From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, January 10, 2003 3:33 P.M. EST

The Politics of Pickering
Earlier this week President Bush renominated Judge Charles Pickering for a seat on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; the then-Democratic Senate judiciary committee had rejected him on a party-line vote back in March. Because Pickering is close to Sen. Trent Lott, and the Dems have attacked him on racial grounds, conventional wisdom in Washington had it that Pickering was through. President Bush, chastened by Lott's segregationist problems, would not reappoint Pickering.

We'd venture to say the president, as usual, is smarter than Washington's CW. In fact, the reappointment of Pickering looks like a very shrewd political move. Most obviously, it's a show of strength after last November's GOP election victories. It's a humiliation for Democrats, who thought twice that they had already defeated Pickering. It forces the Dems to expend political capital attacking Pickering.

It may even neutralize any political advantage the Democrats gained from Lott's political self-destruction. They paint Lott and Pickering as two of a kind, but there's a big difference: Whereas the closer you look at Lott's record, the harder it is to defend, smear outfits like People for the American Way have made Pickering look far worse than he actually is. (For a telling example, see Byron York's account of the famous cross-burning case in National Review Online.) The New York Times reported last February that in "his small and largely black hometown," Pickering "is a widely admired figure." The same month, Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, defended Pickering in a Wall Street Journal essay.

The new Washington CW is that Pickering's reappointment is a sacrifice play--that he will not get through the Senate. We're not so sure. Republicans do have a majority, after all. If the Democrats were confident Pickering would lose a confirmation vote, they wouldn't be threatening a filibuster, as New York's Sen. Charles Schumer is doing. To sustain a filibuster, and thus prevent Pickering's nomination from coming to the floor, the Democrats need 41 votes; there are 48 Democrats in the Senate plus Jim Jeffords.

"I haven't done a count but my sense is that we will have 41 votes," Minority Whip Harry Reid tells Reuters. Sens. Richard Durbin and Hillary Clinton agree. But note what's missing here: None of the senators expressing their confidence in a filibuster are from the South. (OK, Hillary is from Arkansas, but technically she represents New York in the Senate.) Do Southern Democrats, who have to face more conservative electorates, really want to go to the mat to do the bidding of Ralph Neas? Few would actually vote for his confirmation, since they depend on black votes and his opponents have played the race card, but surely your average Southern Democrat wishes this controversy would end as quietly as possible.

If the Senate confirms Pickering, it's a total victory for President Bush. But if the Democrats do muster the discipline to block his promotion, they win a Pyrrhic victory. By filibustering, they will make themselves look like obstructionists, and antidemocratic ones at that. (What ever happened to "letting every vote count"?) If Democrats have forgotten what happens when voters perceive them as obstructionist, they might want to go back and read the newspapers from last Nov. 6.

The filibuster is one of the few weapons the Democrats have left, and they won't be able to use it often. That means that even a Pickering defeat would clear the way for Priscilla Owen, Miguel Estrada and other worthy (and, not incidentally, younger) judicial nominees. Any way you look at it, the president wins.

Patty to Press: Go Construe Yourself!
Sen. Patty Murray tried yesterday to defend her remarks about Osama bin Laden's purported humanitarianism, Fox News reports:

"I have to tell you that it's really important that people don't twist or construe remarks that were made to an AP student group in a Vancouver high school," she told Fox News in a Senate corridor after attending a "power coffee" with the 13 other women senators on Capitol Hill.

"We all know--everyone in this country knows--that Usama bin Laden is an evil terrorist and in my remarks I told the students we're taking the right steps now. The question is what do we do next . . . and it's an important question," Murray said.

Now, there are a few problems here. First of all, most of the coverage of the subject has quoted Murray's remarks, not twisted them. (A transcript is here; scroll down to "Osama's Good Works.") Although she presumably meant to say people shouldn't misconstrue her remarks--the Washington State Republican Party is charitable enough to correct her error--she seems actually to object to people construing them, since what she's saying now actually contradicts what she told the students. She didn't actually say "we're taking the right steps now"; she said: "We have not done that. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure."

Why won't Murray just admit she was wrong? Her explanations are about as believable as Trent Lott's claim that he admired Strom Thurmond's 1948 views on national defense.

Where the Heck is Lakehurst U?--IV
Yesterday we noted that Lakehurst University, which mysteriously bestowed an honorary degree on a Saudi businessman, lists an address in Franklin Park, N.J., in the registration for its Internet domain name. We'd forgotten that Franklin Park was in the news not long ago. USA Today published a dispatch from Franklin Park on Oct. 18, 2001:

When people here saw pictures of the most notorious envelope in America, they were shocked by the name of the community on the return address: theirs. "Franklin Park?" said the Rev. David Risseeuw, who first saw a photo of the anthrax-laced envelope mailed to Sen. Tom Daschle when he lifted the newspaper off his driveway. "There it was: Bam!"

The anthrax return address was supposedly an educational institution:

4TH GRADE
GREENDALE SCHOOL
FRANKLIN PARK NJ 08852

The address is phony; there is no Greendale School in Franklin Park. But it's an eerie coincidence, is it not?

In a less eerie coincidence, there's also a Lakehurst, N.J., which is where the Hindenburg crashed.

The South Florida Business Journal reported in October 2000 that the state of Alabama was "threatening to revoke the license of Barrington University, the flagship school of Virtual Academics.Com" because "the company failed to notify Alabama that the university, which is registered and incorporated in the state, changed ownership in January." As we noted yesterday, the address of Barrington University Middle East is the same as that of Lakehurst.

'Suicide' Bombers
"Iraq has paid millions of dollars to families of Palestinians, including those of suicide bombers, killed by Israeli forces since the start of the uprising in September 2000," Reuters reports. If "Israeli forces" killed them, why do the "geniuses" at Reuters call them "suicide" bombers?

More Objective Reporting From Reuters
"Europeans Seek to Rein in American War Machine"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 10

You Don't Say--I
"U.S. Building for Possible Air War Against Iraq"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 9

World Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit
"AIDS Patients Hidden Victims of Any Iraq War--UN"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 9

Baathist Hospitality
"The Defense Department recently obtained additional intelligence stating that a missing Navy pilot is alive and being held by the Iraqi government," the Washington Times' Bill Gertz reports. The reports "state that Iraq is holding a U.S. pilot and has moved the pilot among 18 locations in the country, according to officials familiar with the documents. The reports said the pilot was being treated by a doctor." Presumably the pilot is Capt. Michael Speicher, whose plane was shot down during the Gulf War.

Canada Imitates 'South Park'

"Blame Canada, Blame Canada / It seems that everything's gone wrong / Since Canada came along / Blame Canada, Blame Canada / They're not even a real country anyway"--lyrics from "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut," 1999

"Canada Tires of Blame for Terrorist Threat to United States"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2003

Cereal Bomber
Last Sept. 10 Kellogg's announced it was recalling a batch of Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal because it "may contain undeclared egg, milk or soybeans." You know what's really dangerous, though? Cracklin' Oat Bran with nuts.

The nuts we're thinking of are a Maine couple, Paul Donahue, 50, and Teresa Wood, 46, who got into trouble when they tried to fly from San Jose, Calif., to Atlanta, CNN reports:

When their bags were put through a bomb detection machine, federal screeners found what turned out to be a snow boot with batteries, wires and an electrical power strip arranged in a suspicious way.

Screeners also found a note that read, "To the uniformed puppet opening this bag--congratulations. You've just brought this once free nation one step closer to becoming a fascist police state," according to Transportation Security Administration spokesman Robert Johnson. The note was scribbled on one side of the cardboard torn from a box of Cracklin' Oat Bran.

The Bangor Daily News reports Donahue is the publisher of The Maine Woods, "a publication of the Forest Ecology Network." Here's an excerpt from his "Letter From the Editor" in the "Late Winter 2000" issue:

The WTO protests in Seattle showed the way forward for many of the struggles which are taking place throughout the world against the forces leading to social and environmental disaster. It showed the strength that can be developed through coordinated action. It showed that people from all cultures can come together when there is a common and deeply felt objective. And it showed the inherent weakness of the seemingly invincible alliance of corporations, multilateral organizations and governments working to destroy the planet in the name of profit. By building on the success of Seattle, there is hope for the next thousand years.

Donahue must've been "building on the success of Seattle" with his "protest" at the airport. He now stands accused of "sending or placing a false or facsimile bomb."

You Don't Say--II
"Pesticides Are Designed to Kill"--headline, Paul Donahue article, The Maine Woods, Late Winter 2001

Stupidity Watch
We're always hearing that young Americans are ignorant of history, but apparently things are a lot worse in South Korea. A Washington Post report from Seoul quotes one Kim Young Ran, 29:

"If the United States left, I wouldn't mind. If North Korea wants nuclear weapons, I think they should have them. The U.S. and so many other countries have them. There's no way North Korea will attack us with their nuclear weapons. I don't think so. We're the same country. You don't bomb and kill your family. We share the same blood."

The Korean war, it would seem, is not part of the curriculum of the Seoul school system.

The Jewish Press reports that liberal yapper Ellen Ratner committed a gaffe--and quite an unpatriotic one at that--in a Dec. 27 appearance with Fox News Channel's Brenda Buttner. They were talking about how President Bush looks unbeatable in 2004:

Ratner: Unless he messes up the war--I hope.
Buttner: You hope?
Ratner: Well, I don't want him to be re-elected.

This week Ratner apologized, in a column that appears on WorldNetDaily: "Unfortunately, my mouth starting moving before my brain, as happens to the best of us. By the time my brain caught up, my misstatement had already been released through the airwaves."

The Associated Press quotes Gretta Duisenberg, Israel-hating wife of the European Central Bank's president, as declaring: "The Holocaust excepted, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands." And the terrorism excepted, the Palestinians no more deserve their fate than the Dutch did.

An American Hero--I
A Muslim allegedly tried to torch a Brooklyn synagogue, but another Muslim stopped him, the New York Daily News reports:

Syed Ali, 35, was working at the Amoco station on Ocean Ave. in Sheepshead Bay at about 4 a.m. when he sold $2 worth of fuel to the alleged would-be arsonist.

The Pakistani immigrant said he watched in disbelief as Sead Jakup, 22, took the canister across the street and began dousing the Young Israel of Kings Bay synagogue.

Ali quickly called 911, and cops arrived before Jakup, a Bosnian Muslim, could set the temple ablaze.

"Mr. Ali saved the shul [synagogue]," said Allen Popper, president of the synagogue. "He's a hero."

The News adds: "Ali declined to accept the mantle of hero, saying he did only what any responsible person would do. 'It's a sacred place he was going to destroy,' Ali said."

You Don't Say--III
"Americans Hopeful Leaders Can Handle Concerns"--headline, USA Today, Jan. 8

Great Moments in Euphemism
California's Gov. Gray Davis delivered his State of the State speech Wednesday, an address "seen by many as the most important of his career," according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The speech bore a remarkable resemblance to President Clinton's first State of the Union address. These two quotes come from Hotline Last Call, a subscription-only newsletter from National Journal:

Davis: "When governors speak from this podium, they ordinarily discuss a range of issues. But these are not ordinary times. We have one overriding task before us. We must come together to create new jobs and get our economy back on track."

Clinton: "When presidents speak to the Congress and the nation from this podium, they typically comment on the full range of challenges and opportunities that face us. But these are not ordinary times. For all the many tasks that require our attention, one calls on us to focus, unite, and act. Together, we must make our economy thrive once again."

The Daily News reports Davis speechwriter Jason Kinney "dismissed the parallels as an 'accidental homage.' "

They Couldn't Afford the Mortgage on the House?
"Senators File for Bankruptcy Protection"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 10

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

"The first claim [of those who support tax cuts] is that the rich pay more in taxes in the first place. Well, yeah, they do--they have more money. The richest 1 percent have 18 percent of all the pretax income and they pay 36 percent of all personal income taxes."--Molly Ivins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 9

"The dirty little secret about taxes in this country is that rich people and corporations mostly don't pay them now--they have a whole system of shelters and offshore deals."--Molly Ivins, same column

An American Hero--II
Holding a walker in one hand and a 12-gauge shotgun in the other, 74-year-old J.C. Adams shot and killed a man who tried to rob Adams's convenience store. It wasn't a first for him, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports; three years ago he fatally shot another would-be robber. His message to the crooks: "Go to work and make your own money. Quit trying to take mine."

Not Too Brite--XLII
"A teenage Lithuanian hit-and-run driver thought he was in the clear once he got home--only to discover the pedestrian he had knocked down was still under the car," Reuters reports from Vilnius. "The unlicensed 18-year-old was shocked to see a man's feet sticking out from under his father's Audi. . . . Police were able to identify the remains of the 64-year-old victim." Oddly Enough!

'All Y'all'--II
Yesterday's item in which we said we'd heard from readers who said y'all was a singular pronoun and the plural was all y'all brought a torrent of e-mails saying we were right the first time when we said y'all was plural. The American Heritage Dictionary seems to agree. This really goes to show we need to read Jay Nordlinger more carefully, since the exact same thing happened to him last month. "I just want you to know that that item was largely tongue-in-cheek," he told those who complained. Alas, we have no such excuse, since everything we write is deadly serious.

You Don't Say--IV
"Many Don't Understand Pull of Carp"--headline, Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette, Jan. 9

Kim Young Ran, Take Note
"The last of the original wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 has been killed," CNN reports, "apparently by members of another wolf pack."

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Barak Moore, Michael Segal, Mont McNeil, Justin Taylor, Tom Milway, William Schultz, Ryan Kelley, Raghu Desikan, Justin DelPrince, Melanie Premo, Rosanne Klass, Joel Goldberg, Bernard Cohen, Eric Levitt, Matthew Meyerson, Dick Riley, Mark Silverschotz, Rick Rumbaugh, Tom Mangieri, Donald Aites, Chris Keating, Don Hering, George Price, Michael Goldsberry, Raymond Motlasz, Kevin Kennedy, Vlad Kogan, Yury Krongauz, David Johnson, David Stern, William Truelove, John Hartness, Marie Bourgeois, Charlie Gaylord, Darren Gold, Chris Wenzler, James Tysse, Robert Le Chevalier, Joshua Brook, Monty Krieger, S.E. Brenner, C.E. Dobkin, Paul Stinchfield, Steve Ginnings, Ron Prudhomme, Ed Miseta, Cliff Thier, Brian Otey, Lawrence Hauch, Ray Wilde, Nancy Dorsner, Todd Cason, Steve Prestegard, Bob Fields and all y'all who wrote us about the proper use of y'all. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

And on the Taste page:

Click to email this article EMAIL THIS Click to format this article for printing FORMAT FOR PRINTING
ARCHIVE