Better Banter

Jane Fonda has issued a half apology for her antics in Vietnam, 33 years late. "The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda's daughter ... sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal," she said, calling the act, "The largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine." But she said she did not regret visiting Hanoi, or being photographed with American prisoners of war there. Because what she meant to say was she supported the troops, but not the war, right?

Today's NRO editorial on the death of Terri Schiavo is a must-read . Her death is a tragedy in itself, but the greater evil is, as the editors say, that "next time it will be easier. It always is."

You may have missed this Tuesday, but at the end of a NYT editorial blathering about the merits of Democrats filibustering Republican judicial nominiees comes the following acknowledgement of why they were wrong to support measures that would have quashed Republican filibusters during Clinton I: A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. At the time, we had vivid memories of the difficulty that Senate Republicans had given much of Bill Clinton's early agenda. But we were still wrong. To see the filibuster fully, it's obviously a good idea to have to live on both sides of it. We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide. While it's wonderful that they acknowleged their error, it is certainly a decade late...

Shamefully, the Banterers have yet to broach the hottest news topic of the last month, so I thought I'd make a quick observation. Poll numbers indicate that Americans are overwhelmingly against Congress and the President acting on behalf of Schiavo's parents. But the questions actually asked reflect the spirit of the libertarian feeling that the government should not invervene in deciding when someone should die, it should be up to the family. But the very purpose of government is to establish and enforce laws that protect the people. It is also the purpose of government to provide a judiciary system to settle disputes among citizens. What we have in the Schiavo case is 1) a possible infringement on Terri Schiavo's right to live. What if she doesn't want to die? and 2) a legitimate dispute as to who should make such a life or death decision. Congress did not step in to order the tube reinserted. They did not decide she should live. Congress and the President merely aske...

Fox Sports has the following info about Johnny Damon's views on meeting the President: Damon wants Bush's autograph for his 5-year-old son. "He knows every single president," Damon said. "His favorite, of course, is Zachary Taylor because he carried a sword. So I'm going to tell President Bush (to) start carrying a sword. He's going to have a stronger fan base." That's fantastic on so many levels. Bush is meeting with the Red Sox (have we mentioned they are World Series Champions?), Damon's son knows every president at the age of 5, he knows that Zachary Taylor carried a sword, and of course the image of Bush with walking around with a cavalry sword. That made my day.

Here's a disturbing story I've been following the last week. The limits of "eminent domain" are being tested in Connecticut, as the town of New London is attempting to use it to acquire private property for the "public good." What is this public good? Not a road or school, but a private commercial development, including a hotel. If you're puzzled as to how the government can force you to sell your home so that someone can put up a Marriott in its place, so is Justice Scalia. The case is in front of the Supreme Court, and arguments from the city and from some of the other justices are alarming, to say the least. The basic argument is that it is in the public good to put the land to a different use if it could garner more tax revenue for the government. The invaluable Jeff Jacoby gives us the following quotes: "For example, a Motel 6," O'Connor says. "A city thinks, 'If we had a Ritz-Carlton, we'd get higher taxes.' Is that ...

What to do with Iran? The Europeans subscribe to the idea that offering the mullahs enough carrots will make them quit their nuclear ambitions. The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday put this policy in its proper perspective: As it is, even if the Europeans were sincere, the deal being considered for Iran is certain to fail. The Iranians have already publicly forsworn any interest in nuclear weapons: Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi insists that Islam itself forbids their development. So just what purpose is served by another attestation of Iran's fidelity to the NPT? Perhaps Tehran's good faith may yet be purchased with (Airbus) planes and WTO membership. But what guarantee is there that the arrangement will last? As we have seen with North Korea, rogue regimes rarely stay bribed, and the most effective way Tehran could up the ante is to continue to develop its nuclear options. The statement that "rogue regimes rarely stay bribed" reminded me of the story of Ethelred the ...

The British Navy is actively recruiting gays and lesbians, according to an article in the International Herald Tribune (link from Drudge). But I bring your attention to it not to revisit "don't ask, don't tell," but to point out this chuckler (emphasis mine): In response to the ruling, in 2000 the services abruptly changed their policy, stopped monitoring a recruit's sexuality, and began allowing gays to serve. Gay men and lesbians have since fought in Iraq alongside heterosexuals, as well as alongside Americans , without it being an issue, military officials say. And I'll let you decide whether the following was intentional: The change in the law followed a long and agonized debate here, similar to that in the United States, over the possible consequences of allowing gays and lesbians to serve. But when it took place, it was an anticlimax.

Those of us who are involved in the vast right-wing pajama media conspiracy have noted many troubling stories in recent years regarding the rise of European anti-Semitism. Better late than never, the New York Times weighs in today with a piece about how Jews have been abandoned by Europe's left-wing elite. But what is wonderful about the article is that it relays to America and the world at large that European Jews are not content to let this happen, and have moved markedly rightward in recent years. In Britain in the last 60 years, the number of left-of-center Jewish members of Parliament has dropped from more than two dozen to about a dozen, primarily older, members while the number in parties of the center and right has climbed from none to about half a dozen. The Tories' would-be finance minister, Oliver Letwin, is Jewish, as is the party's new leader, Michael Howard. Mr. Lerman says Jews in Britain are now identified in public opinion more with the Conservative Party t...

Last night as I creeped home from work in stop-and-go traffic I noticed a small pickup truck pass me, its bed cap bedecked with pro-Kerry and anti-Bush stickers. Over the space of two or three traffic lights, I was able to read all of them, as she in the left lane and I in the right (naturally) passed each other with the natural ebb-and-flow of city driving. I have my own sticker (of a markedly different variety) on the back of my car, and was hoping she'd notice, but alas, she was consumed with a cell phone conversation. One sticker on the back of the truck had the unintended consequence of making me laugh out loud. It said: "Ideas are more important than knowledge." That, my friends, explains a lot. I was still considering this monumental admission when I received an email from a friend containing many musings from the great Thomas Sowell. One seemed like it was written in response to that sticker: People who pride themselves on having ideas often fail to understand tha...

Spring training kicked off today as pitchers and catchers reported to camp in Florida. Gear has not been fully unpacked and we have our first breakout of animosity between the World Champion Boston Red Sox and the also-ran New York Yankees. Check out Trot Nixon's comments regarding Alex Rodriguez: "Like Rodriguez says," Nixon said, "his running stairs at 6 in the morning while I'm sleeping and taking my kids to school. I'm like, well I'm not a deadbeat dad, Alex." On Nov. 18, Rodriguez's wife gave birth to a daughter. "He's got a kid now, too, so I guess he'll have his limo driver take her to school," Nixon said. It's going to be a great season. Let the posts fly.

If the people only knew what the Bush administration was peddling, why surely they would reject it outright as evil. So says The New York Times in a Monday editorial. ...the administration is manipulating information - a tacit, yet devastating, acknowledgement, we believe, that an informed public would reject privatizing Social Security. The Times grasps at many straws in coming to such a conclusion. The thrust of the message is that there is no problem with Social Security, and if there is no problem with Social Security, the Republicans must be eager to "fix" it only so that they can destroy this 70-year-old institution. No problem with Social Security? Here's the argument: At a recent press conference, Mr. Bush exaggerated the timing of the system's shortfall by saying that Social Security would cross the "line into red" in 2018. According to Congress's budget agency, the system comes up short in 2052; according to the system'...

Since you've heard nothing about it, your assumptions are correct: the Ohio presidential election recount looked just like the original count, with George Bush winning by about 119,000 votes. The results were announced Tuesday, December 28. However, if you were to search an "old media" website to find out about it, as I did, you would come up empty. Today's AP story about the 3rd-party candidates requesting a second recount caught my eye, and in reading the story, found out the above. Wondering why I didn't hear about the first, but admitting being on vacation may have had something to do with it, I searched the CNN and CBS websites for "ohio recount." Both sites have several previous stories about the demand for a recount, shining a bright spotlight on Jesse Jackson's latest embarrassing antics, but apparently, when the count actually happened, and it confirmed what rising star Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell had been saying all alon...

Imagine your wife is trying to put your son in the bathtub. But he doesn't want a bath, and he kicks and screams and throws a tantrum. What if, as your way of helping out, you say, "you know, until all this kicking and screaming stops... I don't think we can put him in the tub." Some help you'd be. What every parent knows about not encouraging bad behavior is lost on U.N. head honcho Kofi Annan, who said yesterday" The decision (to) go ahead or not is the Iraqis' decision, not ours. But the violence, if it continues, will have an impact on the elections. Elections don't take place in a vacuum. Please stop being violent, or else you might get what you want! One more reason for Mr. Annan to pack his bags and go home.

The latest missile defense test failure has invited a cheap shot from the New York Times editorial page yesterday. If it were not for the mammoth waste of taxpayers' money, the latest failure in the Bush administration's obstinate deployment of a totally unproven missile defense system could be titled Star Wars: The Farce. Two years after ponderously scripted flight tests had to be suspended because of widespread technical gaffes, the Pentagon tried again this week - and failed again. An interceptor rocket sat inert and shut itself down when the signal was given to take off after an invader missile bearing a mock warhead out in the Pacific. The failure, at the cost of a mere $85 million, was the latest evidence that the missile shield, a complex grafting of various unproven technologies, remains firmly in the dream stage. Yet the administration is going ahead with hollow defense plans to soon "activate" the first missile silos along the Pacific coast in a ludi...

Well, the Yankees have just signed Jaret Wright. We might as well concede the AL East right now. They've also picked up Tony Womack and jettisoned Miguel Cairo. The numbers on the two are pretty similar, though Cairo is a bit younger. But what I remember is that Cairo hit against the Red Sox in the postseason (.280), while Womack did not (.180). I'll also enjoy watching the lawyerly weasling they'll have to do to get out of the Giambi and Brown contracts. I like the trend.

Just when you thought lawsuits couldn't get any more ridiculous, there is a new campaign afoot to sue the United States for natural disasters caused by global warming. A study of a 2003 heatwave in Europe may give Pacific islanders and environmentalists new ammunition for legal cases blaming the United States for global warming, advocates said on Thursday... The British-based authors said human activity, especially emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels, had at least doubled the risks of heatwaves like last year's in which more than 20,000 people died. Of course, as Victor Davis Hanson likes to point out, thousands of elderly Frenchmen died in the cities because their families were too busy vacationing on the Riviera, and nobody thought to buy air conditioning. Arizona gets a lot hotter than France, and there was no crisis there. But here's where the ridiculous gets more disturbing: Among other cases, eight U.S. states and New York City filed su...

Congrats, Mark. Looks like Holy Cross put up a good fight though.

I noticed a couple of disturbing items in the news yesterday. Seemingly opposite in their purpose, both are foreboding illustrations of government policies designed to restrict debate about the past. The first comes from France . A professor of Japanese at the University of Lyon is the subject of a criminal investigation for questioning certain aspects of the Holocaust. Prosecutors in the southern city of Lyon said the investigation would focus on "denying crimes against humanity." France anti-racism laws have made denying the Holocaust a crime, punishable by fines and even prison. Now I don't think I'd like to invite any Holocaust-deniers over for Sunday dinner, but shouldn't there be some outrage about the supression of free speech? Isn't this precisely the type of speech that civil liberties organizations were designed to protect? The second case also involves atrocities in World War II and again ties in with Japan. But the angle is completely...

OK, maybe not. But tonight the Princeton Tigers travel to Worcester to take on the UNDEFEATED Holy Cross Crusaders, in a matchup sure to interest some of my fellow Banterers. GO 'SADERS!