by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, September 22, 2005 4:03 P.M. EDT

Try a Little Tenderness
Wisconsin Democrats Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold joined Vermont's Pat Leahy and all 10 Judiciary Committee Republicans in voting for Judge John Roberts's confirmation as chief justice, sending Roberts's nomination to the Senate floor on a 13-5 vote. Sens. Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin voted "no," mostly, it seems, because Roberts didn't talk enough about his feelings. Here's Feinstein from the transcript:

I attempted to get a sense of his temperament and values. And I asked him about the end-of-life decisions: clearly, decisions that are gut-wrenching, difficult and extremely personal. Rather than talking to me as a son, a husband, a father--which I specifically requested he do--he gave a very detached response.

But the Associated Press reports that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described Roberts as "a man who does listen and is willing to learn." Of course, "being a good listener" is easier to fake than "sharing one's feelings." Maybe all Roberts does is gaze soulfully at Justice Ginsburg as she goes on about how the latest innovations in Nigerian statutory interpretation make her feel, and he periodically nods and says, "That's very interesting," while he's actually thinking about the weekend's football games.

Anyway, if it's important to have a sensitive man on the court, why not Sen. Tom Coburn to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor? Sure, he's not exactly a lawyer, but isn't it more important that he's not afraid to cry?

Searchlight's Dim Bulb
"Democratic critics said the preparations for [Hurricane] Rita seemed to exceed those for Katrina, and called anew for an independent panel to investigate why," the Associated Press reports from Washington:

"It's nice to have the Bush administration recognize the importance of a federal response to Rita, but why weren't they proactively mobilizing and organizing like this for Katrina?" said Rebecca Kirszner, a spokeswoman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

"These are the questions that need to be asked by an independent commission," Kirszner said.

So Harry Reid needs a commission to explain to him why people are less complacent about a big hurricane a few weeks after a big hurricane strikes? And he has the nerve to insult Clarence Thomas's intelligence.

AP: Let's Lose This War!
An Associated Press "dispatch"--really an editorial--argues that Iraq is Vietnam:

Bush officials bristle at the suggestion the war in Iraq might look anything like Vietnam. Yet just as today's anti-war protests recall memories of yesteryear, President Bush's own words echo those of President Johnson in 1967, a pivotal year for the U.S. in Vietnam.

"America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated," Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967. Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, "We shall stay the course."

After 14 Marines died in a roadside bombing on Aug. 3, Bush declared: "We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. And the job is this: We'll help the Iraqis develop a democracy." . . .

Johnson's main arguments were much like those Bush has employed: War was justified to protect the U.S. and to encourage freedom everywhere. When faced with mounting losses on the battlefield, both presidents offered the dead as a reason to keep fighting.

Of course, an "honorable peace"--which would have meant saving only half of Vietnam from totalitarian oppression--is quite a bit more modest a goal than "developing a democracy." In any case, can the AP think of a war in which the president didn't say he intended to win?

Lincoln: Shucks, maybe these dead shall have died in vain. I mean, really, if this government perishes from the earth, it's not like it's the end of the world or anything.

FDR: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, fear itself and our soldiers getting killed, and our soldiers getting maimed, and the deaths of innocent German and Japanese civilians, and declining approval ratings, and public opinion turning against the war, and Congress balking at my domestic agenda, and dependence on foreign oil, and . . .

You see our point. There is no reason to compare Iraq to Vietnam, of all wars, unless you are either defeatist or actually rooting for the enemy. And here's another hilariously biased anti-Iraq editorial from AP:

The war in Iraq passed a sobering milepost [Tuesday] when U.S. officials reported 12 more Americans were killed--eight of them members of the armed forces, raising to more than 1,900 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the country since the invasion.

Ah yes, the all-important 1,900 milestone!

Meanwhile, thanks to the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, who in a column today pays tribute to Arthur Chrenkoff, the ex-blogger who has been chronicling the good news in Iraq and Afghanistan as an antidote to the Vietnam-besotted "mainstream" media. Chrenkoff has taken a new job that requires him to give up outside writing, but we will be carrying the tradition forward. Watch this space.

Shahid Sheehan?
Here's a rather disturbing passage from a Washington Times piece on Cindy Sheehan, the haters' heartthrob:

"They already killed my son. People say we're brave and courageous, but you know we're fearless. Because we know we have right on our side. We know we're going to prevail. Sometimes the pain is so, so deep . . ."--her voice grows dramatic, perhaps as if she's pondering her own martyrdom--"that maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing . . . but I am absolutely not afraid at all."

Given that "martyrdom" these days is a euphemism for suicide, it seems awfully irresponsible to encourage an emotionally troubled person to "ponder her own martyrdom."

Longing for John
A couple of weeks ago, we observed that "the one thing no one has had the audacity to say about the Katrina response is that Kerry would have done better." Now someone has had the audacity to make that claim: Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe, who spins a fantasy of Kerry as an effective leader and uses it to justify Kerry's actual existence as an impotent carper:

Nobody is better qualified than John Kerry to remind us that a choice was made last year. That is especially true given his intention to speak out on major issues in depth in the coming weeks, free now from agitprop about gay marriage and lies about his Navy record. Obviously the big one will be Iraq, about which he gets one more chance to point a clear way forward or out or both. Nobody has higher standing than Kerry to say, as he did yesterday, that the Senate should not trust Bush's or John Roberts's evidence-free claims of ''modesty" where the Supreme Court is concerned.

This just makes us laugh, but we do hope it's true, as Oliphant suggests, that Kerry has stopped telling "lies about his Navy record."

Homer Nods
Josh Marshall is waging a tedious campaign for the Davis-Bacon Act, "passed by Congress in 1931 with the intent of favoring white workers who belonged to white-only unions over non-unionized black workers," not against the act as we said in an item yesterday (since corrected).

You Don't Say
"Federal Generosity Comes With Price Tag"--headline, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Sept. 22

Fox Hops the Pond
A few months ago Fox Butterfield took early retirement from the New York Times, but he may have found employment with London's Guardian, which picks up his favorite trope in an editorial:

A prison population that took four decades to increase by 11,000 between 1951 and 1991, climbed by 25,000 in the following decade, despite the largest and the most sustained fall in crime for more than a century.

So a lot of people are in prison, and crime is down--and the Guardian's recommendation is to let people out of prison! Can they really be clueless enough to miss the illogic here, or are they actually pro-crime?

Luckily, We Bought Bass Bonds as a Hedge
"Sturgeon Stocks Are in Decline Around World, Survey Reports"--headline, New York Times, Sept. 22

We'd Just as Soon Keep Ours in Our Apartment
"Deal Is Reached to Put Toilets on City Streets"--headline, New York Times, Sept. 22

Better Switch to 'Heavy'
" 'Light' Smokers Face Tripled Risk of Heart Disease and Cancer"--headline, Scotsman, Sept. 22

What an Exposé!
"Hooters' Secret: More Than Just Pretty Faces"--headline, Boston Herald, Sept. 21

Poll Rage--II
So it turns out that we were right after all when we said, on "Hannity & Colmes" last Friday, that there were some polls that showed President Bush's approval rating almost as high as his disapproval rating. A reader calls our attention to the Rasmussen daily tracking survey, whose results we've reproduced nearby for the week leading up to the appearance. On five out of those seven days, the approval rating was within five points of the disapproval rating, on two out seven days it was within three points, and on one day--just two days before "H&C"--the approval rating was a mere two points below the disapproval rating.

We did make one mistake in the segment, however: We said Louisiana had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction. In fact, it has elected two: David Treen in 1979 and Mike Foster in 1995 (re-elected in 1999). Buddy Roemer, elected as a Democrat in 1987, became a Republican while in office.

MediaMatters.org, meanwhile, has posted a follow-up to our item yesterday. It includes an interview former comedian Al Franken conducted with former journalist David Brock on the former's Air America radio show. We'll just quote Brock's portion of the interview:

Is that right? Great. [Laughter] [Laughter] [Laughter] Right. Sure. Absolutely. Right. And he's not being dishonest in his response. Right. Sure. Right. Right.

Anyway, MediaMatters' latest tiresome item produced another raft of tiresome e-mails, though these were generally less rude than the first batch and only a few of them contained obscene language. We do wish MediaMatters would stop writing about us, though. Our ankles are getting sore.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: A GOP tax increase?
• Peggy Noonan: Is Bush's big spending a bridge to nowhere?
• Kane Webb: Arkansas welcomes refugees from Katrina, and soon Rita.
• Daniel Ford: America's "imperial grunts" are God-fearing Spartans.