From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, March 26, 2007 1:15 P.M. EDT

Today's Videos on WSJ.com: Mary O'Grady on Mexican pension reform.

An Anxious Nation Holds Its Breath--Day 15
Is America worthy of being presided over by Chuck Hagel? That's the question Chuck Hagel is pondering, and he has promised to get back to us with an answer no later than March 17, 2008--just 357 days from today. Earlier, of course, Chuck Hagel promised us an answer by March 17, 2007--but it turned out he wasn't ready to commit one way or another. That's OK, though. We're not going to rush Chuck Hagel. Chuck Hagel needs his space.

Yesterday was the first Sunday of springtime. We spent the morning fast asleep. Maybe you were in church, or hanging out with friends, or spending some quality time with your family. Not Chuck Hagel. Country's calling now, and yesterday Chuck Hagel answered the summons by appearing on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos." The dutiful scribes of the Associated Press recorded Chuck Hagel's words of wisdom:

Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the war, stopped short of calling for Bush's impeachment. But he made clear that some lawmakers viewed that as an option should Bush choose to push ahead despite public sentiment against the war.

Chuck Hagel doesn't favor impeaching the president. Chuck Hagel has been through one presidential impeachment (he voted "guilty" on both counts), and he knows how traumatic that is for the country. But some lawmakers see impeachment as an option, and it is Chuck Hagel's solemn duty to give voice to the voiceless.

Think about it. Suppose you think President Bush should be impeached. What can you do about it? Zero, zip, zilch. After all, you're just some lawmaker! Stephanopoulos won't have any old lawmaker on his show, and don't even get us started about Russert. Sure, in theory you could go to the floor of Congress and deliver a speech on C-Span. But that would be presumptuous. Anyway, who cares what some lawmaker thinks?

Chuck Hagel cares. Chuck Hagel is willing to sacrifice his weekends to speak out on behalf of the men and women who toil in the capital, anonymously and silently, making the nation's laws. Some lawmakers are doubtless very grateful to Chuck Hagel. But here is a question that should prompt some soul-searching from all of us: What has America ever done to deserve Chuck Hagel?

Did Edwards Do Right?--II
In Friday's item about John and Elizabeth Edwards's decision to continue his presidential campaign, we responded to his critics with this speculation: "Maybe Mr. Edwards told Mrs. Edwards he was going to end the campaign to care for her, and she, out of a combination of guilt and denial, begged him not to."

Based on the Edwardses' interview with Katie Couric on "60 Minutes" last night, we seem to have been exactly right, at least about Mrs. Edwards:

Couric: Can you describe the decision making process for me in terms of what should we do now? Do we stay in? Do we suspend it temporarily? Do I call the whole thing off? Do we call the whole thing off? How did that unfold?

Mr. Edwards: Well, first the decision was made by the two of us, no one else, as it should be. And she said to me, "This is what we believe in. This is what we're spending our lives doing. It's where our heart and soul is. And we cannot stop."

The doctor came in. And I said, "I need to know. We have a tough decision to make. We know what we want to do. But I need to know whether Elizabeth can physically do this and I don't mean physically stay at home and watch me do it. I mean, can she physically do it, go out on the campaign trail, do all the work that needs to be done?"

The country's going to want to hear from her, and I knew that. And the doctor said yes, she absolutely could physically do it.

Mrs. Edwards: You know, you really have two choices here. I mean, either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying. That seems to be your only two choices. If I had given up everything that my life was about--first of all, I'd let cancer win before it needed to. You know, maybe eventually it will win. But I'd let it win before I needed to.

And I'd just basically start dying. I don't want to do that. I want to live. And I want to do the work that I want next year to look like last year and--and the year after that and the year after that. And the only way to do that is to say I'm going to keep on with my life. . . .

Couric: Here you're staring at possible [sic] death--

Mrs. Edwards: Aren't we all though.

Couric: And you're thinking, "I don't want to deprive the country of having my husband lead us."

Mrs. Edwards: That would be my legacy, wouldn't it, Katie? That I'd--that I'd--that I'd--that I'd taken out this fine man from the possibility of giving a great service. I mean, I don't want that to be my legacy.

We heard from a reader who went through a similar experience, and who asks not to be named:

In the early spring of the year I was to run for City Council, my husband was diagnosed with a very rare cancer. My husband knew I had been working toward a run for at least several years. He told me he loved me and he would be disappointed in me if I didn't run, that my dedication was one of the things that had attracted him to me. I ran. Races are never easy, but I challenged myself to fit in door-knocking with the chemo and hospital visits. Family, friends and supporters pitched in to help, but it wasn't enough.

I don't like John Edwards as a candidate, but I can't judge what is a highly personal decision--one that gets to the core of a man and a woman's relationship. I can say it is harder than you ever imagine, and it's likely he'll lose. In the choice between a campaign event or my husband, the campaign always lost, as it should be, and my returns reflected that. If Mr. Edwards were smart, he would wait a cycle to see what these early days bring for him and his wife. It takes that long to accept your fate, deal with it, and move on.

And two years after my loss, I still don't regret running, or losing.

Edwards's critics accused him of putting ambition before love, but this strikes us as a bum rap. Imagine how devastating it would have been for Mrs. Edwards to learn on the same day that she was incurably sick and that she was (as she surely would have imagined she was) responsible for dashing her husband's dreams.

In truth, those dreams are unrealistic, and reader Debra Burlingame explains why:

I was pretty shocked at their decision, mainly because they have a 6- and an 8-year-old. Think about this: If Elizabeth doesn't defy the odds and he is elected president, it is possible that she will die while he is in office. It is possible that she will be gravely ill during his first term. And the little kids won't have much of Dad's attention either.

Therein lies the paradox of the Edwardses' decision: Mrs. Edwards needs a sense of normality, but for her and her husband, "normality" means the continued pursuit of a goal whose achievement would make a normal life impossible for four or eight years. For them, this will all take time to sink in. But it seems clear that Mr. Edwards, sensitive to his wife's immediate needs, made the best decision he could have, at least for now.

Your Telly Tax Pounds at Work
When you visit Britain, you realize that although it is a normal country in many ways, some things about it are deeply odd--for instance, they drive on the left, they use the metric system, and their language, while deceptively similar to English, is often incomprehensible ("US Nuke Boffins Rubbish Polygraph Testing").

Here's another British oddity: If you own a television (or, as they call it, a "telly") you have to have a license (or, as they call it, a "licence"). That means you have pay a tax, which goes to subsidize the BBC.

So how does the Beeb spend that money? Here's a story from London's Daily Mail:

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East.

The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine [meaning against Israel].

BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public. . . .

The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat [who is in stable condition] in 2004.

Two hundred thousand British pounds is the equivalent of just under $400,000. And the finding the BBC is spending all this money to cover up is obvious to anyone but the most malignant anti-Semites.

London's Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that "BBC staff have been stopped from replacing lightbulbs because of concerns for their health and safety":

Instead, the corporation is paying up to £10 for each replacement bulb to be fitted.

The situation came to light when Louise Wordsworth, a learning project manager with the BBC, complained.

"I called up to ask for a new lightbulb for my desk lamp and was told that this would cost £10," she wrote in a letter to Ariel, the corporation's magazine.

"On telling them I'd buy and replace the bulb myself (bought for the bargain price of £1 for two bulbs) I was told that it was against health and safety regulations. So guess how many BBC colleagues it finally took to change a lightbulb (risking life and limb to do so)?"

We'll bite, how many?

The member of staff left in the dark would need to find a clerk to get a reference number so that the repair could be paid for, then report the fault to a helpline. An electrician would ask the store manager for the part and install the bulb, making a total of five people.

You know, sometimes we just don't get British "humour."

Glad They Cleared That Up
This "Editor's Note" appeared in yesterday's New York Times:

The cover article in The Times Magazine on March 18 reported on women who served in Iraq, the sexual abuse that some of them endured and the struggle for all of them to reclaim their prewar lives. One of the servicewomen, Amorita Randall, a former naval construction worker, told The Times that she was in combat in Iraq in 2004 and that in one incident an explosive device blew up a Humvee she was riding in, killing the driver and leaving her with a brain injury. She also said she was raped twice while she was in the Navy.

On March 6, three days before the article went to press, a Times researcher contacted the Navy to confirm Ms. Randall's account. There was preliminary back and forth but no detailed reply until hours before the deadline. At that time, a Navy spokesman confirmed to the researcher that Ms. Randall had won a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal with Marine Corps insignia, which was designated for those who served in a combat area, including Iraq, or in direct support of troops deployed in one. But the spokesman said there was no report of the Humvee incident or a record of Ms. Randall's having suffered an injury in Iraq. The spokesman also said that Ms. Randall's commander, who served in Iraq, remembered her but said that her unit was never involved in combat while it was in Iraq. Both of these statements from the Navy were included in the article. The article also reported that the Navy had no record of a sexual-assault report involving Ms. Randall.

After The Times researcher spoke with the Navy, the reporter called Ms. Randall to ask about the discrepancies. She stood by her account.

On March 12, three days after the article had gone to press, the Navy called The Times to say that it had found that Ms. Randall had never received imminent-danger pay or a combat-zone tax exemption, indicating that she was never in Iraq. Only part of her unit was sent there; Ms. Randall served with another part of it in Guam. The Navy also said that Ms. Randall was given the medal with the insignia because of a clerical error.

Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq. If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article.

Otherwise, though, the story was accurate. And check out this passage from a Saturday Times op-ed: "We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone." We'd like to see a photo of that.

Life Imitates 'The Simpsons'
From "Whacking Day," an episode of "The Simpsons," which first aired April 29, 1993:

Principal Skinner: So, what's the word down at One School Board Plaza?

Superintendent Chalmers: We're dropping the geography requirement. The children weren't testing well. It's proving to be an embarrassment.

Skinner: Very good. Back to the three R's.

Chalmers: Two R's, come October.

From the Seattle Times, March 26, 2007:

State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test.

The idea is to do something about the fact that so few students pass the math and science sections.

Won't Get Fooled Again

The Debate Turns Ugly

  • "Debate on Interspecies Cloning Reignites"--headline, Associated Press, March 25

  • "Sri Lanka's Tigers Bomb Base in First Air Raid"--headline, Reuters, March 25

Ursine Nativists
"Foreclosure Wave Bears Down on Immigrants"--headline, Washington Post, March 26

World's Busiest Stalker
"Study: Nearly 1 in 5 Texans Victimized by Stalker"--headline, KPRC-TV Web site (Houston), March 24

Why Fight 'Em When You Can Drink 'Em?
"U.S.-Cuba Custody Fight Brews Over Girl"--headline, Miami Herald, March 24

Well, Except for Their Food
"Study: Cannibals Usually Dine Alone"--headline, LiveScience.com, March 23

World Ends, Etc., Etc.
"Vermont Maple Syrup Hard Hit by Climate Change"--headline, ABCNews.com, March 24

News You Can Use

  • "Slow Down, Multitaskers; Don't Read in Traffic"--headline, New York Times, March 25

  • "Astrology Won't Help You Find True Love' Claim Scientists"--headline, Daily Mail (London), March 26

Bottom Stories of the Day

No Apologies
In a letter to the editor of the New Hampshire, student newspaper at the University of New Hampshire, Marie Coyle, feminist outreach coordinator of One in Four: American Women United Against Eating Disorder, stakes out a controversial position:

I am, and will continue to be, aggressively and unapologetically anti-eating disorders. I am definitely trying to attack this problem. I want to be supportive of those who are suffering, but I refuse to say that I am anything but opposed to their sickness. I am not in any way blaming people who have eating disorders; this is absurd. When I say I am furious about eating disorders, I mean that I am furious at their existence, not at the people whose lives are being ruined by them. I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for the hundreds of people on this campus that are suffering. I want to do everything I can to improve their lives. I really cannot stress enough the distinction between being against eating disorders and being against people who have eating disorders. . . .

I believe it is very possible to live in a world without eating disorders. Throughout history and across various cultures, there have been societies with no documented cases of disordered eating. It is not the presence of food that creates eating disorders, it is the presence of a slew of cultural factors that are unique to certain societies (including, obviously, ours) that encourage disordered eating. I think that while it may be scary and strange to say, "I want to live in a world with no eating disorders," it is extremely empowering and it is a statement that I stand behind completely.

Given how many people favor eating disorders, this is a brave stand indeed!

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