I've noted before that Paul McCartney, though not a big soccer fan, is an Everton supporter. So I've always been puzzled by the homage McCartney pays to Liverpool great Kenny Dalglish on one of his live albums (Scott may know which album). At the end a song (I forget which one), the crowd starts chanting McCartney's name. McCartney responds by chanting back the name of Dalglish.

The mystery is solved, I think, in this interview with the Observer, which McCartney gave as part of his campaign to help the British Paralympic team. McCartney reveals the following:

1. He was "hopeless" as a footballer, and gave up playing once his peers moved on to the "formalized" game. That's "how it was with the Beatles; none of us was very sports-minded. . . .We were sports wimps and proud of it." McCartney likes "watching the football on the telly" and goes to the "occasional match," but is not a "massive fan."

2. His family "are officially Evertonians," and McCartney himself has always been an Everton supporter.

3. However, years ago at a concert at Wembley Stadium, which McCartney desperately wanted to fill, Dalglish led the entire Liverpool team, dressed "in light grey suits, white shirts, red ties and look[ing] really cool," into the stadium. Dalglish and McCartney became friends.

4. McCartney thus decided "against all the laws of sport and supporters" to back both Everton and Liverpool.

5. However, "if it comes down to a derby match or a crunch or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton."

6. It was John Lennon's idea to put old-time Liverpool forward Albert Stubbins on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Dixie Dean, the Babe Ruth of English soccer, was considered but they went with Stubbins because his name was funnier. These were just "names we had heard when we were growing up, we really didn't know very much about them."

In explaining how he can support both Everton and Liverpool, McCartney says "I don't have that Catholic-Protestant thing" and jokes that "I did have to get special dispensation from the Pope." Here, McCartney buys into the notion that the Everton-Liverpool rivalry has a sectarian component. I've studied this a little bit, and believe it's a misconception. As I understand it, very early on Everton had many Irish players and thus drew heavy Catholic support. These days, however, religion doesn't really factor in.

That's not to deny the blasphemous nature of backing both teams. But if anyone deserves a dispensation, it's McCartney.

Earlier today, John wondered whether a lot of Democrats who voted for Barack Obama on the theory that he was a staunch antiwar candidate are having second thoughts. It's a legitimate question, and it extends beyond the Iraq war. In fact, it turns out that an "internet petition" has been launched to pressure Obama to flip back to opposing legislation that would immunize telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration's warrantless intercept surveillance program.

Perhaps I'm overestimating Obama, but it's difficult to imagine him switching his position on this matter yet again, and least of all under pressure from leftists nearly all of whom will vote for him regardless. For some leftists, I suppose, signing an internet petition is a partial antidote for buyer's remorse.

The interesting question is not whether Obama will continue to tack towards the center as a candidate -- that's a virtual certainty. The interesting question is what he'll do if elected president.

In that event, it's quite likely that Obama will move back towards the left, since that's where his sympathies have always been and since, once elected, he'll feel less constrained in the short term. But it's almost certain that Obama won't satisfy his leftist supporters when it comes to foreign, defense, and security policy. That's mostly because Obama is far too intelligent to embrace leftist indifference to obvious national security concerns.

Thus, for reasons of pragmatism and patriotism, Obama will be quite keen, for example, to prevent a successful attack on the homeland. Indeed, I suspect that Obama's current position with respect to surveillance of terrorists (including suits against companies that cooperate in that surveillance) is not just the product of strategic political thinking but also a reflection of what he'd like to be able to do as president. Let's hope so.

If Obama is elected, I expect the left quickly to divide into those who express their remorse and those who sublimate it and get with the program. Both factions should be well represented. In other words, expect lots of internet petitions.

Dana Milbank thinks he detects “new levels of hysteria” in relations between the U.S., Iran, and Israel. But the only hysteria on display in Milbank's latest “Washington Sketch” is his own and that of Seymour Hersh.

The U.S. certainly isn’t exhibiting new levels of hysteria. President Bush says, as he’s said for years, that “all options are on the table, but the first option for the United States is to solve this problem diplomatically.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is far from eager to see the military option invoked by either the U.S. or Israel. He says, “this is a very unstable part of the world and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”

The Iranian foreign minister isn't exactly rattling the saber either. He has discounted the likelihood that his country will be attacked, and is touting the prospects for diplomacy.

Milbank duly reports all of this non-hysteria, and offers no countervailing evidence of any value. He notes that Iran has talked about closing down shipping lanes and that the U.S. has said this would be an act of war which would require a military response. This is old hat. Iran makes this threat from time-to-time, and the U.S. has never suggested that it would let such action stand. To make such a suggestion would be quite odd.

Milbank also cites the views of Liz Cheney, the Vice President’s daughter. But putting to one side the obvious fact that she does not speak for the administration, her statements on Iran to the Center for Strategic and International Studies simply reiterated, if forcefully, that the use of force should be on the table. (Milbank, of course, presents no argument or analysis in favor of taking the use of force off the table. Milbank doesn’t do argument or analysis; he does snark).

The main basis for Milbank’s hysteria is an article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh suggesting that Israel and the U.S. may be planning to attack Iran. But as Max Boot shows, Hersh’s reporting here is based on “misunderstanding, or outright deception.” Hersh bases his claim that large-scale military action is being planned on reports that the U.S. has undertaken a covert action program in Iraq. But, says Boot, “it’s far more likely that such a program, if it exists, is designed to be a substitute for military action.”

There is a serious possibility that Israel, a nation Iran has talked about destroying, will launch an attack. That serious possibility has existed for years and, absent a change in Israel’s government, it increases very slowly but very steadily as Iran moves towards developing nuclear weapons. However, David Hazony makes a pretty good case that the struggling Olmert government isn’t likely to launch a strike before the American presidential election takes place in November. It seems to me that if McCain wins, Israel won’t be in rush to attack after the election either. If Obama wins, however, Israel may feel it has a limited window in which to act with U.S. cooperation.

In any event, the fact that Dana Milbank couldn’t find a good congressional hearing, i.e., one in which an administration official is being harassed, to report on yesterday doesn’t mean that the likelihood of an Israeli or U.S. strike has changed appreciably in recent days.

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You have to wonder whether a lot of Democrats who voted for Barack Obama on the theory that he was a staunch antiwar candidate are feeling had. During the primary season, his position on Iraq was unequivocal. This statement is still up on his website:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

But, like everything Obama says--remember that word, "everything"--his Iraq position was subject to being rendered inoperative. That time has now come. Later this month, Obama will visit Iraq. Today he laid the groundwork for a reversal of his long-stated determination to withdraw, based on what he learns there:

As he arrived for a campaign stop in North Dakota, Mr. Obama told reporters on Thursday that he intended to conduct “a thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy during a forthcoming trip to the country. He stressed that he has long called for a careful and responsible withdrawal of American forces, but he declined to offer a fresh endorsement of his plan to remove one to two combat brigades a month.

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I’ve said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe,” he said. “I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.”

He added, “I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.”

That represents an inversion of Obama's position in the primaries, which was that Iraq was not stable and could not be made stable--it was in the midst of a civil war, remember? An hour or so ago, after he started taking heat today for backing off the trademark stand that won him the Democratic nomination, Obama denied that he had changed anything at all:

Senator Barack Obama held a second news conference today to address criticism that an earlier statement that he would be open to “refine” his policies, signaled a softening of his stance on troop withdrawl from Iraq.

“I have said throughout this campaign that this war was ill-conceived,” Mr. Obama said. “That it was a strategic blunder and that it needs to come to an end. I have also said that I would be deliberate and careful in how we got out. That I would bring our troops home at a pace of one to two brigades a month and at that pace we would have our combat troops out in 16 months. That position has not changed. I have not equivocated on that position. I am not searching for maneuvering room with respect to that position.”

Obama will continue to drift centerward over the next four months. By November, his position on Iraq will be hard to distinguish from John McCain's. Both candidates will say that we want to get our troops out as soon as possible, but should only do so at a pace that does not endanger Iraq's hard-won stability. This, by the way, is why the Democrats are so determined to peddle the myth that McCain wants to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. That's dumb, obviously. McCain, like President Bush, would like nothing better than to bring our troops home. But the Obama camp needs to distract attention from the fact that Obama's current position on the war represents an admission that McCain was right all along.

If the candidates' positions on Iraq not only converge between now and November, but are widely seen as converging, Iraq may be largely taken off the table as an issue, and the election will be won by the candidate who most vigorously advocates drilling for oil and natural gas.

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One of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives, perhaps the most important one politically, is what they think (or how they feel) about the United States. Conservatives think the U.S. is a great country. Liberals think it is a deeply flawed, but redeemable, country. Radicals think it is hopelessly bad and should be destroyed or remade.

This difference is brought into sharp focus by the debate that has erupted in recent days over patriotism. Barack Obama gave a speech on the subject in which, as we noted here, he suggested that the height of patriotism lies in criticizing one's country. This is a common liberal conceit. To Obama's left lie his wife's claim that America is "downright mean," and, still farther to the left, Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" rants.

One of the basic problems faced by liberals, and the reason why they tend to get sensitive whenever the subject of patriotism comes up, is that a large majority of Americans share the conservatives' view of their country. Rasmussen Reports adds up the numbers: 75% of respondents are proud of America's history, while 13% are ashamed of it. 64% say the U.S. is a positive role model for human rights.

As always, these numbers break down quite differently based on party affiliation. 91% of Republicans are proud of our country's history, compared to 64% of Democrats. Not surprisingly, there is also a racial divide: 81% of white respondents, but only 44% of African-Americans, are proud of America's history. (It would be interesting to see the breakdown for other races, but for some reason Rasmussen doesn't provide it.)

These data highlight one of Obama's problems as he moves toward the center for the election in November. His associations with anti-Americans like Wright, Ayers and Dohrn help him on the far left, the milieu from which he entered politics; don't hurt him with liberals; but are damaging, potentially severely so, to the extent that mainstream Americans learn of them. Watch for Obama to become more explicitly pro-American the closer we get to November.

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A reader created this video highlighting Barack Obama's relationship with terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

If you have a web site, feel free to embed it. Or you can email it to your friends. While the media have done a good job of covering the Jeremiah Wright story, Obama's relationship with Ayers and Dohrn has not gotten the attention it deserves.

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The New York Times has posted the long profile of Rush Limbaugh by Zev Chafets that is forthcoming in the Sunday Times Magazine. Chafets is a gifted journalist, but he goes off the rails with persistent inquiries about Sean Hannity. It's a line of inquiry that does not merit the attention Chafets gives to it and that resulted in Rush giving up on Chafets after he had opened up his life to him.

I nevertheless enjoyed the profile. I particularly enjoyed the platform of a putative Limbaugh administration that Chafets extractd from Rush:

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.

3. Privatize Social Security.

4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.

5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.

6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

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Over at Power Line News the Counterterrorism Blog is our blog of the season. It has two interesting posts (here and here) on the dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans and 11 other hostages yesterday by the Colombian government yesterday.

The New York Times has a good account of yesterday's events. The Times notes:

The American ambassador to Colombia, William R. Brownfield, and the United States combatant commander in the region, Adm. James G. Stavridis, were “engaged in the planning stages,” according to Gordon D. Johndroe, the deputy White House press secretary.

This was a Colombian-conceived and led operation; we supported the operation,” he said, adding, “This rescue was long in the planning, and we’ve been working with the Colombians for five years, since the hostages were taken, to free them from captivity.”

At Pajamas Media, Fausta Wertz comments: "The message is clear: Today’s spectacular rescue proves that Colombia, America’s most important ally in the region, is winning its war against terrorism — and winning big." By my review of the various news accounts, Hugo Chavez apparently could not be reached for comment.

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Mark Falcoff took a look at the University of Leicester's national Happiness Index for us yesterday. By the University of Leicester's calculations, Denmark comes in first. Reader Gene Schwimmer points out that the pseudonymous Spengler argued in a recent Asia Times column that Israel is the world's happiest country. Based on his plotting of fertility rates and suicide rates in 35 industrial countries ("loving life versus loving death"), Spengler argues that "Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation." By Spengler's reckoning, the United States comes in second and Denmark sixth.

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In Wesley Clark's appearance on Face the Nation last Sunday, one of the counts in Clark's indictment against John McCain's purported lack of executive experience was that "[McCain] hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall." The implied contrast Clark drew was with Clark himself rather than with Barack Obama. Obama has few achievements to his name beyond his electoral success.

Even though Clark was appearing as an Obama surrogate when he made the comments on McCain, the implied contrast Clark drew was obviously with Clark himself rather than with Obama. Obama has no executive experience. On the "bombs away" count in Clark's indictment, Ed Morrissey adds: "Barack Obama hasn’t ordered the bombs to fall, although to be fair, he has associated himself with someone who has — William Ayers."

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Joel Mowbray filed a report for us yesterday on a "star on the rise." The subject of Joel's report was Ohio state representative Josh Mandel. Rick Richman now follows up in a brief post (with video) about Mandel and his appearance this past Sunday at the Republican Jewish Coalition dinner held at the Reagan Library. Rick writes in a message early this morning: "I think Mandel is an important story."

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You may have seen this news story about watermelon having Viagra-like properties. It's an entertaining concept, but what struck me was the observation that the chemical in question is concentrated in the watermelon's rind.

If you didn't grow up in the Midwest, this may not have meant much to you. But if, like me, you came of age in an environment in which nearly every middle-aged and elderly lady made watermelon pickles from the fruit's rind, and such pickles were a staple at every church picnic and similar social event, today's news may have suggested, not for the first time, that those ladies knew what they were about.

This morning the Washington Post broke the news that Barack Obama got a sub-market interest rate when he took out a mortgage to buy his Chicago mansion in 2005:

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Obama's loan came from Northern Trust, whose employees have also donated $71,000 to Obama's campaign. This is, of course, the same home purchase in which Obama was assisted by his fundraiser, convicted felon Tony Rezko, who bought the adjacent lot for the seller's full asking price, while Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for the house.

It has come to light that several Democratic Senators availed themselves of sub-market mortgages under circumstances that are more or less suspicious. Obama is in that rather tawdry category.

What is most striking to me, though, is not that Obama shaved a fraction of a point off his mortgage by being a politically powerful customer. It is, rather, the rapidity with which Obama was able to turn his ascension to the Senate into material wealth. The Post describes the Obamas' mansion, purchased just a few months after Obama became a Senator:

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

How were the Obamas able to afford this on a Senator's $162,000 salary? They weren't, of course. But in January 2005, the same month in which Obama assumed his Senate seat, Random House "agreed to reissue an Obama memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children's book." How does an author who has never sold many books get a multi-million dollar book deal? By being an up-and-coming Democratic Senator.

Then there is Michelle Obama, whose salary doubled to over $300,000 when her husband was elected to the Senate. It was the Random House book deal, together with Michelle's newly-discovered value to her employer, that paid for the Obamas' Chicago mansion.

You can draw your own conclusions from all of this. It strikes me that Barack Obama is a very old-fashioned politician. He is a powerful man, and he expects the world to kiss his ring and shower him with money and other good things. This is a Chicago tradition, I guess, and it's not hard to understand.

What's a bit harder to make sense of is Michelle Obama's attitude. She says that America is a "downright mean country." Is this an insight that she had while sitting in her double steam shower? Or perhaps while fetching a prime vintage from her wine cellar, or musing in her solarium, or applying makeup in her marble powder room, or treading the granite floor in her kitchen? It's hard to say. Maybe it's just another instance of liberal guilt. But since Barack is as nakedly on the make as any politician in modern American history, the Obamas should perhaps drop the pose.

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On page 8 of the Washington Post's news section today, we learn that, according to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq has met all but three of the 18 original benchmarks set by Congress. The only three that have not met are (a) enacting and implementing laws governing the oil industry (though it's not clear why formal laws are necessary), (2) disarmament of militia and insurgent groups, and (3) making the Iraqi police more professional.

The Post hastens to add, however, that other recent assessments find that Iraq has failed to achieve "many of the goals that the Baghdad government and President Bush said would be reached by the end of 2007." But a parallel statement can probably be made with respect to the domestic situation here in the U.S.

The best evidence of the extent to which political progress has been made in Iraq is found in another story that also appears on page 8 of the Post -- the fact that Iraq's main Sunni Muslim political bloc is on the verge of rejoining the Shiite-led government after a boycott of almost a year. If this bloc, known as the Tawafaq Front, does join the government, that itself will represent progress. Perhaps more importantly, the bloc would not be ending its boycott in the absence of major progress.

The bloc withdrew from the Iraqi government last August over demands for constitutional change and the release of Sunni detainees from Iraq's prisons. Now, according to the Post, its leaders say the government has done enough to satisfy their core conditions. In particular, they cite the passing of the amnesty law and the government's efforts to crack down on Shiite militias.

A spokesperson for the Sunni bloc said: "We feel that a great deal of [the conditions] have been fulfilled." Considering the stakes for Iraq's leading Sunnis and their close proximity to the situation on the ground, this assessment seems persuasive, and far more probative than any assessment by the GAO.

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AEI resident fellow emeritus Mark Falcoff is the author, most recently, of Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro's Legacy. He has forwarded his comments on the University of Leicester Happiness Index, reported on by Business Week here. He writes:

Like most blog readers, I've become aware in the last few days of the so-called "Happiness Index" a British university decided to produce. Denmark came up as the happiest country in the world.

When I first read the headlines of this item I braced myself for the standing of my own country. Happily, it wasn't produced by the Pew Foundation. While the U.S. didn't come up in the top ten, we should probably be grateful it stood 23 out of 157. Ahead of us were Switzerland, Austria and Iceland, as well as--imagine this!--Puerto Rico. (Could sunshine and beaches be a factor? Where would that leave Iceland?)

I've always been suspicious of these surveys. I lived in Eugene, Oregon for ten unhappy years and was constantly being told by the national media that it was one of the best places to live in the United States. I concede this much: Oregon IS the best place to live in the United States, but only if you happened to be a tree. If you are a human being, you will be very depressed by the weather. Most of the year it is either raining or just about to rain. Oregon has the second highest suicide rate in the United States (the highest is Washington State, which gets even more inches per year). By the way, Denmark has one of the highest suicide rates in world.

Returning to the happiness index. Reading the details of the survey, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the findings associated money and free markets with happiness (even though it took back half of it by emphasizing the "social democratic" version of capitalism in Western Europe). An even bigger surprise was to see that the Japanese aren't as happy as the Chinese (90th to the Chinese 82).

What could this possibly mean? Japan is one of the most sophisticated, best-organized and prosperous countries in the world. I have not been to China but have been told by those who have that problems of air pollution, lack of courtesy and urban disorganization, not to mention corruption, are all very challenging. Perhaps English universities should try something else besides chasing the will-o'-the-wisp of happiness, a subject that has preoccupied moral and religious thinkers from time immemorial.

UPDATE: Our astute reader Jeff Parks observes: "This line from the Mark Falcoff quote says it all: 'By the way, Denmark has one of the highest suicide rates in world.' Of course a country is going to rate the happiest if a good chunk of its miserable people keep offing themselves! They aren't around to take the survey!" Reader Peter Shalen, on the other hand, responds in a serious vein, declaring solidarity with the Danes:

I remember reading the passage in Arthur Frommer's Europe on $5 a Day, all the way back in 1961, where he described the Danes as "the happiest people in the world." I didn't get a chance to visit Denmark until 1967, but my visit certainly confirmed what Frommer said.

I'm not sure why Jeff Parks wants to begrudge the Danes their happiness, given that they are also among the most pro-American nations in the world. Denmark used to be, and for all I know may still be, the only country outside the US that had an annual 4th of July celebration. And since the cartoon riots, those of us who are concerned about the Islamist threat have yet another reason to show solidarity with the Danes.

As you hinted in your piece on the subject, political conditions can make the pursuit of happiness possible, but they can't make people happy. It came as no surprise to me that the Japanese came out low on the happiness scale. Their culture produces an anxiety in people that makes many of them seem ill at ease and almost neurotic. In one of Bertrand Russell's writings, possibly his autobiography, he pointed out that things that make people happy are not necessarily the things that we are used to regarding as important in life.

Suffice it to say that there is a good reason why the Declaration of Independence only recognizes our unalianable right to "the pursuit of happiness" and not to happiness itself.

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Over at AOL, our question for the day is: What do you think of Barack Obama's private promise to end strict federal oversight of the Teamsters Union?

So far, 75 percent believe it's "a corrupt bargain." Only 13 percent are unconcerned.

You can vote here.

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Joe Asch '79 generously funded a highly successful writing program at Dartmouth for the better part of a decade until Dean Carol Folt terminated the program. As I suggested last night, Dean Folt's decision seems to have been due in part to displeasure with Joe's sharp criticism of Dartmouth's administration.

There's no one I'd rather hear from on the subject of the teaching of writing at Dartmouth than Joe. This morning, I received the following message from him:

When the new "Institute" was announced, about 30% of freshmen were exempted from Writing 5 based on their AP and SAT writing scores. These top-scoring folks are now the object of most of the additional spending in the writing program! This move makes little sense to me; one might imagine that these students are among the College's best writers.

Beyond this point, an external review of the writing program a few years ago showed that the Writing 5/Freshman Seminar/RWIT model was not successful in teaching students to write (as almost any faculty member who requires writing from students can tell you). To now add to the number of students in this failed system is simply to do "more of what does not work".

It seems that one of the real motivations behind this change was simply to get more freshmen into small classes at the lowest possible cost. Too many students were finding freshman year an impersonal experience due to the large size of so many classes at the College today, and this is the administration's slapdash solution.

This much ballyhooed change at Dartmouth is further proof that the College desperately needs a new President who can appoint effective, imaginative administrators.

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As a philosophy major at Dartmouth, I came under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein. If I recall correctly, John was even more heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, perhaps because he understood him better.

Almost a decade after leaving college, I read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. By then, I was finally moving decisively away from the left-wing ideologies that had addled my brain. Popper’s great book hastened the movement. In short, I count Wittgenstein and Popper among my intellectual heroes.

Popper, however, was a fierce enemy of Wittgenstein. On October 25, 1946, that enmity produced a legendary confrontation at the Cambridge Moral Science Club. In their brilliant and immensely entertaining book, Wittgenstein’s Poker, David Edmonds and John Eidinow attempt to figure out what actually happened that evening in England, and why.

The “why” turns out to be the easy part. Wittgenstein and Popper both came from Vienna and both belonged to families that once had been Jewish. The similarity ends there. Wittgenstein was the scion of one of the wealthiest families in the Empire, a family comparable perhaps to the Mellons. Popper’s father was a fairly prosperous lawyer who was ruined by the post World War I inflation. Wittgenstein was an intellectual sensation and the idol of the influential Vienna Circle (Wittgenstein was already at Cambridge when the Circle formed). Popper was unable to gain admission to the Vienna Circle and became the arch-enemy of its teachings. Popper also did not secure a place in England after he left Austria in the dark days before World War II. He spent the war teaching in New Zealand. There he wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies.

The book propelled Popper to the intellectual forefront, and was part of the reason why the Cambridge Moral Science Club wanted to hear from him in 1946 (though he had appeared before that body once prior to the war). Popper wanted to use the occasion to take on Wittgenstein. In this, he seems to have been assisted by Bertrand Russell with whom he met (and perhaps "conspired") earlier in the day. Once, Russell had been Wittgenstein’s sponsor and good friend, but by the 1940s the two were barely on speaking terms. For one thing, Wittgenstein had largely repudiated the breakthrough thinking, set forth in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), that had commended him to Russell.

Popper saw Wittgenstein’s views as anathema. However, it seems unclear whether (or to what extent) he was familiar with the views Wittgenstein actually held in 1946 and thus, whether (or to what extent) his antipathy had much to do with true philosophical disagreement. Wittgenstein hadn’t published any works of philosophy since the Tractatus which, as just noted, he no longer stood by. It is certain that Popper was aware that Wittgenstein now viewed the traditional problems of philosophy as essentially word puzzles rather than matters of serious concern. Popper took vehement exception to this view. However, as I’ll argue below, it’s questionable whether the two disagreed in any profound sense.

As to what happened in Cambridge on October 25, 1946, the disagreement is profound. There seems to be little doubt that Popper challenged Wittgenstein with a series of questions he had formulated in advance. They were intended to force the concession that a given matter (e.g., causation, induction) raises a genuine philosophical problem. Not surprisingly, no such concession was forthcoming. However, Wittgenstein did seem to become somewhat agitated, and nervously handled a fireplace poker.

In Popper’s account, Wittgenstein more than just handled the poker; he brandished it in a manner that could be considered threatening. At the crucial moment, Wittgenstein challenged Popper to provide him with an example of a moral rule. Popper responded, “Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers.” According to Popper, Wittgenstein, in a rage, threw the poker down and stormed out of the room, banging the door behind him. His humiliation was complete.

Others remember the incident quite differently, though. In fact, all of the accounts obtained by the authors are at variance with one another in at least some respects. Those at the opposite end of the spectrum from Popper's recall that it was Russell, not Popper, who provoked whatever agitation Wittgenstein experienced. In these accounts Wittgenstein left after an exchange with Russell. Moreover, Wittgenstein did not handle the poker in a threatening manner, did not “storm out” of the room, and did not slam the door. Wittgenstein almost never stayed for the entire meeting of the Moral Science Club. Usually, he said his piece, dominated the discussion, and then left. This time he might have left earlier than normal (he wasn’t dominating the discussion to the usual extent). However, some contend that his withdrawal wasn’t particularly remarkable.

What about the key matter -- Popper’s “moral rule of pokers” rejoinder? Those who dispute Popper’s account most sharply insist that he made this comment in response to a question posed by a student (one of Wittgenstein’s admiring disciples) after Wittgenstein had already left. In this account, Popper’s remark could not have been a triumphant put-down of his rival.

The authors of Wittgenstein’s Poker conclude that, in all likelihood, Wittgenstein had left the room by the time Popper made his famous remark. They stop short of saying that Popper lied, suggesting that Popper honestly believed his own account. Here, they are less than fully persuasive. On the other hand, their conclusion that Popper was “all too human” and Wittgenstein (who comes as even stranger than I expected) “not quite fully human” seems close to the mark.

As to their philosophical differences, I think the authors overrate them. Though both are considered philosophers, the two men were engaged in very different enterprises. Popper was addressing practical questions such as: is an open society preferable to a closed society, which philosophical systems are inimical to an open society, and which approach to science produces the most scientific advances. Wittgenstein would not likely have denied the legitimacy of these questions; he just would have called them something other than what people have meant by the term "philosophy." (Some accounts of the October 1946 confrontation indicate that this is what Wittgenstein was getting at). Wittgenstein's major enterprise consisted of showing that the problems traditionally associated with philosophy are word puzzles, not genuine problems. Popper himself seems to have had little interest in most of these problems.

After Wittgenstein’s death, his second major philosophical work, Philosophical Investigations, was published. Popper had this to say about the book:

If you force me at gunpoint to say what it is I disagree with in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, I should have to say, "oh -- nothing." Indeed, I only disagree with the enterprise. I do not disagree with anything which he says, because there is nothing with which one can disagree. But I confess I am bored by it -- bored to tears.

Popper and Wittgenstein were in the same field in roughly the same sense that a trial lawyer and a professor of jurisprudence are. The trial lawyer may think that the professor of jurisprudence is wasting his time, but he’s not likely to view the professor with profound contempt, much less hatred. But then, trial lawyers are more gentle, tranquil souls than academic philosophers.

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Like much that's going on in the presidential campaign these days, I didn't find much of interest in Wes Clark's assessment of the relationship between John McCain's military service and McCain's credentials to be president. In view of the astonishing thinness of Obama's credentials, some wondered what Clark was thinking when he made his comment. The answer is: "I should be president."

I did find it amusing to hear some liberals challenge those conservatives who were offended by Clark's remark to explain why they weren't similarly outraged when the Swiftvets questioned John Kerry's military record in 2004. The two cases are quite different. If those who were in prison with McCain in North Vietnam were to say that McCain wasn't really tortured, or to say that McCain went on Hanoi radio to accuse U.S. troops of criminal conduct, then the two cases would become analogous. And then you would have an interesting issue.

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Wall Street Journal reporters Brody Mullins and Kris Maher reported in early May how Barack Obama won the Teamsters' endorsement for president. In a meeting earlier this year, he privately "told the union that he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption[.]" Obama holds himself out as a new kind of politician who refuses to play the old games. The story should have blown Obama's pretense up several times over, but it has generated next to no coverage.

The Teamsters union of course has had a long and storied relationship with the Mafia. To take just one vivid example, consider the case of Anthony Senter. Senter was the Mafia hit man who arranged a deal with a Teamsters local for a pension after he was convicted of being a member of a mob hit squad in New York City that committed 25 murders and dismembered most of the victims.

Senter's attempt to secure a pension from his friends at the Teamsters was disrupted in 1994 by the Independent Review Board. The IRB is the body created by a 1989 consent decree to monitor the Teamsters for corruption. Since 1999 the Teamsters has sought to have the consent decree dissolved. The Department of Justice has not thought that such a good idea. The Teamsters would like new leadership at the Department of Justice with a better attitude.

The Teamsters agreed to the decree with the government. The decree was entered into before, and signed by, Judge David Edelstein of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The consent decree resolved the government's prosecution of the Teamsters for racketeering.

Certain provisions of the decree were enforced by a permanent injunction. The injunction ordered the Teamsters to refrain from racketeering activity (as defined under federal law) and from knowingly associating with the Mafia. The consent decree also provided for the creation of the three-member IRB in 1992. The jurisdiction of the IRB is limited to the prevention of corruption, including bribery, embezzlement, extortion, loan sharking, and other serious violations of federal law, or control and influence of the Teamsters by the Mafia.

The page-one Wall Street Journal story by Mullins and Maher turned a spotlight on the Teamsters' endorsement of Barack Obama. According to the Journal, Obama advised the Teamsters prior to its endorsement of him that he supported dissolving the permanent injunction to which the Teamsters agreed in 1989 and under which it has been operating ever since. Dissolution of the consent decree would require judicial blessing, but if the government were to seek dissolution of the decree, it would be highly likely to secure it.

Taking a leaf from the Clinton scandal management playbook, the Obama campaign dismissed the Journal story as old news. Even if it was old news, the Journal story provided the detail and attention that the story richly deserved.

In 2002, the left-wing Nation magazine frankly condemned Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa's goal of eliminating federal oversight of the Teamsers as "a bad idea." It still is. Are the corruption and exploitation of the Teamsters no longer a serious threat? Someone really should ask Barack Obama why not.

The Nation article noted that in May 2002 the IRB permanently barred from the union two of Hoffa's closest associates (William Hogan Jr., president of Chicago's Joint Council 25, and Dane Passo, Hoffa's former Midwest campaign manager and special assistant). According to the article, they were disciplined for trying over an extended period of time to force the Las Vegas local to permit a mob-linked labor broker (of which Hogan's brother was vice president) to provide low-wage, nonunion workers for convention setup work, thus threatening to undermine the Teamsters contract and displace union members.

Following Mullins and Maher's Wall Street Journal story, John Judis revisited the 2002 incident that showed the continuing threat that corruption poses to the Teamsters, and therefore the continuing need for the IRB. Judis raised two salient issues regarding Obama's pledge to the Teamsters:

The first is procedural. Obama's promise to close down the IRB suggests a Bush-like contempt for the customary relationship between government and the judicial process. The president himself can't shut down the IRB. He can only recommend to his attorney general that he recommend to the U.S. Attorney in New York that it be shut down. But in these kind of touchy matters, presidents usually defer to the judgment of their attorney generals. By coming close to promising a shutdown, Obama was putting politics above judicial procedure--which is just the kind of "Washington" behavior that he likes to criticize his opponents for doing.

The second reason for concern is more substantive. Labor leaders have made plausible arguments for shutting down the IRB, but a Chicago politician should be extremely wary of acceding to them. If there is continuing mob influence in the Teamsters, it is probably centered in the Chicago area. And in the last decade, the Teamsters in Chicago have shown little enthusiasm for rooting out corruption in their ranks. As a veteran Chicago politician surrounded by a veteran Chicago campaign staff, Obama had to have known this--and that makes his warm words to the Teamsters all the more disturbing.

Judis's discussion of the related events in the linked article is also worth reading.

Former Teamster William Hogan stands at the center of the 2002 incident that shows the continuing Mafia threat to the Teamsters. In a letter to the New Republic, where Judis's article appeared, Hogan describes the IRB allegations against him in connection with the 2002 incident as "discredited." Responding yesterday, Judis commented:

Mr. Hogan accuses me of "recycling discredited allegations by the controversial government 'watchdog,' the Independent Review Board." And the question to ask is: "Discredited by whom?" In 2002, the IRB, which was created by agreement between the Teamsters and the Justice Department to root out corruption and organized crime influence in the union, barred Hogan and his close associate Dane Passo from any future association with the Teamsters.

The IRB found that the two men tried to get the Teamsters local 631 in Las Vegas, which provided workers to convention shows, to allow Richard Simon, a Chicago labor broker, to provide non-union workers to conventions. The workers, which would be provided by Simon's United Temps, would not receive benefits or overtime. All in all, they would earn less than half of the Teamster workers; and under the labor agreement that the Teamsters had with the conventions, Simon's cut-rate contract could then become the standard for all convention employees. The Teamsters would be screwed, but Simon would come out ahead, and so would Hogan's brother Michael, who was the vice president of Simon's company, and also the head of a convention company that would be hiring Simon's workers. No agreement was signed because the IRB began an investigation and Ed Stier, the head of the Teamsters' internal oversight group, warned that Simon might be "involved with some crime figures in Chicago, that he was a bad guy."

In its decision, the IRB concluded that "Passo and Hogan colluded with Simon to enable Simon to profit from paying his workers below the rate the governing Teamster contract required. Passo's and Hogan's actions, which Local 631 officials fought, were designed to benefit United and the trade show contractors, including Hogan's brother's company, There was no benefit to Local 631, its members or the United employees." Hogan, of course, disputed these findings. Advancing arguments similar to those in his letter, Hogan appealed the IRB's decision to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. When that court ruled against him, Hogan appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, but it, too, rejected his arguments against the IRB ruling. "Having carefully reviewed the hearing record," the Appeals Court wrote, "we concluded that the IRB's findings are supported by substantial evidence, are not arbitrary or capricious, and plainly demonstrate that Hogan and Passo were negotiating a contract that they knew would have harmed the union." So the question remains: allegations discredited by whom?

As for Obama, Judis concludes: "Either he is guilty of willful ignorance about a powerful segment of the Chicago political scene, or he is, for better or worse, another example of that well known species, politicus hypocriticus." The New Republic has posted the exchange between Hogan and Judis here, and it should be read in its entirety.

Some Democrats recently sought the impeachment of an attorney general for politicizing justice by the firing of eight United States Attorneys. Many Democrats joined in driving the attorney general from office on the charge. Judis to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe the charge was bogus in the case of Alberto Gonzales. But Democrats are now about to nominate a presidential candidate who is engaged in something that looks very much like the genuine article, with the appearance of corruption thrown in for good measure.

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