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The Movement

March 30, 2005

An Open Letter to Conservatives
by Morton C. Blackwell

Fellow Conservatives,

I’m writing to ask you to join me in doing something effective against the leftist organizations and liberal media who have launched truly vicious attacks on U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

They attack Tom DeLay for just one reason: Congressman DeLay is one of the most effective fighters for conservative principles.

Time and again, Majority Leader Tom DeLay manages the strategy which wins for conservatives in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

I know personally that Tom Delay is almost obsessively careful to get good legal advice before he takes any step which might conceivably be questioned under the law or suspected as an infraction of House rules. None of the leftist uproar has contains any evidence he has done anything illegal or violated the House rules.

The only fire under all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man.

Conservatives must respond with a richly deserved attack on leftist groups and liberal media trying to lynch Tom DeLay. That’s why I’m writing to you.

And you and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support in the future had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay.

Media and organizations who would let left wingers get away with almost anything are trying to generate a feeding frenzy against DeLay. No matter what he does, they attack him. Not content to make mountains out of mole hills, they invent mole hills to make mountains.

If Tom DeLay preferred Fords to Chevrolets or Chevrolets to Fords, the leftists would gin up reasons to attack his preference either way.

Unscrupulous leftist media will huff and puff to breath life into any trivial or phony leftist complaint against any act of any powerful conservative, no matter how upright and innocent. And they’ll keep doing this until a public reaction begins to embarrass and damage those spreading the propaganda.

You’ve seen this all your life.

They tried without success to generate a feeding frenzy against Ronald Reagan for many years. They tried it without success against George W. Bush’s reelection. Now they’re trying it against Tom DeLay.

Prominent newspapers have run a dozen almost identical stories, re-hashing the same foggy complaints, each with a different headline. After all those outrageous, repetitious attacks, the liberal news media have the gall to say that he has become controversial.

It’s clear that major liberal print and broadcast media have assigned full-time reporters in this concerted effort to “get” Tom DeLay.

The “non-partisan” leftist groups that attacked President Bush all last year and those groups’ big donors are now pouring resources into the current anti-DeLay effort.

Make no mistake about it, their purpose is to damage or destroy any effective conservative. If the attacks succeed, the left eliminates an enemy and tends to discourage any other conservative who is effective.

You and I must not let the left get away with this.

That’s why I’m writing to you — to ask that you make an immediate and sustained effort to stop the left from destroying this outstanding, successful, honorable conservative leader.

Earlier this month, at my personal expense, I had printed up some hundreds of lapel stickers which read, “Hooray for DeLay.” I distributed them to eager conservatives at political meetings. But much more can and ought to be done.

Here are three important things you can do:

First, vigorously respond to the onslaught by leftist groups and the liberal media. Attack the attackers for their outrageous bias and point out the real reason they are attacking Tom DeLay: He is one of our most effective conservative leaders.

Second, ask the leaders of any conservative organization you know what they are doing to uphold Tom DeLay against the vicious attacks against him. They should activate their members, readers, donors, viewers, and listeners.

Even non-profit groups can do many things helpful to Tom DeLay without endangering their tax status.

Virtually every conservative cause has benefited greatly from the devotion and skill of Tom DeLay. He fights our battles beside us. We owe him our strongest support now.

Third, and perhaps most powerful, by letter, phone call, email, or personal visit, ask the Republican Members of Congress from your state and others Members you know what they are doing to attack those who are mounting the biased, unfair attacks on Tom DeLay. They will listen to you.

Ultimately, the purpose of all the left’s attacks is to remove Tom from his position of leadership. That’s why they are doing this. They must not succeed.

Please don’t get bogged down answering all the absurd, groundless attacks. The left can and will raise phony new issues faster than you can respond to the old ones. Congressman DeLay has fully and publicly dealt with these false or nit-picky issues.

Focus your attention on attacking his ill-motivated attackers — and encourage others to do what is right and stand beside Tom DeLay.

Morton C. Blackwell

The Loser

by tristero

Any day that begins with more tsouris for Tom DeLay is a good day in my book. But his resignation from Congress – that’s cause for celebration. A few points:

1. I don’t see any reason why DeLay can’t leave Congress today.

2. But if he must stay until May, then I strongly suggest that the Capitol police drop their attempts to arrest McKinney and instead devote a considerable amount of manpower to trailing DeLay until he’s out of there. Count the towels in the bathroom. Count the ashtrays and pencils. I’m not not kidding: if he came over to my house to do a fumigation job, I wouldn’t leave him alone for a second. Would you?

3. I once read that Bernard Herrmann asked Alfred Hitchcock what job he wanted if could have any job in the world. Without skipping a beat, Hitchcock dead-panned, “A hanging judge.” Well, I would make a lousy hanging judge, as I would a professor – the few times I’ve taught, my colleagues have had to spend serious time talking me out of giving automatic A’s. So I know this will anger a lot of you, but I care far less about punishing DeLay than I do about spending time and energy fixing all the disasters he caused. I firmly believe he should receive a fair trial before being sentenced (grin), but it’s more important that Texas recover from the DeLay gerrymandering, and that laws get passed to make the corrupt practices DeLay gorged on far more difficult to do.

DeLay is history. His legacy unfortunately is not. Now, when he is convicted, part of his sentence should forbid him can never to get close to any office or government official again, other than his parole officer. But the results of his awful deeds must be reversed as soon as possible, before it becomes in any way settled business. And we should not forget that while indulging in some genuinely justified schadenfreude.

[Note to the humor-challenged: Point 2 is satirical. That should be obvious, but the tip-off is the notion that I would hire DeLay to fumigate my apartment. I only hire people whose competence I can trust, thank you very much. The other points are serious, including that DeLay should be urged to leave immediately.]

The Winner

by tristero

Woo Hoo! Congratulations to Digby for his Koufax! Well-deserved and hard-earned by posting one splendid insight after another.

It is hard to believe what it was like back in the dark days of 2001 through early 2003. At that time serious liberal commentary was next to impossible to find. The only hint that there Others Like Me still alive in America was the bi-weekly Krugman column in the NY Times. Everyone else, including smart, close friends, had gone off the deep end, parroting one or another piece of nonsense from the Bush administration – “no way could Bush have prevented 9/11 by forcing the government agencies to be more vigilant” was the most prevalent, even among the most liberal people I know.

Somehow, I discovered the blogging world and Hullabaloo was one of the first I found. And there he was – I mean Howard Beale. Digby had read my thoughts: Some crazies had looked at “Network” – which was hilarious when it came out but had seemed slightly over the top, even a tad ludicrous back then – and mistook its satire for a how-to guide. Digby got it. I started reading him regularly, and linked to him often. HIs posts literally helped to get me sane as I watched my country go over a cliff at the whim of a clearly delusional frat-boy of a president. I’m thrilled he’s been recognized for his contribution to the left blogosphere.

Poster Boy

by digby

So Tom Delay is cuttin’ and runnin’. I’m sure he’d like to stay in Texas, but the minorities have taken up all the good slots in prison.

My question is how these guys are going to explain themselves now. 3/30/05

Conservative leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The move follows a meeting last week among DeLay, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the chief deputy majority whip, and nearly two dozen conservative leaders, including David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation.

Perkins, Keene and Feulner called the meeting, according to participants.

“It was a rallying cry to our conservative community that we are under assault. We need to fight back. We’re going to have a challenging year with the judicial issue bubbling up in the senate and the impact it may have on our ability to get things done,” said Cantor, who said he described to the group how Democrats and liberal groups have waged a coordinated battle to raise doubts about DeLay’s conduct.

Several of the conservative leaders who met last week are planning to launch a grassroots campaign targeted at conservatives in the districts of House Republican lawmakers whose support for DeLay may be wavering.

“The various organizations probably represent 3 or 4 million people,” Keene said of the conservative groups in the meeting. “We’re communicating with them to ask them to support DeLay and point out what is going on here.”

What is going on, conservatives say, is a coordinated effort by liberals and Democrats to tarnish DeLay’s name to oust him as majority leader and regain control of the House. Keene and others want conservative groups to communicate that to their members and to have their members relay the message to GOP lawmakers who represent them.

[…]

Most of the conservative leaders at last week’s meeting who spoke to The Hill said support for DeLay at the meeting appeared to be unanimous. But one who requested anonymity said his group would likely not participate in defending DeLay, and he raised questions about the propriety of tax-exempt groups’ waging a political campaign on behalf of a lawmaker.

Conservatives at the meeting received GOP research and press reports on millions of dollars in grants that George Soros’s Open Society Institute gave to groups critical of DeLay. The materials also described how several of the groups’ board members gave tens of thousands of dollars to help Democratic candidates and little if anything to help Republicans.

[…]

“I think that conservative groups ought to be concerned,” said Donald Hodel, who recently retired as head of Focus on the Family, “If conservative politicians are singled out for attacks by groups that have allegiance to a different worldview, if [conservatives] leave attacks to the liberal groups, they’re not going to have conservative politicians working for them.”

Blackwell, of the Leadership Institute, hinted that conservative groups will turn the attack back on Democrats and outside groups that are criticizing DeLay’s conduct, issuing a stern warning to Republican lawmakers who hang back from the battle.

“Any politician that hopes to have conservative support in the future better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay,” he said.

They claimed that Delay was the personification of conservatism and by God he is. He’s a crook and a coward. All these pontificating rightwing “moral majority” gasbags backed him to the hilt.

That’s your modern Republican Party for you. What’ll we tell the children?

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“I’d like to thank the craft service guy”

by digby

Congratulations everyone.

The Winners:

• Best Blog — Non Professional : Crooks & Liars
• Best Blog — Professional or Sponsored : Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo
• Best Blog Community : Daily Kos
• Most Deserving of Wider Recognition : Echidne of the Snakes
• Best New Blog : Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory
• Best Writing : moi
• Best Single Issue Blog : Jordan Barab of Confined Space
• Best Expert Blog : Pharyngula by P.Z. Myers
• Best Group Blog : Shakespeare’s Sister
• Best Post : Bag News Notes for Katrina Aftermath: And Then I Saw These
• Best Series : FireDogLake for Plame coverage
• Most Humorous Blog : Jesus’ General
• Most Humorous Post : Dood Abides for The Wizard of Oil
• Best State or Local Blog : Bluegrass Report and Tennessee Guerilla Women
• Best Commenter : Georgia10

I am gobsmacked. Writing this blog is not all that easy for me, unfortunately. I write slowly and laboriously, unlike a lot of my fellow bloggers who seem to have an endless supply of great ideas and words at the ready to apply to any subject. I get writers block way too frequently. But I’ve got this little bloggy monkey on my back that just won’t leave me alone (not that I really want him to.) Despite my limitations, blogging is incredibly fun. And getting approbation from readers is fantastic. Thank you.

This is a wonderful political community, constantly evolving and growing and moving in new directions. This year brought many new bloggers into the forefront, some of whom have small but loyal followings, like my friends at Bagnews and others who are blogging juggernauts like Jane and Christy at firedoglake and and John Amato at Crooks and Liars who are clear cutting new paths through the blogosphere. And blogs are starting to have a tangible impact; it’s exciting to be a part of it.

But I have to say that the reason the political blogs are changing things has far less to do with our entertaining writing or cogent analysis than with the fact that we provide a forum for citizens to interact and a system for interacting with each other. We bloggers set forth ideas and lead the debate, but our political power derives from our readers and commenters. Essentially, it’s a collaborative political media — and the political and media establishments are starting to notice that many thousands of average citizens are engaging. They aren’t stupid. They know that blog readers are all opinion leaders in their own lives who take the arguments and ideas that are hashed out on the blogs to water coolers, dinner tables, bars and churches everywhere. That’s some powerful mojo.

I probably should say something about pseudonymity since it’s come up recently. This tradition goes back to the early days of our nation in which the enlightenment belief that pseudonymous written argument, based in reason rather than authority, democratizes ideas and promotes freedom. Many of the writers and activists who fomented the American revolution used fictitious personaes or wrote pseudonymously — Sam Adams wrote under 25 different identities. The idea (aside from protecting themselves from charges of treason!) was that the written words standing on their own, without the edifice of credentialed expertise and social status — or grounding in the received word of religion — had the greatest persuasive power. (The best example of this, of course, is Publius, of the Federalist Papers.) Writing pseudonymously openly distinguishes between the private person and a citizen of the public sphere by removing all but the disembodied voice from the argument. I find that interesting.

Until recently it was rapidly becoming necessary for people once again to have money, status or specialized knowledge in order to engage in national civic life. TV had created a public sphere,to be sure, but it was one-way. The impotence I felt during the Clinton impeachment, in which a media and political elite hijacked the discourse against the public will, was excruciating. When the internet serendipitously came along at precisely that moment with it’s natural affinity for fungible “identities,” I found it irresistable to try to write pseudonymously and engage the debate in this unique fashion. I do not claim to have accomplished anything spectacular by doing this but I’ve found it suits my temperament and continues to challenge my thinking in ways I never anticipated. That others find it entertaining and edifying as well pleases me to no end. After all, it’s the (early) American way.

Thanks very much everyone, particularly my talented contributor, tristero, and the gang at Wampum who are kind enough to sponsor these awards for our community. I’m truly grateful.

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Short Sighted Strategery

by digby

Joe Klein is piling on Bill Frist, no doubt in anticipation of his future fellatory profile of the man of his dreams, John McCain. He’s just clearing the decks. It’s enjoyable watching Frist get skewered, of course, but did anyone ever believe that such a dry socket could become president? Seriously, he makes Evan Bayh seem like Mick Jagger.

The column is, therefore, as useless as most of his columns, but there is one throw away line that caught my attention:

A series of terrible leadership moves have ensued. There was Frist’s effort to deploy the “nuclear option” — that is, to perform radical surgery on the Senate’s filibuster rules in order to allow votes on President Bush’s more extreme judicial appointments. But the nuclear option was thwarted when 14 Senate moderates cut a deal to keep the rules and allow votes on some of the appointees. “We saved him on that,” said a G.O.P. staff member involved in the negotiations. “Frist never had the votes he needed for the nuclear option.”

Who saved him exactly? The seven Republicans or the seven Democrats who cut that deal?

In case you forgot:

* Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut
* Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia
* E. Benjamin Nelson, Nebraska
* Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
* Daniel Inouye, Hawaii
* Mark Pryor, Arkansas
* Ken Salazar, Colorado

So what are these seven extracting from Bill Frist for their trouble? Nothing? What an excellent deal it was then.

It’s a perfect example of Chuck Schumer’s “protect the marginals” strategy, which is revealed in all its glory in the most amazing piece of narcissistic premature chicken counting I’ve ever seen. Does anyone really think it’s a good idea for Shumer to give an in-depth interview at this point in the cycle outlining his cynical, unprincipled political strategy? Could he not keep his big mouth shut for a few months at least?

It’s disturbing to see that Shumer cares more about big donors and moving the party ever rightward than fulfilling the Democratic vision; there is ample reason to condemn him for some of his decisions and criticize his strategy, which I will discuss shortly. But it’s unbelievable to me that he is such an egomaniac that he cooperated with a story that will damn the Democrats as being phony and hypocritical — which they are if what he’s saying is true. The only earthly reason to discuss his strategy publicly and in such detail is to toot his own horn and bask in the approbation of political pundits and sleazy strategists. And to do this before he has won is simply inexplicable.

What is it about Democratic politicians that they cannot keep their pieholes shut about process and strategy? Note to Harry Reid: think twice about assigning camera hogs to do backround work.

On the substance, I can see both good and bad in his strategy. On the positive side, I think he’s probably been pretty good at attracting good candidates in red states and I think it was very smart to bribe the Democratic senators who were tempted to retire with whatever they needed. We cannot lose any more senators. And I think we all understand that Democrats running in conservative races around the country need to be given latitude to run in a different way than one would run in New York or California. It is an unpleasant reality that the Senate, being a basically undemocratic institution, overrepresents conservatives. It always has.

But there are signs that Shumer’s agenda is not merely to draw a defensive line around red state Democrats — it’s to actually change certain fundamental aspects of the Democratic platform in order to make his job easier. Recruiting anti-abortion candidates in states where being pro-choice is acceptable even for Republicans like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, for instance, is very hard to reconcile unless there is some attempt to marginalize that issue in the caucus. That will not do. I realize that it is always better to have Democrats in power than Republican when it comes to preserving choice (although history suggests that it is not an inviolable rule — the Hyde amendment was passed by a Democratic congress and signed by a Democratic president.) But to try to undermine choice by actively recruiting candidates in Blue States who believe that abortion should be outlawed looks very much like a move to push the party into the anti-abortion camp. (And like the Democrats’ eventual endorsement of the death penalty, it will not accomplish anything politically in the long run except making abortion illegal. There’s always another issue for the right to demagogue.)

It’s possible that there are forces at work in those two cases of which I’m unaware, but this is how it looks to me out here in grassrootsland. Chuck Shumer seems to be bargaining away choice in order to win and from where I sit that’s no different than endorsing rolling back the voting rights act in order to win. This is a fundamental issue of civil liberties that cuts to the heart of what the Democratic party stands for. Being willing to create the illusion that the party is anti-abortion (when a majority of the population is clearly in favor!) makes it appear that the party will do anything to win. And that, in my view, is what’s killing us.

Shumer puts it this way:

Schumer knew that the full fury of pro-choice Democrats would rain down on him when Casey announced his candidacy. But that was exactly the point. By pissing off the party’s most loyal supporters, Schumer sent a message that he was serious about winning, one that rippled into other states and helped persuade reluctant recruiting targets to run. “I said, ‘Hey, we have to win!’ If we had 58 seats, maybe you wouldn’t do this, but our back is against the wall,” Schumer says.

58 seats! (I suppose we should be grateful to at least know what’s required before we can stand up for our principles.)

I can’t help but wonder, however, if people like Shumer are hoping to win this next election exclusively with Independent and Republican votes; this is a very dicey strategy to employ in a mid-term, which depends upon turn out. On the substance I think he’s wrong. On the politics, I think he’s insane to be saying this publicly. Does he think we can’t read?

I honestly can’t decide which is worse — Shumer doing what he’s doing or Shumer advertising what he’s doing. When you look at both the optics and the substance, I don’t think I’ve ever read an article that makes be feel more depressed about the direction of the Party.

The days of “Sistah Sojahing” the base are over. It was useful 14 years ago but it is deadly now. Democrats should be very congnizant that disrespecting their core voters at this point will produce a backlash. And they should also be cognizant that turn-out of the Democratic base in the fall is not guaranteed by Bush’s unpopularity. There is a strong sense out here that our participation is meaningless — we will have Bush for two more years no matter what and the congress is impotent and unwilling to challenge him no matter how unpopular he becomes. Clearly there will be no accountability for the last five years and the only change in policy the Democrats seem interested in is to bring the nation ever closer to making choice illegal. Why should the base bother to vote in this election?

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Assuming The Worst

by digby

Howard Kurtz isn’t satisfied quite yet with Jill Carroll’s explanations as to why she didn’t get herself beheaded for George W. Bush. Apparently, until he can “see into her soul” he can’t judge whether she was truly not being a terrorist collaborator even though she said her statement was coerced. Here’s Kurtz:

Jill Carroll is now back in Boston. (Here’s the Christian Science Monitor piece on her return.) Since I was among a number of journalists expressing puzzlement about her videotaped interview in an Islamic party office in Baghdad after her release, I was glad to see the statement she released over the weekend. I just wish it had been in front of a camera, since it’s hard for a written statement to catch up with a piece of video that’s been endlessly replayed.

Yes, because the media failed to provide proper context for her statements, she now needs to submit herself for inspection on television so that people can properly evaluate her veracity. Excellent journalism, once again. Professionals like Kurtz, being naive little tots who couldn’t possibly have used some discretion and refrained from airing their “puzzlement” at her “behavior” until they had the facts, just don’t know what to think.

Here’s what Kurtz said on Friday:

I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they never threatened to hit her. Of course, as we all saw in those chilling videos, they did threaten to kill her. And they shot her Iraqi translator to death.

Why make a terrorist group who put her family and friends through a terrible three-month ordeal sound like they were running a low-budget motel chain?

What a good question. Why indeed?

But, perhaps I’m being unfair, right? Maybe Kurtz didn’t know that she made the tape before she was safely out of the hands of her captors. Nope — from the same column:

Now perhaps this is unfair, for there is much we do not know. We don’t know why Carroll was kidnapped and why she was abruptly released. She says she doesn’t either, but surely she must have gotten some clues about her abductors’ outlook and tactics during her 82-day captivity. Maybe she was just shell-shocked right after being let go. Maybe she won’t feel comfortable speaking out until she’s back on American soil.

As my colleagues in Baghdad point out, when that interview was taped, Carroll was still in the custody of a Sunni political party with ties to the insurgency. It may have just made sense for her to be especially cautious.

Yah think?

But it would have been wrong for the media critic of the Washington Post to sit tight and wait to get the fact before speculating that she is a terrorist sympathizer. He was just awfully “puzzled” by the sight of a kidnap victim giving a propaganda statement.

And they tell me that Carroll did cry — off camera — when the subject of her murdered translator came up.

Thank god for that. Of course, you would have thought that the tape of her almost hysterical from a couple of months ago would have been a clue that she wasn’t a willing participant, but whatever. Unless she cries when howie and his pals think she should cry, she’s suspect. Lucky for her, someone was there to vouch for the fact that she behaved appropriately.

Still, people are buzzing because her taped remarks have been played over and over again on television. I hope she’ll be able to share a fuller account of her ordeal soon.

The main people who were “buzzing” were despicable asses in the right blogosphere and rightwing talk radio who are going to hell for what they said. And I would suggest that Howie is going right along with them; his column on Friday was unconscionable. The only decent assumption under the circumstances was that she had been coerced. That’s certainly what I thought when I saw the tape. It was always theoretically possible that she could have suffered from Stockholm Syndrome or had “gone over to the enemy” but to assume that based upon a tape that was produced by anyone other than a reputable news agency is either a sign of second rate journalism or an obvious political agenda. With Kurtz’s history it appears to be both.

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Interspecies Marriage

by digby

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on anyone’s choice of spouse. I’m a romantic. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments” and all that other crap.

But I think this illustrates some of what is going on with our political media — and why those of us who are left of center find the cries of “liberal media” increasingly absurd.

The political media and political establishment are intertwined — indeed, they are intermarried:

Campbell Brown, left, co-anchor of NBC News’ ‘Weekend Today’ and primary correspondent for ‘NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams’ and the weekday ‘Today’ and her new husband, Dan Senor, former Bush foreign policy advisor and current Republican strategist and Fox News Analyst, smile after their wedding ceremony at The Beaver Creek Chapel in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Sunday, April 2, 2006.

There is nothing new about this. I’m sure that journalists have been intermarrying with the people they cover for decades (haven’t they?) Certainly it’s pretty common today. People need to keep this in mind when they evaluate the mainstream media. It’s part of the mix. The Washington establishment works together, plays together — and sleeps together. They are part of the same organism. And that’s why it’s valuable to have an alternative media outside the beltway to offer different perspectives on politics and current events. We don’t have to face people we cover over cocktail weenies in the evening or over the pillow in the morning.

Congratulations Dan ‘n Campbell. May your marriage be as happy as the union of common interests between the GOP and the corporate media.

hat tip to Jane Hamsher.

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Two Great Darwin Books

by tristero

Scientist, Interrupted reviews Niles Eldredge’s Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life so I don’t have to. Basically, I agree, there was a sense of it being rushed but it’s still very, very good. What wasn’t mentioned in the review was that while Eldredge uses the opportunity to push his and Gould’s “punctuated equilibrium” theory at various times, he doesn’t mention recent criticism of the idea. As I understand it, the strong case for punctuated equilibrium – that all or nearly all evolution occurs more rapidly than Darwin imagined and it seems to group around, among other things, evironmental disuptions – is still controversial. However, the weaker case – that instances of evolution proceed at different rates, some of them quite fast in geological terms – has been pretty much accepted. (Knowledgeable scientists: please correct the above if there are any misconceptions and I’ll change it.)

However, what makes the book remarkable is the description of Darwin’s notebooks which are so fascinating that I went and bought the scholarly transcription of them. For containing a great discussion of the Darwin notebooks, and for the beautiful layout of the book, I would reccommend it. (And the exhibit at the Natural History Museum is a joy and a wonder, complete with live iquana and tortoises.)

Another book, one which I can’t rave enough about is Jay Hosler’s Sandwalk Adventures which you can get a taste of by clicking the above link. It’s a graphic novel – not a comic book – about Darwin’s discussions about evolution with “a follicle mite named Mara livining in his left eyebrow.” But that grossly misrepresents the book. First and foremost, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable work of fiction, not explicitly in the Lewis Carroll mode, but certainly with an Alice-like whimsy. This means it’s a book for grownups that kids will thoroughly adore. The ending I found quite touching.

But then the book is also an example of how true historical events and ideas are transformed into myth and epic. This is all done in such a humorous and convincing fashion that you are often hardly aware of it.

There’s also a terrific introduction to Darwin’s theories and reasoning – it has to be introductory, because, after all, Darwin is trying to persuade a mite, which doesn’t have the intelligence of a fly. Simple it is, but as far as I can tell – Hosler’s an experimental biologist – it’s accurate.

Finally, Hosler manages to debunk the standard “intelligent design” creationism nonsense, refuting their arguments in a cartoon panel or two – yep, that’s about all it takes.

I just love this book. No matter how old you are, please get a copy and read it. I think I first heard of it on Pharyngula but I haven’t been able to find any reference to it there when I looked recently so whomever first told me about Sandwalk Adventures, thanks!

Iraq: Terrorism Insurance Is Not The Only Growth Industry

Memo to Howard Kaloogian: Why bother wasting everyone’s time trying to pretend an Istanbul ‘burb is Baghdad? Here’s proof positive that business is fine in the Iraqi capital. If you’re selling AK-47’s that is.

And only an ignorant, defeatist liberal scoundrel would leap to the conclusion that all those guns are being used to slaughter other Iraqis. We know better. They are being fired off during spontaneous street celebrations of their country’s freedom from tyranny. Freedom!

Go ahead. Prove all those weapons are being used in some mythical civil war. You can’t.