THE STORY OF THE WEEK

Last week, actually. But it isn't necessarily time-specific.

Armed Prophet would forgive you if you'd never heard of Vancouver, Washington. But I might not forgive you if you're from outside the Pacific Northwest and you had heard of it. Vancouver is a suburb north of Portland, across the Columbia River, and not a very remarkable suburb at that. So maybe that will help the uninitiated grasp just how incredulous I was at first reading in the Vancouver Columbian that Vancouver is sending an invitation to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, who will be in the US for the G8 summit this summer.

For the moment let's set aside the fact that Putin is far less than the good man President Bush decided upon first meeting him; war crimes in Chechnya, abuse of the Russian media, obstinacy over Iraq, you name it. Those are all excellent reasons to not invite him over.

But apparently Vancouver wants to. While it's not entirely clear why they want him to come, one thing is crystal clear to all except Vancouver mayor Royce Pollard and Governor Gary Locke (both are sponsoring the bid) is that Putin will not be visiting anytime soon. But they're hoping! To wit:

Officials are optimistic that Putin will come to Vancouver because next year's "Group of Eight" summit will be in the United States.

Oh, really? Isn't that like Russia hoping President Bush would stop over in Vladivostock on the way to Moscow?

Any Putin visit to Vancouver likely would come before or after the G-8 summit, which President Bush will host at a date and site to be determined.

Before or after, you say? I see. So not during, then? They don't expect Putin to slip out in the middle of talks, fly out to Vancouver to meet the people, and return in time to catch Gerhard Schroeder blustering through his final comments?

Vancouver officials also think Putin might come here because 2004 will mark the 100th anniversary of Valeri Chkalov's birth. Chkalov and two other Russian aviators flew nonstop across the North Pole from Moscow to Vancouver. They landed at Pearson Field on June 20, 1937, after a flight that lasted more than 63 hours...

This is really much less impressive than it sounds, which is not to say that it sounds all that impressive to begin with. Why so? Because...

Chkalov's flight fell short of its intended destination, San Francisco, after his plane ran low on gas.

It was all a mistake, you see. Kind of like Vancouver itself.

Really, if Putin was going to stop in the Pacific Northwest at all, I can think of at least three -- no, make that ten -- cities he'd get more out of visiting. And what's more, I can even think of another city he'd be better off stopping in that's also named Vancouver.

WHAT?!?!

Postmodernist English professor Stanley Fish defending traditionalist Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in this morning's New York Times??? Now I've seen everything.

APPARENTLY YOU DON'T NEED THE AARP

It probably isn't a good thing to keep blogging about things I happen to see on TV, but here Armed Prophet goes again: For awhile now, the AARP has been running these commercials -- surely you've seen them by now -- where ordinary Americans have the unexplained ability to invite senators over for dinner, get the president on the phone, and persuade them to make their problems go away with only the slightest effort. Take the one where a woman gives the president a call. Recalling from memory, the ad's dialogue goes:

HOUSEWIFE: Excuse me, Mr. President? I know you're busy and all, but could you take care of this Social Security insolvency thing so no one has to worry about it?
THE PRESIDENT: Sure!

The tagline goes something like this:

If you could do it yourself, there would be no need for the AARP.

These commercials greatly annoy me, for some reason I can't quite explain. I think it has something to do with the notion that the world would be a better place if the average American (as if such a thing existed) could access the country's top political at any time, and if those leaders would instantly capitulate to their unbelievably vague requests.

But it worked anyway, because after seeing this commercial tonight, I decided to go find out exactly what the AARP says about the "Social Security insolvency thing." What I found surprised me: The AARP doesn't think Social Security is in trouble.Their main Social Security page includes this statement:

A solid retirement plan counts on Social Security for its foundation. And you can count on Social Security to be there when you retire.

First of all: the "foundation" of a "solid retirement plan" "counts on" Social Security? Hmmm... no wonder hardly anyone has a 401(k). Secondly: The AARP says we "can count on" it to be there? Well, for those already over age 65, I wouldn't disagree. But what about those of us still waiting on the quarter-century anniversary of our birth? A further page goes into more detail:

Fact 1: The Social Security trust funds are a sure thing. ... Today, 65 million boomers are paying into the system and, along with about 89 million other employed Americans, are helping build that reserve. Add to that the nearly one in three retired Americans who are contributing to the trust funds by paying taxes on their Social Security. It all adds up. The income in the Social Security trust funds is earmarked to pay for benefits and administrative costs. Right now, there is more money coming in than is going out.

Today? Right now? Uh, that doesn't help. One might think that the AARP is simply catering to the Retired Persons of their name. While short-sighted, that would at least make some sense. But that isn't quite the case. The AARP does know that its constituency will change over time, and so it does address future plans:

Q. Many elected officials say they want to protect Social Security. Do they all have the same position?
A. Listening to the current debate over Social Security reform can certainly be confusing. While just about every elected official says he or she wants to "strengthen Social Security," ideas about how to do that can be very different. And some plans to strengthen Social Security would actually jeopardize the program's guarantees.

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. The AARP is (surprise!) against any plans to privatize or otherwise personalize Social Security. It won't run out until 2042, they argue, and then it will be able to cover 70% of its obligations. Better to "strengthen" it, they say. After all, they state:

Personal accounts come with a host of risks.

As James Taranto would point out: You don't say?

This is not an argument against private accounts, through which individuals could make their own decisions about investing some of their money, such that it could return a great deal more than Social Security currently does. Will some lose all their money? Of course. This is why it would be voluntary. Vol-un-tary. Nowhere does the AARP site mention this as an important "Fact." Apparently there is no need to "worry."

So, er, what exactly should the president do about that Social Security insolvency thing?

MUST READ

Hong Kong blogger Big White Guy republishes and explicates a most unfortunate newspaper advertisement for a Chinese language school. I don't want to blow it, just go check it out.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS OUT...

Center For Politics' Larry Sabato makes his early electoral college projections, and his map shows a surprisingly close win for George Bush: 278 electoral votes to 260. This doesn't surprise me. The Democrats may be imploding in the eyes of the Washington media, but that doesn't mean the party's rank-and-file won't try to vote Bush out of office. On the Beltway Boys a few minutes ago, when pressed to name one state that voted for Al Gore in 2000 but this time may well go for Bush, Sabato chose ... [drumroll] ... Oregon! This bit did surprise me. Oregon's been voting for Democrats since the Atari 7800 was cutting edge, but perhaps reluctantly. Armed Prophet supposes that Bush could be the beneficiary of possible Democrat fatigue back there, but I'd need to hear more before making a call. Sometime this later summer I'll get around to doing some research on this, and I'll post what I find.

THE [BLEEPING] SPEECH

The Providence Journal follows up on Rep. Patrick Kennedy's "never worked a [bleeping] day in my life" speech:

In [the press release], Kennedy said he felt "compelled to set the record straight about the context" of his remarks, but he did not refer to the profanity in his speech. Rather, he rephrased his view that the Bush administration's tax-cut program -- "rubber-stamped" by the Republican-majority Congress -- favors the rich. "I frequently point to my family as an example of those who benefit most from Bush's tax cut at the expense of others," Kennedy said in his news release.

Yes, that's all he was trying to say: Bush's tax cut favors the rich. When all else fails, revert to the first (and sometimes it seems, only) Democratic tax-related talking point.

The article is rather unsatisfying, not to mention hidden behind an infuriating registration wall. There is no discussion of whether Kennedy was inebriated, nor any mention of his "frequently mentioning how much better the candidates would sound the more [the audience] drank." (Armed Prophet is no teetotaler -- it's possible even that I was drunk when I made the original post -- but Kennedy is an irresponsible jerk.)

Basically, the media reports I've seen of this have focused all on the "[bleeping]" part. Even Fox News, which loves to play up Democrats' woes, ignored this during a segment today. So a representative from one of America's best-known political dynasties gets drunk, knocks his own party's presidential candidates, and it merits not even a sentence? Damn those Kennedys, they get away with everything.

THE "SECOND DOWNTOWN"

Well, Portland, Oregon hasn't quite gotten around to covering over the section of I-405 that runs downtown, it does look like they are planning to do at least one interesting thing: finally, transform the stretch of Southwest Portland waterfront opposite Ross Island that has been a vacant industrial lot since Armed Prophet first showed up at Kaiser Sunnyside almost a quarter-century ago. Portland Communique has excerpts from coverage in The Oregonian and a link to the Portland Development Commission's public report (with pictures).

HOW CONSERVATIVE IS DENNIS MILLER?

National Review Online intern and Harvard student Duncan Currie (not to knock this one guy, but are all NRO interns also Ivy Leaguers?) has a great article up on the site today about Dennis Miller's politics. As you may know, Miller has been tapped by Fox News to deliver a weekly commentary on Hannity and Colmes, starting tonight.

Since 9/11, Miller has obviously become a favorite of those who support President Bush's prosecution of the war on terrorism. Once considered by many a left-liberal, Miller is now taken by most as a conservative (or at least, conservative). But have Miller's politics really changed? Currie gives his Nexis access a good workout in a well-balanced piece, pointing out that Miller is neither as left-wing as his old fans once thought, nor as right-wing as his more recent fans believe. It's well worth checking out.

But Armed Prophet finds in Currie's analysis room for further comment (otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this).

Currie argues from a more traditionally conservative point of view -- which Armed Prophet certainly is not antagonistic toward -- that Miller shouldn't be taken as a conservative in, say, the William F. Buckley vein. True enough. But he also quotes, without the full comment it deserves, a 1996 Playboy interview where Miller explains where he's coming from. In it, he calls himself a

a conservative libertarian.

Aha! Now, caveat lector, this just so happens to be exactly how Armed Prophet would describe himself. Currie acknowledges Miller's self-description and then continues to examine Miller in light of what one could call traditional conservatism (as I already have). He eventually decides that Miller is a welcome ally, but not necessarily someone conservatives should wholly align with.

(By the way, considering National Review itself, doesn't this accurately describe the estimable (of course I'd say so) Andrew Stuttaford?)

Armed Prophet isn't sure whether to agree or disagree on this point, but I do think there is something more to be said about Currie's concluding paragraph, in which he says of Miller:

It doesn't matter that he's not a movement conservative or a Rush Limbaugh "dittohead." His has become a hilarious brand of commonsense, patriotic political humor -- and in Hollywood, that makes Miller a valuable commodity indeed.

Perhaps I'm just fishing for an argument here, but I think it's not merely that it "doesn't matter" that Miller isn't a movement conservative -- rather, it's because he is not a dittohead or movement conservative that conservatives should be encouraged by his concurrence on issues of foreign policy, as well as some of domestic policy. A "movement dittohead" is immediately discounted by those who would usually disagree, and would be unlikely to be persuaded. But somebody like Miller can go a lot further to bring mostly-apolitical fence-sitters around to agreement.

Electorally speaking, Dennis Miller can speak to the swing voters. Conservatives should appreciate this, and be grateful that they have him.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where's Lileks?!?! After Wednesday's panic, it looked like he had everything under control, but then this morning... no new Bleat!

Surely Instapundit can get to the bottom of this ... aaaah! No! Glenn's on vacation! Okay, calm down. Ken Layne will send out a search party... aaaargh! No! He's on vacation, too!!

Somebody, HELP!!!

WE ARE ALL DOOMED! DOOOOOOOOMED!

Did you see Paul Krugman's column today? Wow! An era of one-party rule? Wow. I can't wait to read the as-yet-unpublished Nicholas Confessore article that he let do the thinking for him. (Just in time to re-confirm the Weekly Standard's David Brooks' much remarked-upon article on the Democrats' hysteria, too.)

Now, I'll let Donald Luskin contest Krugman/Confessore's arguments, as he's already done. But to buttress the argument against the idea that conservatives are getting their way in everything, allow Armed Prophet to discuss a something I read earlier this week: Namely, the column in which Scripps Howard columnist Jay Ambrose asks if Bush is the new Nixon. Not that Bush is a paranoid, law-breaking nutcase, but that both talk a good conservative game only to capitulate to liberal interests. Ambrose writes:

Successful politics in a democracy is said to consist in the art of compromise, and there’s something to be said for a president who will do some horse trading. But there’s a point at which compromise equals abandonment of principle. Ideological rigidity is an error. Losing sight of what you stand for is an error, as well.

And what does Bush stand for? He has called himself a “compassionate conservative.” It’s as if conservatism, by its nature, is mean-spirited and needs a compassionate coating. At heart, though, I think Bush is a principled conservative, and I like much that he has done — his tough antiterrorist actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance. But many conservative supporters appear to be growing anxious. They may not be there for him if, in his policy proclivities, he continues to look increasingly like another Nixon.

The evidence here is far, far, FAR more persuasive than Confessore's tenuous arguments (as I understand them via Krugman). Take education, Social Security, trade protectionism, and Medicare. And on such not-necessarily partisan issues as AIDS in Africa and funding for alternative fuel research, Bush has if anything moved toward the Democrats' goals and away from the Republicans' priorities (by which, I mean, Tom DeLay's).

It does seem unlikely that Republicans and conservative independents will abandon or fail to support or turn out in great numbers to vote Bush a second term next year, but trust is certainly eroding. He's been a sold tax-cutter and a staunch defender of liberty, but he shows little interest in controlling spending or reforming social security. Ambrose's column goes to show that "triangulation" didn't begin with Dick Morris, nor did it end with Bill Clinton.

Armed Prophet's hope is that the half-measures Bush has delivered on are half-steps toward doing the whole thing after re-election. Will we see personal retirement accounts? Or vouchers beyond a few provisional districts? Maybe, maybe not. Still, Armed Prophet is willing to find out.

Meanwhile, Krugman will be imprisoned, writing on scraps of paper using his own feces as ink ... er, I mean, on the New York Times editorial page. Same difference.

THE FACE OF THINGS TO COME???

The Japanese are now entering their second decade of economic recession. Nothing seems able to stop it. Is there anything they can do? Short of a radical change in their political culture and a massive restructuring of their banking system, Armed Prophet can't say, but maybe there is reason to hope.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Armed Prophet usually ignores Washington Post gossip columnist/public nuisance Lloyd Grove on general principle, but this morning, I could not. I quote the last bullet point from this morning's column:

As sometimes happens with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he let his mouth race ahead of his brain Wednesday night at a gathering of Young Democrats at the Washington nightspot Acropolis. After presidential candidate Howard Dean spoke, Kennedy delivered an impassioned peroration against President Bush's tax cut. We hear that Kennedy told the crowd: "I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life." With that he got the audience's attention -- the dropping-jaws kind. "He droned on and on, frequently mentioning how much better the candidates would sound the more we drank," a witness told us. "Finally, he had to be stopped by a DNC volunteer." Kennedy's spokesman, Ernesto Anguilla, told us yesterday: "He was talking to the crowd; it was a rally-the-troops kind of speech about the tax cut. He was energizing the crowd and got caught up in it and used an unfortunate word, which he regrets using. ... And no one pulled him off the stage."

Are you like me? Are you reminded of the old anti-drug commmercial where the father confronts his son with a box of marijuana paraphernalia, and when he asks where he learned to do this, the son blurts out: "I learned it from you, Dad! I learned it from watching you!" Ted must be so proud.

J. STROM THURMOND, DEAD AT 100

He is, he has. Armed Prophet is a twinge sentimental today because, in a very roundabout and very (very) indirect way, Strom Thurmond was responsible for me landing my first job here in Washington. I am not, however, surprised in the least by his passing, barely six months after leaving office. Really, after sixty-plus years in politics, what's the point of sitting around the house anymore? Might as well let go. You can't blame him for that.

This morning Drudge redirects you to Thurmond's hometown paper, The State. I have to confess: I laughed at first, when I saw the front page. That's because, as you may well remember, The Smoking Gun got ahold of the Columbia newspaper's prepared coverage a few months ago, which is still available. So my second thought was that on this huge day in South Carolina history, the State newsroom maybe got to take the day off.

Well, good luck, Strom. Conan O'Brien and his joke-writers are going to miss you. And if he'd been elected president, we wouldn't have had all these ... oh, never never mind.

THE LIBERAL MEDIA EVOLVES?

Armed Prophet forgot to change the channel after today's repeat of The Daily Show. Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd follows it. I've never seen an episode -- I hate Colin Quinn, and I defy anyone to tell me there was a worse Weekend Update host than he -- but it caught my attention, for reasons I'll get to quick. The show appears to be a knockoff of Bill Maher's late, semi-great Politically Incorrect, except with commentators who have absolutely no claim to fame.

The show's first topic was Barbra Streisand's call, posted on her website (no link, on purpose), for blacks to come together with other Democrats to strongly oppose President Bush in 2004. So what did everyone thing of this? Quinn and his four commentators all derided her for (in so many words) being a limousine liberal with no practical claim to speak for African-Americans. They were cruel. I know Streisand is a joke (and that's actually part of my point), but Armed Prophet was pleasantly surprised: it wasn't just opposition to her as a singer or a publicity hog, but also her hypocritical armchair activism. And it was unanimous. Meanwhile, Bono was praised -- I think rightly -- for actually going out and getting his hands dirty, visiting African villages and meeting with Bush to get help. (He succeeded, you know). And later in the show, they mocked Hillary Clinton.

Then again, comedian Keith Robinson took her to task because her ticket prices are "so high, only Republicans can afford them." So it's certainly far from a Republican love-fest. And of course they all want to see Bush defeated next year. So it's not like the media have done a 180. Though the media may be liberal, it's not like they're unwilling to criticize liberal sacred cows. I'd call this progress.

Then again, Robinson (who happens to be black^TM) might make jokes about the GOP, but he also says he's in favor of Ward Connerly's ballot initiative to forbid California from categorizing people according to race. Interestingly enough, the white guys (and woman) disagreed. Very interesting. I just wish they'd talked about school vouchers.

Armed Prophet's conclusions (based on this one, purely anecdotal instance): Republicans are still a stock laugh line (as are Streisand and Clinton), but some of their arguments are getting through (while Streisand's and Clinton's are losing some support, if incrementally). I do not believe this is especially new, but this is the first example I've blogged at Armed Prophet.

P.S. Next time I see I'm With Busey, I'll see if there's anything more to this.

ARE YOU G---IN'?

Neither is Armed Prophet.

YOU LIKE? YOU NO LIKE?

Unless this is your first time at the Armed Prophet blog, you'll notice that I'm experimenting with colors. Is this better? Or worse? At least it's different than the hundreds or thousands of Blogger sites that use the same template. I'll keep the Firebrick and Burlywood for awhile, unless I decide otherwise, or there's a revolt among readers. So what do you think? The comments below await your input.

P.S. I've noticed my "<$BlogDateHeaderDate$>" is showing. While I don't think this is something I did in the template, well, chances are I did. I'll get it fixed before long. And in case you were wondering, today is Thursday.

P.P.S. And now, just as mysteriously, it's working again. I suppose Blogger is still working out the kinks...

THE VISION THING

Oregon Blog's Emma is a more than a few clicks to the left of Armed Prophet -- Emma is short for the pseudonym Emma Goldman, for example -- but I agree with her that Portland's storied (but now useless) Memorial Coliseum should not become a Home Depot, considering the alternative.

The Memorial Coliseum is where Armed Prophet saw his first basketball game (Blazers, obviously), first circus (Ringling Bros.) and first concert (R.E.M.), but unless there is a change in momentum, a Home Depot -- or similar mega-store -- it soon could be.

This has nothing to do with elitist disdain for Home Depot, but instead that it would be unlikely to revitalize the Rose Quarter. One popular alternate proposal is to turn it into the largest indoor athletic club in North America, which would be called the MARC. (Note to DC readers: That's Memorial Athletic and Recreation Complex, not Maryland Rail Commuter train.) The idea certainly a risky scheme, but not a "risky scheme," and for a city that hasn't seen the sun since the 1940s (Letterman said this once), it could well be a success.

There's a lot more about this over at the Oregon Blog -- go check it out.

DUELING HEADLINES

Wherever one sees a news box in DC, there is almost certainly going to be at least two boxes. One for the Washington Post, one for the Washington Times. Sometimes, like on Tuesday morning, it can be very interesting to notice how differently they treat the same stories on the front page. Here are the top two headlines for that morning, as I saw them on the way to work:

• Washington Post: Affirmative Action for Diversity is Upheld

• Washington Times: Split decision for choice-by-race

Obviously, the Times is self-consciously conservative, whereas the Post is not self-conscious of any political leanings (though it is certainly there). So one might quibble that the Times has deliberately slanted its headline against the Supreme Court's Monday ruling on the issue of race-based admissions to the University of Michigan. But Armed Prophet actually thinks that the Times came up with the fairer -- and more importantly, more accurate -- headline.

To wit, "affirmative action," a phrase that everyone's been familiar with since at least LBJ's executive order, is inherently euphemistic. Everyone has an idea of what they think affirmative action means, but not everyone agrees on what it means, and the words themselves (unhelpfully) are not descriptive of anything in particular. Certainly its proponents would like to think that it simply means making the world a fairer place, whereas its opponents see in it discrimination, or "reverse" discrimination if you want to so call it. Choice-by-race is clumsy because it isn't a phrase we see often -- it's shorter than "race-based admissions" is why I think it was used -- but that is exactly what the Court ruled on. Whether students can be chosen according to criteria that involves consideration of race.

But that isn't the half of it. What's much more intriguing is that the Post headline only gives half of the story. The Supreme Court did uphold the right of schools to allow race as a consideration in choosing students, but struck down the undergraduate program's more-specific point system. The Times recognizes this -- it was clearly a split decision, one that wholly satisfied neither camp. But to see the Post headline, one would think that the Court did nothing more than reaffirm Regents of the University of California v. Bakke without comment. O'Connor's decision upheld Bakke all right, but the Times' decision to highlight the split nature of the ruling is simply more accurate.

At least the articles themselves are both even-handed, though the Post tilts (a bit) left, and the Times tilts (a bit) right.

Meanwhile, Armed Prophet found one of the most interesting aspects -- mentioned by both, here taken from the Post's Charles Lane -- to be also one of the less remarked-upon:

A majority also endorsed the view that diversity-based affirmative action should not be a permanent feature of American life, urging universities to start preparing for the day when, 25 years hence, the court suggested, it should no longer be necessary.

25 years is an awful long time -- too long, methinks -- but that the Court found that race-based preferences should not be a "permanent feature of American life," as Lane puts it, is a good thing. Given that, "uphold" and "affirmative action" would not be the words Armed Prophet would use.

P.S. By the way, I don't mean to pick on Lane; he's a perfectly good journalist, and was the man who, as editor of The New Republic, exposed fabricator Stephen Glass. Besides, it's impossible to know if he wrote the front page headline, and if daily SOP holds in this case, probably didn't.

HE EATS HISTORIC LEADERS FOR BREAKFAST WITH HIS CORNFLAKES

Q: What do George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Benjamin Franklin have in common besides being famous American statesmen?

A: According to a BBC poll, none of them are as respected by the citizens -- er, subjects -- of Britain as is Mr. T! For real! ... sort of. Armed Prophet picked up on it from Ventura Star columnist Bill Nash, who gives it just the kind of humorous spin you'd expect from a suburban newspaper columnist. But he goes on:

At first, I thought it was sort of funny, but the more I looked at it, the more incredulous I became. I wondered who Americans would list as the greatest British citizens. I don't know, of course, but my guess is the list would include names like Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill, Shakespeare, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher and maybe even Tony Blair. I can't imagine we would include a cartoon character, a B-list actor and an unintelligible, if gifted, singer/songwriter. (Although Paul McCartney and John Lennon might make the cut).

Hellooooo, Mr. Nash, it's an unscientific poll. Did you bother looking closely at the BBC write-up? Underneath the figures, it says:

Results are indicative and may not reflect public opinion

You try telling Mr. Nash that. Not only is it unscientific, but such web polls always skew toward the outlandish. Anyway, for the sake of amusement, here's the complete list:

Homer Simpson: 40.83%
Abraham Lincoln: 10.28%
Martin Luther King Jnr: 10.06%
Thomas Jefferson: 6.43%
Mr T: 8.38%
Bob Dylan: 6.15%
George Washington: 5.10%
Franklin D Roosevelt: 4.34%
Benjamin Franklin: 4.52%
Bill Clinton: 3.92%

Not only am I pleased that Homer Simpson landed atop the list, but I'm also grateful that Bill Clinton -- who might have been expected to rate much higher, if the Daily Mirror is any indication -- fared so poorly. At least Bill Nash didn't freak out at that.

P.S. Go back and check out that Ventura Star page again -- what's with those guys arguing? Am I supposed to believe they're arguing about the content of the Star editorial page? No matter -- it's Diverse^TM, and that's what counts.

FINALLY!

Armed Prophet spent all day yesterday cursing Blogger and entertaining thoughts of making the switch to Movable Type, because I wasn't able to log on and post -- they were busy moving my blog to a new version -- but now it's clearly back. And? Well, I may stick with Blogger a bit longer. On a PC, which I am posting from now, it just looks more elegant, plus things are slightly more accessible. But for Mac users, they've added "semi-automatic" linking, boldface and italics capabilities, which is a big help for someone like me, who just likes to boldface and italicize any damn thing I want to, or vice versa.

Check back in a few hours -- I've got a few posts on backlog to package up and ship out. Stay tuned.

ONE-AND-A-HALF CHEERS FOR THE ONION

The Onion's editorial by Myanmar general Myanaung Phauk, is hilarious. Go read it. It's just too bad they never deigned to write anything of the sort about Saddam Hussein, whom they clearly deemed less of a problem than George Bush all through the spring. Furthermore, Phauk is a fictional creation -- what was wrong with actually using the name of Myanmar's real despot, Than Shwe? Their average reader doesn't know Phauk from Shwe from Mugabe, but that's no reason to eschew accuracy. If I was Sean Hannity, I might accuse them of appeasing dictators, or if I was Ann Coulter, I'd be screaming "treason." Instead, I simply conclude that The Onion doesn't take its politics at all seriously -- until it comes to opposing US military action.

MORE OBJECTS IN TIME

Armed Prophet colleague Eat Your Damn Peas (no, that's not his real name) emails with a response to David Gelertner's article in the latest Weekly Standard, discussed three posts below. If you haven't read it yet, go read it now, then come back and start here. EYDP writes:

While the web is certainly in need of a new type of news medium (something other than e-editions of print newspapers), Gelertner's cascading index card idea is awful from a design perspective. Cascading index cards would simply take up too much space on your screen. The latest story in a subgroup should be on the right with scrolling text, images and links to pertinent video while the related stories would be listed by headline in descending chronological order on the left. This would allow you to maximize the amount of info on your screen and allow for more handsome design options. Of course you would need your search tools to be contained in bar across the top of the page.

The whole idea of a multimedia news outlet is a good one and will inevitably become reality, but it doesn't seem as revolutionary or fascinating as you make it out to be. The Drudge Report is already releasing headlines as events happen so I suppose that would qualify the Drudge Report as an "object in time" as Gelertner pretentiously calls it. It seems that Gelertner is only proposing the creation of a self-sufficient Drudge Report with good production values. What would have been more interesting is a business plan that show how this type of operation could be financially feasible.

Furthermore, I take issue with the idea that the traditional news story is on its way out. I appreciate an appropriately long informative news story. Constant releases of new information may be useful for intense stories where people are hinged on every forthcoming word, but most of the time reporters get to the scene of an event after all the action has taken place. A process of information gathering must then take place to ensure that they get all the facts straight. I shudder at the idea of print media becoming more like cable news where depth is sacrificed for immediacy.

A realistic model for a new type of information source on the web might take the form of an index of news stories produced by a consortium of smaller local papers. A subscriber base would exist immediately through the current subscribers of the printed locals while the centralized web edition could concern itself with organizing the priority of regional, national, and international feature stories taken from local papers and, of course, commentary. In fact, this is where a news source like this could shine brightest. The web offers an unprecedented opportunity to present an extensive and diverse opinions. The nearly unlimited amount of info-storage potential would mean no constraints on letters to the editor. Everyone could be published and anyone could respond and debate with those who choose to publish themselves. Of course regular columns by reputable thinkers would be necessary to draw people in and kick off debate, but it's the debate that would keep many people coming back.

In summation: The format for the display of a web-based, multi-media news provider is naturally intuitive and uninteresting. What is interesting is how we can use the existing news-gathering infrastructure to create a searchable/browsable index/catalog/archive of a wide and voluminous range of news info (text, photos, video) complete with centralized and scalable prioritizing, intelligent commentary and free, democratic response and debate.

That would be interesting.

It would be. I don't think Eat Your Damn Peas and David Gelertner are really all that far apart; the disagreement is primarily over design and content. Okay, so that's a lot. But I think the differences are bridgable.

On the first point, Armed Prophet grants, Gelertner's model leaves room unused on the screen, particularly in the corner beneath the cascading index cards. But hey, the banner ads have to go somewhere, right? EYDP's idea is good, and would undoubtedly be an improvement on every other current layout. But I still want to see Gelertner's model implemented, partly because I'm curious to see it in action, and partly because new formats sometimes take a bit of time to catch on.

On the second, I think Eat Your Damn Peas has Gelertner dead to rights. While Armed Prophet is more receptive to the idea of immediate news on the web -- why do you think so many readers are drawn to Instapundit and Drudge? -- Gelertner leaves a hole large enough for EYDP to drive a mult-car journalistic convoy through. One cannot hope to found "the next great American newspaper" without serious investigative pieces, substantive interviews, or point-counterpoint editorials." Nor, of course, do I think anyone would, probably including Gelertner. Otherwise he would just be advocating the creation of "the next great American group news blog."

Meanwhile, EYDP's idea of a consortium of smaller papers pooling their coverage is interesting, but raises more questions. What he describes is essentially the Associated Press (mostly stateside) and Reuters (mostly abroad). What would happen if the AP and Reuters all of a sudden declined to furnish their content to papers across the country? I believe the first thing would be, the wire services' revenues would plummet, as would those of local papers as there no longer was a "news hole" to fill (which attracts readers), just one big advertising space (which no one would look at).

Perhaps to start with, an existing paper should simply put either Gelertner's or Eat Your Damn Peas' plans into action -- the rest could come later. Armed Prophet is certainly a fan of incrementalism, so why not apply it to this?

GUESSING

The inevitable Professor links to a series of questions and answers on the state of Iraq, from the Globe and Mail. It's worth reading in its entirety, but if you don't, there's an interesting bit on the whereabouts of Saddam. Not where he is, exactly, but rather what Iraqis think:

The new Baghdad newspaper al-Muajaha printed residents' ideas on the subject, including that he was driving a taxi in a Baghdad suburb, that he had fled to Russia, that he died years ago, that he was working at the power station ("that's why the electricity's going off and on without any reason") and that he is "working in a butcher shop in Thawra City [another part of Baghdad], because he can't kill people any more, so now he's killing animals."

Arab cultures are notorious for indulging in conspiracy theories, but I don't think that's quite the case here. At least, I hope not.

ALEQUE?

Alec Baldwin's new straight-to-television movie is on TNT as I type. He speaks French in it. Armed Prophet is not surprised.

FOUND IN SPACE

David Gelertner has a fascinating -- and Armed Prophet doesn't throw that word around lightly, as it often is -- article in this week's Weekly Standard, called "The Next Great American Newspaper." I found that I had to read some sentences over again to fully get what he was describing -- it needs a visual demonstration -- but if you get it, you'll be surprised. (It took me a few minutes to grasp the notion of an "object in time.")

In the wake of the New York Times scandals, it's no longer just conservatives that are clamoring for a better, new newspaper, or at least a different standard for collecting and disseminating news. Gelertner certainly is a conservative, but as a computer scientist, he's less interested in the newsgathering -- that's for the journalists to decide -- and more intereste in its presentation.

The first part of his essay slams the current online newspaper, and all of them at once, equally. Liberal, conservative, it matters not when you're talking layout. And though Armed Prophet is someone who gets most of his news through conventional news sites and is fairly satisfied with that, Gelertner makes clear the obvious disadvantages of the medium as it is now used:

Today's typical web-paper is like a newsprint paper where you can only see one midget-sized page at a time, and can never touch it--someone holds it in front of your face. You have no idea how many more pages there are, or how the pages are arranged.

Yes. The flaws are apparent to anyone who really stops and thinks about it, but when you're too busy looking for stories -- and Armed Prophet's paying gig has him reading a lot of newspaper stories online -- you don't have the time to think about it. His solution is actually quite simple, if unconventional. Gelertner describes

a parade of jumbo index cards standing like set-up dominoes. On your computer display, the parade of index cards stretches into the simulated depths of your screen, from the middle-bottom (where the front-most card stands, looking big) to the farthest-away card in the upper left corner (looking small). Now, something happens: Tony Blair makes a speech. A new card materializes in front (a report on the speech) and everyone else takes a step back--and the farthest-away card falls off the screen and (temporarily) disappears. So the parade is in constant motion. New stories keep popping up in front, and the parade streams backwards to the rear.

As I said, unconventional. Gelertner has done work of this nature for PC search software, and if you click here, you can imagine what such an index card newspaper would look like on your computer desktop.

I should add that blogs already do something similar, and by that I mean organizing information by time. A blog itself is something of an "object in time," with the most recent posts at the top and, to paraphrase Gelertner, one long parade reaching back to the blog's founding.

He doesn't attempt to solve the portability issue (i.e. paper beats even a laptop or PDA), but we'll leave that to the folks at Sharper Image or Xerox PARC. And there are other aspects of his piece that don't add up, notably his assertion that computer isers don't have use for all the memory available to them, or that the computer industry is somehow in danger because of this, but the flaws don't detract from the sagacity of this one idea. Armed Prophet hopes someone with more money (Rupert Murdoch, I'm looking in your direction -- so too is the Murdoch-owned Standard, I'm sure) seizes upon this. I don't know if you could call it a newspaper, but it would be great.

DEFINITELY SOFT

Tom Nugent -- probably not a brother of Ted, but one can pretend he is -- on NRO Financial offers a list of the YTD moves of some major technology stocks:

Cisco Systems: +34.4%
Intel: +40.6%
Dell Computer: +18.3%
EMC: +70%
Oracle: +22.9%
Sun Microsystems: +74.3%
Amazon: +84.3%
E-bay: +46.2%
Yahoo: +81%
Microsoft: -3.8%

Ouch. What happened to Microsoft? Nugent offers a few reasons, including one of the more obvious: fallout from the antitrust suit. Which means that although the government lost in general, it essentially succeeded in its goal of diminishing Microsoft. Uh... congratulations?

So this means the government's method of fighting "monopolies" is to sue, sue and sue again until they've damaged the company in question. Not that you need Armed Prophet to tell you, but that is not a good thing. Anti-business types may not be able to "sue them out of existence," as they've tried with the tobacco industry, but they can inflict considerable harm. Whereas Microsoft could have directed its finite resources to improving its products, they've had to fight for their survival. The result? Lesser products, of course.

Armed Prophet may blog from a (mostly) Microsoft-free Macintosh, but a strong Microsoft is a good thing for me too.

JUST HOW GREAT IS HOWARD DEAN'S BLOG?

All you have to do is take one look first at Gary Hart's blog and then at Howard Dean's blog to see why the latter is the buzziest Democrat in the field while the former never got in at all.

Dean's blog is as sharp as any other out there: he's got wireless and RSS feeds, trackback and comment capabilities, and a team of regular posters (including campaign manager Joe Trippi) keep the kids coming back for more. The design is elegant, it's "powered by Movable Type" (unlike Armed Prophet, at least for the time being) and the links cover both Dean-related sites (plus unofficial blogs), the most popular left-wing blogs, and -- for good measure -- The Blogfather.

Hart's site has most of the same features, although one must click on links to get to the rather longish posts. (This is rare and difficult to pull off in the blogosphere -- Bill Whittle's Eject! Eject! Eject! is a good one.) That second click is one too many. But that point is moot, because it's hard to tell if Hart is even still publishing. As of today it has been a little over a month since Hart blogged anything -- longer even than a couple of Armed Prophet's unannounced sabbaticals -- but he never posted all that often to begin with. But he is still collecting donations, if you care to hit the tip jar.

Also telling: Dean has not posted to his campaign blog at least since its June 10 relaunch -- he has a paid staff which does that for him. Hart's adventure in blogging, however, is purely a solo affair. (Whoops! Pun incidental, until I noticed.)

Now: perhaps I've let it go too long without saying: the blogs themselves are only indicators; even this blogger wouldn't be so Negropontean* to say that either blog had anything to do with their respective fates.

Hart obviously had much more going against him, while Dean has surprised almost everyone by doing a lot right. However, Armed Prophet would go so far as to say that there are two major factors that transformed Dean from a lower tier candidate:

1) Near-anonymous Rep. Dennis Kucinich making wild anti-war statements and wilder accusations against President Bush (both can't-miss with the Democratic party faithful) is one thing, but a long-serving governor saying the same things is something else. And...

2. His internet operation is as savvy as was John McCain's and savvier. Dean has raised a ton of money and he's created a groundswell of grassroots support.

He's got tons of great press about his internet efforts -- click here to see the plethora of stories available through Google News -- but an effective internet operation can't raise all your money for you. Just ask John McCain.

The blog and the rest of the site has helped get him this far, but it's essentially a gimmick. Has he got everything out of it that he could? Perhaps not, but likely most of it. Armed Prophet isn't yet sold on the notion of an "internet constituency." In time it may come. But it hasn't happened yet, and it won't happen for Dean.

And while Gary Hart spends his summer "reading The Odyssey in classical Greek on board a three-masted schooner off the island of Chios," Howard Dean will be taking red-eyes from Iowa to New Hampshire, New Hampshire to Iowa, and then he'll do it all over again and again and again. But Armed Prophet is willing to bet that blog or no blog, Dean has peaked.

*I.e. MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte, not his brother, UN Ambassador John Negroponte. Negroponte's book Being Digital, a collection of columns he wrote for Wired Magazine, is wildy entertaining -- and wildly overreaching in utopian promise. Which explains the Wired connection. Armed Prophet bets Nicholas Negroponte likes the "internet constituency" idea.

NUKE-WIELDING STUDENTS?

Maybe Armed Prophet is missing something -- and I certainly am sans access to classified intelligence briefings (for now) -- but something about this line from this morning's David Sanger story in the New York Times about the Iranian protest (revolution?) struck me as odd. Sanger writes that

administration officials believe that Iran is likely to pursue efforts to build nuclear weapons regardless of what government rules the country.

They do? For real? I find that hard to believe. As Michael Ledeen will tell you, the students leading these protests represent perhaps the most pro-American movement in the Middle East. Why a non-Islamist, non-terrorist government would keep pursuing nuclear weapons is beyond me. And what of Iraq? Did the White House tell reporters that Iraq would keep pursuing its NBC weapons, "regardless of what government rules the country"?

Either Sanger misheard or the anonymous official who talked to him is (on this topic) guilty of everything Howard Dean alleges. Armed Prophet doesn't know which, but the assertion that any Iranian government would develop nukes is asinine.

NOOOOOO!!!!

Armed Prophet is already discouraged about visiting NYC, which I will do later this summer. You can't smoke in the bars, or at least you have to find one that won't enforce the ordinance. (Actually, not that hard.) Armed Prophet only smokes when drinking, but when I drink, smoke I must.

But to get to the point -- i.e. Noooooo!!!! -- it seems visiting LA could be, er, a lot less gratifying than before.

Update, 6/20/03: Yesssssss!!!

PARTISAN GUESSES

One of Armed Prophet's favorite pastimes is guessing the partisan affiliation of those whom I don't know for certain. Take Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback, who said this to the Strib just the other day:

I loved Paul Wellstone, but I wouldn't have wanted him managing my 401(k).

Ouch! True, though. Armed Prophet guesses Ryback is a Democrat -- because no Republican could get away with saying that.

Follow-up: I checked -- I was right.

Now here's Denver Post nutcase Woody Paige, on reports that Al Gore might start his television network, on Around The Horn just this afternoon:

Al Gore was terrible in the White House and he'll be terrible on TV!

Does this mean Paige is a Republican -- or just that he was grabbing for the first thing that came into his head? This one could go either way.

Follow-up: A cursory Google search yields nothing, but this brief interview seems to tilt him toward the GOP column:

Q: Is Canada a country or a suburb of the USA?
Paige: Canada is a breakfast food.

Make up your own mind.

ISN'T IT OBVIOUS?

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, and I'll go ahead and say it again: You just can't trust those liberals.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Head on over to The Dane right this very minute (and for a few days, probably), where Armed Prophet's alter ego has had published the first installment of a travelogue about Toronto, Ontario. The first one is a little slow and slight on action -- the setup is always like that -- but tune in for the second installment next week, and each one thereafter. Do it for the Dane.

Actually, this isn't quite self-promotion, but it certainly is shameless.

"CIVIL ... LIBERTIES ... BANNED!!!"

Remember back when liberals owned the television medium? When radio's biggest star, Rush Limbaugh, couldn't find an audience on TV? With Fox News crushing the liberal by default CNN and the me too MSNBC, those days now seem very far away. Of course, this is only true in news. But after watching a few other examples of "liberal media" these past two days, Armed Prophet has to wonder if the left has lost its savvy entirely.

To wit: You must check out the new NARAL advert, now running here in the Washington market, as well as elsewhere in the country. And also, watch the Bushenstein cartoon, exclusive (I believe) to the DNC website.

The NARAL ad is a joke; the newspapers on the day after Roe v. Wade is overturned say "Abortion Outlawed!" This is impossible, and not only because Howell Raines is out at the New York Times -- it's because its overturning would not make abortion illegal. It would put the matter to the states, who would be able to decide, one by one, whether they wanted to have abortion or not. But NARAL -- excuse me, NARAL Pro-Choice America -- has always opted for the path of greatest hysteria. One might say this is necessary to get the base mobilized, but Armed Prophet thinks it might turn off a number of abortion moderates who might otherwise be sympathetic.

As for the DNC cartoon, a paraphrase of Roger Waters seems apt -- it's nearly a laugh, but it's really a cry. I understand that it's only intended for the party activists, but my how easy it must be to entertain them. Armed Prophet has to imagine that you could put a sock puppet in front of a webcam saying "Bush sucks" and the faithful would howl with laughter. Actually, that would be a lot funnier than what they did. Perhaps the only notable thing about it is that they're no longer portraying Bush as subordinate to Cheney -- who plays the part of Quasimodo (Cheneymodo?).

Both ads, I might as well point out, aim to rally the Democratic base to act in case a Supreme Court Justice retires. But as each day passes, it looks less and less likely that there will be a retirement. With a huge decision over McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" later this summer and the election next year, it looks like the next retirement won't happen until 2005.

Not only are these ads pitiful and futile, but chances are they were a total waste of time. And more importantly -- considering the CFR jam the Democrats are in -- it's also a waste of money.

"FAIR TRADE" IS NOT FAIR TRADE

Drudge links to an AP story from Armed Prophet's hometown about a pizza chain that is paying homeless people -- who would otherwise be panhandling -- in pizza, soda and cash, to hold signs that say, "Pizza Schmizza paid me to hold this sign instead of asking for money."

Brilliant! I wish I'd thought of it. Hell, for a few summers between college back there, I wish I'd had the option. But, in the interests of equal time, the writer sought out the following but of uninspired dissent:

Gary Ruskin, director of Portland-based Commercial Alert, an advertising watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, said homeless people acting as billboards should be paid minimum wage, or else they are being exploited. And he complained that the practice adds to ad clutter. "People don't want to get hammered with an ad every time they turn their head," he said. "Most advertising is either somewhat of a lie or deceptive, and it's an assault on our attention."

Er, who are you to say they're being exploited? How is that your judgment to make? The article quotes Peter Schoeff, a homeless man who works for Pizza Schmizza. He says:

I think it's a fair trade. We're career panhandlers, that's the only other way we can get money.

Sure, he's being exploited. He just doesn't know it. Ruskin would actually take away Shoeff's right to earn the kind of living he chooses to, simply based on what he thinks people should want. Also consider Ruskin's last two statements. Very last first:

Most advertising is either somewhat of a lie or deceptive, and it's an assault on our attention.

Uh, that's relevant how? Penultimate statement:

People don't want to get hammered with an ad every time they turn their head.

Hey, Ruskin -- I don't know about you, but a panhandler trying to grub some change is a hell of a lot more annoying than another advertisement -- let alone one that's amusing and possibly even friendly.

LET'S GET COMPLICATED

Right now we're in overtime in the tax cut battle. After the whole thing was negotiated down to about a $350 billion pricetag, a couple of liberal think tanks pointed out that a provision which would have kicked an extra $400 per child to non-taxpaying, minimum wage families -- what the taxpaying families got -- was excised to meet the $350 billion insisted upon by liberal Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans. Armed Prophet is skeptical of any and all Keynesian plans for short-term stimulus, but if you believe it's a good idea, then here's one to fight for -- those families are likely to spend that money, fast. So fight they did. The Senate passed a $10 billion pacakge, and the White House even backed it up, figuring it would inoculate them against the usual criticisms.

Now that it's in the House, however, Tom DeLay is throwing an extra $72 billion on top, obviously hoping to sink it. That I'm actually fine with; the amendment is good politics, but bad policy. But here's the thing that actually does piss me off: While the taxpaying families would get their $400 within weeks, the non-taxpayers would have to wait a year, when they could file for it on their tax return. Are those people even likely to be filing tax returns? Precisely.

It is genius, and from a cold, calculating perspective, I respect the hell out of what DeLay's doing here. He is good. But if DeLay is kicking sand into the Democrats' shoes, he's also kicking some into the eyes of his constituents.

Why is no one talking about this? Because it's too damn complicated, that's why. The Democrats aren't in a position to change it, and the Republicans aren't about to. Oh well. Neither party comes out of this looking too good. But I'm sure that Wesley Clark, from his "non-partisan" perspective, could talk a great deal of nonsense about it.

THE PROGRESSIVE

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, onetime Supreme Allied Commander of NATO -- and regardless of the criticism herewith, "Supreme Allied Commander" is easily the coolest job title ever -- went on Meet The Press this weekend to keep his name in the hopper for next year's Democratic nomination.

He had one good line, responding to criticism from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay:

One of the greatest charges you can make against someone is, 'Don't listen to him because he has presidential aspirations.'

Fair enough. But Clark also showed us there were other reasons not to listen to him. For example, here's what he told Russert about why he wouldn't support the latest Bush tax cut:

[T]he tax cuts weren't fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it's not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don't have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should -- one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.

Whoa. What was that he said? Let's try taking this step by step.

[T]he tax cuts weren't fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more.

If he's just pointing out that lower-income taxpayers pay less tax than higher-income, then I'm not sure what his criticism is. But if he's arguing that the upper-income taxpayers got a break, well, so did all the other taxpayers. Armed Prophet is getting back something like $50 over the next year -- that's about how much I spent on booze this weekend. And you know what? If I had little Armed Prophetlings, then I'd get more money back. (But I'd also be paying to take care of another person.) Still, just because I don't benefit the most is no reason to oppose it.

I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation.

What? It was? You know, I haven't read all of the Federalist Papers, but I'm pretty sure I never came across "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" anywhere. There wasn't an income tax at all until Woodrow Wilson introduced it in the 20th Century, and only the very rich paid any income tax at all until World War II. In fact, it was Bush's 2001 tax cut that removed millions of low-income Americans from the voter rolls. But Clark surely didn't support that tax cut, either.

Those payroll taxes? Cigarette taxes? Beer taxes? All regressive. But I don't hear any of the Democrats talking about those, let alone Clark. (Actually, Clark refuses at this point to even identify himself as a Democrat, so it's always possible he's running as a McCain Republican.)

In other words, it's not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don’t have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should -- one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.

Wow, that's just too convoluted to discuss. At least when Dubya mangles his speech, you know exactly what he's driving at. Clark? I haven't the foggiest. And so I won't even try. What I will do is try on for size an argument that he -- or other Democrats -- should have made this past week but have not. But not until the next post.

JUST SHORT OF A TRIFECTA

Drudge and Paglia? In the same interview? Genius! The only thing missing is Andrew Sullivan. Better luck next time!

SQUIRRELS. YES, SQUIRRELS

On Friday the Tacoma Tribune printed this story. Perhaps this is something the enviros will get worked up about, but Armed Prophet had a different response. Yes, it reminds me of what is perhaps the most infamous non-controversial news article published by Oregon Daily Emerald the daily paper at Armed Prophet's alma mater. Key passage:

They [squirrels] dashed across busy streets in search of food. Cars ran over them. Some parts of campus had surplus amounts of nuts, while others did not. It seemed like a problem.

The environmentalists never got behind the plight of the squirrels then, but I promise you, the last time I visited, they were everywhere. And I won't say laissez-faire works best in every instance -- only most of the time -- but when it comes to those evil rodents, it's always best to leave them alone.

NOOOOOOO!!!!

Armed Prophet is reminded of the legendary words of Wayne Gale...

Tonight I'm standing on Highway 666, running through towns like Cortez, Shiprock, Sheep Springs, and ending in Gallup, New Mexico. To some, a beautiful stretch of the American landscape, but to Mickey and Mallory Knox, who are still at large, it is literally a candylane of murder ... and mayhem.

Not anymore, it isn't.

LAST HILLARY POST?

Armed Prophet will try. But this I couldn't pass up. First, here's Hillary Clinton on the WMD question, in particular with regard to the decision by Senate Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts to hold closed-door, rather than open-door hearings. The Washington Times quotes her as saying:

I don't think you should hide behind charges of being partisan in order to avoid the inquiry that should lead to answers that the American people deserve to have.

Now, here's Hillary on the Today Show, Tuesday, discussing the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment:

It was a private matter that was unfortunately made public and used then for partisan, political advantage in what really amounted to a power grab.

A private matter -- in a public office building on public time? And the Democrats shouldn't refrain from pushing for a WMD inquiry because they risk seeming partisan, she contends -- but the Republicans shouldn't have pushed impeachment because it was partisan? And the hearings -- intelligence hearings -- are rightfully being conducted out of the public's view. But for Democrats, many of whom are calling the President a "liar," to demand full hearings on the subject now -- that wouldn't be a "power grab"?

Okay, now I'm starting to feel the anti-Clinton urge starting to rise up. Better move onto something else, quick. But if I ever want to scratch that itch, I always know just where to go.

ARMED PROPHET'S FAVORITE POLL RESULTS

CNN/USA Today/Gallup has the goods:

Which Best Describes Your View Of Where Hillary Clinton's New Book Should Go In A Bookstore Or Library? It Should Go In The:

History section; it is as accurate as most history books            16%
Political section; it is so political in nature                                50
The fiction section; it is so inaccurate                                      22

Armed Prophet doesn't really care about Hillary's book all that much; I'm just amused, because in spite of the hype, no one else really does either. (Also, see this Jonah Goldberg post doubting the veracity of Simon & Schuster's 100,000 books per day sales figures. Gee, you think?)

(Notes for poll junkies: Poll conducted 6/9-10; surveyed 1,029 adults; margin of error +/- 3%. Responses to this question taken from half of sample B.)

WANTED: WMDs AND THEIR MEANS OF PRODUCTION

Slightly more than two months past the fall of Baghdad, the United States and Britain have yet to come up with either the weapons themselves or anything that was definitely used in a recent (post-1998) weapons program. (What about the mobile weapons lab, as described by Colin Powell at the UN in February? Well, there seems to be a lack of consensus on what those things were really used for.) Naturally, people like Tim Robbins are out there claiming vindication, as if this was the sole justification for the war, and Pres. Bush must have lied. But Robbins was opposed to invasion no matter what, so nobody cares what he thinks. Rather, now we have level-headed people like Mark Bowden questioning his support for the war in his Philadelphia Inquirer column, apparently fulfilling a promise to declare both Bush and himself a liar, were the weapons not found. Perhaps Bowden's support was based solely on the presence of WMDs, but that would be ironic, since his gruesome "Tales of the Tyrant" cover piece for The Atlantic was such a persuasive condemnation of the Saddamite regime.

Bowden's wobbliness seems in part a reaction to the backlash he's no doubt read about and received in his own e-mail box, but it's a little overblown. Most importantly, the fixation on Bush as a "liar" is either disconcerting or laughable, and probably both. Disconcerting because it's reckless, and laughable because it's so far-fetched. Ex-Clinton aide and CNN Crossfire host Paul Begala has lately taken to stating there are two possibilities with regard to the weapons: "Either he never had them in the first place, or he was just too nice of a guy to use it." He's said this more than once, and almost seems to believe it himself.

How about Armed Prophet states obvious fact: There is no evidence that Bush himself lied about the contents of intelligence briefings. Some have alleged that the CIA focused more on information that backed up their conjectures and downplayed that which conflicted. Without knowing much more, I'm going to guess this happens all the time -- like in gymnastics when the high and low scores are thrown out before computing the final score. This is not the same thing as Bush having foreknowledge that WMDs and the technology to produce them were not in Iraq at all and yet saying so just because it satisfied his ends. Indeed, Bush's rhetoric matched that of Bill Clinton's, except for the "...and we're going to war" part. Of course, for those Democrats who do not believe the war was justified if WMDs are not conclusively documented, I just have three words: Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia. No WMDs there, either. And the humanitarian case in Iraq, we now see, is more serious than it was in the Balkans.

Besides, given all of this prior information about the Iraqi weapons program, what is more likely -- that there never was such a program, or that stockpiles have been secreted away, perhaps to Syria? What's most troubling to Armed Prophet is that the notion that Bush lied about the existence of WMDs to invade a country he was hell-bent on subjugating has received less coverage than the notion that the weapons themselves or the means to produce them have been smuggled to someplace else.

I could write more on the WMD hunt and why Armed Prophet is not worried about the political ramifications, but instead I'll send you over to Jive Diatribe, where Maxim Basa has a few thoughts on the subject.

SITE UPDATE

Finally, Armed Prophet has comments available for readers to "prophesy," if they so choose. All credit goes to Sho Ikeda, proprietor of Wazeth and sometime contributor to the OC blog, for making up for my lousy HTML skills. Also, the blogroll (to the left, scroll down) has been updated, and will probably be updated again before too long. Also, the page itself has been slightly elongated ... if you can tell. But if you can't, well... it's always looked like this.

AN ICY FIELD OF LIES

The New York Observer asked several fiction writers to discuss Hillary Clinton's new book, and the results were published in today's edition. Most couldn't help taking a swipe at President Bush -- these are Manhattan literary types, don't forget -- including the romance novelist Laura Moore. But her contribution is pretty good, considering what fellow contributor John Updike points out:

Senator Clinton['s] description of "the most devastating, shocking and hurtful experience" of her life is nowhere as moving or human as the legalistic vignettes of furtive partial pleasures in the Starr Report.

So Moore offers Clinton some advice on how to really bring her readers inside the pain of hearing her husband's confession. Advice in the way of an imagined excerpt, speaking in the voice of HRC:

My mind reeled from the blow of his softly stammered words. Stunned, I stared uncomprehending. A wave of dizziness assailed me and I thought I might be sick. Fighting against the sudden nausea, my fingers clutched at the bed sheets. A distant region of my brain registered the fact that here I was in our bed, the one Bill and I had shared countless nights, his warm, wonderfully familiar body pressed against mine. It had been a place of joy and refuge where we had lain and whispered dreams in the dark. Now it was horribly transformed into an icy field of lies. As though of their own accord, my hands released their hold to wrap themselves protectively about me as I shivered from the tears coursing down my cheeks, from the awful chill invading my heart. A scream of pain rose up inside me, and yet all I managed was a broken whisper. "Why, Bill, why? Why did you lie to me?"

He just stood there, his head lowered, unable to meet my eye, his shoulders slumped, looking like a sullen, naughty child. Perhaps I should thank Bill for that, for at that moment as I stared at him, rage hot and pure began coursing through my veins, spreading until it consumed every atom of my being. Bill must have sensed it, for he raised his head, his red-rimmed eyes finally meeting mine. "I'm sorry. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea."

Ha! Ha! Ohhh... I don't feel so good. There's more, if you think you can handle it. Armed Prophet needs some Pepto Bismol...

SORT OF MAKES YOU WONDER WHAT THEY MEAN BY "REVOLUTIONS"

Armed Prophet thought at first that the inclusion of Cornel West in The Matrix: Reloaded was going to be a huge distraction. Then, I saw it for myself and decided that he couldn't ruin the Roman council scene -- it was bad enough by itself. (For a particularly uncharitable take on the film, see the Website review of the film). But this morning James Lileks does a short take on The Animatrix. Though he enjoyed the DVD, he rather more charitably notes that it "has some flaws," which made me think about West yet again. Lileks writes:

It all comes down to this: the machines are mad at us because we didn't let them into the UN. And they dressed up for the induction ceremony and everything. But you know humans! Once one robot goes rogue, we set our minds to killin' the lot of them, regardless of the cost to the global economy.

Oh boy, he's right. I saw that one a few weeks ago, and that's about how I remember it. But Lileks also noticed an image from the short films that I either didn't watch or didn't catch. You'll have to click the immediately preceding link to see the photo for yourself. But as he points out -- the scene must a deliberate recreation of this infamous photograph. Hmmmm. The Wachowskis might call what they're doing subversive, but Armed Prophet rather thinks it trite. And you know, Cornel West wasn't a distraction at all -- he was a leading indicator.

RUN, DON'T WALK

Last Friday, the following e-mail landed in Armed Prophet's e-mail inbox at work, propositioning the reader first to guess what new wonderful thing the e-mail itself was to announce. Then it answered:

Well NEW VENDING MACHINES of course!!! That's right, new vending machines are now on the 9th, 5th, 4th and lobby south floors. That is not all; they have different selections and better prices than before. And yes, there is Diet Dr. Pepper in the new soda machines. And for those of you that get that deep down body thirst, there is a 20 oz Gatorade machine on the 5th floor. (Also with 20 oz Diet Dr. Pepper) So stop reading this post now, run (don't walk) and get yourself a treat today.

Yes, I am as lucky to work here as you think.

LIFE AIN'T NOTHING BUT TICKETS AND MONEY

Onetime Oregon attorney general and gubernatorial candidate (and a real Lincoln Chafee of a Republican), Dave Frohnmayer, heads up the largest and best-known public university in Oregon, which only somewhat coincidentally happens to be the alma mater of this blogger. So why is the Frohn bringing home a smaller salary than the president of the aggie school up the road? As the AP story about this points out, Oregon has lagged behind other states in terms of the salaries it can offer professors and administrators, which makes it hard to attract top tier talent. But I do believe this is the first time the University of Oregon has paid its chief executive less than Oregon State has paid theirs.

But hey, Mike Bellotti gets thrice that thanks in part to his taking a share of ticket revenues -- yet that's "only" a couple hundred thousand more than the significantly lower-stature Oregon State coach, Mike Riley. What's up with that? Oregon State hired president Edward Ray from a much larger OSU -- Ohio State -- and Riley returned to the team following a stint in the NFL. They'd had better-paying jobs at larger institutions, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're doing better jobs. Which brings Armed Prophet to speculate on something which I am entirely unprepared to investigate further at this time: Perhaps the Ducks are getting a good return on modest investments, while the Beavers try throw money around as an intended corrective to their lower profile?

P.S. Meanwhile, Joey makes them all look like paupers.

I DON'T GET IT

Armed Prophet hasn't said anything about the capture of Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph, and I certainly don't intend to start. So here instead is the dumbest headline since ... the last time the subject crossed my mind:

Eric Rudolph motivated by radical Christian beliefs, experts believe

Who are these experts, and what evidence do they have?? Are they sure they're ready to go out on a limb and attribute his actions to radical fundamentalist beliefs? So he bombed a gay nightclub and an abortion clinic -- but maybe he did it for the money! Actually, if you want to see something at least as perverse, click above to read the "accompanying" story. Best line:

"At the end of the day, Americans just love their stuff."

Yes. Unless you're Eric Rudolph.

ACCURACY IN REPORTING?

Glenn Reynolds links to a Times of London article largely crediting the resignation of the NYT's Raines and Boyd to the activity of bloggers, and which includes the following passage:

The bloggers got their man last week and have been exulting in their power. After a rollercoaster two years in the job, Raines resigned from The New York Times last Thursday along with Gerald Boyd, the managing editor.

"If this had happened 10 years ago, when the internet didn't exist, Raines would still be running the place," crowed Mickey Kaus, whose "blog" can be found on slate.com. The week before, his Howell Raines-O-Meter had put the chances that the editor would leave at 70%. Now it triumphantly announces: "Resigned".

Armed Prophet is amicable to the notion that bloggers helped speed the plow that pushed the two out the door, but don't ask me to believe that a week passed between the inauguration of Kaus' Raines-O-Meter and the declaration of Resignation.

A week? It was a matter of hours, between a Wednesday and Friday. Even if the rest of the article's facts are correct, if I know that's wrong but don't know enough to judge other new facts, how can I be sure of those other facts? They really misrepresented that detail. Most of the subsequent details sound right to me, but how can I be sure?

Prima facie, one might think this criticism trivial, but the carelessness of describing facts in a story undermines its credibility on other facts/claims that are new to me. Just that. And for Armed Prophet, it's just more known unknowns.

WHY THEY BOO US

On Friday night Mansoor Ijaz called in to Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program from the French Open in Paris -- on his way back from trying to negotiate a cease-fire in Kashmir -- to discuss the Serena Williams freeze-out-as-shout-down. (A differing representation was made in an AP story, but that short article elides any discussion of attitudes toward America, let alone mention Williams at all.)

Until that segment, I'd shrugged off the incident as insignificant, but Ijaz had a summary of what he saw from his place in the crowd:

Here the fans were taking out their frustration about the fight over ousting Saddam Hussein, on an American athlete before them. Curiously, tennis being a supposedly polite sport, the audience had been politely rude. But it was mean, and deplorable.

That's about what he'd said. I pick up on that thinking by noting that there has been some nasty pettiness on the American side -- the Freedom Fries episode and the pouring of French wine into gutters certainly won no converts -- but think about what the crowd did, and consider the proximity here: Imagine having a capacity crowd at a public event be openly hostile to this one individual present. One could call it a genteel mob scene. And compare that to a grape-grower in the south of France, watching on TV from an ocean away the scene of a French bottle of wine slogging out onto the corner of Lincoln or Davis or King and Main. Might that farmer be offended? Probably, it's intended that way. But the victims of its mischief are not put on public display. If nothing else, it's a more polite form of protest.

The manifestation of American anti-French sentiments were depersonalized, generalized and even cariacatured. And they singled out governmental officials such as Chirac and Villepin rather than athletes who have no say over American foreign policy and and who knows, might not even always agree with it. The American protests were not just more polite, but also more effective and more rational.

If anybody has any stories about the Expos getting booed in Texas I'm willing to hear them out, but they certainly can't play victim when they sweep their series with the Rangers.

P.S. Have I really reached the end of a post about French protests without mentioning the Million Marxist March -- excuse me, anti-pension reform strike -- that has shut down Paris this weekend? Not quite. I'm just pointing out that the French masses are still longing for another Révolution Française, and when they stubbornly "have conceded the urgency of reform, yet refuse to accept a reduction of benefits," they reveal themselves to be more politically immature than they accuse the us of being.

AN AGE OF UNCERTAINTY?

Armed Prophet very narrowly avoided getting a journalism degree, and sometimes I'm thankful for that fact. Armed Prophet is also a sometimes fiction writer -- unpublished like the rest of you, and probably deservedly so -- and each day I watch the news, I think this is more and more true. It isn't just the low opinion of journalists found in every poll (except for the first couple of weeks after 9/11), it's the sense that what constitutes journalism is increasingly indefinable.

Howell Raines really isn't the problem. Conservatives say it's about Raines' condescending liberal enthusiasm for diversity. Liberals say it's about Raines' poor management style. Actually most conservatives point out that it's both -- a nexus of the two that created the lethal combination that allowed Jayson Blair to run amok. But I'm not really interested in that. Though incompetence is certainly prevalent, what Blair did is egregiously wrong, and there's no difficulty in condemning his actions. It gets a lot murkier around another ex-Times reporter, Rick Bragg. What Bragg did -- using stringers to do his research before rewriting it in his allegedly cloying, folksy manner (Armed Prophet can't judge; what Bragg does isn't what I'm interested in, although I hear his memoir "All Over But The Shoutin'" is supposed to be good) -- is more laziness. Of course, if Bragg was simply a fiction writer, nobody would have given a second thought to all this. He could compose pretty prose poems all he liked without having to do a "dateline toe-touch."

But he probably won't. He'll keep writing journalism, and as long as the rules of what journalism is remain unclear, there will continue to be a gap between what Don Rumsfeld calls known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Known knowns are what journalism strives to bring us -- the facts on the ground. Unknown knowns and known unknowns, I think are essentially the same thing in this context -- matters of open speculation, where an issue is definitely important or noteworthy, but cannot be entirely accounted for. These are the open questions, where writers let the readers know there is something more, and invites them to fill in their blanks.

But all these troubles we've been having are because of unknown unknowns. Did anybody know about the Times' practice of using stringers? Armed Prophet didn't know -- and I know people who have been stringers. Hell, if I look back to some conversations I've had, I myself could even be considered a stringer, if unpaid, and not for anything like the Times. It isn't just the stringer issue. It's an issue of what a reporter's politics are, and the extent to which that shades the reporting without your knowledge.

With more information available from further away and in greater detail, the less we seem to know about things closer to us -- and those details often seem to be wrong. But it's Friday afternoon, and that will have to wait for another post.

WHEN DID SHE KNOW IT?

Posted at 10:30 (or so) EST, the first sentence -- and first paragraph -- of Lloyd Grove's column in tomorrow's Washington Post, titled "What Did She Know, And When Did She Know It?":

In "Living History," memoirist Hillary Rodham Clinton describes her gut-wrenching reaction on the Saturday morning of Aug. 15, 2000, when her husband "told me for the first time" -- as quoted by the Associated Press from a leaked copy of the much-hyped but still unreleased $8 million book -- "that there had been an inappropriate intimacy" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Whoa! 2000? Now Armed Prophet definitely doesn't believe her! The real question here is what does Grove know about his typo ... and when will he know it?

P.S. It's 12 hours later, and Grove still has no clue!

P.P.S.Aha! Armed Prophet was incorrect -- it is not Grove's column from Friday the 6th, but actually from Thursday the 5th, and yet (as you can tell by the link) originally posted on the evening of Wednesday the 4th. Will the madness ever end? Will the inaccuracies ever cease? It's clear that I too am party to some of the journalistic uncertainty I complain about. (Is my offense as bad as Rick Bragg's? No. But it is annoying.) More on that, probably in a post above.

DON'T JUST BLAME IT ON THE RAINES

What is the damn point of journalism? Armed Prophet has to wonder these days. And despite the moniker I post under, there's a lot I'm still trying to figure out. These days it seems like the best are the worst, and the worst are the best. Yes, that's an overstatement. But no, I don't think it is by much.

There's a saying that Armed Prophet has been thinking about recently. I'd say where it comes from, but even if I googled it, I wouldn't believe the citation. It goes something like this, though the actual line surely is much pithier:

Fiction can tell the truth better than nonfiction, because incorrect facts in nonfiction can corrupt its integrity, whereas fiction can make its point without having to rest it upon a particular set of facts.

Take Joe Klein's "Primary Colors" and Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars." Almost everyone who had any semi-close proximity to the former president sees a lot of truth in Klein's novel, yet almost nobody, even many who were there at the time, seems to believe Blumenthal's account of the Clinton presidency. Of course, Blumenthal has a lot personally invested in describing Clinton's tenure in the best of terms whereas Klein does not, but I think that only bolsters my case.

Yes, a novelist can "lie" as much and possibly more than a journalist, but nobody is necessarily expecting the novelist to be conveying a specific set of facts. A journalist, on the other hand, has a duty to both the specific facts as well as a general sense of what they mean.

Today of course, the big news is the resignation of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd from the New York Times. Almost since the moment Raines was appointed chief editor, writers such as Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus have meticulously chronicled the now-former editor's many editorial missteps. (Raines did have a bit of a reprieve with the 9/11 attacks, but by the time the Afghanistan campaign began -- and Johnny Apple started predicting a quagmire -- this dissipated.)

True, Sullivan may have a bone to pick since he was axed from his Contributing Editor slot with the Times Magazine, but he and Kaus (with no obvious bias) have dedicated, both passionately (Sullivan) and impassionately (Kaus) Raines' mistakes. For a long while, those faults were primarily ideological in nature, but before long those matters bled over into matters of journalistic ethics. Raines' crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club may have only been a matter of perspective, but when he spiked two columns by dissenting sports writers, that then became a matter of journalistic prudence, not political impartiality. (Though as Andre 3000 says, "But yet it's that, too.") And as Kaus -- who seems to know almost everybody in New York and Washington Journalism -- had blogged, the staff was extremely upset with their leadership.

So by the time Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg became big news stories, the stage was set for what happened today. Without all that came before, Blair would have been a serious blemish on the magazine's record, but it wouldn't have sparked the controversy and upheaval that it has. Not that I think this necessarily is a bad thing, or rather, that I it foretells only more problems.

My argument here is not to focus primarily on the ideological bias of the Times. Others I have already mentioned have done yeoman's work on the matter, and Armed Prophet does not need to carry on.

What I do think is an issue is the extent to which the Times scandal has illuminated a number of problems that plague the very concept of what modern American journalism is all about.

So: Check back tomorrow when I continue on this same line of thought.

P.S. If you are reading this on Thursday evening or Friday morning, the previous sentence applies. If it's Friday evening or Saturday morning, well, you can pretty much ignore this entire paragraph.)

P.P.S. Slightly OT, The Nation's Bruce Shapiro on "Hannity and Colmes" just referred to Blair and Stephen Glass as "fabulators." Really, can we not do that? Please?

DECAPITATION STRIKE A MATCH

Armed Prophet generally likes California Rep. David Dreier. He's a mild-mannered, level-headed conservative who hails from a liberal state (although a conservative district), and I agree with him on most issues. In the last two days, however, I confess he has me confused. On Tuesday he was one of only eleven Republicans to vote against a bill that calls for a constitutional amendment to allow the U.S. Congress to ban flag burning. Yes, again.

Full text of the bill:

The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

Unfortunately, it passed with the 60% majority it needed, and will be going to the U.S. Senate next.

Props go not just to Dreier on this, but to Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake, who will probably give John McCain a primary challenge next year. Dreier and Flake are the only two genuine conservatives to vote their senses on this bill, rather than their emotions or constituents' emotions; the other nine are pretty much all moderate to liberal Republicans who tend to vote with Democrats on most issues. The notable exception among them is Texas Republican Ron Paul. Paul is the kind of libertarian that non-libertarians roll their eyes at, so Armed Prophet is tempted to turn him loose sans props, but he did have the best quote in opposition to the bill, saying: "We're amending the Constitution for a non-crisis." (Hold that thought until the end, would you?)

What's to make of this bill? As a conservative, this is one of a very few issues where I have a hard time saying I can respect the arguments of my fellow right-wingers who disagree. Conservatives, who have proposed this amendment five times in the last eight years, are supposed to be defenders of liberty -- yet here is a notable blind spot. When I look at the long list of Democrats who supported it, I'd like to point out that according to their terms, this is political, not commercial speech, so the left-wingers who voted for this are similarly without an excuse. (Dennis Kucinich must be light-headed from his exclusive vegan diet.) But who needs an excuse when something is politically popular?

Flag burning, I hope I need not point out, is a stupid thing to do. Lest I be tagged as a Commie symp, let me point out -- scroll through the past few months of my archives and I defy you to find me saying something positive about the anti-war protesters. As political speech it's offensive and crude, but unlike, say, child pornography, it has a clear message (though not a constructive one) and surely wouldn't be ruled as falling on the wrong side of the "prurient interest" test. And it hasn't -- the conservative Supreme Court has held that flag-burning is legitimate speech. Which is exactly why the House wants to amend the Constitution.

But will it pass the Senate? Not this year, that much is probably safe to say. With Medicare likely taking up all the oxygen until the fall, chances are it will have to wait until January. Stay tuned.

So that's the good David Dreier. I commend him for a legitimately courageous stand -- not just an easy partisan jab that supporters would call "courageous." So what about the bad?

Right now the Continuity of Government Commission is proposing to the House Rules Committee -- which Dreier chairs -- an entirely different amendment, one that would provide for the appointment of House members in case of a devastating terrorist attack here in Washington, DC. (Does the clumsy header on this post make a little bit more sense now?)

Though the issue is obviously complicated, it can essentially be pared down to this: while governors can appoint senators in the case of vacancies, the constitution only allows for the election of House members. Right now, it takes an average of four months to call and execute a special election. Imagine that times 400, meanwhile the country tries to respond to a disaster worse than September 11.

TNR's Michelle Cottle wrote a much more thorough explanation of the amendment in the most recent Atlantic Monthly, and a convincing one at that. Problem is, the bill has very little chance of moving out of the Rules Committee, and is likely to be kicked down to a House-Senate joint panel that will mull other options.

On such an important matter, why? Cottle guesses it has something to do with fear of the government facing its own mortality, but USA Today quotes Dreier voicing a different objection -- a thoroughly conservative one -- that in another circumstance I would support. He said:

Beyond the time it would take to win approval, I disagree with fundamentally altering the intent of the founders. They created a true 'people's house' by requiring elections, and I don't want to change that.

Memo to Dreier: There won't be a people's house if there isn't a contingency plan to ensure that it lives beyond such a catastrophe. You would think this is a matter of common sense.

The Rules Committee considered the matter today, Wednesday. Dreier, along with fellow House Committee Chairs James Sensenbrenner (Judiciary) and Bob Ney (Administration -- you may remember his House cafeteria "freedom fries" fiat), do have a plan, one that would call elections in just 21 days. Would that be enough? Armed Prophet is doubtful. I too share the concern that the Constitution should be left alone as much as possible. But recall that the House didn't wait three weeks to authorize President Bush to take action against al Qaeda in 2001. Would we really want to wait that long in a much worse situation? And would we want the Executive Branch acting without any oversight from Congress?

Ron Paul has it right -- you only want to amend the Constitution in the case of a crisis. On September 11, such a crisis was avoided only due to a routine flight delay, the proliferation of cell phones and the courage of a few, doomed passengers. It would be indeed foolish to avoid a tough decision on this matter, and hope that nothing happens that can't wait for the better part of a month.

If nothing else, Dreier is being consistent. But consistency isn't always the same thing as common sense.