Insightful political commentary, etc.

Thanks to Smitty for the hard-hitting expose about Jesus and Elvis, plus moderating the comments, while I was out of pocket Tuesday evening. The man is owed cheeseburgers and beers for his labors, so hit the tip jar, people. (Second rarest sentence in the English language: "Thanks for picking up the tab, McCain." Because of extremely low wages, newspapermen are cheapskate moochers, and I've eaten enough free food to alleviate Third World famine.)

Update blogging is in order:

• VodkaPundit has some thoughts on the growing public perception of utter incompetence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad says there are not enough Senate votes to pass the Obudget, and the Wall Street Journal reports that "card check" looks like a loser, too.
• American Glob: Progressive group digs for dirt on Obama's critics. Also, video of Bill O'Reilly ripping the left-wing smear machine.
• Paco: Chris Matthews: A Human Jacuzzi of Stupid.
• Uh, I wasn't going to blog about this, but "The Fight for Big Sexy" (with strawberry Jello) is being planned. I think I know one blog commenter who's cheering for Monique.
• Tuesday, I concluded the video-editing job I've been working part-time for several months. The job was great, and I'm now experienced with FinalCutPro, a skill that is sure to come in handy in the New Media age. The owner of the video company is a magnificent Christian lady, who was extremely gracious when I explained that the blogging/freelancing/consulting has now become so demanding that I felt I needed to concentrate on those tasks.
• With the help of my good friend, investigative journalist Matthew Vadum, I subsequently attended a splendid reception at Top of the Town in Arlington, and then consulted by phone with clients and sources. It was, all in all, a delightful evening.

Now, it's time to address something that needs to be said: I naturally expect that, when I blog about gay rights/gay marriage in terms of God and sin and Anglo-American legal tradition, gay people are going to take umbrage. It is inevitable.

During CPAC, I met conservative lesbian Cynthia Yockey, and Miss Yockey gives me a very gentle and friendly Rule 2 rejoinder on my belief in biblical authority. (Note to self: Resist temptation presented by opportunity for brilliant double-entendre.)

As is my wont (and Miss Yockey can ask commenter Victor about this), I will avoid engaging the specifics of her critique, and instead focus strategically on holding more defensible terrain. To wit, refuting the routine slander that alleges that Bible believers:

• Hate gay people.
• Are ignorant of the reality of gayness.
• Suffer from twisted sexual "repression."
• Lack familiarity with scientific evidence.
• Wish to deprive gay people of their rights.

These are lies, Miss Yockey. And who is called "the father of lies"? ( Church Lady voice.) Satan!

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
-- John 8:44 KJV

Miss Yockey, if you will read that chapter, you will find that Jesus spoke those words prophetically. The scribes and Pharisees, jealous of Jesus' influence, were indeed already plotting his death. They kept questioning him, trying to trip him up so he would say something that would either justify his religious condemnation as a heretic, or else that would be seen as subversive of Roman authority and justify his condemnation for sedition.

John 8 begins with one of the most famous of these incidents, "the woman caught in adultery." As everyone knows, Christ challenged the woman's accusers, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8:7), and all of them walked away.

This woman quite literally owed Jesus her life. What transpired next?

When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
-- Romans 8:10-11

Jesus did not condemn the woman, but he nonetheless commanded her to "sin no more."

Now, Miss Yockey, do not read that passage and think of yourself. Think of me. You have no idea how often I have cheated death. One night when I was 19, I consumed the better part of a half-gallon of psilocybin mushroom tea and tooted up a goodly amount of Bolivian flake cocaine.

Having started smoking pot as a 14-year-old, I'd done (and dealt) many drugs by the time I was 19. But psilocybin and cocaine I'd never tried and, as I did not realize at that time, I was under tremendous stress. My mother died when I was 16, I'd barely graduated high school, I'd goofed off so badly in college that I was on the verge of flunking out and -- this was the real heavy one -- my conscience was burdened with knowledge of my own sins.

By the time the psilocybin really kicked in, I had practically forgotten about that half-gallon of magic mushroom tea, whose effects I'd never before experienced. And as anyone who has ever done a lot of coke will tell you, that stuff makes you feel smarter than Einstein, a euphoria that borders on a sense of omniscience.

To say that I freaked completely out is to understate the case. I've always been about half-crazy, but for about 10 days there, I was 110% crazy, and when my older brother finally got me to the emergency room -- oh, that was a wild ride -- the doctor didn't need to examine me much before he spoke those three fateful words: Nurse, Thorazine, please.

Recovering from that experience was a long, hard road, and I went so low that many doubted I'd ever recover, period. All that splendid talent, such once-promising genius, seemed destined to either institutionalization or else slumping along as a dim shadow of his former self.

However, people were praying for me, and people were willing to help me. I returned to college a year later, with only one last chance to make good or flunk out, and thus forfeit the full-tuition scholarship that the state of Alabama granted to the children of disabled veterans. My father had been quite nearly killed by German shrapnel while serving in France in 1944. (His Purple Heart and other medals hang on the wall beside my desk as I type this.) The merit of my father's service had been rewarded with a scholarship for me -- an opportunity I was on the verge of wasting.

I made Dean's List that semester, my still-unstable psychological condition compelling me for the first time in my life to develop systematic study habits. It happened that one of my classes that semester was Introduction to Psychology, where I learned that long-term treatment with anti-psychotic drugs produces a debilitating side-effect known as tardic dyskinesia. So I weaned myself off the meds and, slowly, fought my way back to something like my old half-crazy self.

Now, Miss Yockey, I could elaborate at length all the miracles that God has wrought in my life over the past three decades. If you should ever see me write about angels, trust that there are angels, sent in answer to prayer, and "some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2).

"Go thou and sin no more," Jesus said to the woman who owed him her life. Miss Yockey, if you think I've spent the past 30 years without sinning, you're crazier than me. The apostle Paul once said, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (I Timothy 1:15), but if Paul was chief of sinners, I'm definitely part of the tribe. The only one of the Seven Deadly Sins at which I have not excelled is gluttony, being skinny by nature. (On the other hand, I've gained 25 pounds since my Speedo glory, and can't resist a buffet, so I guess I'm a perfect 7-for-7 in the deadly sins.)

Last fall, I got an Instalanche for a post titled, "Is babe-blogging a sin?" And in all good conscience, I contend it is not. One of the happy blessings of advancing age is that my appreciation of beauty steadily becomes more aesthetic than erotic. (My extremely beautiful wife is skeptical of such assertions, with ample reason given the fact that she is the mother of our six children. The main reason we don't have seven is that I manage to keep myself almost constantly in the doghouse.)

Make no mistake: Lust remains a real temptation, and quite dangerous, and I would hate to think that I was leading others to perdition by such silliness as "Sarah Palin bikini pics" or "Old School upskirt." But if you think about it for two seconds, this is the Internet. Everybody reading this is one quick Google search away from as much raw porn as they want.

So if there are recovering pornoholics out there who need a little methadone to help them get off the heroin, a little Christina Hendricks is relatively benign. (Don't you agree, Dr. Vodka?) If by happy accident that random porn-Googler finds himself reading a right-wing blog run by a homophobic hillbilly holy roller . . .

Miss Yockey, I don't believe in accidents. I've been involved in too many conspiracies, and have been the recipient of too many prayed-for blessings (e.g., Mrs. Other McCain) to think that things "just happen." The person who is reading this is no more reading it by accident than I am writing it by accident.

BTW, did I ever tell you about the time my 1973 VW Beetle went head-on into a pickup truck, and I walked away with nothing worse than a headache? One of many potentially deadly encounters I've survived. If you believe in accidents, how is it that I'm even here to be writing this?

Richard Spencer recently paid me the fine compliment of noting that, in my Taki's Magazine columns, I have shown an ability to write about sex in a funny, engaging way that is not preachy or boring, as is most conservative writing about sex. Such is the tragic dimension of human nature and the decadent situation of contemporary culture that, it seems to me, we must learn to laugh about sex or else it will drive us to despair. Ted Haggard, Jim McGreevey, Mark Foley, Eliot Spitzer, the Big Sexy -- oh, wait a minute. Never mind. Failure to send a promised box of Godiva chocolate isn't all that scandalous.

My point is that sexual sin seems nowadays so widespread that even the most respected and eminent persons might appear in the tabloid sex-scandal headlines tomorrow. And whatever your sins are, or my sins are, or the Big Sexy's sins are, the fact that they're not splashed in 96-point type on the front of the New York Post doesn't mean our sins are unknown. You know your sins, and I know my sins. And if we have sinned against others (which I most certainly have), then those against whom we have sinned are also aware of our sins.

Is there a God who is aware of all our sins? I believe there is, and I believe His judgment is far more to be feared -- because it is eternal and righteous -- than any judgment man can make. We are sinners in the hands of an angry God.

Now, at last, the gay thing. As I look at the clock just now, it's 3:50 a.m. ET, and a couple of guys somewhere in Atlanta are strolling out of an after-hours disco, arm in arm, on their way to an eagerly anticipated carnal satisfaction. Sinners.

Simultaneously, however, it is 12:50 a.m. in Modesto, California, where a pimply teenage boy -- with the assistance of a 4-pack of wine coolers -- has finally gotten to third base with his girlfriend. Sinners.

To quote the American poet Bob Seger, they've only got one thing in common, they've got the fire down below.

Will you accuse me of "ignorance" or "hate"? You haven't the slightest idea what I've known or who I've loved. (Or what I've loved and who I've known.) As for the charge that I am unfamiliar with scientific evidence, that can be easily refuted, if necessary. Everybody knows I'm not "sexually repressed." More like irrepressible.

Ask my friend Michael Petrelis how much I hate gay men. Ask Tammy Bruce how much I hate lesbians. Ask Lynn Conway or Dierdre McCloskey how much I hate transsexuals. Far from wishing to deprive them of their rights, I will stand up for their rights -- especially their First Amendment right to tell meddling politicians to go straight to hell, or their Second Amendment right to defend themselves against assault.

Miss Yockey, you have yourself said that I am irresistible, and you may have thought you were joking. But ask anyone who's met my wife . . . well, she's gotten better at resisting me, but it's a difficult feat to accomplish. My late mother said that I could accomplish anything, if I ever put my mind to it, and please don't tell me my mother lied.

The question of resistance, however, brings me to a conundrum that long contemplation has not resolved in my mind: Are "gay" and "straight" mutually exclusive categories? Would a Venn diagram show them as non-intersecting circles? Is Andrew Sullivan utterly incapable of erotic interest in a woman? Could Camille Paglia ever feel attraction toward a man?

I answer: "No," "no," "maybe," and "it would certainly be nice to think so." I do not doubt, Miss Yockey, that you and your partner are happy together. But if somehow you were to become so unhappy as to split up, or if by misfortune you were widowed (as it were), I would not automatically rule out the possibility that your next partner could be male. More amazing things have certainly happened.

Teenage dopehead psycho becomes notorious right-wing journalist with beautiful wife and six kids? Impossible.

My dear grandmother used to say that I missed my calling, and should have been a preacher. Well, if you miss one calling, you never know what the next calling will be. And if you ignore that one, and are called again . . . But God keeps calling and calling, like the finance company wanting to have a friendly discussion about my 2004 Kia Optima. And by the time you finally answer the call, maybe you're so messed up that the only use God has for you is as a perpetually impoverished blogger. (Hey, it's not His fault that I didn't answer the first call.)

Well, it's 5 a.m. now, and Mrs. Other McCain's alarm clock is set for 5:30 a.m., so we'll see how irresistible I am when I bring her a fresh hot cup of coffee. But if I'm not entirely irresistible, what about God? Can I resist God, Miss Yockey? Can you?

You did not read this by accident, did you? My original career goal was to be a rock star. I been bloggin' all night, my hands are wet on the keys . . .

UPDATE 6 a.m. ET: OK, so it turns out I am resistible. But I did bring her the coffee and thought of something: Am I privileging patriarchal heteronormativity, or whatever they call it in Women's Studies course nowadays?

Do I appear an arrogant chauvinist, to suppose that if Cynthia Yockey and her partner woke up this morning to find Brad Pitt standing there with two fresh hot cups of coffee, that they'd decide to have a Brad sandwich for breakfast?

Excuse me while I leave you to contemplate that scenario. As an old football junkie, my bet is that Brad would put it in the end zone, even if he didn't make the two-point conversion.

UPDATE 6:10 a.m.: Just talked to Mrs. Other McCain again. Sly humor: "I don't know!"

Trying hard to maintain family values while talking about baseball. Which reminds me that today the Braves play the Phillies in spring training. Who's pitching and who's catching? No, who's on first! I don't know! Third base!

UPDATE 7:15 a.m.: Professor Glenn Reynolds: "It figures this would come from a lesbian." Ah, so two can play the old double-entendre game, eh? Well, back at ya, Professor!

Nothing says "family values" like ZZ Top . . .

I'm going to have to ask blogospheric neologian William Jacobson what to call it when the Professor sends me traffic via a carom shot off a lesbian blogger. Or perhaps Gunnery Sergeant Hartman will have some suggestions.

Camille: Shush!

by Smitty

Camille Paglia is letting too much cat out of the barn:

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection.

Not at all, Camille! Just let the nitwits keep digging.

President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisers and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism.

Great hope and confidence? Based upon what? His book sales? His campaign-fu? Call me a balding old squid, but the POTUS eats whatever the staff serves, just as the captain of the ship does when she's hard aground. Credit and blame are flip sides of the Coin of Office, Camille.

And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey.

And this is why I love to read you, lady: I may not agree with you all the time, but your calls-it-like-you-sees-it is so refreshing...

President Obama should yank the reins and get his staff's noses out of slash-and-burn petty politics.

...but your research into the good POTUS's brass-knuckle approach to election-fu, not so much.

Exit question:Camille, Rule 5? Hey, if you're that squid who's been hard aground for a while, you understand the meaning of Who is pleased easily is pleased often. I'd certainly buy the lady a cup o' joe.

CWCID: Newsbusters

Works on Several Levels

by Smitty

• Rule 5, as the girlfriend in question passes the 'cute' test. (I got a job ta do, right?)
  
• Total retro fun for the Dementats and Dementites in the crowd.
  
• A nicely filmed reaction to seeing the current economic situation.
  

Enjoy!

Elvis Once; Jesus, Not So Much

by Smitty
Hat Tip: Hot Air

Jesus sightings would seem to refute the idea of Evangelical Collapse:


Back to the post title, I did see Elvis once.
I was in Aft Steering aboard USS McClusky (FFG 41).

That's at the extreme right of the picture, right at the waterline.
Looking at a blob of grease on one of the steering gear joints, I saw the King in profile.
"Look, it's Elvis!" I yelled, because everyone in Aft Steering wears double hearing protection for a reason.
Rather than looking at this miracle in astonishment, my shipmates looked at me with concern...

Now, while a ship's a she, I don't think FFG-41 really buys us much in the Rule 5 department with RSM. Do forward your tasteful cheesecake photos post haste.

Never punk-smack a masochist

The punk will keep coming back for more and, next thing you know, you'll spend all your time smacking punks instead of providing insightful commentary on current events.

Nevertheless, infamous poofter James B. Webb has demonstrated the validity of Rule 4 (as if its validity were ever in doubt), showing how a wise selection of enemies can increase traffic. Since he first began his auto-beclownment, his traffic has spiked from a pathetic 53 visitors Saturday to 123 yesterday, and as of 5:11 p.m. ET today, he was at an astonishing 101 visitors!

On an inarguably related topic, Dr. Helen addresses the question: "How can we live in a world where the losers in high school are, well, losers for life?" A problem for which Professor Glenn Reynolds offers one possible prescription.

James: Take 12, and blog me in the morning.

UPDATE: I will be out of pocket this evening, consulting clients and researching economic conditions, and have told Frequent Commenter Smitty that, if he wants to provide insightful commentary on current events, now would be a good time to go hog-wild.

So if you're looking for some Rule 2 action, link us up, e-mail the URL to Smitty and beg for the FMJRA, punks. Remember, today is David Brooks Fisking Day, so you have until midnight to trash that useless idiot with remorseless fury. Trust me, your spleen will thank you.

And if you haven't hit the tip jar yet, do so now. Blogging this brutal is too good to be free.

Evangelical collapse?

(BUMPED; UPDATES BELOW) I linked this in the headlines after seeing it in Hot Air Headlines, but wanted also to discuss Michael Spencer's Christian Science Monitor article, which includes this point:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

Spencer does not mention Julia Duin's important new book, Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about It, but it seems clear to me -- if to no one else -- that he's read it. So I'll begin by putting a mark against Spencer for failure to acknowledge his source.

There are many sources of the problems that Spencer (and Julia Duin) discuss, and the failure of churches to rigorously teach the Bible to kids is the nut of the whole thing. When I was a kid growing up in the Baptist church, "Sword Drill" was a big event.

"Sword Drill" took its name from Ephesians 6:17, where Christians are commanded to employ "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." So us kids were literally drilled in Bible memorization. I was by no means a good student, but some of it took, and the constant repetition of Bible study engrained in my mind -- as I am sure it did with others -- a solid core of biblical knowledge. It also developed a mindset that the Bible was an authoritative source.

This was reinforced during the sermons preached by Pastor Marion Beavers. If there are any others out there who grew up in Lithia Springs (Ga.) First Baptist Church back in the '60s and '70s, you know that "Preacher Beavers" (which was how he was addressed) was a first-class Bible preacher.

By the term "Bible preacher," I refer to a sermon style that seems to have faded in the past three decades. The preacher kept the Bible in his hand, or open on the lectern, throughout the sermon. However he organized his sermon, it began with a reference to a specific biblical passage -- the Verse of the Day, which was listed in the program -- and was further elaborated with references to other verses.

"Turn with me now . . ." was a phrase repeated endlessly during the sermon. The people in the pews were expected to have their own Bibles and, as the preacher proceeded to cite "chapter and verse," the people would turn the pages to follow his references and read for themselves. So, whatever the preacher's eloquence contributed to the sermon, the people in the pews could see directly that his preaching was built firmly on a scriptural foundation.

He wasn't just telling you his opinion, he was preaching the Word of God. The reliance was not on the preacher, but on the Bible, so if you subtracted the preacher from the equation, you still had the Bible to guide you. Bible preaching encouraged an autodidactic attitude in the congregation, so that the believer had a proprietary sensibility toward the Word: "This is my Bible, this is my God, this is my faith."

The loss of that covenantal idea of mutual belonging -- you belonged to God, and God belonged to you, and the Bible was an ironclad contract between you -- is at the core of the evangelical decline that Julia Duin describes and which Michael Spencer sees turning into a "collapse" of American evangelicism.

We could talk about many other factors -- e.g., the abandonment of the hymnal in favor of pop-rock "praise music" -- but the shift away from old-fashioned Bible preaching seems to me the key factor in the waning of vital faith in many churches.

UPDATE: Linked at Memeorandum and Outside the Beltway.

UPDATE II: Linked by Donald Douglas, who notes:

Andrew Sullivan, in particular, has a number of posts up cheering all of this, for example, "The Young and the Godless," and "A Coming Evangelical Collapse?"
Sullivan blames these trends on ... wait for it! ... "Christianism," of course.

I'm just waiting for Ace of Spades to take notice of this. Ace has never struck me as a particularly religious man, but if Sully is smiling, Ace is the man to wipe that smile off his face.

UPDATE III: Let me say a word or two in response to the anonymous commenter -- the good ones are always anonymous, eh? -- who said:

Good idea, get rid of contemporary music and bring in madrassa-style Bible drilling. That will bring in the young folk.

The anonymous idiot is not a parent, and has never studied developmental psychology. Four words: Children flourish under discipline.

If you know nothing else about dealing with children, you should try to understand this. My good teachers, my effective Boy Scout leaders, my winning football coaches, the choir, band and drama directors who knew best how to elicit superior performance -- all of these worked with the understanding that discipline has positive value with children.

The failure of "seek-friendly" mega-churches is not an inability to "bring in the young folk," but their unwillingness to apply discipline. After all, "discipline" and "disciple" are words of more than etymological affinity. You cannot build disciples without discipline. "Seeker-friendly" churches indeed attract youth, but they cannot retain them. They're dealing Wonder Bread and Velveeta, when what the kids really need is whole wheat and red meat.

(Note: Anyone accusing me of going "crunchy" will be at risk of a punk-smacking.)

It's David Brooks Fisking Day!

"If one does not read enough economic illiteracy from Paul Krugman's Monday column in the New York Times, there always is David Brook's Tuesday column, which presents the neo-con (emphasis on 'con') view of the world. One must remember that the editorial writers at the Times actually believe that Brooks is a free-market guy."
-- Bill Anderson, LewRockwell.com

OK, here he is, the useless idiot who needs no introduction, David Brooks:

Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate. . . .
The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is "no."
Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism. Global capitalism is an innovative force, they could argue, but we have been reminded of its shortcomings. When exogenous forces like the rise of China and a flood of easy money hit the global marketplace, they can throw the entire system of out of whack, leading to a cascade of imbalances: higher debt, a grossly enlarged financial sector and unsustainable bubbles.
If the free market party doesn’t offer the public an honest appraisal of capitalism’s weaknesses, the public will never trust it to address them. Power will inevitably slide over to those who believe this crisis is a repudiation of global capitalism as a whole.

Oh, my aching spleen! Where to start? How about a joke?

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery begins when David Brooks loses his job.

The "weaknesses" of capitalism are not what this crisis is about. Economies expand, economies contract. Old businesses go bankrupt, new businesses are launched. "Economic stability" is (a) an impossible Keynesian fantasy that can never be achieved, and (b) arguably a bad thing. We don't want "stability," we want dynamism -- innovation, creativity, new businesses being launched, new technologies developed, new markets emerging, etc.

What Brooks cannot be made to see is the weaknesses of government -- the utter inability of the federal behemoth to competently manage or regulate the economy. To argue that "capitalism's weaknesses" require government intervention, one must first suppose that there is something useful or helpful that government can actually do that it is not already doing, or that it can do a better job of the job it has done so badly in recent years.

There is no evidence for the Brooksian view. We have no reason to believe that future government interventions will be more competent or effective than previous interventions -- It Won't Work -- and we have many reasons to believe that the severity of the current crisis is a direct consequence of misguided interventions in the past.

Brooks is not interested in evidence. He is interested in being thought clever. He knows even less about economics than he knows about politics, and he knows precious little about that. He is a menace, an enemy of common sense and sound policy. He must be fisked!

UPDATE 1 p.m.: He hasn't been fisked enough yet. Let me reiterate something that cannot be emphasized enough: Being articulate is not the same as being right.

No one can deny that David Brooks is a skillful writer. As a prose stylist, he is excellent. If the New York Times sent him to cover the infield scene at the Talladega 500, Brooks would come back with a brilliant, funny story -- and he would come back with fewer teeth, because some redneck would be unable to resist the urge to knock that arrogant smirk off his face.

Brooks is a classic example of The Writerly Delusion: The journalistic belief that one's aptitude for written articulation is the same thing as being knowledgeable about a subject. A truck driver might not be able to write a coherent narrative of how to drive a truck, but he can in fact drive it. David Brooks can write about economics without actually knowing anything useful about economics.

If Brooks were actually right about anything, his elegant prose would be a weapon on the side of truth. Because what he believes about economics and politics is wrong, however, his eloquence is a force for evil. He must be fisked, fisked brutally, and the fisking must be continued vigorously until he is converted to the cause of truth or shamed into silence.

UPDATE II: Linked by Dave at Point of a Gun, by Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack and by Dan Riehl at Riehl World Views. Everybody join in and let's give Brooks the vicious gang-fisking he deserves.

UPDATE III: The question is asked, "What is an appropriate gift for David Brooks Fisking Day?" The answer, of course, is a Rule 2 FMJRA, such as this one from TrogloPundit.

Fine-print foreign policy

Washington Post, via Dan Riehl:

Menendez knew that his hard-line approach to Cuba was a minority view within his party, and that it was at odds with Obama's approach. But he did not expect to discover a significant policy change embedded in the text on an appropriations bill. His policy aides came across the language when the legislation was posted on a congressional Web site.
"The process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide," the enraged son of Cuban immigrants said last week on the Senate floor. Menendez even slapped a hold on a pair of Obama nominees to draw attention to the issue.

When they start trying to change U.S. foreign policy with the fine print of an appropriations bill, you know the Democrats have developed contempt for the voters, and think they are invulnerable to political challenge in the near term.

Tribute to Ted Kennedy

Somebody e-mailed me a link to this:

It comes from a blog, Patum Peperium, which features an idiosyncratic mix of images, including one that can only be called Old School upskirt. I'm just reporting this stuff. As a neutral, objective, professional journalist, I have no opinions.

Stephen Gordon sells out

He's begging for stimulus money:

• Considering how easy it is to come with $30 billion of other people’s money, I thought I’d try the same approach. Of course, I’m not as greedy as AIG -- I only need a million bucks to stimulate the parts of the economy in which I’m interested.

Read the whole thing.

Gays. And marriage. And rights.

As an indirect result of my influence -- I'm not "influential" in the Ross Douthat sense, but it's not Easter yet, so I'll drop it -- Donald Douglas gets into a discussion of gay rights and political correctness with Little Mister Loser:

James Webb, of Brainrage, has asked of me repeatedly: "I'm just curious as to your views on gay marriage if one of your own boys wanted the same rights that many gays are now denied by yourself and others of your ilk."

Now, you can go read the whole thing to get Dr. Douglas's take on the subject. He should be thankful he's got tenure, or he'd be fired for dissenting from PC orthodoxy and out here shaking the tip jar with the rest of us blogwhores.

While I claim to speak for no "ilk," personally, I'm sick and damned tired of the transparent nonsense being peddled as "rights." Judge Roy Moore got it right: An enormous and venerable corpus of Anglo-American jurisprudence classified homosexual activity as "a crime against nature," having no legal sanction and certainly not constituting a "right."

Yet scarcely five years after Lawrence v. Texas overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (a Supreme Court precedent that dated to only 1986) anyone who dares to question the existence of such a "right" is subject to vehement denunciation as a hateful troglodyte. We even have earnest young intellectuals telling us that gay marriage is "conservative," despite any inkling of such an idea in the writings of Burke, Weaver, Kirk, et al.

A scam is being perpetrated, because too many so-called "conservatives" lack the necessary organs -- two eyes, a brain, a spine, and a functioning pair of testicles -- to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular the truth may be, or what the consequences of speaking unpopular truth.

Men and women are different. They were created different, designed with a natural complementarity, to fulfill specific life functions. There is a natural order to human life, and marriage between man and woman is part of that order. The legal status of marriage did not create marriage, but is rather a recognition of a pre-existing natural order -- an order that was not created by human agency, but by the Creator.

The gay-rights movement would like you to believe that sexual behavior can be divided into two categories: Gay and straight. But according to the Creator, this is a false distinction. God divides sexual behavior into two categories: Righteousness and sin.

Righteous sex is the love between man and wife that creates human life, and which through that God-ordained intimacy knits together the couple in a permanent and exclusive union: "One flesh."

Everything else -- everything else -- is sin. And this was once recognized by Anglo-American jurisprudence, which in one way or another imposed sanctions against every type of sexual behavior except between man and wife. But in the decades after World War II, in the name of "modernizing" the legal code, these sanctions were gradually repealed. "Sexual liberation" was the name of the game, divorce skyrocketed and the lawyers cheerfully liberated wives from husbands, liberated husbands from wives, and liberated fees from clients.

If "anything goes" was the prevailing legal spirit of the new order, so that people could hook up, shack up, break up and move on at random -- well, in what sense was love between man and wife deserving of any special legal status?

American society stepped off the Solid Rock and onto the shifting sand, and it seems that no one -- especially not young punks like our Brainrage blogger -- even realizes that the old order ever existed, or what its fundamental principles were. "Conservatives" attempting to defend marriage tend toward citing sociological statistics, as if fundamental principles were a matter of charts and graphs.

To cite the most authoritative source -- the Word of God -- is to be accused of superstition, or of seeking to "impose your values" on others. But my values (or Dr. Douglas's values, or anyone else's values) are irrelevant. What counts is God's values, and these are not subject to amendment or public opinion polls.

No one today has the courage to stand firmly on biblical truth, without the aid of any other authority or reference. Yet the disorderly debate over gay "rights" we see today is, in its own way, clear proof of the Bible's authority:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.
-- I Timothy 4:3 (KJV)

The prophetic nature of the Bible is evidence of its authority, and if anyone wants to tell me that the successive disasters that have fallen on our nation in recent years aren't just a wee bit apocalyptic in appearance, the Bible can answer that, too: Let him that has eyes, see.

"Straight" people don't have any special dispensation to screw around willy-nilly and then point the finger of condemnation at gay people. You go into any church on Sunday morning and you know what you will see? Sinners. All of them, sinners. ("For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," Romans 3:23) The preacher in the pulpit, the soloist in the choir, the blue-haired old lady playing the piano -- sinner, sinner, sinner.

There is nothing more ludicrous than a professed Christian pretending to be anything but a wretched sinner, whose only hope of salvation is the unmerited grace of God.

Well, now, you can laugh or you can cry about this. I prefer to laugh, and so I joke around a lot. But sin is a very serious matter, and the worse thing you can do about sin is to pretend that it's not really sin. Call sin by its right name.

It recurred to memory a couple of hours ago, as I was writing an e-mail to friends, how this whole thing began with me trying to set up Clever S. Logan with Big Sexy. Think about it: There is no law that would forbid them from marrying tomorrow. Indeed, they could have been married many months ago. They have that right. So why aren't they married?

Beats me. Maybe it has something to do with . . . sin?

It's late. I'm tired. My beautiful wife is in bed, and I should turn off the computer and join her. I have that right. Too many people with itching ears have heaped to themselves teachers who tell them about their "rights." They will not endure the sound doctrine that tells them about their sins.

And me? I'm just another sinner, too. Maybe not as bad as I once was, but still bad enough to deserve nothing but destruction. ("Sinners in the hands of an angry God" and all that.)

Still, even when I was hopelessly lost, there's one thing I know: If I promised a girl I'd get her a box of chocolates, she'd doggone sure get that box of chocolates. What kind of miserable faggot would break a promise like that?

UPDATE: Welcome Cynthia Yockey readers. You might enjoy this response to Miss Yockey. It's irresistible, isn't it?

Short demonstration of the pathetic inadequacy of Meghan McCain

New York Times Q&A Ann Coulter:

Q: Do you consider yourself as speaking for the conservative movement, or just someone who has attracted many conservative fans? Something else?
A: I think I speak for all Americans who think newspaper editors who print the details of top-secret anti-terrorist intelligence gathering programs on page one in wartime should be executed for treason.

You know, just when I start to feel a tiny bit guilty over my relentless punk-smacking of David Brooks, here comes Ann to remind me that I haven't really done enough. Yet.

If It Ain't Broke, Fix Until Paralyzed

by Smitty
Morgan Freeberg is always worth a read. One hopes at some point to hoist a beverage with the fellow. He offers a pair of thoughtful concepts in this post to clear the palate of all the Limbaugh/Steele/Coulter/Meghan business.

Morgan’s First Rule of Government: Life thrives in order but matures toward chaos. Government has a role as long as order and life serve the same purpose; where their paths diverge, government must yield.

Morgan’s Second Rule of Government: Consensus thrives in logic but develops toward nonsense. Government has a role in deriving its policies from consensus, as long as the consensus is rational; when consensus becomes silly, government must remain logical.

These organizational behavior observations recall a bit of Jerry's wisdom:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

• those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and
• those who work for the organization itself.

Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

In the mad haste to expand the government to include the entire population (as an employee or client) sometimes the classic wisdom is overlooked:

John 15:2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

How Not to Get a Million Hits On Your Blog, And Not Score With Hotties. Ever.

First, accuse Suzanna Logan of being a homophobe.

Next, try to walk it back when you belatedly realize she's hot.

Then, jump into her comments like you're completely obsessed with her.

Finally, do a roundup post, displaying to the world that you've spent your entire day making a complete fool of yourself. Oh, and along the way, be sure to call her "sweettits" and include a lame Photoshop of you with her.

When you're through doing that, go to a Castro Street glory hole, offering up your rump to complete strangers, while bragging that you've got more than 25,000 hits on your blog in the past 13 months.

Losers. They're born that way.

P.S.: How do you know that Suzanna is so intolerant of homosexuals? For all we know, when Suzanna and Moe get together to watch Jason Mattera videos, they drink a few pina coladas, share their feelings of desperate loneliness, break out the digital camcorder . . .

By the way, Little Mister Loser, did you see how Moe body-slammed Megan McCain? Moe also smokes Marlboro Reds. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE: William Jacobson diagnoses a new BRD (Blog-Related Disorder), SiteMeterenFreude:

"deriving pleasure from the failure of other bloggers to generate traffic"

He swears he'll never succumb to this one, but I needed an outlet for my ailing spleen between David Brooks columns. Since swearing off Douthat-bashing for Lent (and I'm not even Catholic), I find myself easily provoked to punk-smacking. So when this idiot wandered into my crosshairs, he was automatically going to get it like Carlo got it from Sonny Corleone.

What's making it worse is that my friends are taunting me, egging me on, for the sheer voyeuristic thrill of watching me rip a new one on some unsuspecting victim. My old "friend" Ken Hanner just sent me an e-mail containing precisely one sentence:

Ross Douthat is on Washingtonian Magazine's list of Most Influential People Under 40.

Yeah. (Grit teeth.) Congratulations, Ross! I'm shaking the tip jar and hustling T-shirts, and you're so gosh-darn "influential"! I wish you all the best!

God help the next "centrist Republican" idiot who says anything nasty about Rush, Ann or Sarah. The Fierce Populist Ad Hominem Hammer From Hell is ready for 'em, with an aching spleen full of punk-smacking bile.

UPDATE II: You see what happens to a guy when he's not "influential"? His own minions start plotting against him in the comment field. Watch it, Logan. It's against my religion to punk-smack a girl, but if you don't want those Godiva chocolates, maybe Michelle Lee Muccio does.

UPDATE III: A commenter helpfully informs me that bile comes from the liver, not the spleen. OK, so I didn't major in biology. It's a blog, not a scientific journal. However, I do know where babies come from.

Note to self

Never make Kathy Shaidle angry. I haven't been following this thing with the Canadian "human rights" nonsense so I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I am 100% sure I would hate to be that idiot liberal blogger who crossed her.

Don't worry, Kathy: Keep it up until they deport you. You're too good to be Canadian. In my book, Canadians are not actually human and therefore have no rights -- a principle known down home as "The Neil Young Rule." Cue the theme song:

South Park - Blame Canada - video powered by Metacafe

UPDATED: To fix broken link.

A Missed Point About Unions

by Smitty
Gary Gross over at Let Freedom Ring points to a NYT article about unions being less than united about health care reform:

Two labor unions have pulled out of a broad coalition seeking agreement on major changes in the health care system.
The action, by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, shows the seeds of discord behind the optimistic talk at a White House conference on health care this week.

Unions had value, many decades ago when workers were exploited. At what point did they morph into de facto temp agencies, rationing workers to companies under the mistaken impression that they still have employees?

Meghan and 'progressive Republicans'

Meghan McCain announces she's a "progressive Republican," prompting Jimmie at Sundries Shack to say that a "cute caboose" is the only difference between David Frum and Crazy Cousin John's daughter.

As I told Jimmie, I've never actually seen Meghan's caboose, so he's probably giving her too much credit. And Donald Douglas writes:

I'm waiting to hear back from Robert Stacy McCain about all of this. McCain's been making the case that Barack Obama's economic policies will fail, and Republicans will be positioned sooner rather than later for a return to power, in Congress and perhaps the executive. But a lasting Republican electoral model needs to be more than about protecting the interests of "economic man." The roots of conservatism are found in traditions and institutions that limit governmental power and unlock the potential of the individual.

I disagree with the entire premise of "progressive Republicanism," since it is nothing but a shadow cast by liberalism. I believe it was M. Stanton Evans who said that if the Democrats proposed to burn down the Capitol tomorrow, liberal Republicans would agree to compromise by burning down half of it next Thursday.

Having quit the Democrats about 15 years ago, I'm not going to let some halfwit milquetoast moderate like Meghan McCain lead me back into endorsing 60% of the idiot agenda that I opposed even when I was still a loyal Democrat. Compromising with evil may sometimes be necessary, but it is not a virtue, as the "progressive Republicans" would have you believe.

I may come back to update with more thoughts later. But there is a reason I didn't jump on this earlier. Meghan just trashed Ann Coulter and if I know Ann like I think I know Ann, after she publishes her column Wednesday. there will be nothing but a radioactive crater where Meghan McCain's credibility as a Republican used to be.

UPDATE: OK, so let me address Dr. Douglas's comment about conservatism and the electoral necessity of the Republican Party mounting more than an appeal to homo economicus. This is true, but what is that "something else" we all agree on? And given that Obamanomics is driving the nation to ruin -- It Won't Work -- why is that "something else" so important that we must agree on it now?

The argument for economic liberty has the tremendous merit of being true. We know that, ceteris parabus, a free economy is a more prosperous economy in the same way that we know the force of gravity to be 32 feet per second squared. This is a fact, and all effort to convince us otherwise is therefore a lie, and anyone who prefers lies to facts is a fool.

So when David Brooks conjured up his "National Greatness" nonsense, trying to convince Republicans congressional leaders that their idea of limiting government for the sake of economic freedom was a bad thing -- "Oh, those horrid anti-government populists!" -- the conclusion that any honest and informed person should have reached was: David Brooks is either a liar or a fool.

From the day I first laid eyes on "National Greatness," I knew it was wrong, and I developed an instant distrust of David Brooks. He is an elegant writer; no one can deny that. His "Bobos in Paradise" was a delight to read. But the man's political judgment is fundamentally unsound, and by presenting himself as a conservative -- or "moderate conservative," or whatever he's calling himself this week -- he has done more harm to the cause of liberty than any other intellectual now living, including Ward Churchill. He is certainly fully deserving of his most recent award.

A constitutionally limited government is either right or wrong. If limited government is right, then unconstitutional interventions in the economy are wrong. Brooks's arguments for "Hamiltonian conservatism" (cue eye rolls) are arguments in favor of a constitution that the Founders did not draft, and which the states would not have approved. When Hamilton attempted, via his influence in the administration of John Adams, to impose his more expansive view of federal power, it sparked a backlash that led to the creation of the Democratic Party, an accursed wrong turn in American history that is with us to this day.

The term "neoconservative" has been wrenched out of context and turned into a meaningless epithet, but the allegation that neocons are "Straussian" involves the accusation that they are dishonest in argument, preferring Platonic "noble lies" to the blunt truth. Whatever label you slap on Brooks, he is a first-class peddler of "noble lies," who labors tirelessly to create a myth of American political history that exactly suits his purpose. And he has exactly one purpose: The advancement and promotion of David Brooks.

Brooks's obsession with "respectability" -- a trait he shares with all "moderate Republicans" who express horror at Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin or any other genuinely popular conservative -- is the hallmark of selfishness.

An unselfish and honest man -- that is to say, a real man -- does not give a damn whether other people think his opinions are "respectable." He believes what he believes, he stays true to his beliefs, and if he changes his mind about something, he will begin by admitting that he was formerly wrong, and with that admission begin to convince those with whom he formerly agreed that they must now change their minds, too.

Brooks does not do this. He was a cheerleader for Bushism, then a cheerleader for McCainism, until he became a cheerleader for Obamaism, and he thinks that ordinary Americans are too stupid to notice that he's just drifting wherever the winds of lucrative "respectability" lead him.

And, of course, Brooks suffers the ironic fate of all who make "respectability" their lodestar: NOBODY RESPECTS HIM.

In sum, then, Brooks is both a cause of, and a metaphor for, the sorry state of the Republican Party. And the Meghan McCains of the GOP, who think that there is something to be gained by further betrayals of the bedrock principles of economic liberty and limited government, are merely proposing to take Republicans from irrelevance to extinction.

UPDATE II: Excuse me for that digression into Brooks-bashing. As I explained today to my novelist friend Tito Perdue, I've become concerned for the health of my spleen.

Moderate Republicanism has a horrible effect on my spleen, causing the production of excess bile. The bile starts building up in my spleen, next thing you know, the ducts become blocked, it backs up into my bloodstream and I get the overwhelming urge to smack around some pathetic 24-year-old Kenyon College grad just for sport. So let's actually quote little Miss Meghan:

To make matters worse, certain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans.

(You mean the "negative stereotype" that Republicans are short, clueless old bald guys?)

Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter.

(Note that she does not say, "Elaine Chao" or "Elizabeth Dole" or some other Republican woman less famous and popular than Coulter. You're not going to get a Daily Beast column by announcing that the biggest problem with the Republican Party is Olympia Snowe.)

I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time.

(Funny, I said three of those things about your father. He was never radical. Crazy, yes. Radical, no.)

I consider myself a progressive Republican, but here is what I don’t get about Coulter: Is she for real or not?

(She is real, and she is spectacular. She is also funny. So that's something else you don't have in common with her. Say, Meghan, how about I set you up with a guy. He's perfect for you. He didn't much care for CPAC, either. Kid's name is Evan Ramsey McLaren. Don't say I never did you any favors.)

UPDATE III: Hot girl-on-girl action, as Monique jumps into the Jello pit with Meghan:

I’m waiting to see you on an episode of Maury ten years from now where you bring back the boy who wouldn’t kiss you to tell him how over it you are. Except, you’re obviously not over it because if you were you wouldn’t be concerned with bringing the guy on Maury and telling him about it.

Let's go to the super-slow-motion video replay . . .

'Big Sexy' vs. Charles Rangel

Jason Mattera confronts the Most Ethical Democrat Evah, eliciting the carefully argued response: "Why don't you mind your goddamned business?"

BTW, both Moe Unique Hits and Clever S. Logan are in love with Mattera, whom Logan nicknamed "Big Sexy." A couple of years ago, I jokingly suggested to Big Sexy that he should marry Moe and, when he refused to act on my suggestion -- I was joking, but Moe really was in love with the boy -- I sicced Logan on him, so he would know how a broken heart feels. I'm evil like that.

Then I introduced Moe to Logan, and got them both into blogging, and now Big Sexy is mad at me, alleging that I broke the Guy Code. I'm evil like that, too. But really, Jason, man, it's for your own good. Until you send Logan that box of Godiva chocolates you promised, you're in that zone of injustice where you're not allowed to invoke the Guy Code.

UPDATE: Jason Mattera is a racist who hates Asians (as I'm sure Michelle Malkin would gladly testify.)

Idiot liberal guy: 'I take it back, because she's a hottie'

"Clearly, a perceived sexual orientation bias by someone else is akin to blasphemy, but blatant sexism when they're the ones dishing it out? Well, that's just par for the liberal course."

-- Clever S. Logan, in response to an idiot who rescinded his condemnation of her alleged "homophobia" after seeing her photo

(See, this is my fundamental career problem. I'm too ugly to merit an apology from anyone.)

UPDATE: William Jacobson has decided to help mentor the Minions of Evil. Which means he also must give some Rule 2 to Moe Unique Hits. They come as a pair, Bill. (I can never resist a double-entendre.) It's OK to employ the Rule 5 effect with Logan, but don't deny Moe her FMJRA.

David Brooks rumored for book deal: 'How to Lose Influence and Alienate People'

He's at the bottom of a deep hole, but refuses to stop digging, and Kazoolist calls him out for his violation of three principles -- Equality, Liberty and Justice:

David Brooks doesn't share a common outlook on these three American values with conservatives. He's willing to do away with the conservative push for Justice and Liberty for a little Equality. That's not the balance of a conservative, it's the balance of a liberal. Now if only the mainstream media would bring Brooks on their programs under the right label.

Since becoming an ex-Democrat some 15 years ago, I am naturally suspicious of any tribute paid to Equality, since the pursuit of Equality tends to become a totalitarian impulse that obliterates all other values. One can accept the premise that "all men are create equal" only in the sense that Jefferson intended it, but that sense long ago evaporated, replaced with the radical egalitarianism that conceives of people having a right to housing, a right to health care, and so forth.

At any rate, I'm grateful to Kazoolist for his contribution to the cause, nearly as much as I am grateful to those who have contributed to The David Brooks Fisking Fund. Give now: It's For The Children!

Congratulations, Rich Miniter!

E-mail press release:

Richard Miniter Appointed as Washington Times Editorial Page Editor
Washington, DC: Richard Miniter, a best-selling author, award-winning investigative journalist and former Wall Street Journal editorial writer, has been named Editor of the Editorial Pages and Vice President of Opinion by the Washington Times.
Mr, Miniter, who wrote two New York Times bestselling books, and won awards for investigative reporting at the Sunday Times of London, is a former editorial writer and columnist for the Wall Street Journal Europe and WSJ.com. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal as well as The Atlantic Monthly, Reader's Digest, National Review and The New Republic. He is a regular commentator on Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNN, C-Span, and CNBC and many nationally syndicated radio programs.
The role of Vice President of Opinion is new, encompassing the editorial page, the op-ed page, and commentary pages. (Since the paper's founding in 1982, Editorial and Commentary pages were managed separately.) The new Vice President of Opinion will also oversee all online opinion, the opinion component of the new Washington Times wire service that distributes to more than 90 newspapers and other new products to be unveiled in the coming months.
Appointing Mr. Miniter is the latest in a series of bold moves designed to remake The Times, Washington Times President and Publisher Thomas P. McDevitt said. “After an extensive nationwide search, we are extremely pleased to find Richard Miniter, a veteran of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a bestselling author.”
The editorial pages will remain true to conservative values, while reaching out for independent-minded and thoughtful writers of op-eds, Mr. McDevitt said. "We've been listening to our readers and they tell us they want sharp, fact-based analysis that challenges the conventional wisdom in Washington. Expect us to be more distinctive, contrarian, authoritative and conservative on our opinion pages. The challenges we face in this nation demand the very best opinion, analysis and a forum for solution-oriented debate. Rich Miniter and the team we are assembling at The Times are committed to providing that for our readers every day."
The Opinion pages will feature a new design in its print editions, starting on Wednesday, and the online Opinion pages will boast a new, easier-to-navigate design later this Spring. "While many of our readers' favorite syndicated columnists will continue to appear on WashingtonTimes.com, the mix on our print pages will emphasize original, news-breaking and exclusive content," Mr. Miniter said. "We value the reader's time and they want the very best insights as well as the finest selection of their favorite writers."
Mr. Miniter was a member of the award-winning investigative team of the Sunday Times (of London) in 2001 and 2002. Reporting from Darfur, Mr. Miniter was the first to publish an interview with a Janjaweed warlord in the field.
His New York Times bestselling book "Losing bin Laden" was a groundbreaking investigation that drew on dozens of senior Clinton Administration sources to reveal that the threat posed by bin Laden was known long before the September 11 attacks--and too little was done.
Mr. Miniter's second New York Times bestseller "Shadow War," based on war-zone reporting from Iraq, North Africa and Southeast Asia, was among the first to contend that the U.S. is winning the war on terror. Mr. Miniter's first book, "The Myth of Market Share," was published by Random House and was hailed by The Washington Post as a "must read for business executives."
Mr. Miniter is as comfortable in a newsroom as he is with U.S. Marines in Iraq, with rebels in war zones in Uganda, Sudan and Burma, and along smugglers' routes in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, interviewing everybody from warlords and prime ministers to diplomats, soldiers and spies.
The Opinion pages will have a new operating philosophy while remaining faithful to its signature conservative values. "The Internet has transformed the environment for opinion writing,” Mr. Miniter said. “Every blogger has an opinion and the market for pure opinion is saturated. We are going to be different. Readers want editorials, op-eds and columns based on reporting and news. We expect our editorial writers to act like reporters and then add insight and perspective to explain what it all means. And we will respond at blog speed."
"Though our two departments operate separately, I'm thrilled to have our opinion pages under the stewardship of such an accomplished journalist as Rich,” said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon. “I know Rich will honor The Washington Times' extraordinary editorial tradition built on the shoulder of giants like Tony Snow and Tony Blankley while transforming our print and online opinion for the 21st century with the same deep reporting and insight he has demonstrated through his career as an editorial writer, reporter and best-selling author.” (Emphasis added)

Congratulations, Rich.

UPDATE: Over at AmSpecBlog, I call attention to Miniter's quote about how the blogosphere has revolutionized journalism, a point I've tried to make for years:

The privileged positions within the newspaper industry enjoyed by op-ed columnists like David Brooks have been rendered obsolete by the rise of the blogosphere. Were there any justice in the world, the New York Times would have axed overpaid opinionators like Brooks and Maureen Dowd rather than eviscerating its news-reporting operation.
Good to see that finally someone in the newspaper business gets it.

I cannot be accused of sucking up to Miniter with any ulterior motive. I put in a decade at The Washington Times and walked away in January 2008. The timing of my exit was consciously chosen so as to assure that I left on good terms, and could not be accused of burning a bridge. And then Tom McDevitt made the mistake of hiring Jeff Birnbaum, who went on C-SPAN to proclaim that, until he was hired, the newspaper had lacked "real journalistic standards."

Rule 4 went into effect at that moment. Birnbaum can do nothing to repair the damage caused by his vicious insult to the men and women who have devoted their careers to making The Washington Times one of the world's most important news organizations.

The vile creature who would do such a thing -- to disparage his own employer and the professional journalists with whom he worked on a daily basis -- is unworthy of the respect that should be accorded to the lowliest clerk in the newsroom. Frankly, I was astonished that Birnbaum was not immediately terminated for making that statement, which seriously undermined morale in the newsroom.

During CPAC, I chatted briefly with former Townhall.com reporter Amanda Carpenter, and congratulated her on recently having been hired by The Washington Times. As is my habit when speaking to bloggers, I gave her the old "you haven't been linking me enough lately" patter. (Nobody can ever link me enough. My slogan is, "All Your Links R Belong 2 Us.")

Amanda responded, "Stacy, I can't link you as long as you're badmouthing Birnbaum. . . . He's my boss."

More's the pity, eh? That a fine journalist like Amanda should be required to report to a contemptible worm like Birnbaum is one of those cosmic injustices that breaks your heart.

Nevertheless, as I assured Amanda, I will be happy to link her work, just as I am happy to link Andrew Breitbart's column and the other excellent work produced by the good people of The Washington Times, who now include Rich Miniter. It would be unjust to hold against these good people their misfortune of being associated with The Worm, which is not their fault and which they are powerless to remedy.

Once, I contemplated vengeance against someone who had done me wrong, but was wisely counseled by my older brother, "Stacy, just let it go. Bad things happen to bad people. That a--hole who f---ed with you will keep f---ing around until he f---s with the wrong person, and that will be the end of him."

Wise advice, bro. And so it will be with The Worm. When the hammer falls on him, it will not be because of anything I've said or done, but because of his own evil. He will be the author of his own destruction, which will descend on him suddenly and from some unexpected source. I've seen this happen to many others who have thought they could deal unjustly with impunity.

Knowing this -- that The Worm's evil will destroy him -- I cheerfully told Amanda Carpenter to be careful. She should conduct herself at The Washington Times in such a manner that when the hammer comes down to smash The Worm, none of the slime splashes on her.

Thus, no one can doubt the sincerity of my hearty congratulations to Richard Miniter, as my avowed enmity toward The Worm means that my friend Rich cannot do me any favors, nor even admit that he is my friend.

Yesterday, I swore a vow not to bash Ross Douthat again until after Easter, a vow undertaken to please a friend who advised me that by bashing Douthat, I was undermining my standing with certain conservative intellectuals who are friends with Douthat. My friend could not understand why I would do this, despite my explanation of the sturdy principle involved. (Namely, when a 23-year-old Harvard graduate accepts a contract to write a book about what it's like to attend Harvard, he has participated in an act of injustice that requires atonement.)

Nearly everyone in Washington political circles is motivated by two factors: Career ambition and partisan ideology. At times, it's hard to distinguish the influence of these two factors, since advancement is usually accorded to those who successfully advance partisan interests. As a result, people in Washington avert their eyes to injustices -- the backstabbing betrayals, the self-serving cynicism -- rather than risk antagonizing the friends of the enemies they might make.

However, this is in itself an injustice, even to one's "enemies." I've got more than all the enemies a man could ever want. By nature I am a gregarious, cheerful, fun-loving person and, if it were up to me, the world would be filled with 6 billion of my personal friends. So if anyone considers himself my enemy, this is his choice and not mine.

When I see someone acting unjustly, which is the proper course of action as a Christian: To remain silent, or to admonish them? So when I see Evan McLaren disparage the entirety of CPAC as a convocation of time-serving cowards, the Punk-Smacking Heard 'Round the World is not an act of vengeance against McLaren. Rather, I am doing him a favor for which he should be grateful.

Rule 4 works that way. If I were concerned only with my own personal short-term benefit, I would have remained silent about Birnbaum's viciousness, and when Miniter was elevated to his new position -- a plan that has been in the works for several months -- I might have profited thereby. But that's not how I roll.

I write for money, but there are limits to my shamelessness in the pursuit of a dollar. If Birnbaum had insulted me by name, it would be the act of a Christian to turn the other cheek. But he purposely insulted people of goodwill -- excellent journalists whose wastebaskets he is not fit to empty -- and for this grievous wrong he has not even begun to atone.

How could I stand to see my face in the mirror if I let such an act as Birnbaum's pass without comment? Never mind the fine journalists, both living and dead, whose erstwhile worthy services to the Times were the intended objects of The Worm's insult. There are good, decent, hard-working people now in the newsroom of The Washington Times who suffer daily because of Birnbaum's continued employment at the newspaper, who carry the additional burden of being unable to mention the ignominy of being required to work for him.

They cannot speak out, but I can, and I will. Given the cosmic principle that my older brother expressed to me years ago -- Bad things happen to bad people -- when The Worm goes down, it will likely have nothing to do with anything I have said about him. Rather, it will be a natural consequence of his own evil.

Grateful as I am for the honor at having been associated with The Washington Times, how should that gratitude rightly be expressed? It would be distinctly ungrateful if I were ever to say anything nice about Jeff Birnbaum. And such are the circumstances of modern "employment rights" law that, no matter how deeply Tom McDevitt regrets hiring Birnbaum, he can't fire him now without inviting a lawsuit and a firestorm of bad publicity.

The Worm has 'em by the short hairs, and he knows it, and he thinks himself invulnerable. Nevertheless, the hammer will inevitably fall.

Congratulations again, Rich. And like I told Amanda, watch out that none of that splashing slime hits you.

Noted advocate of Big (Republican) Government calls opponents of Big (Democratic) Government 'insane'

You can have anything you want, except less government, says David Brooks:

This is the genius who came up with "National Greatness" -- the notion that the GOP should seek to outbid Democrats in terms of bigger government during good times. So now, of course, with the federal budget a red tide of massive deficits as far as the eye can see, it's "insane" to propose reduction of any federal spending anywhere.

It's OK. The New York Times is in freefall and Brooks will soon be out of work. He's already irrelevant. Kind of hard being a useful idiot who is no longer useful. He beclowns himself.

The sadistic pleasure of 'progressivism'

Remember when Eliot Spitzer's anti-capitalist crusades made him a darling of the "progressive" Left?

"I was never fully undressed. He was naked. He was perspiring a lot. He was holding me down. He pinned me to the bed. That didn't bother me. But when he grabbed my throat, that was too much. I remember trying to push myself up off the bed, which made him apply more pressure. I've never been worried about my safety, but I was really concerned."

Strangling hookers. Something symbolic there, eh?

The Doltish Duo

By Smitty

The Reid, Pelosi Swearing Match is just another brick in the wall for The Congress That Shall Live in Infamy. But this brace of boobs didn't just show up in January. No, their consistent non-command of effective leadership is such that there is a body of classic abuse just waiting to be linked.

You, Mr. Reid, are the target of among the more majestic rants I've ever heard:

(Aside: how many new PJTV subscribers would it take to secure a weekly Miller Time segment, one wonders?)

Slightly less caustic in approach is Kristen Wiig's demolition of Nancy Pelosi, just after the 2006 election. This clip is from SNL, and the implication that the House of Representatives is an S'n'M dungeon under her tenure makes it NSFW.

How does that lady keep a straight face while serving up that material?

CWCID: Instapundit

'The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong . . .'

" . . . The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind."

'Strange new respect' for Frum

Career role modeling for Republicans whose lifelong ambition is to be published in Newsweek.

Donald Douglas has some thoughts. I'm just trying not to think about it at all for fear that it will drive me utterly mad. It's like seeing the phrase "menage a trois" on a blog post with links to Jim McGreevey and Eliot Spitzer. Not enough brain bleach on the planet to erase that unseemly image from one's mind. Some people are just sociopaths . . .

'As the Britons have just become aware . . .

". . . Michelle Obama is one of those people who argues that a racist incident can be said to have occurred whenever the putative victim feels that it has occurred."

Rule 5 Sunday

Originally inspired by Pirate's Cove Patriotic Pinup series, and in accordance with Rule 5 of "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog," we are proud once again to bring the weekly Sunday sampler of delicious babe-blogging:

• Jammie Wearing Fool: NY Dem caught in supermodel campaign cash scandal.
• Point of a Gun: Sponge-worthy hotness from Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.
• Serr8d: Angela Saunders with colored balls (blogged last week, but not linked because of Post-CPAC Syndrome).
• TrogloPundit: Doesn't mention that Hayden Panettiere is only 19. Because that would make some people feel slightly guilty. Slightly.
• Political Castaways: LPGA's "Pink Panther" Paula Creamer.
• Miss Cellania: Walking abreast.
• Elder of Ziyon: Lebanese in lingerie.
• Pinup Girl is one of Jimmie's "Tweeps."
• Donald Douglas: Rosemond Pike Rules!
• Kind of random: Beyonce Knowles selling blue jeans with much back.

Via Convervatives4Palin:

"Too hot for the White House?"

For my own original contribution, here's a photo from CPAC:

Jimmie Bise of Sundries Shack, Suzanna "Clever S." Logan and Duane Lester of All-American Blogger.

If your contribution to Rule 5 Sunday has been overlooked, please e-mail me the URL of your babe-blogging, and I'll try to update to include you.

Also, if anybody wants to get original and creative, try this: Order a T-shirt -- either in the Ordinary American design or the Equality Is For Ugly Losers design -- and get a hottie to model it for a photo. (If you are yourself a hottie, model it yourself.) Bonus points for such photos in which the hottie is modeling with guns, motorcycles, cool cars, or guitars.

UPDATE: Serr8d unabashedly tries to see how close to NSFW he can get. But if you're working on Sunday . . .

UPDATE II: Doug Mataconis gives you an eyeful of the sinister neocon cabal's secret weapon, Bar Rafaeli. And if they ever decide they want a Gentile prime minister . . . remember, that's only a hypothetical.

BTW, I've got to take my three youngest kids on the Bataan Death March a Sunday hike up South Mountain, so if there any late entries for Rule 5 Sunday, e-mail them to Smitty. If I drop dead of a massive coronary halfway up the mountain, just keep hitting the tip jar, people. It's For The Children!

UPDATE III: Did you know Melissa Rycroft of "The Bachelor" has had breast reduction surgery? And did you know such operations would be outlawed by the first executive decree of the Gentile prime minister?

UPDATE IV: While I was hiking the kids up and down the mountain -- all three made it home safely -- Bill Dupray at Patriot Room put up some pictures of Brazilian Carnival hotties.