From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, June 4, 2007 1:07 P.M. EDT

Today's Video on WSJ.com: Mary O'Grady on Hugo Chavez's war against free Venezuelan media.

Who's Afraid to Debate?
Last week our friends at National Review, taking offense at some critical comments at a Wall Street Journal editorial board meeting on immigration, issued the following challenge: "Who at the Journal is willing to debate the merits of the legislation rather than cast aspersions from afar?"

What NR's editors didn't mention is that a week earlier, they had bugged out of a chance to debate. In an email, editorial page editor Paul Gigot explains what happened:

Two weeks ago we wanted to have an immigration debate on our Fox TV program, "The Journal Editorial Report," with two WSJ writers squaring off against two anti-immigration conservatives, and me as moderator. We invited the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, who accepted and appeared. We also invited National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, who declined but told us to ask Byron York, who accepted and agreed to fly up from Washington to New York.

York then called us late Thursday to cancel, first saying he didn't want to debate us after all. Our producer asked him to think about it, and he then called her back about 6 p.m. to say he had decided he was willing to debate but was still canceling because he had a story to pursue. Because we tape at 9:15 a.m. on Friday in New York, this left us at the last minute with only one anti-immigration guest. When our producer told York what he was doing to our program, he said it was no big deal, that he'd done TV for years and had lots of shows blown up at the last minute. We scrambled to find a substitute but failed. Heather did appear and had plenty of air time.

So imagine our astonishment to hear a few days later that National Review was challenging us to a debate. Had they wanted to debate, they could have. But we have no interest in participating in what is merely a publicity stunt.

If you're interested in an immigration debate, just read the transcript.

I'm Envious of Your IQ
The link atop this item takes you to an image of yesterday's New York Times front page. It was apparently a pretty slow news day, for the lead story, "President's Push on Immigration Tests G.O.P. Base," merits only one column. Three other stories appear above the fold:

  • "A Legal Debate in Guantanamo on Boy Fighters"
  • "After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay"
  • "In a New India, an Old Industry Buoys Peasants"

That last story is about brick making. Below the fold are two more stories: one about President Bush's Korea-Iraq analogy (a subject we wrote about three days earlier) and one about violin maintenance.

Then there's this story:

Four men, including a onetime airport cargo handler and a former member of the Parliament of Guyana, were charged yesterday with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport.

This appeared not on the front page, but on page 37. (We're told it appeared on page 30 of the Times's national edition.) The Washington Post, by contrast, put the story on the front page.

Today's Times carries a follow-up article. This went into the Metro section (albeit on the first page), and we're told the national edition put it on page A19. The headline on the Web version: "Papers Portray Plot as More Talk Than Action" ("papers" meaning government documents, not newspapers).

Well of course it was more talk than action. Authorities stopped the alleged plot before it could be carried out. If terrorists had succeeded in blowing up the airport and what today's paper calls "a substantial swath of Queens," perhaps the Times would have thought the story worthy of page 1.

'It Is the Iraqis Who Have Failed'
"Sunni residents of a west Baghdad neighborhood used assault rifles and a roadside bomb to battle the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq this week, leaving at least 28 people dead and six injured, residents said Thursday," the Washington Post reported Friday:

The mayor of the Amiriyah neighborhood, Mohammed Abdul Khaliq, said in a telephone interview that residents were rising up to try to expel al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has alienated other Sunnis with its indiscriminate violence and attacks on members of its own sect. . . .

In the western province of Anbar, which is predominantly Sunni, tribal leaders have formed an umbrella group, the Anbar Salvation Council, to join with U.S. and Iraqi troops in a common fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq, which used to dominate the province.

In last night's Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said the problems in Iraq are the fault of the Iraqis:

Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

Bad Iraqis! And don't they know Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda?

Don't Hire This Guy as Your Investment Adviser
The strangest observation of the day comes from Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria:

More troubling than any of [President] Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him. "They hate you!" says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. "They don't want you to be in this college!" he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. "Or you, or you, or you," he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, "We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us." On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. "This is reality, ma'am," he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. "You've got to clear your head."

The notion that the United States today is in grave danger of sitting back and going on the defensive is bizarre. In the last five and a half years, with bipartisan support, Washington has invaded two countries and sent troops around the world from Somalia to the Philippines to fight Islamic militants. It has ramped up defense spending by $187 billion--more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India and Britain. It has created a Department of Homeland Security that now spends more than $40 billion a year. It has set up secret prisons in Europe and a legal black hole in Guantánamo, to hold, interrogate and--by some definitions--torture prisoners. How would Giuliani really go on the offensive? Invade a couple of more countries?

Zakaria simply assumes that current trends will continue, or at least not reverse, like someone who bought tech stocks in early 2000 thinking they can't possibly go down because they've gone up so far and so fast for so long.

Perhaps it has escaped Zakaria's notice that there is a presidential election next year, and the major Democratic candidates have promised to move America to a more defensive posture--by retreating from Iraq, curtailing surveillance and interrogation, and providing terrorists with legal protections that even legitimate prisoners of war don't enjoy. One candidate has even declared that he doesn't believe there is such a thing as the war on terror.

In light of this information, Zakaria's analysis makes sense only if he's sure either that the Democrats won't win or that their promises will turn out to be empty ones.

Might've Come in Handy

  • "Demands for a ban on 'un-Islamic' activities in schools will be set out by the Muslim Council of Britain today. Targets include playground games, swimming lessons, school plays, parents' evenings and even vaccinations."--Daily Express (London), Feb. 21

  • "Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says some 60 Taliban fighters were drowned when their boat sank as they were attempting to cross the Helmand River."--Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 3

World Ends, Etc., Etc.

  • "With its new members, the court is also likely to make prisons less civilized, and workplaces, elections and criminal trials less fair. . . . America will be a much less just place if Justice Thomas's life experiences and moral truth start to shape the court's agenda--and the nation's."--Adam Cohen, "Editorial Observer," New York Times, June 3

  • "Ginsburg a Minority of One on High Court"--headline, Associated Press, June 4

  • "EXCLUSIVE: Women, Minorities Top Bush's Supreme Court Short List"--headline, ABCNews.com, June 1

The Bullet America Dodged
Here's a frightening story from London's Sunday Times:

It was intended to be the symbolic gesture at a global series of rock concerts next month to alert people to climate change. Al Gore, the former US presidential candidate turned climate doomsayer, had wanted a massive switch-off of lights by television audiences, but the National Grid has vetoed the idea.

The inconvenient truth, it says, is that the power surge when people switched their lights back on could cause disruptions in supply and even endanger hospital patients on life support machines.

It's a cute, funny story--until you consider that back in 2000, Gore came within a few hundred Florida votes of being elected president of the United States. Who knows what destructive and counterproductive policies he might have pursued? And the National Grid would have been powerless to stop him.

This Just Makes Us Cry
"After promising unprecedented openness regarding Congress' pork barrel practices, House Democrats are moving in the opposite direction as they draw up spending bills for the upcoming budget year," the Associated Press reports from Washington:

Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify "earmarks"--lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states.

Rather than including specific pet projects, grants and contracts in legislation as it is being written, Democrats are following an order by the House Appropriations Committee chairman to keep the bills free of such earmarks until it is too late for critics to effectively challenge them.

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

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

Life Imitates the Movies

  • "In the garden, growth has its seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."--Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener, "Being There," 1979

  • "Economy Warms in Spring: Growth rebound in April, May could bode healthy year, analysts say"--headline and subheadline, Chicago Tribune, May 31

She Wants Her First Time to Be Unforgettable
"Virgin Vows to Help Elephants in Kenya"--headline, Reuters, June 2

Breaking News From 1861
"Bull Run Faces Test"--headline, CNNMoney.com, June 3

Breaking News From 1898
"US and Spain Clash Over Cuba"--headline, Financial Times, June 2

Breaking News From 1963
"Informant Plays Key Role in JFK Plot"--headline, Associated Press, June 3

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • "1 Person Speaks Up Against Smoking Ban"--headline, Indianapolis Star, June 2

  • "North Dakota Hunters Criticize Microsoft"--headline, Associated Press, June 2

  • "Resident Finds 'When He Removes One Squirrel, Another Moves In' "--headline, Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.), June 4

  • "Canadian Airports Not Planning Security Boost"--headline, Canadian Press, June 2

We Have to Be Responsible and It's Your Fault!
"About a thousand anti-globalisation and anti-poverty campaigners are convening in Mali on Monday for a forum to counter the G8 summit of rich states due in Germany this week," Agence France-Presse reports from Bamako, the Malian capital:

Participants were expected from Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Europe, said Barry Aminata Toure, head of Mali's African Coalition for Debt and Development, which groups about 60 NGOs.

Toure blasted the G8 for reneging on aid pledges it made at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles.

"The rich countries did not keep their word, (and) this is why it's up to the African countries, countries of the south, to take charge of themselves," said Toure.

If only the rich countries weren't such deadbeats, the poor countries wouldn't have to take responsibility for themselves! Perhaps that attitude is part of why these countries are poor.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Ed Lasky, Evan Slatis, Rosanne Klass, Chris Collins, Rob Schaaf, Michele Schiesser, Marc Young, William Katz, Stuart Creque, Chip George, James Gardner, Alan Jones, Chris Costello, Jim Moran, George Carden, Ethel Fenig, Abe Beyda, John Nernoff, Andrew Penchuk, Don Stewart, Thomas Mayer, Geoff Hazel, Robert Henard, Alan Ridgeway, John Hoh, Paul Wicht, Bruce Goldman, John Williamson, Brian O'Rourke, Gary Larreategui, C.E. Dobkin, Tim Townsend and Rhonda Cisneros. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

  • Review & Outlook: North Korea will not extend "cooperation" to any U.N. review.
  • John Fund: Fred Thompson excites the conservative base. But will his unorthodox campaign succeed?
  • Irshad Manji: America beats Europe on assimilating Muslims.
  • The Journal Editorial Report: A transcript of the weekend's program on FOX News Channel.

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