated Press brings news from Paris that suggests Bush was right to say Unesco had reformed:

UNESCO criticized an elite French university on Wednesday for a campaign to cut off exchanges with Israeli universities because of the conflict with the Palestinians.

A motion by the University of Paris VI for European academics to break ties with Israel prompted an outcry from French politicians and Jewish groups.

Koichiro Matsuura, director-general for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said the campaign runs counter to the goal of advancing peace and understanding through education.

U.N. agencies of course are notorious hotbeds of anti-Semitism, so Unesco's stand here is particularly noteworthy.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid
The Council on American Islamic Relations cares about America's economy--or so they'd like you to believe. Actually, CAIR is using our economy as another club with which to beat up on Israel. "Stimulate America's Economy, Not Israel's" is the headline on a CAIR press release that reads like an anti-foreign-aid screed by some right-wing crackpot. "Sending more aid to Israel would not only deprive America's economy of much-needed funds at a time of economic crisis, it would further damage our nation's interests in the Muslim world by again offering blind support for the oppression of the Palestinian people," the release quotes CAIR's Nihad Awad as saying. Naturally, the group makes no mention of the economic impact of the billions in foreign aid Washington sends Egypt and other Arab and Muslim lands.

How much does CAIR care about the U.S. economy? Another item on its Web site carries the headline "They Choke on Coke, but Savor Mecca-Cola." Mecca Cola, as the BBC notes, is the brainchild of one Tawfik Mathlouthi, a Frenchman of Arab descent, who tells the Beeb he aims to combat "America's imperialism and Zionism by providing a substitute for American goods and increasing the blockade of countries boycotting American goods." Where does CAIR stand on the use of anti-American boycotts as a means of fighting "imperialism"?

Our Friends the Saudis Imitate the Onion

"Bill of Rights Pared Down to a Manageable Six"--headline, the Onion, Dec. 18, 2002

"Can you pare down the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights to a manageable, no-nonsense six? Well, not really, but government authorities sure as heck can try that under the table, especially when it comes to dealing with those dreadful 'Middle Eastern types' running around the country."--lead paragraph, Fawaz Turki, Arab News, Jan. 9, 2003

You Don't Say--I
"Arafat Responsible for Ongoing Terror, Israel Says"--headline, CNSNews.com, Jan. 8

You Don't Say--II
"Singapore Warns of Threat From Radical Islamic Groups"--headline, New York Times, Jan. 9

Stupidity Watch
Rep. Charles Rangel is certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame for proposing conscription as a way to make the military less effective. Today's New York Daily News carries a Rangel op-ed in which he says: "I fear that the Bush administration's apparent determination to invade Iraq could thrust us into all-out war, perhaps a religious war, in the Mideast."

Did Rangel like it better when that war was being waged in Manhattan?

Where the Heck Is Lakehurst U?--III
Our readers have been diligently uncovering more information about Lakehurst University, the mysterious institution that gave a Saudi businessman an honorary degree recently. Several did the obvious thing of looking at its domain name's Whois entry, which gives the school's address as 92 Sapphire Lane, Franklin Park, N.J. Two readers produced an aerial photograph of this address, and it appears the campus is quite small (actually, the photo looks like a residential subdivision).

Yet this tiny campus is also the home of Barrington University Middle East, according to Barrington's Web site. Although Barrington acknowledges (see question 13) that it is not accredited, it, unlike Lakehurst, has a .edu domain. According to Educause.edu, which administers the .edu domain, the accreditation requirement is waived for .edu domain names already in existence as of Oct. 29, 2001.

Several readers explored the Lakehurst Web page and discovered some curious things. If you go to the About Lakehurst University page, which appears devoid of information, and use the "view source" command on your browser, you find a bunch of hidden text that begins:

Lakehurst University is the Mother school for a group of (5) five notable Universities. Known for its excellence in education, LU is one of the most prestigious distance learning universities worldwide and presently has students earning their degrees in 28 countries in 6 different languages. Many high-ranking officials and members of the royal families are working on degree programs with LU, or are already alumni of this distinguished institution.

At least they don't call it the "mother of all schools." This page points out that the Lakehurst "core curriculum" includes courses in Arab history and Arab society and culture, and this page lists the deans of Lakehurst's "Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait & UAE Campuses," its "Lebanon & Syria Campuses," its "Morocco Campus" and its "Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and China Campuses."

Several readers also point out that the Lakehurst academic requirements seem very similar to those of the American University in Cairo. Among other things, both proclaim that their requirements "reflect the university's effort to bridge two cultures."

You Don't Say--III
" 'Unforgettable Lesson' if India Begins Nuke War"--headline, Oakland Tribune, Jan. 9

You Don't Say--IV
"N. Korean Leader Now Seen as Villain"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 8

Hail to the Thief
"Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates was fined $100 Wednesday after pleading guilty to stealing UC Berkeley student newspapers that had endorsed his opponent in the November election," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The paper says Bates described the theft as "an irrational act of election fatigue" and describes him as "a leader of the city's progressive left." Sounds like he could have made a strong case for an insanity defense.

Gray Davis Goes Trainspotting
If California were a country, it would have the world's fifth-largest economy. That's kind of amazing when you think about how foolish are the economic views of Gov. Gray Davis. The Ontario Daily Bulletin reports Davis is criticizing President Bush's economic-stimulus plan on the following grounds: "Bush should invest money in public projects like roads and Amtrak instead of relying on the private sector for job growth, Davis recommended."

You Don't Say--V
"Democrats Call Judicial Picks Disappointing"--headline, Boston Globe, Jan. 9

Say What?
"Crash Shouldn't Hamper Troubled US Airways"--headline, Pittsburgh Business Times, Jan. 8

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Thirteen-year-old Mitch Muller, a seventh-grader at Colorado's La Salle Middle School, "was expelled for a year because he played with a friend's miniature gunlike laser pointer," reports the Greeley Tribune:

Mitch asked to see the pointer, which is about 2 1/2 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. He admits he played with it for a few minutes, shining the red dot from the laser beam around the classroom. Then he gave it back to his friend.

Now, Mitch and two of his friends have been expelled from school for a full year because they played with a "firearm facsimile" in school.

'All Y'all'
Nearly a dozen readers wrote to say we were wrong yesterday when we said y'all is a plural pronoun. According to these readers, y'all is singular, and the plural is all y'all (or, says one, all y'alls.) The lesson: We should read Jay Nordlinger more closely.

Like a Rolling Stone
"Rare Moss Ends 130 Years of Celibacy" reads the headline of an Associated Press dispatch that appeared on CNN's Web site yesterday. Isn't this old news? After all, last March CNN carried a story titled "Model Kate Moss Expecting Baby."

Oh Drat
"Sex Comes to an End"--headline, Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 9

I Think, Therefore I Croak
Here's a curious headline from yesterday's USA Today: "Flu Kills Thousands More in USA Than Thought." We suppose it's pretty newsworthy that thousands of Americans are dropping dead of influenza, but have you ever heard of anyone thinking himself to death?

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Yaser, that's my enemy.
• John Fund: Zell Miller's retirement is good news for the GOP.
• Thane Rosenbaum: What's wrong with Holocaust movies.