by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, February 26, 2007 2:43 P.M. EST

Poly Wanna Cracker
The Associated Press discovers a scandal . . . well, not exactly a scandal, but more of a . . . uh, we can't quite figure out what it is, so you tell us:

While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.

Now, this column yields to no one in our repugnance to polygamy. The Supreme Court held in 1890, "The organization of a community for the spread and practice of polygamy is, in a measure, a return to barbarism," and who are we to disagree?

But Romney's church long ago renounced polygamy. He himself not only isn't a polygamist; he doesn't even practice "serial monogamy." He married his high school sweetheart, Ann, and they've been together, just the two of them and their kids, for 37 years.

If the marital lives of a presidential candidate's great- and great-great-grandparents are a legitimate topic of journalistic inquiry, what about the marital lives of presidential candidates themselves? We have in mind a particular candidate, who, without naming any names, is now the junior senator from New York and the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Nine years ago we learned that the future senator's husband, who then held a high position in the federal government, was carrying on an extramarital sexual affair with an employee who was only a few years older than the age of consent. This came to light when the husband lied under oath about it in a lawsuit in which another woman alleged that he had made unwanted sexual advances toward her. Several other women also claimed that the husband either had affairs with or forced his affections upon them. The husband was not indicted for perjury, but he was impeached, though not convicted.

The senator-to-be did not divorce her husband; indeed, in her public statements at least, she not only stood by her man but made him out to be the victim of what she called "the vast right-wing conspiracy." Now, according to the Washington Post, she wants the whole topic to be off-limits:

[New York's junior senator] has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband.

With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998--or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it--taboo, putting her rivals on notice and all but daring other Democrats to mention the ordeal again.

"In the end, voters will decide what's off-limits, but I can't imagine that the public will reward the politics of personal destruction," senior . . . adviser Howard Wolfson said Friday, when asked whether the impeachment is fair game for [the senator's] opponents. Earlier in the week, Wolfson dismissed references to [the senator's husband's] conduct as "under the belt."

The press, as usual, is respectful of taboos when they issue from the political left. Here's an example from this week's Newsweek:

Last December, a Newsweek reporter tentatively broached a delicate subject with a longstanding adviser to [New York's junior senator]: was there a concern in the . . . camp that her husband might somehow embarrass her in the campaign ahead? The reaction was swift and fierce. "If that's what you want to talk about, I'm hanging up right now," said the adviser, who did not wish to be identified even entertaining such a question.

But it is the elephant in the room. [The senator's] presidential campaign can ill afford another scandal swirling around her husband, whose second term in [high federal office] was badly disrupted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. Perhaps the [senator's supporters] are understandably worried that the Republican right will try to create a scandal where there is none or dredge up old history.

An example of dredging up "old history," it seems to us, would be going back three and four generations to examine the marital practices of a candidate's ancestors. In the case of the senator from New York, the questions very much involve living history.

Based on her public actions--remaining married to her husband and publicly defending him despite his infidelity--one may wonder if this is a "polyamorous" marriage (polyamory essentially consisting of polygamy without commitment). It may also be that this has devolved into essentially a marriage of convenience--that the senator believes she is better positioned to realize her political ambitions if she remains legally bound to her husband, who is very popular at least within his own party.

No doubt liberal journalists will continue to shy away from these questions, as with the Newsweek reporter who "tentatively broached a delicate subject," instead of confronting a source with a tough question, the way reporters do with Republicans. The senator's Democratic opponents may respect her "taboo" too.

But if she gets the nomination, you can expect to hear a lot more about this, just as you did about John Kerry's dodgy activities vis-à-vis Vietnam. Like Kerry, the senator from New York may find herself unprepared because she is so used to deferential treatment from the press.

'Burn the Christians'
"Al-Qaida posted a 56-second video Friday of rockets being fired at what it claimed was a US military base in Afghanistan," the Associated Press reports:

The pictures were accompanied by a song whose lyrics included the line: "Burn the Christians, fight the devious Christians who worship crosses."

Obviously they're just unhappy with American foreign policy in the Middle East.

It's 9/10 Again
Back in the summer of 2001, we were vexed by Fox News Channel's repeated practice of putting "psychics" on the air, especially to talk about the case of Chandra Levy (remember her)? We faulted Fox hosts Judith Regan, Paula Zahn and Bill O'Reilly, and we did it again and again but to no avail. Fox kept putting this junk on the air.

Until 9/11. One of the small blessings amid that devastating horror was that it forced a certain sense of perspective. The attacks were so serious that even the murder of Chandra Levy suddenly seemed far less important. And no one cared anymore what "psychics" had to say.

Until now. Check out this story in London's Daily Mail:

Psychics were recruited by the Ministry of Defence to locate Osama Bin Laden's secret lair, it was claimed yesterday.

Newly declassified documents revealed that the MoD conducted an experiment to see if volunteers could "see" objects hidden inside an envelope.

It is claimed the ministry hoped positive results would allow it to use psychics to "remotely view" Bin Laden's base and also to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

An Onion article dated Oct. 3, 2001, carried the headline "A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullsh-- Again." Granted, the Mail is English, not American, but it appears we've made progress, if that is what it is.

Farrakhan for President!
Louis Farrakhan "gave what was billed as his last major public address" yesterday, the New York Times reports:

Mr. Farrakhan, 73, looking fairly robust for a man who emerged from major surgery six weeks ago, spent most of his two-hour address denouncing the war in Iraq and calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

"If you don't want to impeach him," Mr. Farrakhan said, "censure him, say to the world something went wrong with our leadership and we repent after our wrongdoing." . . .

Despite his frail health, Mr. Farrakhan on Sunday demonstrated the same passion that has held followers rapt and angered his detractors. He assailed the Bush administration for the war in Iraq, which he said was built on lies and had caused great suffering and disunity.

"Sunni and Shiite lived together, Christian and Jews lived together in Iraq, you didn't hear none [sic] of this stuff before America came in," Mr. Farrakhan said. "There was no bombing of Shiite holy places. You don't need to look at Shiite and Sunni, you need to look at those who came in. After they came in all hell broke loose."

Mr. Farrakhan also urged young black Americans not to join the military.

"I am telling you brother and sister that will be the worst mistake you make to join the military today, because you will leave America in one way and you will come back in another," he said.

Wow, this guy is great! He's Russ Feingold, John Kerry and Charlie Rangel all rolled into one! And at 73, he's only three years older than John McCain. With the Democrats looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton, why in the world doesn't Farrakhan throw his hat into the ring?

Chairmen for Sale
From the Washington Post:

Eager to shore up their fragile House and Senate majorities, congressional Democrats have enlisted their committee chairmen in an early blitz to bring millions of dollars into the party's coffers, culminating in a late-March event featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 10 of the powerful panel chairs.

In the next 10 days alone, Democratic fundraisers will feature the chairmen of the House's financial services panel and the House and Senate tax-writing committees. Senate Democrats also plan a fundraising reception during a major gathering of Native Americans in the capital Tuesday evening, an event hosted by lobbyists and the political action committee for tribal casinos, including those Jack Abramoff was paid to represent.

Critics deride the aggressive fundraising push as the kind of business as usual that voters rejected at the ballot box last November--particularly the practice of giving interest groups access to committee chairmen in exchange for sizable donations--but Democrats are unapologetic. . . .

The tactics are hardly new. Republicans aggressively used their committee chairmen--and the promise of access to them--to raise money from interest groups and lobbyists during the party's 12 years of congressional control. They tracked donations closely and pressed lobbying firms to hire GOP lobbyists through the "K Street Project," promising "intimate" issue briefings with the chairmen in return for big donations.

We're so disillusioned. We really thought the Democrats were going to be different!

All Right, Put Your Laws on My Body
The New York Times editorializes in favor of mandatory vaccination of young girls for human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted disease:

We have endorsed a mandate because the vaccine--Merck's Gardasil--looks highly effective against strains that cause 70 percent of all cervical cancer. With more than two million doses already distributed, the reported side effects have been mostly minor, such as dizziness or fainting. Many parents who oppose a mandate are aghast at the thought of vaccinating such young girls against a sexually transmitted disease. But the vaccine works only if taken before a girl becomes infected. Social conservatives object that the vaccine will encourage promiscuity, but it seems farfetched to believe that protection from cervical cancer will change any girl's behavior. Others complain that a mandate will pre-empt parental rights to make health decisions, but all vaccine mandates do that, to protect the children and those they might infect.

We're actually inclined to agree with the guys at the Times, but we wonder if they realize the implications of their position. If the government can tell a woman (or in this case a girl) what to do with her body, then surely it can impose restrictions on abortion--and before you know it, we will be back to the bad old days of coat alleys and back hangers.

Seoul Mates
"A top South Korean bank is sending a group of its single female employees on a blind date trip to North Korea, hoping that romance will make them happy at the office," Reuters reports from Seoul:

Hana Bank is trying to fix up 20 of its employees between the ages of 29 and 33 with 20 single South Korean men selected by a top matchmaking agency in the country, an official said. . . .

Hana Bank will pay half the fare for its employees for the two-day trip this weekend to a mountain resort in North Korea run by an affiliate of the South's Hyundai Group, which more than a million South Koreans have already visited.

Didn't we just read that South Korea has such a shortage of nubile women that men have had to resort to Vietnamese imports? Odd.

Meanwhile, a few readers took issue with our assumption that the reportedly unusually high number of male births in South Korea was the result of sex-selection abortions. Here is Frank Holloway:

Consider two sets of Korean parents, both of whom share the cultural norm of wanting boys. Because of the low infant mortality rates, they don't need to have a large family to ensure that at least some of their children will live into adulthood. And because of birth control (and, yes, abortion), they need only have children when they want them.

Let's say both families decide they want to have one boy. Both mothers get pregnant, but while one gives birth to a boy, the other has a girl. The first family, satisfied, decides not to have any more children. But the second family tries again, and this time succeeds in producing a male heir. Both families are happy. But from Korean society's perspective, there is now a gender imbalance. Writ large across the entire country, these actions can produce the imbalance we see today even without abortions.

Actually, though, this doesn't work. There is no guarantee that the second couple's second child will be a boy; it is as likely to be another girl. Same thing if they have a third child. The more children a couple has, the more likely it is to have a boy--but if every couple keeps trying until it produces a boy, a lot of girls will be produced along the way. Assuming each baby has a 50% likelihood of being either sex, there is a 1 in 1,024 chance that a couple following this plan will have 10 girls without ever producing a boy.

For the same reason, you can't win at blackjack by simply doubling your bet every time you lose. Eventually you will have a losing streak long enough that you will either run out of money or reach the table limit.

Et Tu, Limbaugh?
"Rush Is On for Eco-Friendly Fair Trade Fabrics"--headline, Agence France-Presse, Feb. 23

You Don't Say
"Train Fatalities Higher Among Pedestrians"--headline, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Feb. 26

A Very Sharp Ax--We'll Give It a 9.8
"Blanco: Ax Rating Board"--headline, Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.), Feb. 24

'Cmon, Dude! Sentence Us, Please!'
"Pot Growers Plead, to Be Sentenced"--headline, Ionia (Mich.) Sentinel-Standard, Feb. 23

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Upstate Pump Prices Soar: Gas prices up more than a penny"--headline, Greenville (S.C.) News, Feb. 23
  
  
• "Strange Holes Reported in Frozen Lakes in Latvia"--headline, Times (London), Feb. 24
  
  
• "MP3 Player, Not Gun, Seen on Student"--headline, Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro, Tenn.), Feb. 24
  
  
• "Sister City Program Is Neglected"--headline, Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, Feb. 26
  
  
• "Obama Ridicules Cheney's Iraq Comments"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 23
  
  
• "U.N. Human Rights Expert Faults Israel"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 23

Can't We All Just Get Along?
"Europe Divided Over Unity Anniversary" reads the rather droll headline in the Australian over a piece from the Times of London:

A grand statement--the Berlin declaration--is planned next month to commemorate the founding in 1957 of what is now the EU, but the 27 member states are increasingly divided about what to celebrate.

Luxembourg is pushing for a prominent mention of the euro as one of Europe's greatest achievements. But this will not go down well in Britain and Denmark, where the single currency was rejected.

Poland and Italy want to emphasise Europe's Christian values but are opposed by the French, who prefer to keep religion out of politics. The Czechs and Poles want a strong statement on security, but the French and Germans are worried this will aggravate the Russians.

Germany and Spain are keen to look ahead to a revived constitutional treaty, which is upsetting the Dutch and British.

Never fear, we have an idea! Nothing unifies disparate groups of people better than a common enemy. Why doesn't the EU simply celebrate its 50th anniversary by issuing a statement denouncing Norway?

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Joe Lieberman: I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next.
• Scott Johnson (from The New Criterion): A onetime scourge of political correctness offers an ultra-PC view of Islam.
• The Journal Editorial Report: A transcript of the weekend's program on the FOX News Channel.