Discovery News

Troubles come in bunches, as you know (read about the 1930s), but that doesn't excuse political avoidance of true catastrophes in the making. Right now, we need a lot less worry about the flu and a lot more about the danger of nuclear proliferation and the immediate issues of Iran and Pakistan.

It is hard to believe that some in circles of influence want to disarm our nuclear force--the deterrent that compensates for a relative shortage of military manpower in the world--at a time when nuclear arms may be spreading. It is hard to believe that the Obama Administration is pressuring Israel to make a potentially ruinous deal with the Palestinians as a wishful way to appease Iran. And it is hard to think that we are so impotent to curb the Taliban in Pakistan.

Tony Blankley is bringing up the comfortable truth that America needs a stronger military now and cannot strategically afford the effective build-down envisaged by so many in the new Administration. I don't agree with the seeming implication at the end of his article that a draft may be needed. Not only is that wrong in principle, it would ignite a huge political backlash in society now. Regardless, his call for more manpower is exactly right.

Political will is the problem. One good sign--from the Rasmussen Poll--is that national security is growing again in the priorities of ordinary Americans. The 70 percent figure representing those who see the issue as very important is higher than at any time in the past year and a half.

Jack Kemp, kindly and forceful enthusiast, had many claims to our appreciation, but I think many of us who served in the Reagan Revolution will remember him most fondly for the prescient leadership he showed in the seminal years of policy debate in the late 70s that preceded the Gipper's election.

He (and Bill Steiger of Wisconsin) led the original supply side revolt in the House of Representatives and his influence on the emerging thinking of the Reagan team was immense. Our friend and former colleague Richard Rahn pays him apt tribute in today's Washington Times.

Scandal! The London Telegraph is in full-throated cry against the expense-account extravagance of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his cabinet members and parliamentarians of all parties.

However, even the Telegraph has to admit that the problem doesn't just reside in the system of taxpayer funded "allowances" designed to cover the costs of Members' maintaining houses in London as well as in their constituencies. It is a burden for members of Parliament to maintain two homes--as it is, even more so, for Members of the U.S. Congress, covering, as they do a huge continent that seldom can be reached by less than a plane ride. If the Parliament itself decides to help cover such costs the press should not be surprised that odd-seeming expenses will show up--house cleaning services or potted plants. The unfortunate Jack Straw, Lord High Chancellor, must explain why he needed an allowance for "two toilet seats. What exactly caused such excess, the media demand to know; tell us more. Maybe they should send an inquiry to the Privy Council.

No, the real problem is that Members of Parliament make too little to live on in one of the costliest cities on Earth. The allowance fees are a sad way to get around that reality. Sixty three thousand pounds a year (about US$96,000) obviously cannot allow a two-household existence, especially if one of the houses is in London. An American Congressman makes far more ($174,000).

The cure is to raise the salaries and then cut out the allowance system for household expenses.

Of course, the deeper cure is to reduce the time Members spend in Parliament trying to micro-manage one of the largest, most complicated economies on the planet. The Parliament makes is own work, in other words, and, hence, creates the pressed conditions that make scandals--real and faux--nearly inevitable. The heavy burden of government programs in welfare-laden Britain is a major contributor to the high cost of living there. Parliament itself imposes all those programs.

Meanwhile, wouldn't the Lord High Chancellor prefer to pay the bill for toilet seats out of his own salary rather than submit a record to be scrutinized by the media?

Discovery Institute bioethicist Wesley J. Smith describes another brazen threat against medical science researchers. Oddly, however, when one reads about the "war against science," the culprits are people who challenge the extent of human responsibility for global warming or oppose embryonic stem cell research. Where are the protests against violence-supporting opponents of medical experiments, not to mention those who want to stop irradiation of grain to prevent disease and those who prevent the use of genetically modified crops in such hungry regions as Africa?

William Donahue and the Catholic League spend their days counter-attacking those who attack the Catholic Church. It literally is full time work and if you are on their list, you hear from them constantly. What I hope their email readers understand--and, unfortunately, what I doubt that they do understand--is that you cannot trust the media to get a story right. Not just on subjects that reveal anti-Catholic bigotry , but on other forms of bigotry, and much else. It doesn't mean that the media are evil, just unreliable. Here's today's offering:

DID THE POPE JOIN HITLER YOUTH?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on media reports citing Pope Benedict XVI’s membership in the Hitler Youth:

“The English and French news services, Reuters and AFP, flatly say that the pope ‘was a member of the Hitler Youth.’ The U.K.’s Timesonline writes that he ‘was in the Hitler Youth and enlisted with the Wehrmacht,’ noting that ‘he had the excuse that this was standard practice for young German men at the time.’ The Daily Mail from Pakistan reports ‘This is a German pope who served in Hitler’s youth corps.’ Israel Today magazine says many Israelis interpret the pope’s visit to the Holocaust Memorial ‘as a stunt to cover up his past as a member of the Hitler Youth movement during World War II.’ In one article, the Associated Press notes that the pope ‘has written that the Nazis forced him’ to join the Hitler Youth, and in another it mentions ‘Benedict says he was coerced.’ Similarly, CBS reports that ‘Benedict has said he was coerced.’

“All of this is despicable smear. The New York Times got it right when it said that the pope ‘was forced into the Hitler Youth and the German Army in World War II.’ Bloomberg.com also got it right when it noted ‘the German pope’s obligatory membership as a 14-year-old in Hitler Youth’; it said further that he ‘didn’t attend meetings and he later deserted when he was drafted into the German army.’ Moreover, his failure to attend Hitler Youth meetings brought economic hardship to his family: it meant no discounts for school tuition. None of this was a stunt. Furthermore, no one can deny that the pope was coerced into doing what the Nazis demanded of young men at the time.

“Günter Grass and Jürgen Habermas, two German intellectuals loved by the pope’s critics, were also forced to join the Hitler Youth. But because they are left-wing icons, no one implies they are anti-Semitic.

“Even Bill Maher apologized when I blasted him for accusing the pope of being a Nazi. The guilty media should do likewise and correct the record.”

Here's a good example from the Catholic League today. To his great credit, the irascible Donahue demands a full confession. When he gets it, by the way, he invariably is charitable. Not that he gets the chance to forgive very often.

Reposted From Cascadia Prospectus
SEATTLE-Most days it’s the marine life that causes the most stir at the Seattle Aquarium. But on this sunny afternoon, an attraction of a different sort was the center of attention. As cars and trucks drove by outside the aquarium on the earthquake-prone Alaskan Way Viaduct, inside the fate of the aging structure was being sealed. Surrounded by supporters, Washington’s Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law the bill that commits the State of Washington to tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with a deep-bored tunnel.

“This wasn’t an easy process,” said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as he welcomed a crowd of several hundred to the bill signing ceremony, “but it is done, it is done, it is done!” Truer words have rarely been spoken.

Click below to read the extended post.

Gordon Campbell was re-elected Premier in British Columbia yesterday in a race that shows the strength of parliamentary politics. The actual distance between the losing New Democrat Party and the provincial Liberal Party was not great, but it was defining. Accordingly, the Liberals will continue to govern as the international recession drags on and B.C. prepares to host the Winter Olympics in 2010.

In Canadian terms, the Liberals are the more conservative of the big parties in B.C. and are not to be confused with the national Liberal Party. Campbell, as party leader, is an appealing figure, a good speaker and an adroit administrator. His third term victory should commend him to greater national leadership. (But I'm a Yank, what do I know?) He even managed to sound humble in what was a big victory. http://www.vancouversun.com/Business/election+Gordon+Campbell+wins+historic+third+term+premier/1589774/story.html

The election would seem to bode well for Northwest inter-regional relations. Campbell well reflects public sentiment in his province, as well as his own views, in supporting greater cooperation with the State of Washington on common transportation and trade concerns.

President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame was used by the school to underscore its increasingly liberal reputation and by the President to showcase his moderate rhetoric on abortion. The media stressed the rhetoric and did little to contrast it to the unbending Administration support of abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

However, there was a surprising and little noticed line that seemed to signal a change in policy that will matter a lot to pro-life medical personnel. Under President Bush the government allowed doctors and nurses morally opposed to abortion to opt out of abortion operations. Candidate Obama campaigned to change the conscience provision and two months ago the Administration announced its intention to remove it from the HHS guidelines.

However, at Notre Dame, the President stated,“Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

The redoubtable Catholic League president, Bill Donohue, applauded the president:

"Thus far, no final decision has been made. But given what President Obama said yesterday, it seems clear that he is now prepared to rescind the decision that was made rescinding conscience rights. For this he should be commended. We look forward to reading the revised proposal."

Big spenders will not like the decisions of California voters to nix all the tax referenda put before them today, save the one that holds back pay hikes for legislators when the budget is out of balance. Facing a 21.3 billion dollar deficit, California cannot avoid serious budget cuts now.

The question is whether the cuts will be conducted in ways to squeeze those who provide public services or those who receive them. The permanent lobby for more government is the government itself. When government must be reduced, the temptation is to hold on to public employees and to reduce public works and public services. But elected officials have to be fearful in this new environment. The California public is watching.

The rest of the country will be watching, too.

The sumptuary scandal in Britain that is pillorying Members of Parliament for abuse (and sometimes merely use) of the law that allows them to seek re-embursement for expenses on necessary second homes soon will be refashioned as an American story in news outlets near you. That's a prediction. You read it here first.

I suspect that there are American editors already salivating over the juicy sweetmeats uncovered by their London counterparts. Under a Freedom of Information law rashly imposed on Parliament by Parliament itself, an enterprising female sleuth was about to publish the sometimes embarrassing details of the MPs' expense charges. So a male individual with insider access to the records decided to be even more enterprising and peddle the information on Fleet Street. The London Times didn't come up with the price, but the Telegraph apparently did. (No one but the Speaker of the House seems to mind much about the rogue who profited from his privileged access to public documents.) The Telegraph is reporting day after day on the MPs who claimed questionable expenses and the rest of the press is right behind. They perform the journalistic equivalent of a strip-tease, dropping a sexy new item each day.

There is the case of the Honorable Douglas Hogg, a Lincolnshire squire who claimed expenses for clearing a moat (he's a Conservative MP, wouldn't you know?). There is Mr. Ben Chapman (no relation--though, come to think of it, we must be related somewhere back in the medieval murk, mustn't we?), a Labourite who over-claimed 15,000 pounds for a mortgage. One Tory apparently acquired funds to compensate him for steer manure for his garden (a Bourgeoise sort of temptation that the garden-mad English probably can forgive), while Margaret Moran, Labourite, charged for repairing dry rot at a seaside house that is far from her constituency and is owned by her husband. Mr. Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat millionaire, billed the taxpayers for "lavratory rolls" (toilet paper), "fluffy dusters" and "chocolate HobNobs".

Meanwhile, the Speaker, Michael Martin, was far too sanguine about it all, and, further, had the cheek to call for investigation of the leaker. So he has been forced to resign, the first Speaker to be defrocked in 300 years.

Much of the clamor is unfair. The country gentleman with the moat says he really didn't mean to charge for its clearing, but for some other expense that happened to be listed on the same invoice (the moat was in the eye of his accusers). And most MPs' expenses really were legal, their re-embursement merely an ill-advised, but understandable way to let parliamentarians recoup some of the cost of maintaining a house in their constituencies as well as in London. Still, the public is disgusted (or are disgusted, as the English say) or at least claims (claim) to be disgusted. I think the public is titilated, too. Hangings have always been popular in England.

But, a desire to knock off the toffs is at least as strong on this side of the Pond. Even though Members of Congress do not get paid for the homes back in their districts--and instead wisely take a bigger salary than their English cousins, $174,000 US versus about $95,000 equivalent for the Brits--they do get lots of potentially interesting little breaks in travel, per diems ands other re-embursements that can be examined and exposed. It usually is petty bounty for a slow news day, but now, in the aftermath of the English scandals, it will appear to questing reporters like El Dorado itself.

Watch for it. Will the American scandal re-make take one week or two to produce? In any case, prepare to be terribly shocked.

In case you hadn't noticed, Russia's culture, whether the subject is politics or business, doesn't always mesh as nicely with the traditions of the West as one might suppose. The recent arrests of gay rights demonstrators in Moscow--they say they were denied any kind of demonstration permit--illustrate a continuing difference in traditions of free speech on public issues. Regardless of their stance on any given issue, such as gay rights, almost all Americans and Europeans support the right to peaceful protest. In the economic realm, the same is true. However, in the case of a demonstration in Russia against Ford Motor Co., there was no official objection to the protest demonstration, but one does wonder what really was being protested.

In the U.S., it is commonplace for companies under financial pressure to cut back employment or, in certain circumstances, to reduce the work week in order to conform to production reductions. If the company lacks orders for cars, it can't afford to build them, can it? But the work week cut still must seem novel to Russians who are more used to a general social contract that accepts low wages in return for security. In the old days of the U.S.S.R., companies just kept making products, often regardless of market acceptance. It was one reason socialism failed.

There is no lack of economic demonstrations, or strikes, for that matter, in the West; and that is not my interest in the Ford Russia situation. Rather, I am just contrasting the apparent expectations that exist in worker populations. Americans usually don't try to force a company to keep producing when it lacks sales.

Of course, we do have the very recent tradition of simply bailing out failing auto companies. Maybe Russia should adopt that cultural innovation. The trouble is, Ford isn't willing to take a bailout in the U.S. and probably wouldn't want the government's "help" in Russia, either. And, to its credit, the Kremlin doesn't seem to be inclined to fund such a bailout, either.

British Columbia, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics

Thanks to pressure on the U.S. side of the border with Canada, Amtrak is ready to launch a second train per day to Vancouver, B.C. from Seattle. That represents a big commitment of time and money. It is especially topical now that Canada is getting ready to host the winter Olympics next year.

But the Canadian national government seems to be holding things up because it doesn't want to pay for the added costs of clearing passengers through customs. If there is no way to get the passengers to pay a nominal fee ($15 is about what is required to cover the bill), then surely the Canadian feds should step in and pay.

Why? Because trade and tourism are good business bets for Canada and the U.S. is always the biggest provider of same. If the U.S. government is willing to help boost this traffic, most of which will help the Canadians, surely our friends in Ottawa should be willing to assist. In the long run, there should be three, four, many trains up and down the West Coast--from Vancouver to Los Angeles or San Diego.

All these people clamoring for a "Green Future". How about committing to energy savings right now in this modest way?

Cascadia Center of Discovery has a good commentary here by Mike Wussow. Cascadia has a major conference on rail transportation coming up next week, by the way.

The smooth funny-man, social and political critic Dennis Miller toasted Discovery Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter's ideas coast-to-coast May 21, asking, "Johnny, where have you been all my life?"

Wohlstetter, author of The Long War Ahead (Discovery Institute Press) and the regular blog, Letter from the Capitol described the trap Speaker Nancy Pelosi finds herself in with CIA Director Leon Panetta and the trap the President finds himself in with former Vice President Cheney.

On Gitmo, Wohlstetter commented: "What Obama should do to spin this is he should go down to Gitmo himself (inspect it publicly) and then turn around and say, 'Any one in the world who say's Gitmo's a terrible place, open your own jails to the photographers."

Miller loved the idea (good for the country, good for national security and even for President Obama). "Look at you, Johnny! Christian (his producer), we have to get him back on as soon as possible."

Wohlstetter continues to build an audience and appeal on interview programs nationally.

In ways that seldom catch public attention the Sister City movement seems worthy of notice this Memorial Day Weekend. War in the 20th Century seems to stimulated people to want to connect and finding a specific foreign city--maybe like one's own and maybe different--as a way to implement the aim of "people to people" diplomacy.

It started after World War I with allies France and England. Then, after World War II Coventry, England and Dresden, Germany became sister cities--the two cities were among the worst bombed in the European Theater of the war. During the Cold War, Seattle became a sister-city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then a part of the USSR.

President Eisenhower made the program popular in the 50s when it was still part of the National League of Cities. Now the program is under the umbrella of Sister Cities International.

The stories of sister city relationships continue a visible signs of the desire of ordinary citizens for peace and true cultural diversity. Howard and Betsy Chapman, my brother and sister-in-law in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took up an avocational interest in the program a quarter century ago, establishing life-long friendships in Takaoka, Japan. Eventually, they set up a program to allow students from Fort Wayne's sister cities to come to Fort Wayne and for Fort Wayne youth to study in the sister city schools. On a recent trip to Plotz, Poland, Howard (a sometime columnist and Adjunct Fellow of Discovery Institute) found himself the surprise beneficiary of an honor: the dedication of a beautiful new "Chapman Hall" in one of two schools he visited. That moved him, but not as much as meeting some of the Polish young people who told him how their lives had been enriched by the time they had spent as guest students in Indiana.

The Sister City program is one way to honor the sacrifices of soldiers who died to make peaceful understanding the norm rather than the exception in the world. Little steps in "people to people diplomacy": who knows how far they will take us?

A three day conference sponsored by Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center began last night high atop the Columbia Tower Club in Seattle at a dinner to honor the mayor of Vancouver, B.C., Gregor Robertson. "His Worship"--a young man, actually, of easy-going sincerity--is part of the team of state and local leaders promoting high speed passenger rail on the West Coast.

The group took the Amtrak "Cascades" trip down to Oregon this morning--a beautiful trip, by the way--and were met by Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Congressman Peter DeFazio, among a host of luminaries. There was excellent media coverage and near-universal enthusiasm for increasing the number of trains from Seattle to Portland and from Seattle up to Vancouver, B.C. (scene of the forthcoming 2010 Winter Olympics). As current tracks are improved and a third track is laid on the Seattle to Portland route, the idea is to increase speeds from the maximum allowed now (79 miles per hour) to 110 or so.

But just improving the tracks and providing more sidings that permit freight trains to let passenger trains pass them will greatly reduce time and congestion.

Passenger rail is a real option for East Coast travelers and for some folks in Chicagoland and, these days, in Southern California. But, as Discovery Sr. Fellow Ray Chambers explains, the dream of a modern national system is still far off.

Ask yourself, what percentage of inter-city traffic should we expect trains to carry nationally? Got a reasonable number in your mind? Then consider that it is less than ONE percent now. There is every reason to make passenger rail a real choice. It has transportation benefits. Environmental benefits. And national security value.

Washington and Oregon are among the most forward-looking states in terms of public backing for passenger rail and the Spanish train company, Talgo, has been an excellent partner for the past decade. Once really good service is available, chances are good that other areas will catch the fever.

Jack Kevorkian is in jail where he belongs, a man who repeatedly killed off people in the supposed interest of assisted suicide. That Al Pacino is planning to play this man--sympathetically--in an HBO film is a sign that human degradation has become a Hollywood staple. (Please note that First Things is now hosting our colleague Wesley J. Smith's blog on bioethics, "Second Hand Smoke.")

A weighty commencement address is a rarity these days, mostly because the people who graduate and those who come to witness the event mainly are in a mood to celebrate, not to cogitate. Yet the grand tradition of commencement speeches is that they compel people to stand back and see where the civilization is heading. There was, for example, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri in 1946 and Alexander Solzhenitzen's unexpected assault at Harvard in 1978 on America's callow, materialist culture ("A World Split Apart").

The widely admired career diplomat and recent Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has called Whitman College graduates to confront the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be. Here is a good review in Crosscut.

Whitman has a public policy asset in alumnus Crocker, who has semi-retired to nearby Spokane, WA. He may challenge their assumptions, which could explain the relatively muted response to his address. One hopes they appreciate him. Challenging the assumptions of contemporary academia is the duty of all responsible citizens these days.

The latest hype from scientific materialists--following "Ida" ("Sweet as apple-cidah," as Eddie Cantor sang it)--is that we now understand, yet again, how life arranged itself from a few chemical elements. George Gilder comments from The Gilder Report today:

Friday Blogger Bonus / The Issue Has Never Been Chemistry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gilder Telecosm Forum Member: “Scientists may have figured out the
chemistry that sparked the beginning of life on Earth. Until now,
scientists couldn’t figure out the chemical reactions that created the
earliest RNA molecules.”
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/2009/05/13/how-rna-got-started-scientists-examine-the-origins-of-life.html

George Gilder, Gilder Telecosm Forum: The issue has never been chemistry,
but information. The chemistry of the carrier doesn't matter as long as it
is robust and reproducible. You need a low entropy (predictable) carrier
to bear complex high entropy information. Computers, for example, can be
made of matchsticks, beach sand or Lego blocks, among other things, but
these substances cannot make or program a computer. You need a recipe to
produce a pudding, but a pudding cannot write a recipe. The low entropy
carrier does not generate the information that creates it. It takes a mind
to produce information.

I predicted here a while back that the zesty British scandal about the abuse of personnel spending allowances for second homes for members of Parliament would be picked up as a theme tailored for American audiences. That now happens (and with direct references to our English cousins) on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today.

It's pretty thin, I think. The fancy camera of the Ohio Congressman is probably used by the office to photograph him with constituents and to prepare photos for the newsletter sent out to the district--something all members do. The Lexus story and some others raise eyebrows, perhaps.

If this is the best the media can come up with, we're a pretty honest bunch in the U.S. Not even one charge for cleaning a moat or renting porno movies! But I doubt that we have heard the last of the search effort.