Category Archives: The World

She’s not making this up, and I really wish she were

Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids, who last month regaled readers of The Wall Street Journal with the fascinating fact that not one case of a stranger poisoning kids on Halloween has ever been documented (“‘Stranger Danger’ and the Decline of Halloween“), has now shared with us another extreme tale of the wacky stuff grownups do to overprotect children:

What would you do if you got your kids’ yearbook and all the eyes had been blacked out with magic marker?

Ms. Skenazy credited The Daily Mail and Anorak News for this.

Personally, I’d try to wake up. But at a school in England, the principal is very much awake and behind this whole thing. Apparently, she was so worried someone might cut out the kids’ faces, paste them on child porn pictures and post them on the Internet — yes, that’s really her concern — that she ordered the teachers to manually black out all the children’ eyes.

Let’s pause for a second to consider how lovely an illustration this is of what I call “Worst-First” thinking. That is, thinking up the worst, most perverse explanation for something first, instead of assuming a less dramatic, but far more likely, rationale…

Yecch! The idea that a yearbook would be of interest to anyone other than the kids in it (and their parents), doesn’t seem to have occurred to this woman, who also outlawed the taking of photos or videos at school plays. She’s so worried about perverts, she doesn’t realize how perverted her thought process has become. To her, all kiddie pix are one step away from kiddie porn….

She insists that she’s not making this up, and I’ve never known Lenore to mislead us before, but blimey! That headmistress bird has gone spare! (I’m practicing my English slang for a trip to that country next month, so bear with me. I have a particular penchant for the anachronistic…)

November 22nd in Dallas, 47 years on

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Elections oracle Larry Sabato Tweeted this morning:

Eerie to be in Dallas on a November 22. Weather (early rain, clearing,sunny 70s) similar to 47 yrs ago. No formal commemoration.

So consider this your opportunity to share your memories of the day. And if you’re too young to have memories of day, well then who cares what you think? (Aw, now don’t go crying to your mommies about how mean the old man was to you…)

My favorite “Where were you?” story was the experience of Richard Nixon, which I read about once in a book about the 60s compiled by Rolling Stone. On this day 47 years ago, he was being driven through a residential neighborhood in an unfamiliar city, when suddenly a woman ran out of her house and looked around her desperately. She had just heard the news. Nixon, who had NOT heard the news, told his driver to stop. He got out of the car and walked toward the woman, asking whether he could be of any assistance.

The woman took one look at him, and then she really freaked out.

My own experience was atypical. I was out of the country, my Dad being stationed in Ecuador on U.S. Navy business.

We didn’t learn about it until later in the day. I was in the 5th grade at the Colegio Americano, which was way the other side of town. My bus ride home on Don Enrique (buses had names, and personalities) took about an hour. I was one of the last ones on the route. My best buddy Tony Wessler was dropped off six blocks before I was.

When I got home, I rang the doorbell at the security door at the foot of the stairs (we lived in the upstairs of a large duplex). My mom hit the buzzer, and as I started up the stairs I was startled to see Tony standing at the head of the stairs with Mom. What’s up? I asked. “The president’s been shot!” I kept walking up, and asked, “The president of what?” Mind you, I had already lived through one coup in Ecuador that year. So maybe there had been another, more violent, overthrow in a neighboring country.

“The president of the United States,” came the answer. So that was what had caused Tony to outrun the bus…

That hit hard. It was particularly strange to be in another country, as the dependent of a representative of the United States, and know that back home our president had just been killed, and we didn’t know why or by whom or what might happen next. (And mind you, since I was personally familiar with the potential instability of governments in a way that few Americans were, the feeling was intensified. “Seven Days in May” didn’t seem like such wild fiction to me.) It felt like being abandoned to fend for oneself. Wild thoughts went through my head. I thought of the .38-cal. revolver that my Dad kept on a shelf in my parents’ bedroom closet, which had been issued to him just in case. (I don’t think my Dad knew I knew it was there, but you can’t hide anything from kids.)

Then there was Kennedy himself, who personified the youthful strength, the can-do attitude, of my home country. If he could die, just like that… I had not been a big Kennedy supporter initially. For reasons I’ve written about elsewhere, I had been for Nixon in 1960, at the age of 7. But after that I had been fully co-opted into the whole P.T. 109/Camelot mystique, and was proud that JFK had various initiatives going on (to counter Castro, but I didn’t know that) to help Latin America, such as Alliance for Progress.

But not just expatriate Americans were shaken. I witnessed a generous mourning from Ecuadoreans, who identified with this Catholic president as they had no other. Our school yearbook for that year would have a dedicated page with the headline, “Kennedy Ha Muerto,” and a picture of the president and his bride and kids outside a church before or after Mass — Jackie wearing the obligatory veil on her head.

That was reassuring.

Anyway, that was my experience 47 years ago today.

Far more useful than a phrase book…

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Next month I’ll be traveling to England, so this video, which Kathryn brought to my attention, might come in handy. If I can only master these, I should be able to pass as a local wherever.

Excuse the language. Or as the young man says, ignore the words. Just listen to the accents.

I used to be good at accents when I was his age (although not so much now; I think our speech patterns get less elastic as time goes on). But I was never this good.

I would discuss this, but I don’t have time

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The Juan Williams mess led to a long and provocative thread about normal fears and irrational prejudices, and what we should feel free to express about certain situations in modern life without getting fired for it.

And at some point, I posted the following in that thread, and it was so long I decided to make it into a separate post, even though, once I post it, I really need to move on to other stuff… Anyway, what I said was”

You know, there’s a whole conversation I’d be interested to have here about the way a healthy human brain works that takes this out of the realm of political correctness-vs.-Angry White Males, which is about as deep as we usually go.

But in the last week of an election, when I’m having trouble blogging at all, much less keeping up with all the election-related things I need to be writing about… I don’t have time to set out all my thoughts on the subject.

But to sort of give a hint…

What I’m thinking is this: There are certain things that we decry today, in the name of being a pluralistic society under the rule of law, that are really just commonsense survival strategies, things programmed into us by eons of evolution.

For instance, we sneer at people for being uneasy in certain situations — say, among a group of young males of a different culture or subculture. And we are right to sneer, to a certain extent, because we are enlightened modern people.

But, if our ancestors weren’t uneasy and ready to fight or flee in such a situation, they wouldn’t have lived to reproduce, and we wouldn’t be here. Thousands of years ago, people who felt all warm and fuzzy and wanted to celebrate multiculturalism when in the company of a bunch of guys from the rival tribe got eaten for dinner, and as a result, those people are NOT our ancestors. We inherited our genes from the edgy, suspicious, cranky people — the racists and nativists of their day.

Take that to the next level, and we recognize that such tendencies are atavistic, and that it’s actually advantageous in our modern market economy governed by liberal democracies to be at ease with folks from the other “tribes.” In fact, the more you can work constructively with people who are different, the more successful you will be at trade, etc.

So quite rightly we sneer at those who haven’t made the socio-evolutionary adjustment. They are not going to get the best mates, etc., because chicks don’t dig a guy who’s always itching for a fight. So they’re on the way out, right?

However… the world hasn’t entirely changed as much as we think it has. There are still certain dangers, and the key is to have the right senses to know when you need to be all cool and open and relaxed, and when you need to be suspicious as hell, and ready to take evasive or combative action.

This requires an even higher state of sophistication. Someone who is always suspicious of people who are different is one kind of fool. Someone who is NEVER suspicious of people who are different (and I’m thinking more of people with radically different world views — not Democrats vs. Republicans, but REALLY different — more than I am people wearing funny robes) is another kind of fool.

The key, ultimately, is not to be any kind of fool. The key is to be a thoughtful, flexible survivor who gets along great with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in the airport queue or the Spanish-speakers in the cereals aisle at Walmart, but who is ready to spring into action to deal with the Middle-eastern-looking guy in seat 13A who’s doing something weird with the smoking sole of his shoe (or the Aryan guy doing the same, but my point is that you don’t give the Arab pass in such a situation just to prove how broad-minded you are), or the Spanish-speaking guy wielding an AK-47 over a drug deal…

This may seem common sense, but there are areas in which we will see conflicts between sound common sense and our notions of rigid fairness in a liberal democracy. For instance, I submit that an intelligent person who deals with the world as it is will engage in a certain amount of profiling. I mean, what is profiling, anyway, but a gestalten summation of what you’ve learned about the world in your life, applied to present and future situations? The ability to generalize, and act upon generalizations — without overdoing it — are key life skills.

There are certain traits that put you on guard and make you particularly vigilant under particular circumstances, or you are a fool. If you’re in an airport and you see a group of 20-something Mediterranean-looking males (and young males from ANY culture always bear more watching than anyone else — sorry, guys, but y’all have a long rap sheet) unaccompanied by women or children or old men, and they’re muttering and fidgeting with something in their bags… you’re not very bright if you don’t think, “This bears watching.”

Now of course, knowing this, if I’m a terrorist organization, I’m going to break up that pattern as much as I can. (I’ll have them travel separately, wear western clothes, coach them not to seem furtive, etc. I’ll recruit middle-aged women if I can, although they generally have far too much sense.) So if you’re watching this scene, and you are intelligent, you’re bound to think, “These guys look SO suspicious that they must be innocent, because terrorists aren’t that stupid…” Well, yeah, they can be. Let me submit the evidence of the guy who set his underpants on fire… So there’s such a thing as overthinking the situation. I mean, how bright is a guy who wants to blow himself up to make a point? People who do that ALSO don’t reproduce, so evolution militates against it…

Anyway, I’d go on and on about this, and examine all the implications, and endeavor to challenge the assumptions of people of all political persuasions… but I don’t have time this week.

What really happened in Ecuador (one version, anyway)

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I really hate that my only regular source of information about what happens in Latin America — now that I no longer have my subscription to The Economist that the paper paid for — is the opinion columns of Mary Anastasia O’Grady in The Wall Street Journal. They’re all written from the standard WSJ point of view — free markets good, government bad — and while I certainly prefer that to, say, the twisted neo-Maoism of Hugo Chavez, or the native populism of Evo Morales, or the demagoguery of Rafael Correa, I would still prefer my reporting without the Adam Smith sermonizing.

But whaddaya gonna do? In this country, the MSM panders so to the extreme apathy of Americans toward anything beyond their borders that the only way I’ve ever kept up with our own backyard is by reading British publications (such as The Economist).

All of that said, having Ms. O’Grady’s observations delivered to my door each week is better than nothing.

And I read with particular interest her piece this morning about what happened in Ecuador last week. An excerpt of her debunking of Mr. Correa’s claims of a “coup” attempt:

Mr. Correa says that, once inside the hospital, the police “kidnapped” him for 10 hours, in what he is calling an attempted coup d’état.

Not so, says Ms. Zaldumbide, at least one other patient, and two doctors and a nurse who were on duty at the time. They say Mr. Correa retained all his presidential privileges and was never without the protection of his security team.

They also say he was offered an armed escort to leave but refused it. Ecuador’s minister of internal and external security has also said that the president was never detained.

Nevertheless, at 9 p.m. Mr. Correa, who was doing telephone interviews with the state-controlled media during the time he was supposedly “kidnapped,” ordered 500 army troops to the hospital. The soldiers arrived with tanks and submachine guns and opened fire on the police. A fierce gun battle lasted 40 minutes, took the lives of two men, and terrified hospital staff and patients.

Wow. Although there apparently was no coup at all, what did happen certainly sounds more exciting than the real coup I lived through in Ecuador when I was a kid.

Back then, we knew how to have a revolution without our hair getting mussed. I say this because I was, like Forrest Gump and just as clueless, present as history was made.

We lived in the upstairs of a large house owned by a captain in the Ecuadorean Navy. One day in 1963 when my parents were out, they told us to go hang out with the kids downstairs, in the landlord’s part quarters. While I was there, the capitan had a visitor. A few days later, that visitor (an admiral) was the head of the junta running the country, and our landlord held some high post in the government. I want to say minister of agriculture.

When my parents told me there had been a coup, I asked what a coup was (I was only 9 years old). They told me it was like a revolution. So with some apprehension, I went over to the window and peeked out at the intersection of Maracaibo y Seis de Mayo, expecting to see violence in the streets. I saw nothing. Things looked pretty normal over across the street at the home of the chief of police, which always had a guard walking up and down the sidewalk outside. Perhaps, I thought, the fighting was elsewhere.

But there was no fighting. The story I remember hearing at the time — and it may be totally apocryphal — was that the junta waited until el presidente had a bit too much to drink, then put him on a plane and let him wake up in Panama. Presto — instant revolution.

What I saw subsequently certainly jibed with such a peaceful transfer. The only time I ever saw violence in that country when I was there was when some friends and I went downtown to see a Western movie with a title that I suppose caused a lot of people to think it was in Spanish (I want to say “Comancheros”). The crowd was queued up on one side of the theater, then a rumor spread that the tickets would be sold on the other side, and I got knocked down in the stampede. Then there was that other time when I was at some event in a park, and was pushing my way through a crowd to the front to see what was happening, and popped through the front ranks just as a line of cops pushed us back at bayonet point — but I don’t remember what that was about; I just remember my surprise at the bayonets, which seemed excessive. (Or was it just rifles without bayonets? I was so young, and it was so long ago — and a boy’s memory tends to romanticize, especially when living the sort of TV-free, Tom Sawyer existence I experienced down there. Everything was an adventure.)

Now, looking back, I read that the junta canceled elections. I don’t remember that. I do remember that they canceled Water Carnival. Water Carnival was a deeply cherished (by 9-year-old boys) tradition that involved having permission for several days to assault strangers with water balloons. To me, the canceling of Water Carnival has always stood out as the very epitome of oppression.

Of course, it may just be that my parents told me it was canceled…

Come to think of it, Ms. O’Grady’s accounts are probably more reliable than my memories. What do kids know? I later learned that several of the adults with whom I regularly interacted — including my guitar teacher — were working for the CIA, or U.S. military intelligence. Who knew?

And would ye be after havin’ a problem with this, now, paisan?

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Heading out in the cool of the morning Saturday for the Walk for Life, I put on two layers — a black T-shirt I sometimes wear on the weekends, and a long-sleeved baseball-style undershirt over it — in anticipation of putting on yet a third layer (the official Walk for Life T-shirt) over that.

Which worked fine during the walk.

But later, when the wife and my daughter and a friend and I headed to the Italian Festival on Main Street, the sun necessitated stripping down to the first layer. And it didn’t even occur to me to think what that layer was.

I was reminded of it when I got in line to buy some food tickets so I could buy some Italian sausage with onions and peppers to wash down with my draft Peroni lager. Ernie Trubiano, former sports scribe at The State, was selling the tickets. Quoth he, “You got some nerve showing up here wearing that…”

He said it in a nice way, though — more marveling at my brazenness than getting in my face about it.

Gee, I wasn’t trying to start an international incident. But that IS one of my fave shirts. I got it at the best St. Paddy’s Day ever in Five Points, the one in 2007, against which all such gatherings shall henceforth be measured.

The best part of the shirt is the side you don’t see — the back is a mock Guinness logo with the words being about the St. Pat’s event. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of that and share it later. It’s awesome.

The Koran-burning church, and other foolishness

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By now you’ve heard about it. I tend to look at it from the perspective of Gen. David Petraeus:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The top American commander in Afghanistan has warned that plans by a small Florida church to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, could play into the hands of the very extremists at whom the church says it is directing that message.

Burning copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, “would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus said in an e-mail message to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Echoing remarks the general made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday, he said: “It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort. It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”…

Somebody needs to find a way to talk some sense to those rockheads down in Florida. Unfortunately, sense is one thing I’m sure they are adamantly determined not to hear. Folks like that are allergic to it, or something. The fact that it’s senseless provocation is what appeals to them. Or maybe I’m wrong. The pastor says he hasn’t changed his mind, but is praying about it. Here’s hoping the Almighty answers him with a big, booming, bone-rattling NO, so that even he can hear it.

One of the really unfortunate things about modern global communications is that when some marginal, fringe doofuses that no one in this country would pay attention to acts out this way, it gets reported to other idiots on the other side of the world, who use it as an excuse to riot and generally raise hell, which makes the idiots over here feel justified, and so the foolishness continues, one generation into the next… (I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would have been a blogger today).

Basically, what we have here is a low-rent version of the allegedly sophisticated “journalists” in Europe who proved how free and enlightened they were (to each other) by specifically commissioning cartoons designed for no other purpose than to be of maximum insult value to conservative Muslims. And thus another unnecessary cycle of violence was launched. (The Enlightened Ones would justify themselves by saying that the violent reactions were unjustified. Of course they were unjustified, you twits. They were also entirely predictable, and your provocation of it was entirely unnecessary.)

I mean, if you just start with what Mamanem taught you before kindergarten, you don’t go around poking fun at the way other folks do church. Sure, if you’re a Baptist, you know what those Methodists do down the street isn’t REAL baptism, but you don’t make fun of them because well-bred people don’t do that. Well, this is like that, only with AK-47s — we have a practical reason not to unnecessarily inflame irrational passions. It’s not just rude, but stupid.

And when it endangers our troops in the field — and Gen. Petraeus is absolutely right to point that out — it is inexcusable.

Why did I write this? I don’t know. I set out thinking this would be a good thing to discuss, but then as I was typing, I thought, “What’s to discuss?” So I threw in the cartoons stuff. I know some of y’all will argue with me about that, but the point is the same, from my perspective.

The Fatties vs. the Fantasists: A hypothetical rematch with the Japanese

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Last night, by way of explaining to my daughter more fully why Roger Sterling was so abominably rude to the guys from Honda in last week’s “Mad Men” I popped in the first episode of “The Pacific.” (As I’ve mentioned, since I’m currently reading the books that series was based on — I’m on Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed now — that theater is much on my mind.)

For most of us, buying Hondas and Toyotas, and even, most improbably, Mitsubishis (as in, the Zero) comes fairly naturally. There is probably less conflict in the national psyche over those than over, say, Volkswagen. But for those who fought in the less-understood Pacific war, the stress of fighting a suicidally aggressive enemy with seemingly superhuman commitment to his cause, would be something that would mark you forever.

But if we had a rematch with the Japanese, it might go differently.

Did you see the NYT story on the front page of The State today, about how Army training has been “walked back” a bit to make it less stressful on recruits who grew up playing video games instead of baseball? An excerpt:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits…

Now, I’m not about to call today’s war fighters wimps. Especially not the tip-of-the-spear types like the Marines, or the Airborne divisions, or the Rangers or other elites. They are, if anything, tougher than ever, and certainly more lethal.

But that story gives us a hint of what it would be like if the Army ceased being so selective because it was handling a mass mobilization such as that of 1941-45. Imagine soldiers who had never done a pushup in basic trying to make their way through a fetid jungle in 100-degree-plus temps.

But fear not, because in today’s WSJ, we have evidence that they would not be met with shrieking madmen eager to die for their emperor. Get a load of this:

Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen…

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

Wow. Get those guys charged up on saki, and they’re not going to be screaming “banzai,” but drooling over decidedly unwomanly avatars, hoping for a pretend peck on the cheek.

So maybe a nation of fatties could take them. But probably only in a virtual war, fought on a virtual playing field. At least our video games are tougher than theirs, if this is an example.

Maybe Harry Turtledove will take on this topic.

Ya ever wonder what happens to failed ‘Idol’ contestants?

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Well, in Canada, they just might become terrorists. At least, that’s what the Mounties say.

Above, you see the very sad performance by Pakistani immigrant Khuram Sher on “Canadian Idol” in 2008. Two years later, here’s what the authorities say about him:

OTTAWA—Canadian authorities said they found and foiled a terrorist bomb-making plot by three men here—one allegedly with links to the conflict in Afghanistan and another, a pathologist who auditioned for the TV show “Canadian Idol.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the trio of Canadian citizens after raids on their houses turned up schematics, videos, drawings, books and manuals for making explosives, said Serge Therriault, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in charge of criminal investigations.

The suspects—identified as Hiva Alizadeh, 30 years old; X-ray technician Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, both of Ottawa; and hospital worker Khurram Syed Sher, 28, of London, Ontario—were charged Thursday with “knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity.”

“A vast quantity of terrorist literature and instructional material was seized, showing that the suspects had the intent to construct an explosive device for terrorist purposes,” said Mr. Therriault. The arrests Wednesday and Thursday “prevented the assembly of any bombs or terrorist attacks from being carried out,” he added.

The trio were working with an “ideologically inspired terrorist group” with links in Iran, Afghanistan, Dubai and Pakistan, the RCMP said. While officials would not say whether the trio had links to al Qaeda, they were driven by “violent Islamist ideology,” according to Raymond Boisvert, assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country’s spy agency.

NOW will y’all listen to me? Reality TV is a threat to all we hold dear, I keep tellin’ ya!

The stories I’ve seen haven’t been terribly specific as to WHAT these guys were plotting, but the most diabolical thing I could imagine would be if their plan all along was to get busted, and cause this video to go viral, thereby sapping Western morale. (And look — they’ve even tricked me into furthering their plan!)

A couple or three additional points:

We’re seeing the continuation of a pattern (hey, with such astuteness on my part, maybe they’ll base a character on me on “Rubicon”) of terror groups using agents who will be called “homegrown” in Western media. Sure this Triple Threat (singin’, dancin’ and blowin’ stuff up) has only been in the country 5 years, but it’s long enough to become legit and evade the scrutiny of the immigration authorities.
Here we have another instance of Privacy Gone Mad in an Exhibitionist Age: “The spokesperson at the hospital in Ottawa where Mr. Ahmed works said he couldn’t disclose personal information due to Canadian privacy laws.” Yet we can find out WAY more than we want to know about Sher — where he’s from, how long he’s been here, his hopes, his dreams — on “Idol.” Sheesh.
I was just about to throw up my hands and say, “Never mind! Maybe I don’t want a Canadian-style health system!” when I read in the lede of that WSJ story that Sher was “a pathologist.” But then below, I see that he was just a “hospital worker.” Make up your mind, WSJ. And yeah, I still want a Canadian-style system. Only I want the government to forbid anyone who treats sick people to appear on “Idol.”

Huck says nay to Graham citizenship proposal

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Lindsey Graham may have decided to go way harsh on letting the U.S.-born children of illegals be citizens, but Mike Huckabee, charting his own course among leading GOP lights these days, begs to differ:

Huckabee on Immigration: Don’t Punish the Kids

Posted by John Wihbey on Wednesday, August 11, 2010

In a Wednesday interview with NPR’s On Point, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ‘08 GOP candidate for president and a potential candidate again in 2012, said he did not favor repeal of the 14th Amendment — which grants citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status – and said that all children of illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship.

Asked if he would favor changing the Constitution, Huckabee said, “No. Let me tell you what I would favor. I would favor having controlled borders.”

He also elaborated on his views on illegal immigrants’ children who came to the U.S. later on. “You do not punish a child for something the parent did,” he told On Point host Tom Ashbrook. “…I’d rather have that kid a neurosurgeon than a tomato picker.”

Huckabee’s positions likely represent dividing lines in any future GOP presidential primary. As the illegal immigration issue has flared up again in American politics, the issue of birthright citizenship has become a hot topic in GOP circles, as various people have called for its repeal or reinterpretation by the courts. (Listen back to On Point’s Monday segment on the issue.)

Huckabee is an interesting guy who thinks for himself on a number of issues. Sort of like Lindsey Graham, so this contrast is all the more interesting for that.

“Graham’s courageous stand for the republic”

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After I got done stewing about having screwed up on the Biden thing, I remembered that I owed Cindi Scoppe a phone call. Speaking to her reminded me that I meant to call your attention to The State‘s editorial yesterday, “Graham’s courageous stand for the republic.”

It was really, really good. So good that after I read it at breakfast yesterday, I e-mailed Cindi to say:

Excellent lede today. Did you write that, or did I?

It needs to be said loudly and often.

OK, so maybe that wouldn’t be a compliment to you, but I think Cindi saw it as such. You know, knowing my ego as she does.

But it really did say pretty much everything I would have said — of course, one of the great things about working with Cindi over the years was that she could do that. There was a time when I felt like I had to write any important edit about state government or politics to get the message just right, and the right tone and feel into it (to please me, anyway). But I realized shortly after I brought Cindi up from the newsroom that if I just spent a few minutes explaining to her what I wanted, in a few minutes she’d turn it around into an edit that was everything I had wanted, and just as good as if I’d written it — and several hours faster.

The great thing about this was that I didn’t have occasion to tell her what I wanted (you may have heard, I don’t word there any more), and yet I got it anyway. But more important than it being what I wanted, it’s what South Carolina needed to hear about Graham’s decision to vote for Elena Kagan’s nomination, and his cogent explanation of his reasoning.

An excerpt:

THROUGHOUT the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems.

But as Sen. Graham told the Judiciary Committee, things are changing…. What matters today are individual agendas, and punishing anyone who doesn’t agree with their every opinion.

That’s a threat not just to the independence of the judiciary but to the republic itself…

As when he voted to confirm Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court appointment a year ago, Sen. Graham said Wednesday that Ms. Kagan was not someone he would have appointed, but Mr. Obama won the election; the job of the Senate is merely to stop a president from appointing people who are objectively unfit to be judges.

Will Ms. Kagan join the liberal wing of the court? Probably. Just as President Bush’s appointments joined the conservative wing. We wish there weren’t such clearly defined wings…. But that’s a political preference we have; not a constitutional standard appropriate for senators to consider. As far as confirmation goes, there’s nothing wrong with Ms. Kagan. Just as there was nothing wrong with Sonia Sotomayor. Or with John Roberts. Or with Samuel Alito. And any senator who votes or voted against any of them was simply wrong.

But go read the whole thing. And share it with every South Carolinian you know.

“How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”

Leon Lott’s just saving the world, isn’t he?

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First, my twin, Sheriff Leon Lott, magnanimously agrees to solve one of the city of Columbia’s knottiest problems by taking over its police department.

Now this:

Lott heads to Iraq to train police forces

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has been invited to travel to Iraq to train Iraqi police forces.

The sheriff traveled to Iraq at the invitation of the U.S. Army and the S.C. State Guard where he is a provost marshal, said sheriff’s department spokeswoman Monique Mack. Lott will be at the Iraq Police College for two to three weeks.

While in Iraq, Lott will teach courses in community policing and will talk about the importance of having women on a police force, Mack said.

– Noelle Phillips

Ol’ Leon’s just saving the world, isn’t he? He’s pretty much got my endorsement for his next election sewn up.

Next: Mideast Peace!…

How about that zero? THAT was something, huh?

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I have two things to say about this brouhaha over Charles Bolden saying he was told to help Muslims feel good about their culture’s historic contributions to science, and the White House denial of such a brief.

First, the silly thing: I have trouble picturing the no-nonsense Marine on a self-esteem-building mission. When I try, my imagination comes up with something really goofy, like:

Hey, guys and how about the concept of zero? That’s a biggie! I don’t know what we’d do without it! Why, back in the Middle Ages, sports fans all over poor, benighted Europe didn’t know how to keep up with what was happening on the field when their team hadn’t scored (which is a big disadvantage when you’re soccer-crazy — you could spend the whole game in the dark!). They had to make up lame alternative words, like “zip” and “nil.” The guys who kept the medieval scoreboards would just be standing up there scratching their heads wondering what to put up until somebody finally scored… Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to follow sports back then…

And that just doesn’t sound like Gen. Bolden.

Now, to my serious point: If Charles Bolden says that the White House told him it wanted him to make the Muslim world feel warm and fuzzy about itself, that’s what happened.

Charles Bolden is one heckuvan impressive guy, and a squared-away Marine. If he says those are his orders, those are his orders, and don’t get between him and his mission.

Anyone at the White House who says otherwise either isn’t in the loop, or is lying.

And that’s the name of that tune.

We haven’t had a good spy swap in AGES…

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I’m watching with some fascination as the Russian spies we recently pulled in admit their guilt, and we get ready for a swap for some people the Russians are holding:

The US is to deport 10 people who spied for Moscow in exchange for four people convicted of espionage in Russia.

A judge in New York ordered the immediate deportation of the 10, and it is thought they may leave in hours.

The 10 had pleaded guilty to spying for a foreign country but a charge of laundering money was dropped.

Details of the four being freed by Russia were not given other than that all had had “alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies”.

Fascination, and a certain amount of nostalgia. Not only did I grow up in the Cold War (when world affairs were simpler — you were either on our side or theirs), but I’m a huge fan of such spy novelists as John le Carre and Len Deighton. This story’s got it all, including the James Bond/Austin Powers element of The Alluring Spy — a stock character that serious spy fiction didn’t stoop to, but there she is in the flesh, Anna Chapman of the bedroom eyes.

But wait? How are we going to have a proper swap without Checkpoint Charlie. Doh! I knew they shouldn’t have torn down that wall. The proper forms can’t be followed now!

That sort of ruins it for me. That, and the fact that these Russian spooks were so inept. Definitely not up to KGB standards. Putin should hang his head.

Another question — we’re swapping 10 for four? How come it always works out this way for us? And for Israel. You ever notice how Israel will do these swaps for like, 10,000 Palestinians for one IDF soldier? I suppose that says something about the value we place on our people, but still — seems to me like a rip-off.

The mullahs aren’t all bad: Iran bans the mullet

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Folks, that Alvin Greene story I referred you to earlier is the most-read story at The Guardian‘s Web site in the past 24 hours. Yes, The Guardian. In London. England.

So it is that, after celebrating the Gamecock’s national championship last week, we return to the harsh reality that the world will continue to view us as a fascinating oddity, the source of the world’s oddest political stories.

Sigh.

To distract myself from this, I checked out the second most-read story on The Guardian‘s site in the last 24. Turns out to be this:

Iran bans the mullet

Islamic republic aims to free itself of ‘decadent’ western hairstyles

Imagine a country where a man with a ponytail could have it cut off by the cops, as could one with a mullet, or one whose hair was slathered in gel, fancifully spiked, or simply too long. Repeat offenders would face stiff fines, while their barber-accomplices would have their shops closed.

It may sound like paradise, especially if your own crazy-haired days are behind you. It’s actually the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose cultural ministry has just unveiled (although that’s perhaps not the most appropriate word in this context) a list of approved hairstyles in an attempt to free the country of “decadent” western cuts.

And people say bad things about repressive Islamic regimes. A government that bans the mullet can’t be all bad. At least it shows that when the mullahs decry our culture, they actually do have a clue as which parts of our culture are truly awful.

Of course, we don’t need any of their forced haircuts or such over here. Over hear, we have the free market to punish such sins against good taste. I mean, just see if you can get a job paying big bucks if you wear a mullet to the interview. Of course, if you DO try it and it WORKS, get back to me and maybe I’ll grow me one. I’m not proud. I’ll just stay out of Tehran.

Oh, and if you want to know more about the Iran coiffure crisis, here’s an earlier story that was in the Telegraph. Seems that lately, I’m getting more and more of my News That Matters, international and local, from British newspapers…

If I were Muslim, this would make me a militant

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Terrorists, would-be terrorists and terrorist sympathizers come up with all sorts of reasons to declare us the Great Satan: U.S. troops being in Muslim countries (the fave of Osama bin Laden and incompetent bomber Faisal Shahzad), support for Israel, the immodesty of our women, rock-‘n’-roll, beer, what have you.

Of them all, the only excuses that strike any sort of resonance in me are the cultural ones. I do sympathize with people of a religion that values sobriety and modesty feeling beleaguered by the global assault of the tackier, baser elements of American popular culture. If you’re trying to keep the young men’s minds on the words of the Prophet, Lady Gaga cannot be seen as helping one bit. It doesn’t justify violence, but it could certainly be maddening.

But now, Western influence has gone too far. Check this out:

KUALA LUMPUR—The U.S. has “American Idol.” Britain has “The X Factor.” Malaysia, one of the world’s more progressive Muslim nations, has something rather different—a televised search for the country’s most eligible young religious leader.

“Young Imam” might look familiar at first glance. Ten good-looking male contestants in sharp-looking suits are assigned to sing and complete a series of complex tasks. At the end of the show, the studio lights dim, the music drops to a whisper, and a clutch of young hopefuls step forward nervously, waiting hand-in-hand to find out who will be sent home that night.

Instead of a record contract or a million-dollar prize, though, the last imam standing wins a scholarship to the al-Madinah University in Saudi Arabia, a job leading prayers at a Kuala Lumpur mosque and an expense-paid trip to Mecca to perform the Haj pilgrimage.

The sole judge who decides who stays and who goes each Friday in prime-time isn’t an aging pop star or talk-show host. He’s the turban-wearing former grand mufti of Malaysia’s national mosque, Hasan Mahmood. Last week Mr. Hasan stifled a sob as he eliminated 25-year-old Sharafuddin Suaut from the show for stumbling over some of the finer points of Islamic theory…

Sorry, folks, but desecrating Islam with the great cultural evil of our time, “reality TV,” is an outrage too far. If I were a conservative Muslim seeing this on the tube, I would have just become radicalized.

Good news is, Petraeus knows how to do the job

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On the one hand, it’s a great shame for someone who by many accounts is a fine officer to lose his job. Insubordination is insubordination, but it’s not a happy day for America when the president has to bust the top guy in a war zone where things haven’t been going well.

On the other hand, at least we know Gen. Petraeus knows how to get the job done if anyone can. He is literally the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, and he showed he could put his theories into effective practice by saving the mission in Iraq.

Frankly, I sort of hated to seem him bumped upstairs to MacDill, leaving implementation of his plans to subordinates. As hairy as things are in Afghanistan, it’s good to know it will be run, on the scene, by the guy who knows how to turn things around.

Other thoughts?

We’re making one heck of an international impression

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It’s just not the sort a sane person would want to make.

As I was getting out of a vehicle to walk to the State House right after lunch today, I got a call on the Blackberry from Paris. Caller ID said the number was … well, there were 11 digits. To summarize the phone call, I quote from the e-mail I found when I got back to the office:

Good Morning M. Warthen,

I am a french journalist, working for a french national private media
called Radio Classique.
I am working today on a story about Alvin Greene and the democrat
candidacy.
It would be very interesting for me to talk to you about that and may be
doing a short interview by phone.
Is it possible ?
It would be great.
May be within two hours or tomorrow morning your time ?

It would be great and very interesting.

thank you very much.

Best regards.

Marc Tedde
Radio Classique

I asked if he also wanted to talk about all the Nikki Haley stuff. He didn’t know about any of that. Just as well.

Just what South Carolina needs.

Anyway, we’re going to do the interview tomorrow morning — afternoon, his time, morning our time. I’m going to let him call me again, rather than vice versa, I assure you.

bradwarthen.com

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