From the WSJ Opinion Archives
'Decisive
U.S. Response' Foiled al Qaeda
A pair of stories in today's papers illustrate just how silly was last week's
Dick Clarke kerfuffle. First, this from the Washington Times:
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.
Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization's plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.
Then there's this, from today's New York Times:
Thirty months after it lost 343 firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001, the [New York City] Fire Department has produced a sweeping plan that lays out a two-year strategy to better prepare the department for future terrorist attacks.
Clarke of course claimed that the Clinton administration had made terrorism its top priority, yet had that administration ever taken "decisive action" as its successor did after Sept. 11, that attack might not have occurred. And Clarke faults the Bush administration, not entirely without justice, for failing to adopt a new antiterror policy in the eight months before Sept. 11. But the administration's immediate adoption of a new policy on Sept. 11 contrasts sharply with the FDNY's waiting 2 1/2 years.
Romney
for SOMA?
The Massachusetts Legislature has approved an amendment to the state constitution
affirming the traditional definition of marriage and also providing for the
establishment of marriagelike "civil unions" for same-sex couples.
The vote was 105-92
(both legislative houses vote as one on constitutional amendments), but this
doesn't settle the matter. Amending the constitution in Massachusetts requires
the approval of two successive legislative sessions followed by a vote of the
people, so the earliest the amendment can become effective is 2006.
This is a problem, because Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court has ordered the state to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on May 17. (The deadline is actually May 16, but in a holdover from Massachusetts' Puritan days that the courts oddly haven't gotten around to overturning yet, government offices are closed on Sundays.) The Associated Press, however, reports that "Gov. Mitt Romney has said he might seek a way to delay any marriages." This sounds like an endorsement of the Suspense of Marriage Act, which we proposed last week.
But it may be just a sloppy formulation on the part of the AP. Another AP dispatch tells it this way:
Within moments of the historic vote, Gov. Mitt Romney told reporters he would ask the state's highest court to block gay marriages, now scheduled to begin May 17 under the court's landmark November ruling, until the amendment process has run its lengthy course. But Attorney General Tom Reilly, whose job it is to represent the state in court, said he would not seek the delay on Romney's behalf.
It would be fascinating to see how the court responded to a requested delay. Now that the Legislature has voted to amend the constitution, a refusal to extend the deadline would be a direct slap in the face to the voters of Massachusetts, an act of even more blatant judicial imperialism than the original decision mandating same-sex marriage. Since that decision was decided by a vote of 4-3, presumably only one judge in the majority would have to agree with a decision to stay the ruling--so it isn't out of the question, assuming Romney can persuade Reilly to change his mind.
If he doesn't, the SOMA, a temporary statewide ban on the issuance of new marriage licenses, is another possible remedy. And in fact, yet another AP dispatch reports that Rep. Paul Loscocco, a Holliston Republican, is proposing a version of SOMA, "a bill that would abolish the state's civil marriage law, replacing it with civil unions for both gay and straight couples."
Paul Martinek, editor of Lawyers Weekly USA, doubts that the Supreme Judicial Court would agree to delay its ruling until 2006. "That's just too long a period of time to expect people to wait for what the court has said is a fundamental right," he tells the AP.
The Massachusetts Constitution, where the four justices claim to have found this "fundamental right," was ratified in 1780. It's one thing to expect people to wait 224 years for the fundamental rights, but 226 years? That's just plain oppressive.
'I
Have No Idea What You Mean'
Suppose the following dialogue took place in a legal trial involving allegations
of cruelty to animals:
Lawyer: Do the cows exhibit pain when you kill them?
Slaughterhouse operator: I have no idea what you mean.
Most people would view the answer as ludicrous and unresponsive. Well, here's a passage from an Associated Press dispatch about a group of trials in lawsuits challenging the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003:
In San Francisco, a chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood testified that she chooses methods of abortion that violate the new law because they are among the safest options.
Asked by a government lawyer whether the fetus exhibits pain during the procedures, Maureen Paul replied, "I have no idea what you mean."
One can acknowledge that animals are capable of feeling pain, and even favor legislation designed to discourage treating them cruelly, without endorsing the idea that they have "rights" as people do. Similarly, the right to abortion need not depend on the complete dehumanization of unborn life. As Slate's William Saletan argues, by resting their case on such dehumanization--which, as Maureen Paul's testimony illustrates, flies in the face of common sense--abortion proponents are making the pro-life case look much stronger.
Bush
Bounces Back
It's too early to say that John Kerry's presidential campaign has already reached
its peak, but USA Today has good news for President Bush:
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll shows a remarkable turnaround in 17 battleground states where polls and historic trends indicate the race will be close, and where the Bush campaign has aired TV ads. Those ads say Bush has provided "steady leadership in times of change" while portraying Kerry as a tax-hiking, flip-flopping liberal.
The ads have been one factor in wiping away an inflated lead Kerry held in those states. Most of them have had primaries or caucuses that allowed Democrats to dominate the news and Kerry to emerge as a victor. In a survey taken in mid-February, Kerry led Bush by 28 percentage points in those states, 63% to 35%. Now Bush leads Kerry in them by six points, 51% to 45%.
In contrast, there has been much less volatility in states where the ads haven't aired. Kerry held a four-point lead in them in February; Bush holds a two-point lead now.
The Bush campaign also has begun defining Kerry before he has defined himself. In the states where the ads have run, Kerry's unfavorable rating has risen 16 points since mid-February.
The poll was taken Friday through Sunday, after the Dick Clarke kerfuffle.
Kerry, of course, vows to "fight back," but how effectively he will do so is a matter of some question. The Associated Press reports that the Bush campaign has been running a radio ad featuring Jay Moccia, a Boston policeman, who says this about Kerry: "The last thing I need is another Kerry tax increase. John Kerry likes to raise taxes. It's what he's done before and you know he'll do it again":
In response, the Kerry campaign released a statement from Ed Davis, the police chief of Lowell, Mass., who argued that Kerry is committed to making America safer. Kerry was once a prosecutor in Lowell.
"While there are many misleading charges by the Bush campaign, John Kerry has been a fighter for law enforcement all his life and he will be a fighter for us in the White House," Davis said.
Davis is dangerously off message. The correct response to the charge that Kerry is a tax hiker is "John Kerry served in Vietnam."
If
He Were Republican, This Would Prove He's Dumb
From a CNN report on a John Kerry campaign appearance:
"I noticed that gas is now close to three dollars a gallon here in California. If it keeps going up like that, folks, pretty shortly Cheney and President Bush are going to have to carpool to work together," the Massachusetts senator deadpanned.
While Kerry overstated the price of gasoline, California does have the highest average of prices in the country: San Diego had the highest rates in the nation, averaging $2.12 per gallon for regular unleaded gas in the Lundberg Survey of U.S. filling stations for the two-week period ending Sunday.
Kerry apparently can't do simple math: At $2.12 a gallon, gas is hardly "close to $3"; it would have to go up another 41.5% to reach that mark. Blogger Alex Williams notes that Kerry has similar math problems when it comes to job-loss numbers.
Kerry also seems woefully ignorant of basic civics. The president and vice president live and work in the District of Columbia, not California. And the president has no need to "carpool," as he works at home.
Kerry's
Hands-Off Campaign
John Kerry "will undergo minor shoulder surgery" tomorrow, one consequence
of which is that for a few weeks he'll be under doctor's orders to avoid a usual
campaign activity:
"I think initially we'll have him avoid handshaking," said Dr. Bertram Zarins, who will perform the outpatient surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital.
"But as he feels the strength improving, and when he tries to shake a hand if it doesn't hurt, then I think it's alright for him to do it," he said in a conference call with reporters.
What will really cramp the Kerry style, though, is if he's forced to give up hand wringing.
Husband?
What Husband?
"Heinz Seeks to Disavow Kerry Connection"--headline, Associated Press,
March 29
Peach
State Pits
Here's some mildly dispiriting news. Rep. Denise Majette of Georgia, who in
2002 ran as a moderate and defeated crackpot incumbent Cynthia McKinney, is
running for the Senate. This means, first of all, that McKinney has a better
chance of winning back her old seat, which she's seeking this year, since she
no longer need defeat an incumbent.
Majette herself, meanwhile, has moved sharply to the left (though not to the McKinneyite fever swamps). As we noted March 18, she even voted against a resolution supporting the troops in Iraq. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quotes from the press conference announcing her candidacy:
"Right now, the Republicans keep trotting out their right-wing rhetoric on God, guns and gays in an attempt to divide the electorate and distract from the serious problems they are not addressing," Majette said. "Yet, despite Republicans' divisive efforts, Georgia is embracing a more inclusive vision for our state."
This sort of approach might fly if she were running for Senate in Vermont, but not in Georgia, a state George W. Bush won by 14.9%.
If
Francisco Franco Were Still Dead, It Would Be a Good Thing
From Tim Russert's interview with Dick Clarke on "Meet the Press"
Sunday:
Russert: But Saddam is gone, and that's a good thing?
Clarke: Saddam gone is a good thing. If Fidel were gone, it would be a good thing. If Kim Il Sung were gone, it would be a good thing.
Kim Il Sung died July 8, 1994.
Muslim
Dad: Deep-Six My Six-Year-Old
"This six-year-old boy, dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber, complete
with a belt of fake explosives strapped to his body, says he wants to go to
heaven--and his father says his child wants to be a martyr," reports the
Argus of Cape Town, South Africa:
Uzair Dockrat was taken by his father Mohammad to yesterday's march in Pretoria, organised by the Muslim community to voice anger at the killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City last week.
What kind of father encourages his little boy to become a "martyr"? The South African Press Association reports Mohammad Dockrat is a university lecturer.
We
Get Results
The Seattle Times has canceled its online poll asking who was to blame for Sept.
11. As we noted
yesterday, the only options it offered were "Bush," "Clinton"
and "CIA." A notice on the page now says: "Because too few options
were presented, this week's pulse question has been changed." The new question
is completely unrelated.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
Dominique Reed, a sixth-grader with trouble hearing, is suffering abuse at the
hands of her fellow students at Martin
Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, Calif., the Berkeley Daily Planet
reports:
In her special education classes, bigger and older students quietly taunt her, in the hallways they push her and punch her, in the playground they steal her hearing aid and throw it as far as they can.
After months of daily abuse, school officials finally took action: They confined Reed to a classroom during recess for her own safety. . . .
Three times Reed tried to show her tormentors just how tough she was. Acting against the advice of the school, she fought back. Each time she was suspended along with the attacker.
"There's nothing I can do," she said. "If I tell, nothing happens, and every time I defend myself I get suspended."
Hat tip: ZeroIntelligence.net.
Great
Moments in Public Education
The Boston Globe's Sunday magazine publishes the views of one Marcella Lang,
who thinks that the MCAS, a statewide standardized test for fourth-, seventh-
and 10th-graders is "racist and classist." She says: "It's unfair
to expect the same from kids who have been read to since they were born and
children who have never seen a book, never been in a library."
Uh, Marcella, isn't that what schools are for?
Homer
Nods
Yesterday we tweaked
Ellen Goodman for stating that Abraham Lincoln had rejected a proposal "to
insert Jesus Christ into the preamble of the Constitution." It turns out
she was sort of right. The Web site of the American Center for Law and Justice,
a conservative public-interest law group, explains what happened:
On February 3, 1863, eleven Protestant denominations (including United Presbyterians and the Methodist Episcopalian General Conference) organized the National Reform Association. Their aim was to "reform" the Constitution and one of its principle [sic] purposes was to amend that document to "indicate that this is a Christian nation." The association formally petitioned Congress to amend the preamble of the Constitution so as to read:
We, the people of the United States, HUMBLY ACKNOWLEDGING ALMIGHTY GOD AS THE SOURCE OF ALL AUTHORITY AND POWER IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AS THE RULER AMONG THE NATIONS, HIS REVEALED WILL AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, IN ORDER TO CONSTITUTE A CHRISTIAN GOVERNMENT, AND in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS and the blessings of LIFE, liberty, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS to ourselves, our posterity, AND ALL THE PEOPLE, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This change was not enacted but did help in allowing the government to see the wisdom of placing our Nation in God's hands and proclaiming our trust in Him on the medium of exchange; our coins.
What's more, the National Reform Association is still in existence, advocating "explicitly Christian politics."
Amending the preamble, however, makes no sense. Traditionally, when an amendment (such as the 12th or the 21st) supersedes part of the Constitution, the existing text is not actually changed; the amendment is just added at the end, with printed copies sometimes having annotations indicating sections that are no longer operative. So if the NRA's amendment had passed, the new "preamble" would have just been the 13th Amendment.
Sock It to Whom?
Several readers said we misquoted Richard Nixon on "Laugh-In" in yesterday's
item on presidential humor. Or rather, we misinflected it, as reader John
Steele Gordon explains:
Actually what he said was "Sock it to me?"--a question, not an exclamation, as the phrase was usually said on the show. I was watching with my brother and we could not have been more surprised by the sudden (and extremely brief--maybe one second) appearance if it had been Queen Victoria back from the dead. In those days presidents (and wannabe presidents) simply did not appear on entertainment shows as they often do now. The closest they came was candidates being interviewed with the likes of Johnny Carson. It was actually, therefore, a real turning point in American and television history.
But this was a daring political calculation on the part of Nixon (and it worked, big time), not evidence of a sense of humor. You're right, he had none whatever, just as Carter has none. The difference between the two men is that Carter would never have dared to try such a thing, because Carter also has no imagination, which Nixon did.
But we did finally hear from a few readers who disputed our characterization of Carter. Here's Leslie Smith:
I cannot let the assertion that Carter was utterly humourless as president go unchallenged any longer. Surely the story of the attack rabbit, and confessing to committing adultery in his heart (or mind, I can't remember which), was one of the best deadpan routines in the history of comedy. Just because we didn't all get the joke at the time doesn't mean it wasn't hilarious. I mean it must have been a joke, no sentient human could think that any of that was serious.
Someone should write a biography called "Jimmy Carter: Serious or Sentient?" For our part, we remain inclined to think whatever humor the man created was unwitting.
Speaking
of unwitting humor, someone called Keith
Crandell, a wheelchair-bound and tiresomely earnest far-left activist, has
an article in the Downtown Express, a community weekly from Manhattan, describing
a recent "antiwar" protest. The article is uninteresting except for
its total lack of irony given the accompanying photo, which shows a sign that
reads: "Saddam only killed his own people. It was none of our business!"
This slogan comes from ProtestWarrior.com, a pro-American Web site that spoofs antiwar idiocy. (The preliberation, present-tense version is shown nearby.) That neither Crandell nor his editors caught the humor tells you something about what the antiwar movement really stands for.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Rob Coleman, John Hartness, James Heetderks, Raghu Deaikan, Michael Segal, Michael Nunnelley, Ethel Fenig, Michael Siegel, Aaron Krakowski, Barak Moore, Yitzchak Dorfman, Aaron Spetner, Steve Roberts, Edward Schulze, Milo Grummons, Glenn Taubman, Benjamin Lynch, Robin Anderson, Klara Iskoz, Yaron Koren, Tim Curlee, William Schultz, Christian Josi, John Lott, Henry Hanks, Ted Barszewski, Alexander Lubarov, Lazer Fuerst, George Copeland, Tom Crowell, Ray Gardner, Josh Shilling, Neal Sanders, Mark Rosaaen, Amar Sarwal, Paul Steig, Chris White, Tim Kauffman, Micah Arbisser, James Hill, Mark Wilson, Carl Fogel, Robert Firriolo, Douglas Simpkinson, Jerry Bowyer, Greg Miller, Tim Wade, William Hindman, Kurt Hamilton, Michael Brenner, David Shapero, Russ Smith, Carl Adams, Jonathan Beakley, John Topoleski, Scott Tillema, Robert Koelle, Chad Pawling, C. Cornell, Roscoe Shrewsbury, David Cleary, Jim Richards, Michael Thompson and Benjamin Mittman. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outook: Why oil prices are so high.
- Brendan Miniter: Kerry proposes some tax cuts. It'll be harder for him to play against type on national security.
- Tyler Green: The Whitney Biennial should get out of New York.
