Deacon, I think there is a close relationship between the two stories you've just posted on. It seems to me that, viewing the war in a broad context, the Administration is guided by two basic principles: first, we cannot make war on the entire Arab world, let alone the entire Muslim world, simultaneously. If the war becomes Us vs. the Muslims (or the Arabs) it will be immeasurably harder to win. Second, no matter how successful we are in suppressing the immediate terrorist threats, the world cannot have peace in the long term unless Islam is reformed. I think these two principles--both clearly correct, in my opinion--influence everything the Administration does in the war.

I certainly do not believe that Islam is, at present, a religion of peace. On the contrary, I think it has been the source of much violence. But it is important, maybe essential, for our future security that Islam become a religion of peace, like Christianity and Judaism. So when President Bush keeps talking about Islam being peaceful, it is not because he is too dumb to notice that it is not peaceful at present, nor is it because he wants to be our theologian in chief. It is because he recognizes that we must do all we can to encourage the reform of Islam, and toward that end, the official position of our government must be that, in its essence, the Islamic faith is peaceful--even though the "real," peaceful Islam may not yet exist. So, as a matter of descriptive accuracy, I agree that Islam is not now a religion of peace; but as a matter of government policy, I think President Bush is right in taking the position that it is in essence, and must become in practice, a religion of peace.

Likewise, everyone knows that the Saudis are the prime financers of Wahhabism and terrorism; so why continue to pretend that they are our friends? Because we cannot fight the entire Arab world at once. We must prioritize our targets, and begin by destroying those who are most dangerous to us. We must also take the position that various Arab countries are our friends, no matter how suspicious of them we may be. The Saudis pose no independent threat; they support terrorists because they are being blackmailed. Unlike Iraq, they will never use weapons of mass destruction to shelter terrorists. So they can wait. Once al Qaeda has been destroyed and the Iraqi and Iranian regimes have been deposed, what happens in Saudi Arabia will be more or less irrelevant. In all likelihood the Saudi royal family will be overthrown, but either way, events in Saudi Arabia will not compromise our security.

What these two issues have in common is that it is not the job of the President to go around accurately describing the world. That is the job of a pundit. The President's job is to use all the means at his command to pursue objectives that will assure the country's security. If it furthers those objectives to take the position that Islam is a religion of peace, or to assure the Saudis that we value their friendship, so be it.

Here, courtesy of FrontPage Magazine, is a story from World Tribune.com about how the Saudis are still sending tens of millions of dollars to Al Qaeda. According to this article, the CIA has tracked the flow of funds from 12 Saudi businessmen into Al Qaeda and has provided the names to the Saudi government. However, the Kingdom took no action.

The Washington Post seems to take pleasure in reporting that "President Bush finds himself in a rare disagreement with conservatives in his party over his efforts to portray Islam as a peaceful religion that is not responsible for anti-American terrorism." Perhaps we can find a middle ground here. President Bush may have had good reason to make conciliatory statements about Islam in the past. But it seems to me he has made enough of them. Pat Robertson is right -- "Bush is not elected as theologian in chief." Perhaps it is time for him to stop opining on whether, or to what extent, is a peaceful religion. As to the merits of the case, I concur with the comments of Norman Podhoretz that appear at the end of the article.

I did not know until moments ago that Mark Steyn has a website: Steyn Online. Steyn has to be the world's most prolific, and funniest, political commentator. (Minnesota's Unfunny Humorist should take a lesson from him.) Check out Steyn Online.

I spent some time this morning cruising my usual news sources, but it's a pretty slow day. So rather than post on anything in particular, I want to recommend that you read Tim Blair. Tim is one of the best of the bloggers and is one of the leaders of the good fight in Australia. Check him out; he begins today by deconstructing the ravings of an Australian lefty. Funny how hard it is to tell their lefties from ours.

I know what you mean, Trunk. It drives you and I both nuts.

The Weekly Standard out this morning has a fascinating report by Stephen Hayes from the front lines of the Landrieu-Terrell race: "The Battle of New Orleans." The article contains a couple extremely harsh quotes from Terrell and her campaign attacking Landrieu. Hayes asks Terrell about each one, and she sounds remarkably reasonable and undefensive.

With respect to the publicized remark she made, in the course of a televised debate, about Landrieu's abandonment of her faith, for example, Terrell says: "Maybe it's an inappropriate comment. I don't know. But as a practicing Catholic, I just don't understand how she can reconcile being a Catholic with her support for federal funding of abortions on overseas military bases, or with distributing morning-after pills in school."

With respect to a fire-up-the-troops statement by one of her supporters suggesting that the race pitted the "righteous" versus the "wicked," Terrell says: "Well, you know, people have the right to characterize how they see it. There are major differences between Mary and I, big philosophical differences. I think people see things based on their own philosophies and their own view of life. I say what I believe, and even if people disagree with my philosophy, I think the voters know I'll work hard to promote Louisiana and Louisiana values."

My only quarrel with Terrell is her failure to use the objective form of the first-person pronoun, a kind of educated illiteracy that drives me nuts. In all other respects I think God's on her side.

Who the heck is Amir Taheri? All I can tell you is that he is the author of one brilliant column in today's National Post: "France must choose sides." (Another one we would have missed but for our friends at RealClearPolitics.)

The Jerusalem Post's editorial reflection on Thursday's attacks is a model of civilized deliberation: "Two attacks on freedom." (Courtesy of our friends at RealClearPolitics.) It would be piling on to ask you to compare and contrast it with the Star Tribune editorial on Tyesha Edwards' murder, but that is your assignment for today.

Mark Steyn's most recent National Post column coincided with Thanksgiving and we somehow missed it. But we wanted to see what he had to say about Morongate, and he didn't let us down: "All the Liberals have to offer are loose lips." Need I say that it is outstanding? (Thanks to the chairman of the Claremont Institute for the tip.)

Soul music fans of my age are familiar with Johnnie Taylor (not to be confused with Little Johnny Taylor), "the philosopher of soul." He was the artist who sang 1968's chart-topping rhythm-and-blues smash "Who's Making Love." But far and away his biggest success was 1976's across-the-board number one "Disco Lady," the first single ever certified platinum (which at the time meant sales of over two-million copies). (Thanks to the All Music Guide entry on JT for refreshing my recollection.)

Not to be confused with the wonderful Johnnie Taylor (or Little Johnny Taylor) is the convicted mass murderer John Taylor who shot up the Wendy's in New York City. This morning's New York Post carries William Tucker's irrefutable column on the wisdom of putting him to death: "Johnny Taylor should die."

Rocket Man, those of our readers who do not actually read the Star Tribune editorial you write about can have no idea how much pain you endured on their behalf. For myself, I thank you for withstanding the pain necessary both to read and to make sense of what the editorial is saying. I can't get much beyond the editorial's self-parody of liberal nostrums; you make much more sense of it than I could have.

But it is worth our attention. In 500 words the editorial distills the essence of nonsense that has brought Minneapolis to the verge of ruin. The Star Tribune editorial board has deliberated on the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards and suggests the road to recovery begins with a viewing of "Bowling for Columbine." Amazing!

Many of you have read the Trunk's brilliant column on the recent murder of an 11-year-old girl by Minneapolis gangsters, "The Silence of the Liberals." Tomorrow morning, the Minneapolis Star Tribune weighs in with an editorial on the same topic. The editorial starts relatively well, but predictably veers leftward. In the Strib's view, the gangsters are apparently the real victims:

"But what next? How to prevent some of Tyesha's classmates from turning into those sullen young men standing around street corners with no jobs except selling drugs, with no greater ambition than to shoot guns at rival gangsters in a kind of nihilistic child's play?"

How indeed? The average citizen would no doubt assign law enforcement a prominent role in preventing young men from "shooting guns at rival gangsters." Law enforcement, however, is never mentioned by the Strib. Instead, the newspaper blames Tyesha's murder on......Ronald Reagan. You think I'm kidding?

"Minneapolis citizens, from City Hall to the kitchen table, must resolve that the downward spiral of the 1980's will not resume, that the heroic and successful work of rebuilding Powderhorn and other inner-city neighborhoods will continue."

This verges on the mind-boggling. The murder victim was not even born in the 1980's, and it is not clear what this reference is supposed to mean. In the last twenty years, it would be hard to think of a single Minneapolis politician who been elected without the Star-Trib's endorsement. The city's government has been exclusively in the hands of liberal Democrats throughout that time. City, county, state and federal spending on social programs has increased steadily. So what on earth is the Strib tallking about?

Of course, Minneapolis has experienced a "downward spiral" since the 1980's. The downward spiral has involved a welfare/crime explosion and has been the direct result of Minnesota's decisions to 1) pay far higher welfare benefits than surrounding states, and 2) refrain from punishing criminal activity wherever possible. These decisions have resulted in a rapid influx of welfare recipients and criminals (typically, the boyfriends of welfare recipients)--a fact which every resident of Minneapolis knows, but which the Strib never hints at.

But the Strib isn't quite done. It also suggests that :

"Another constructive step would be to visit the Lagoon Theater in Uptown Minneapolis or the Southdale Center in Edina to see Michael Moore's powerful documentary film 'Bowling for Columbine.' Whether or not you like Moore's slant on politics, and despite his rather loose way of dealing with fact, the film overall is a gripping indictment of the fear and paranoia that produced and sustain America's gun culture."

Even the Strib recognizes that Moore is a liar. But never mind, see his movie anyway. It's against guns. Of course, the gangsters who murdered Tyesha weren't "fearful" or "paranoid." Those terms would describe the law-abiding citizens who cower indoors to avoid the gangs. (That didn't save Tyesha; she was shot inside her own home.) The gangsters are loose and confident, secure in the knowledge that Minneapolis' civic authorities are--if not precisely on their side--certainly not anxious to do anything that would interfere with their fun.

Fortunately, the Minneapolis Police Department--which knows perfectly well who the gangsters are--arrested the murderers before policemen had an opportunity to read the Strib's editorial. Otherwise, they might have been watching "Bowling for Columbine" instead of checking their own arrest warrants, which, coincidentally no doubt, included two of the murderers.

I am delighted to find a column that expresses my own total disdain for the United Nations, not in some crackpot publication, but in the New York Post, an organ that is within shouting distance of the mainstream press. Andrea Peyser's column "How Dare the UN Ask Us For Money" is terrific.

Great quote: "Next month, the 191-nation General Assembly, which held 'debates' - their word - on terror after the 9/11 attacks, will formally approve its request for the [$1.3 billion] loan [to renovate the UN's New York headquarters]. So when the United Nations comes begging, I hope officials, here and in Washington, do the right thing: Dump the United Nations in the river."

I think Fox tilts conservative even in its regular news shows. I don't watch enough news on the liberal networks provide a fully informed comparison between the Fox tilt and that of those networks. My sense is that the "tilt quotient" is about the same, but that the other networks put on a veneer of fake objectivity that Fox is less inclined to bother with. Referring back to Rocket Man's initial observation as to why Gore and Daschle have lashed out at the media, I think an additional motive may be to reduce the influence of Fox. I suspect that, unlike the Washington Times and many of the conservatives on the radio, Fox has a strong following among "swing" voters and moderates. They probably find it more interesting and entertaining than the news on other networks and don't feel it is any more biased. It is important for liberals to overcome that perception, and I suspect they are trying to do so by associating Fox with Limbaugh and the Washington Times.

I think Fox is balanced, but then I'm a conservative. The main people at Fox are conservatives--Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly (admittedly, more a populist than a conservative). I think Fox tilts subtly to the right, much as CBS tilts to the left due to the fact that pretty much everyone there is a liberal.

Update: This is the Norm Coleman billboard in St. Paul that was defaced Wednesday night. See our post below.

Am I alone in thinking Fox News is actually fair and balanced? I think the distinction between it and the other outlets is that it not only holds itself out as being so, but actually is.

Good theory, Rocket Man. I suppose that, from the standpoint of Time, CBS, and some newspapers., the risk in taking off the gloves is that they will lose readers/viewers. I don't think the liberal base as a whole is interested enough in the news to sustain these media outlets in the style to which they have become accustomed, if they move to the left. They've already gone about as far as they can go. The Washington Post, I think, is an exception, but the Post seems pretty comfortable with where it is, being taken seriously by all of the players here in Washington. As to the networks, there may be room for one of them to move left. When I was more naive, I half expected one of the then-big three networks to start offering objective to mildly right-of-center news because it would have been such an obviously shrewd move. It never happened, and Fox exploited the vacuum. Right now, if one of the networks moved fairly hard left, it might find a niche (although not as cushy as the one Fox has) and could perhaps differentiate itself nicely from the other two networks (actually, for all the attention I pay to network news these days this might already be happening). But the underlying problem for the liberals won't disappear. Their constituents can't really sustain their media heroes. Just ask Phil Donahue. And, in the current war climate, their media heroes have great difficulty appearing heroic.

There has been a lot of head-scratching over what Tom Daschle, Al Gore, Paul Krugman and others have been trying to achieve with their attacks on "right-wing media bias" as exemplified by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the Washington Times. I actually don't think it's too mysterious. For years, Republicans have attacked the obvious liberal bias of the mainstream media, with great success. Organizations like the Media Research Center track and expose the left-wing orientation of the network news shows and other news outlets; writers like Bernard Goldberg have achieved best-seller status with books like Bias; and, most important, lively alternative media have developed to fill the vacuum left by the mainstream newspapers, magazines and television networks, all of which are liberal. First, conservative magazines like National Review and others sprang up. While far smaller in circulation than Time, Newsweek, and so on, they are much sharper in their analysis and have had an impact far beyond their circulation numbers. Next, talk radio developed. Once the medium was liberated by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, conservatives came to dominate talk radio, which became an essential source of strength for Republican and conservative candidates. This was memorialized in 1994 when the newly-elected Republican House majority gave Rush Limbaugh a present--I think it was a gavel--that said, "Majority Maker." More recently, the internet became another source of conservative strength. With zero barriers to entry, liberal websites and blogs are welcome, but are gratifyingly few in number and popularity. Finally, Fox News came along to challenge the hegemony of the liberal networks; see my post below on Fox's increasing domination of the cable news market.

How does this relate to the attacks by Daschle et al. on "right-wing bias?" Are they trying to intimidate or influence all of these conservative news sources? Of course not. The Democrats understand that their monopoly on the news is gone and isn't coming back. What frustrates them is that "our" news sources are aggressive and openly partisan, while "their" news sources--the mainstream media--are shackled by their pretense of objectivity. It frustrates the Democrats that they don't get full value from their control over networks like CBS, magazines like Time, and newspapers like the Washington Post, because those sources are not as aggressively liberal as Fox News, the Washington Times and Rush Limbaugh are conservative. (There are, of course, aggressively left-wing journals like Nation, but no one reads them.) So I think the Democrats' real purpose here is to encourage "their" media to take the gloves off and become more openly liberal, following the model of the New York Times. If that happens, the Democrats believe their dominant media position will be restored. That's my theory, anyway.

Coincidentally, we blogged on the danger posed by shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons a few days ago. The New York Times has more on this threat. I really don't understand how the terrorists managed to miss the Israeli airliner yesterday, given the reported ease of hitting large, hot, slow-moving commercial airplanes on take-off or landing.

Mark Steyn in Jewish World Review is also less than sanguine about our progress in the war against Islamofascism. Steyn complains, for example, that the war against Iraq "keeps getting deferred, to the point where it's beginning to look like the Bush version of the Soviets' endlessly rolled-over Five Year Plans." He concludes with this wish: "Next, Ramadan, when the traditional calls for a bombing pause are issued, let's hope there's some bombing to pause."

This Jerusalem Post editorial on yesterday's terrorist attacks is an interesting counterpoint to the optimistic piece by Tim Hames in the London Times that Deacon linked to earlier today.

The Washington Post has a good article on the Paradise Hotel bombing, from the perspective of the Kenyans who worked there. Their admiration for the hotel's owner, an Israeli, is touching.

The hate campaign against newly-elected Republican Senator Norm Coleman continues. I have a feeling this could get very ugly; Garrison Keillor may have been only the beginning.

No wonder Al Gore and Tom Daschle are so anxious to bring down Fox News, along with other independent news sources. The latest Nielsen ratings show Fox as the number one prime-time cable network. Fox's prime-time viewership is up 17% over a year ago, while the Democrats' network, CNN, is down 31% and MSNBC is down 43%. Fox now has four of the five top-rated cable news shows, with O'Reilly and Hannity & Colmes ranking first and second.

Tim Hames of the Times of Londonbelieves that Al Qaeda's attack on the hotel in Kenya, a decidedly soft target, is less a sign that Al Qaeda is "back in business" than evidence that the outfit is "in its last desperate stage before U.S. bailiffs arrive unannounced at the door and seize somewhat more than just the furniture." Thanks to our friends at Real Clear Politics for enabling us to find Hames' piece.

Diana West of the Washington Times on attempts to describe Thanksgiving "as a time when families get together to celebrate their traditions and their heritage."

Don't miss Frank Schaeffer's "Thanking Our Troops" from the current Frontpage.

City Pages is a Minneapolis-based "alternative weekly" like the Boston Phoenix. A reader has kindly sent us a piece from the current issue on the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll: "Poll Axed." (The reader, going under the nom de cyber "Lawdog" that he he earned in the Army's JAG Corps, turns out to be my colleague Peter Swanson, whom we thank for the tip.) The piece itself is completely clueless, but it's worth taking a look at to see what Rob Daves, the Minnesota Poll's director, has to say following the election in which his poll seemed to perform particularly poorly.

According to Daves, he did a fine job during the recent election season, including his final pre-election poll that showed Mondale leading Coleman by five points, although Coleman won by three: "Rob Daves, director of the Minnesota Poll, says he thinks his poll was accurate--at least within the 3.2-point margin of error. 'I'm convinced that the polls done late in the election were pretty good. What they showed, taken in total, was an incredibly volatile electorate. And if you've got a volatile environment, then a poll is just a snapshot in time,' says Daves."

The final pre-election Pioneer Press poll conducted by the Mason-Dixon polling organization covered the same period of time as the Minnesota Poll, but showed Coleman leading by six points, a result that was actually within the margin of error compared with the election-day results. The Minnesota Poll results and the Pioneer Press poll results cannot both have been accurate "snapshots," can they? As between the two, the Pioneer Press poll seems to have taken the accurate snapshot. But Daves never finds any ground on which to question his methodology or his results. The guy is impenetrable.

Faithful readers will recall that we tried to blow the whistle on this operation in "The Trouble with Star-Trib Poll."

A Swiss laboratory claims that the audio tape recently aired on Al-Jazeera is not the voice of bin Laden.

As expected, Haaretz reports that Ariel Sharon has won an easy victory against Benjamin Netanyahu in the Likud primary.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian poll says that 76% of Palestinians now support efforts to achieve a cease-fire with Israel. This is not based on newfound moral principles, apparently, as 53% support attacking Israeli civilians and 90% support attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza strip. The pollster interprets the results as indicating that "despite the fact that people still believe the intefadeh has been good, most believe that it is time to return to the peace process...." One is tempted to label this attitude as delusional, but it is worth remembering that if the Labor party were in power, the Palestinians' strategy of killing hundreds of Israelis, and then cashing in through negotiations, would work.

In the conflict between Nigerian Islamofascists and the Miss World pageant, I was naturally prepared to take the side of the pageant. Like Bret Stephens (see Deacon's post below), I have a healthy regard for the "prurient center." So I thought I would check the official Miss World site to see what the pageant has to say about being driven out of Nigeria, and about the hundreds of Christians and others who were murdered by marauding Muslims. To my astonishment, this is how the Miss World pageant responds to those events:

"The Miss World Organisation and all of the Miss World contestants were shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling comments made in the Nigerian Newspaper 'This Day' that led to such a tragic loss of life.

"Miss World brings together young women who are from many faiths.

"The views expressed in this article were offensive to all of us and caused considerable anguish, for all the Miss World contestants, crew and staff. Our deepest sympathies are extended to all those people who have been affected."

Affected, apparently by the "offensive" article, not by bloodthirsty rioters. All blame is assigned to the "This Day" reporter, who is now missing and whose fate is unknown. (The Muslim government of the state where the rioting took place called for her murder.) The Miss World people make Quisling look like a hero by comparison.

A couple days ago I tried to express my indebtedness to the Claremont Institute and my appreciation for its outstanding flagship publication, the Claremont Review of Books. I also posted my favorite review from the current issue that is available online (I understand the new issue is in the mail), Steve Hayward's review of the third volume of Robert Caro's gargantuan biography of LBJ, The Master of the Senate. Steve himself is the author of The Age of Reagan, the audacious life and times of the Gipper that will do for Reagan and conservatives what Schlesinger did for Roosevelt and liberals with The Age of Roosevelt. The first volume of Steve's projected two volumes came out in September 2001, and got a little lost in the news at the time, but the book is terrific and will be around for a long time. I mention Steve's book because in it he traces "the collapse of the old liberal order" to LBJ and the Great Society. Hayward on Caro is the review I wanted to read, and the Claremont Review delivered it.

I heard on the news this morning that The Master of the Senate has been awarded the National Book Award (or whatever it's called now) for nonfiction this year. So once more once, Hayward on Caro: "The Making of LBJ."

Here's the Fox News report on Al Gore's attack on the media that I mentioned late last night. It's worse than I thought. Gore says there's a conservative "fifth column" within the journalistic ranks, similar to the subversive journalists in the 1950s who injected pro-Communist reporting into the mainstream media. Anti-communism is always welcome, even if it comes decades late from Al Gore. But what foreign interests, I wonder, does Gore think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are promoting? Limbaugh has this exactly right when he says, "[the liberals and the Democrats] had a free run for all those years with the mainstream press. . . and those days are over." No wonder Gore and Daschle seem to be suffering a meltdown.

Good posts from Nugent and Greenberg, Trunk. Both have made their contributions to our bounty, Nugent with songs like "Cat Scratch Fever" (I hope my memory is serving me well on this one) and Greenberg with his early warnings from Arkansas about "Slick Willie." Here is a more pedestrian, but still worthwhile, piece on what we have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. It's from Donald Lambro of the Washington Times, who is thankful that "Al Qaeda terrorists are being killed or captured in growing numbers, the economy seems to be stabilizing, the bulls are back on Wall Street, and Congress is away for the rest of the year."

Two more terrific Thanksgiving columns to gild Ms. Kathryn's lovely lilly below: "America Rocks,"by Ted Nugent, for which we thank OpinionJournal, and "It's time to stop, look around and count our blessings," by Paul Greenberg, for which we thank the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Bret Stephens of the Jerusalem Post delivers this critique of postmodern feminism in the form of an update on the Miss World beauty pageant. After the violence in Nigeria, the pageant moved to London. Feminists there were appalled. They concurred with the Muslim clerics who saw the pageant as "commercial sex trading." They even found logic in the slogan used by many Muslim rioters, "Down with Beauty." Observing all of this, Stephens wonders "if bikinis are repressive, what then is liberating? One answer, of course, is modesty both in dress and manner, long the approach of Orthodox Jewish women and now enjoying something of a culture vogue in the U.S. A better answer -- something you'd think the feminist politburo would have thought of already -- is choice itself: the choice to wear bikinis, or burkas, or something in between." Stephens concludes that it is the rejection of choice that the feminist and Muslim critiques of beauty pageants have in common. Then Stephens gives us this gem of a line: "Between the extremes of antediluvian Islam and postmodern feminism, it's a good thing the prurient center holds."

Happy Thanksgiving to all from the Power Line crew.

On September 11 of this year, my six-year-old daughter watched a television program commemorating the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. It seemed to be largely about the Religion of Peace, and she found it unsatisfactory. She said, "They should have used my Pledge of Allegiance book," and disappeared into her room for a while. When she returned, she had painted an American flag. Here it is; I thought it symbolizes pretty well what we at Power Line are thankful for this year: our country, our children, and our ability to raise our children in freedom.

Another terrorist outrage in Israel: Three gunmen opened fire on a Likud Party office in Beit Shean; the office was crowded with Israelis who were voting in the Likud primary, and four were killed. A witness described the scene: "I opened the window and I simply saw the terrorist standing, smiling, laughing and shooting in all directions....People were fleeing and falling."

The beautiful Michelle Malkin, an incandescent conservative who has said nice things about Power Line, offers a prayer for Thanksgiving. Michelle shares our taste in music:

"O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, we thank you this day for 'Proud to Be an American' and 'These Colors Don't Run,' for 'Let Freedom Ring' and 'Of Thee I Sing,' for 'Every Heart Beats True' and for 'Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.'

And in military units:

"For Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars, for Green Berets and Gold Stripes, for the 10th Mountain Division and the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, for the KC-130 Crew and the 101st Airborne Division, for the soldiers and SEALS and special forces who made the ultimate sacrifice this year, and for all who continue to protect and to serve, we give thee praise."

We're thankful for people like Michelle Malkin, who fight passionately and uncompromisingly for freedom and justice.

David Horowitz's online magazine FrontPage has picked up our latest column: "The Silence of the Liberals." The Claremont Institute published and distributed the piece for us yesterday, and the folks at FrontPage must have thought highly enough of it to pick it up for their own publication. We are proud of the piece and hope you find it of interest. The piece is scheduled to appear in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Sunday, and we will post it one more time when it appears in the Pioneer Press.

We should add that we are a little late in expressing our gratitude to the Claremont Institute's invaluable Glenn Ellmers for editing the piece, and for our friend and Claremont Institute chairman Bruce Sanborn in expressing his enthusiastic support for our written work. But today is Thanksgiving, and we owe them our thanks.

While the New York Times reports the commencement of weapons inspections by the UN team in Iraq with a straight face, I think the New York Post gets a little closer to the mark in "UN Weapons Hunt Farce." For comparative purposes, the Times story is "Unhindered by Iraq Officials, Arms Inspectors Visit 3 Sites."

The latest al-Qaeda attacks targeted an Israeli-owned hotel and airliner in Kenya, the latter through the use of what must have been some kind of missile or rocket propelled grenade. The best accounts of the attacks at this time are in the Jerusalem Post: "Three Israelis among eight killed in twin Kenya terror attacks." The Post happened to have reporter Kelly Hartog on the scene, and she filed her own first-hand report: "'Post' editor's firsthand report of carnage at Kenyan beach hotel." The Post also has a separate story on the attack on the plane: "Arkia passenger: We heard an explosion on the left side of the plane."

Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about terrorism, and the Post has a separate article with his reaction: "Netanyahu: attacks are grave escalation of terror against Israel."

The Post's most recent updates report that two suspects have been apprehended: "Kenyan police arrest two suspects in connection with Mombasa bombing," and "Two of three attackers identified as an Egyptian, and a Kenyan Muslim."

I've just heard on Fox News that Al Gore has alleged the existence of a vast right-wing media conspiracy. The epicenter, apparently, is Republcan National Committee headquarters, where conservative talking points are developed. The Washington Times, Fox News, and influential talk show hosts then dutifully repeat the talking points. Next, I suppose, the bloggers chime in. But the best part is Gore's claim that all of this is the product of "post-modernism" and its hand-maids "narcissism" and "nihilism." Gore has promised to explain this intriguing claim in a future interview, presumably after whoever fed him this line has briefed him more fully. For a better understanding of the concepts he is tossing around, Gore could read my FrontPage Magazine piece, in which I argue that Clinton and Gore are both post-modernists, although Clinton is by far the superior one. In fact, Gore's latest bit of whining, though post-modern in a way, falls far short of what one would expect from Clinton (Mrs. Clinton is another matter). Stripped of its pseudo-intellectual content, it sounds a lot like another bitter politician's lament to the media, "You won't have Nixon to kick around."

I confess that I have not yet read Al Gore's new book, Joined at the Heart. Of course, I'm not alone. Al and Tipper's study of American family life currently ranks #1,018 on Amazon's bestseller list. And I have to suspect that most of those sales are institutional--gray-haired librarians in birkenstocks ordering copies for high school kids, and so on. It's hard to imagine a lot of actual people buying this book and reading it. Despite the Gores' massive media push and whatever institutional sales they can muster, it is heartwarming to see their book languishing far behind G. Gordon Liddy's When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, #95, and of course Bob Woodward's Bush at War, #2. It is also fun to read the Amazon reviewers' comments on Joined at the Heart: "Poor Al, another blockbuster fizzled. I hope this guy can find employment somewhere." And: "Absolute nonsense! I tried very hard to finish this book but it was impossible! It would surely be a violation of the Geneva Convention to require anyone to read it." Most revealing, however, is Amazon's listing of other books bought by the people who purchased Gore's latest. This list is interesting because it is computer-generated rather than subjective. The books most commonly purchased by buyers, in addition to Woodward's book about the war, were Paul Begala's It's Still the Economy, Stupid: George W. Bush, the GOP's CEO; The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, by Joe Klein; Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose our President; and Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?, by John Nichols. In other words, the only people who actually shell out money for Al Gore's book are embittered, hate-filled, over-the-top, partisan Democrats. This doesn't bode well for Gore's effort at reincarnation.

Victor Davis Hanson on the latest conceit of the European eilites -- America as "hyperpower" and President Bush as Caesar. Hanson notes that ours is "a funny sort of empire." We haven't annexed anyone's soil since the Spanish-American War. When we have overthrown the likes of Noriega, Milosevic, and Mullah Omar, we have replaced them not with legates or local client kings, but with elected leaders. And, "instead of the much-rumored pipeline we supposedly coveted in Afghanistan, we are paying tens of millions to build roads and bridges so that Afghan truckers and traders won't break their axles." This article makes it clear that the criticism we are hearing from Europe is not friendly, or even rational. It is, in Hanson's words, the product of jealousy and envy on the part of "post-heroic and bored elites." As such, it should be ignored, as should the institution that does the bidding of these jealous and envious elites, namely the United Nations.

Ann Coulter contemplates the Religion of Peace: "Beauty Pageants Can Be Murder."

Michael Kelly's weekly column today also merits your attention: "Giving thanks for the truth." Kelly recounts a telling anecdote deriving from his lunch with a vacuous Clinton administration foreign policy official who sounds like Sandy Berger but obviously could have been many others. (Courtesy of our friends at RealClearPolitics.)

Mark Steyn's latest is a romp through James Bond movies that never were but should have been: "The Spies that Bond us."

Speaking of Saddam Hussein, Debka File reports that Saddam is negotiating with Osama bin Laden to join Osama in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula in the event of war. Skeptics question whether Saddam is still capable of living in a tent and riding a camel. I have gone back and forth on the reliability of Debka File during the last year, but right now, they're looking very good. Their analyses and predictions have been turning out well in recent months. So I am inclined to take this report seriously.

The London Times, citing an Arabic-language London newspaper, quotes an unidentified but "senior Iraqi official" to the effect that Iraq has used chemical weapons on several occasions, and will use them again in the current crisis if hard-pressed. This contradicts the heretofore official Iraqi position that it possesses no such weapons. My sense is that after more than twenty years of rule by the psychopathic Saddam Hussein, there are no normal, competent people left in the upper reaches of the Iraqi government. How could there be? So contradictions of this kind will abound until Saddam is finally overthrown. Hopefully soon.

No, Deacon, you're not. I read Rawls' Theory of Justice many years ago, but as I recall his theoretical construct, it was infinitely malleable. The conclusions he deduced from it depended entirely on his empirical assumptions. When he wrote his book, circa 1970, one could argue--as he did--that socialism or a liberal welfare state offered the best prospects for at least some members of any society. Thirty years of experience have dispelled that illusion. We know now that liberalism allows the rogues among us--Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, whoever--to prosper, but its consequences for the most vulnerable are catastrophic. See our posts below about the eleven-year-old Minneapolis girl killed in the crossfire of rival gangs.

D.J. Tice's St. Paul Pioneer Press column seriously examines one of the reigning shibboleths of local politics and the welfare state: "affordable housing." His column is "It's not a housing shortage--it's an income shortage." Extending the theme that Doug touces on here, I wish some public official would advise folks who cannot afford to support a family not to get married or have kids. I hear that in the old days that was the rule of thumb and that such advice was unnecessary.

The Star Tribune's latest report on the murder of Tyesha Edwards identifies the three suspects and their gang affiliations: "Three charged with killing 11-year-old in Minneapolis."

Earlier today, Trunk discussed Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book that was all the rage during his college days. In 1971, when Rocket Man and I were the pride of Dartmouth's philosophy department, a very different book was causing a stir. It was John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Rawls died on Sunday, and the eminent University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein filed this appreciation with National Review Online. As I recall, the leading members of the Dartmouth philosophy department had reservations about Rawls' book, but those who knew the man had the greatest respect for him. This is about where Epstein comes down too. But he finds much more merit in the book than one would expect a conservative like Epstein to discern in a work that defends the welfare state and supports the redistribution of income. Epstein argues that Rawls' theoretical construct (the notion of impartiality, whereby the political philosopher must view matters as a disembodied spirit who has equal care and concern for the welfare of all individuals) actually supplies a strong intellectual foundation for a classical liberalism (as opposed to the modern welfare state version), with strong property rights and limited government. I'm not qualified to opine with much authority on Epstein's thesis. But it does strike me that what Epstein says of Rawls is true of much of modern philsophy. Often, the leading lights adopt, develop, or refine a particular approach (pragmatism, utiltarianism, or whatever) and develop a plausible construct for propounding theories of justice, morality, knowledge, etc. They then seem to pour their political prejudices into their construct and end up with some sort of trendy liberal/radical prescription. One thinks especially of the leading modern pragmatist, Richard Rorty. Am I being too cynical in thinking that the philosophy usually ends up being window dressing for the politics?

Rocket Man, I wouldn't know where to start in interpreting this AP report and what might be behind it. As far as who is "moderate," that's always in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. Which, of course, is why it's better for news agencies not to dole out this "accolade." In any event, I think the most objective analysis of Israeli politics right now would have to deem Sharon the moderate. He takes a tough line on terrorism, but says he conditionally supports the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. Thus, he stands between the Labor Party, whose leaders want to start making new concessions to Arafat even as the terror continues, and Netanyahu, who claims he will expel Arafat and never agree to a Palestinian state.

The Associated Press reports that Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's PLO deputy, has released a transcript of a meeting he had last month with Fatah members. Abbas is quoted as saying that the last two years of attacks on Israel have been a mistake: "What happened in these two years, as we see it now, is a complete destruction of everything we built."

The Associated Press, like Reuters, constantly imbues its purportedly factual reporting with a liberal perspective. If you read to near the end of this article, you will see that the AP describes Likud's competition in the upcoming election as "the moderate Labor Party." From a purely neutral and factual perspective, it would be more accurate to refer to "the deeply deluded Labor Party." Suffice it to say that you won't be reading about "the moderate Likud Party" in the AP's news reports.

Real Clear Politics has the latest polls on the Terrell/Landrieu race. They are all over the map, and it is not clear that any of them are especially reliable. I continue to think that Terrell will win; her main risk was that voters would size her up as a lightweight, and that doesn't seem to have happened. Also, as of November 17, campaign finance disclosures indicated that Terrell had twice as much money in the bank as Landrieu--a surprising position for a challenger to be in. If the race is close, President Bush's visit on Tuesday should put Terrell over the top.

The Claremont Institute has published our column on the murder of Tyesha Edwards in Minneapolis this past Friday, "The Silence of the Liberals." If you have had any interest in our previous posts on this subject, please take a look and let us know what you think.

This piece from the excellent Tony Blankley in the Washington Times is called "Nix Blix." The article isn't really about the Swedish diplomat per se. Rather, it's about how, in this dangerous world, we need to "get about the business of killing our enemies." In this regard, though, Blankley finds Blix to be a "lethally foolish little man." According to Blankley, "the problem is not that [Blix] is not a premier member of world's diplomatic corps -- it's that he is." Blankley is confident that President Bush will ignore "fretting diplomats" like Blix and he takes the occasion of the coming holiday to be thankful for Mr. Bush. We can also be thankful for journalists like Tony Blankley.

Calev Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post on how most Israeli's have "learned to stop worrying and love Ariel Sharon." As Ben-David notes, Sharon, once the biggest risk-taker in Israeli politics is now correctly perceived as the most reassuring figure on the political landscape. Sort of like that "ignorant cowboy" George W. Bush.

The great Hugh Hewitt has again done us the unbelievable kindness of linking to us in his new WorldNetDaily column: "My name is Hugh, and I'm a talk-show host..." Hugh's readers and listeners (like us) are a fantastically loyal bunch; we can see the referrals rolling in to our site already this morning. We are deeply grateful to Hugh for his support. In real life, as on his show, he is a remarkably generous man, not quite like anyone we have ever met before in his position.