Back of the Envelope

Jonah Goldberg thinks that conservatism might just survive:

From the 1950s onward, various conservatives — mostly, but not entirely, of a libertarian bent — have predicted the movement must come a cropper from its internal contradictions. Buckley was constantly fending off assaults from ideological brigands trying to commandeer the ship of conservatism and steer it toward purer waters of religious, libertarian or anti-Communist hues. Buckley stood firm and said, no! There be monsters there. Buckley was aided by the conservative theorist Frank Meyer, who fashioned the doctrine of "fusionism," which held that freedom and virtue were inextricably entwined; virtue not freely chosen is not virtuous.

As conservatism blossomed in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, some conservatives jumped ship, unwilling to accept the compromises and responsibilities of power. The late "paleocon" Samuel Francis bemoaned the Reaganites as "hapless" sellouts. Others among his confreres banged their spoons on their highchairs because "neocons" got jobs in the administration they felt were rightly theirs. On foreign policy, realists, neoconservatives and traditional anti-Communists tussled in an endless mosh pit.

In 1992, R. Emmett Tyrrell proclaimed that a great "conservative crack-up" was taking place before our eyes. Throughout the 1990s other conservatives made similar pronouncements, even as conservative ideas won under a Democratic president and Republican politicians inexorably claimed majority party status in this country.

Personally, I dislike much of Bush's "compassionate conservatism." Indeed, I find it astounding that even as Bush has moved the Republican agenda leftward in many key respects, the left has screamed all the louder about how "right wing" he is. But simply because I think Bush is wrong about, say, Medicare, it doesn't mean I think it's a sign the conservative movement is falling apart. Lots of folks thought FDR's New Deal was a disaster at the time, and look how that turned out.

What I'm not sure of is whether that last sentence was sarcastic, as I believe there's much about the New Deal that Jonah thinks is disastrous.

The media is reporting on memos sent around by the Senate Republicans, saying how beneficial to their cause the Terri Schiavo case is. For example, the Washington Post:

In a memo distributed only to Republican senators, the Schiavo case was characterized as "a great political issue" that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006.

Republicans deny that they sent around such a memo. In a Weekly Standard article, John Hinderaker of Powerline points out some inconsistencies in it, arguing that it's a Democratic dirty trick. While he makes some good points, there's no smoking gun evidence, as there was for the Rathergate story. So the question becomes on whom lies the burden of proof? The Republicans proving that they never sent around the memo? The media proving that they did? Or John Hinderaker proving that it's a Democratic dirty trick? Personally, I'd go with both B and C, on the theory that the burden of proof lies with the accusers. I don't see enough evidence to support either, so it's not clear who created the memo or for what purpose.

The full text of the memo is here.

Doc tries to explain the view that others take of the Terri Schiavo case:

This is how they see it --the people who would let Terri die: imagine that a woman died, but before her body decayed the doctors cut off an arm and then kept alive artificially. The arm has no soul, no right to life. It's just a macabre relic of the person who is no longer with us. The arm is not the person.
...
You don't agree? You don't have to. But before you attack them for callousness, you have to understand where they are. Imagine a woman's arm, kept alive for fifteen years because her hysterical parents can't bare to let it go. They like to sit and hold the hand and talk to it. They tell you it responds by squeezing their fingers and that it appreciates having them there. Wouldn't you think that was a bit ghoulish? And if her poor ex-husband went to court to get the arm destroyed, wouldn't you be sympathetic? And if the courts ruled that it should be destroyed but the parents fought the ruling for years, wouldn't you be annoyed? And then if Congress actually passed a law to cater to the hysterical parents, wouldn't you be disturbed?

This is how they see Terri. They see a gruesome living corpse. They genuinely believe that Terri is no more; that keeping the body alive is a ghoulish bit of sentimentality. Please put yourself in their place before you start judging and criticizing. You can argue over whether Terri is alive or not, but please don't call them names as if they believe the same things you do and simply do not care about Terri.

I could understand this viewpoint, and I could argue against it effectively, I believe. That is not the viewpoint of the people who've been commenting on my blog, however. They are arguing that Terri is suffering, and that it is more merciful to let her die, to let her soul go to a better place. Doc's summary of the views of my own side are less than complete as well, and don't fully reflect my views on the matter. I guess that my point is that it's a bit more complicated than Doc lets on, that there are many, many different viewpoints that can lead to each of the two conclusions: either let her die or help her live.

Mark Steyn weighs in on Terri Schiavo, and the broader question of what her death by judicial order means:

But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.

"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."

Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.

In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.

Read the whole thing. And worry.

I received an interesting comment last night. I responded to it in my comments, but after some thought, I decided to put it on the main page as well. Here is what TrueViews said:

It amazes me how so many people in this country are unwilling to face death with courage. In a ways, many people fight to keep Terri alive because the protestors themselves have such issues with dying. I actually gave too much credit to those using religious reasons for keeping Terri alive. It is a major part of most religions to live for the day that you die. It is arrogant of ANYONE to decide for Terri whether or not it's time to die. While not all doctors agree on whether or not Terri will recover, they ALL agree that she is in pain. Have any of you considered what would happen if Terri were to recover? Do you understand the additional pain she will have to suffer due to the fact that her muscles are in atrophy from the last 15 years of inactivity? She will have to endure intense physical therapy. PLUS....no one every TRULY recovers from brain damage. ONCE IT IS SUSTAINED, it is a permanent, irreversible reality that the victim has to live with for the rest of her life. And yes, I do consider people who suffer from brain damage VICTIMS. YOU don't live with brain damage, SHE does. IS THIS THE WAY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO LIVE?! I'm not saying they you have to be completely ok with letting her die. Dying is a painful process for EVERYONE involved. BUT that is part of the lives that we have been blessed with. I AM saying that everyone has to able to admit that if Terri were to die right now, her pain and state of mental disability would be washed away and replaced with peace of being finally released from her damaged, physical body. Yes, she has to endure dying of starvation, but that is MOMENTARY compared to the last 15 years and MORE if her feeding tube is reinserted. Instead of being there for her as she journeys on the path towards His light, we're holding her back in her broken body, not only expecting her to deal with her current pain and suffering, but also expecting her to deal with even more pain and suffering IF (AND IT'S ONLY AND IF) she were to recover. You are blinding yourselves to what death really is. So many of you see dying as some horrible thing. It's not a horrible thing to die. It's a horrible thing to put OTHERS through a torture device you ALL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.

This is the response that I gave:

Curious. So are you saying that even if she could recover, could learn to walk and speak again, it'd still be better to put her to death? Because it would be hard? Because life would never be as good as it was before? Does this apply to everyone who's had a crippling injury? Or just those brain damaged?

If you're right and it's arrogant to make the decision for her, how is it less arrogant to decide that she would rather die than it is to decide that she would rather live? Is this because you would rather die in this situation? How do you know, if you haven't been in it? Why don't you ask someone who has lived through it? This woman, for instance. I can't say that Terri would make the same decision. We can't ask her. Her husband says she would choose to die, based on a chance remark he remembers her making years before this happened, but if, as you're saying, we don't know without going through it ourselves, then her opinion before she ended up in this state doesn't count.

My religion instructs me that no one has the authority to end an innocent life. That is God's prerogative, and it is arrogant of me to say that any life is no longer worth living. I dare not even say that about my own life. That would be telling God that I am useless, when I know that God does the most amazing things through the people everyone believes to be useless.

I wish I could have corrected the typos in my comment section, as I did here.

Andrew McCarthy has a very good article on the matter, pointing out what the law passed by Congress did and did not do:

Finally, the bill passed early Monday morning is a strange reflection of our times. It basically says: You have to stop starving and dehydrating Terri Schiavo until we can figure out whether any federal rights have been violated. That's a bit like saying: You need to stop clubbing me until I can figure out whether my head hurts.

Right-to-die folks will use the bill's internal logic to their advantage. They will say that, notwithstanding the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, whatever the U.S. constitutional "right to life" may be, it does not include the right not to be tortured by slow starvation/dehydration. After all, they will rationally argue, if those amendments did include such a right, there would have been no reason for Congress to refer the matter to a federal court — Congress could simply have said that the state is not permitted to starve and dehydrate a person who is not clinically dead.

That is to say, the bill does not communicate any sense of the Congress that torture by starvation/dehydration is itself a constitutional violation. Since no one disputes that Terri was being starved/dehydrated, the right to die people will say: Surely Congress did not refer the case to a federal judge to determine whether starvation/hydration was ongoing, and surely if Congress thought starvation/dehydration violated the constitution it would have said so. Thus, so the argument will conclude, what Congress must have meant is that the federal court is limited to analyzing the state court proceedings themselves to weigh whether some federal law violation has occurred. If that is the route the federal court takes — essentially, that it is limited to deciding whether the state proceedings satisfied minimal threshold of constitutional due process, which tends not to be rigorous — it will be much more difficult to reverse the Florida outcome.

Who let the courts have this much power in the first place? At this point, there may be nothing more that can be done.

I haven't written a lot about Terri Schiavo. My knowledge of the case is fairly limited, based on what I've read on other blogs and a few news articles. If you want to know what's up with this, then I can recommend you get more information from La Shawn Barber, Captain's Quarters, Doc Rampage, or Imago Dei.

I do know that Terri is not brain dead, as Serge of Imago Dei kindly defined the term for me at one point, and it cannot at all be applied to the case of someone who is responsive, even if sporadically. And a few hours of observation is hardly adequate to determine whether someone is ever responsive, which is why I find this so repulsive:

Brian Schiavo, Michael's brother, said he spent Sunday afternoon with his brother and Terri at the hospice, but Terri did not move or make any noises. "Anybody that thinks that she talks and responds, they need to have a mental health examination," he said.

If you look at some of the pictures associated with the article she certainly looks responsive, even if she is severely brain damaged. Early Monday morning, a law was passed which allowed a federal court to make a ruling on the matter, but the court so petitioned adjourned Monday afternoon without making a decision. This was not a good sign, as Terri was currently starving to death, and a judge who did not immediately move to preserve her life wasn't too concerned that her death might render the case moot. Thus it wasn't surprising when earlier today the judge ruled against reinserting the feeding tube. I do not know what can be done now.

With the facts of the case so depressing, it's easier to discuss principles. Joe Gandelman challenged conservatives to say why having Congress pass a law to protect Terri doesn't go against conservative principles of small government and states' rights. Well, to put my answer simply, I don't see why I should care if it's unconservative. My conservative principles are not the driving force in my life. I'm a conservative for reasons of practicality--conservatism works when it comes to enforcing and defending the social issues I care about, which are primarily individual rights and the common welfare. And the one issue that I care most about is the right to live, and the assurance that no one is allowed to take that right from another person without due process of the law. I do not believe that due process was followed in Terri's case, and if conservative principles cannot prevent that, then they have failed and it's time to consider other principles. I don't really think that conservative principles have failed, but that the system does need to be fixed. The problem is that the efforts by the duly elected representatives of the people to do so are continually stymied by the courts. (A law passed by Florida's legislature was declared unconstitutional.) I do not trust the courts of this country, and I fear that it will be impossible to undo the damage that they are doing. We won't be able to undo Terri's death.

Update: La Shawn Barber has a new post up outlining the case and saying something similar to what I said:

Despite liberals’ lament that the rule of law is being trampled on, an unjust law is no law at all. A law that deprives the innocent of life should be no more enforceable than one legalizing human bondage.

Alas, she also thinks that at this point, the debate is academic, and that Terri's fate has already been decided.

That's what I thought when I read this:

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a lightning rod for controversy as one of the main advocates for the Iraq war, is President Bush's choice for World Bank president, administration officials said on Wednesday.

Wolfowitz would replace World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, who said earlier this month that Wolfowitz was no longer in the running for the top job after a Pentagon official suggested he wanted to stay at the Defense Department.

The U.S. Treasury Department has said it wants a new president in place before Wolfensohn departs in June after 10 years in the post.

Ain't Wolfowitz the Grand Poobah of the Necon Cabal, the shadowy mastermind behind Bushitler's War for Oil in Iraq? Yes, some folks blame Cheney or Rove or Rumsfeld, but those in the know realize that the invasion of Iraq was all Wolfowitz's idea. He cleverly disguised his intentions by publicly proclaiming for like ten years that we really ought to invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam and replace him with a democracy, thus misdirecting everyone from his true intention to invade Iraq and get rid of Saddam and replace him with a democracy. I cannot wait to see what the conspiracy theorists think of this appointment.

On a more serious note, this seems like something of a waste. I figured him for a Secretary position, perhaps Defense when Rumsfeld was moved to the CIA or State or something to give it a good shake-up. That would have been fun. Instead Rumsfeld stayed with Defense, Porter Goss became head of the CIA, and Rice became Secretary of State. I'm sure Rice will do a good job, but I'm not sure she'll give State the gutting it needs. I can't really talk about Goss, although all the screaming and yelling from the CIA indicates that he must be doing something, hopefully the right thing. And Wolfowitz is nominated for Head of the World Bank. If you're wondering what the World Bank does, here's what the website says:

The World Bank Group’s mission is to fight poverty and improve the living standards of people in the developing world. It is a development Bank which provides loans, policy advice, technical assistance and knowledge sharing services to low and middle income countries to reduce poverty. The Bank promotes growth to create jobs and to empower poor people to take advantage of these opportunities.

Now, I'm sure Wolfowitz can do a fine job making sure the World Bank's assets go to the proper place, rather than being diverted to prop up dictators, but I'd rather he were working on possible solutions to Syria, Iran, and North Korea.

It looks like the Lebanese aren't going to be intimidated by Hezbollah, after all:

Hundreds of thousands of anti-Syrian demonstrators flooded the capital Monday in the biggest protest ever in Lebanon, surpassing the turnout for an earlier pro-Damascus rally organized by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah (search). In a show of national unity, Sunnis, Druse and Christians packed Martyrs' Square as brass bands played and balloons soared skyward.

The rally, perhaps the biggest anti-government demonstration ever staged in the Arab world, was the opposition's bid to regain momentum after two serious blows: the reinstatement of the pro-Syrian prime minister and a huge rally last week by the Shiite group Hezbollah.

I'll admit that I was worried after the Hezbollah protest. Hezbollah is powerful and unaccountably popular, and I wasn't certain that their ability to raise sheer numbers, whether by honest means or with coercion and deceit, could be matched by the Lebanese anti-Syrian movement. It looks like I was mistaken. This protest numbered between 800,000 and 1 million, which makes it not just impressive, but breath-taking, for a country whose population is 3.5 million.

After the Hezbollah protest, the steady progress of Lebanese freedom seemed to pause. Bush, undaunted, continued to insist that Assad move his forces out of Lebanon, and Assad agreed to comply, but Karami, Syria's puppet Prime Minister, was re-installed just days after the initial anti-Syria protests forced him to resign. I was worried that Hezbollah's claim to represent the will of the people might cost the Lebanese independence movement its legitimacy in the eyes of the world, leading to a compromise with Syria. Bush would probably have held firm, though, and convinced Syria to leave. Hezbollah was doubtless hoping that even if Syria was forced to leave, their show of power would put them in a position to take control. It might have, if they hadn't made the mistake I pointed out in my last post. They chose the wrong side. If their side had won the "will of the people" contest, then perhaps, even with Syria gone, they would have taken a leadership role. But by siding against freedom, they showed the people that they did not represent them, and if the people had the courage to demonstrate it, Hezbollah would lose. And unfortunately for Hezbollah, the people did. Hezbollah's not going away, but I doubt they will ever have the role in Lebanese politics that they had hoped for.

Well, it looks like China's decided to make it legal to invade Taiwan:

China's parliament on Monday, voting unanimously with two abstentions, enacted a law authorizing force if Taiwan pursues formal independence mainland China.

Taiwan and China split in 1949, but Beijing considers the democratic, self-ruled island to be Chinese territory. Beijing has threatened repeatedly to attack if Taiwan tries to make its de facto independence permanent.

Any outbreak of hostilities could ensnare the United States, which is Taiwan's biggest arms supplier and is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan defend itself. There are 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan and 35,000 in South Korea. Under Washington's one-China policy, the United States agrees to have no diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognizes Beijing as China's sole government.

McClellan reiterated that policy, but said U.S. officials are dismayed at the threat of force.

Our official policy may be one-China, but Bush has publicly stated that the US will defend Taiwan if China attacks, and the Chinese would be foolish to think that Bush doesn't mean what he says. Any such battle would be primarily a naval engagement, and the US Navy is not tied up in the same way that our ground forces are, so we have the forces available to defend Taiwan. Is it possible we could lose such a battle? Anything's possible, and China is the world's most populous nation, so it's not like they don't have more manpower than you can shake a stick at. In addition, they've been spending a lot of money to upgrade their military recently, and they did increased funding yet again in this legislative session for the stated purpose of defending their sovereignty, by which they mean keeping pesky places like Taiwan from slipping from their grasp. I doubt they can match the US level of technological sophistication quite yet. It's not a battle which we should want to fight, but hopefully the Chinese see it the same way.

One thing I'm curious about are the two abstentions. Incidentally, the totals are 2,896 votes for, 2 abstentions, and none against. It seems to me that even abstentions might be seen as an act of courage in such an environment. Or it might have been, "Hey, if everyone votes for it, it will look undemocratic. You two, vote against it." "No way! You vote against it. We don't want to go to prison." "Okay, okay, just abstain then."

China's premier, Wen Jiabao has defended the action by likening it to America's Civil War, and the North's actions to keep the Southern states from seceding:

"If you care to read two anti-secession resolutions adopted in the United States around 1861, you will find that they are very similar to each other," Wen said of the resolutions and the anti-secession law.

"In the United States, the civil war broke out, but we here do not wish to see such a situation," he added.

This argument might have had some validity if Taiwan hadn't had an independent government for the last fifty years.

You also see a lot of talk on the part of Wen on how this legislation is intended to strengthen relations between China and Taiwan. In the same way that a marriage is strengthened when a husband threatens to beat his wife, I take it.

Frank J makes a good point:

Think of what the new Democrat ads would be like:

ANNOUNCER: Now that felons have regained the vote, the Democrats want to see as many as possible at your local polling place. Yes, voting around you will be your newly enfranchised friends like these...

On screen appears mug shots of offenders along with their rap sheets.

Talk about voter intimidation.

It ain't gonna work on me, bub. I say we lobby for us permit holders to now carry into polling places. Alarmists will worry about me running into the room with two guns blazing, but, while I will have two .45s pointed out in front of me, safeties off, fingers on the triggers, shouting, "I'm voting Republican! And, if any of you have a problem with it, make your move!" I will not be firing any rounds unless someone mistakenly thinks I'm bluffing. Yes, it could end in a violent shootout, but that's true democracy for you. If you don't like it, go to some country that doesn't have democracy and we currently don't have any immediate plans to invade (I can't think of any off-hand, but I know there are some).

Frank J is very funny, although some of you may find his humor offensive.

I learned a new word from Rich Lowry yesterday:

One of the inconveniences of political debate is that occasionally reality intrudes to invalidate a given position no matter how much its partisans want to believe it. This is what has been happening recently to the argument that the invasion of Iraq produced an irrecoverable mess. Although surely setbacks still await us in Iraq and the Middle East, stunning headlines from the region have left many liberals perversely glum about upbeat news.

Schadenfreude has faded into its happiness-hating opposite, gluckschmerz. Liberal journalist Kurt Andersen has written in New York magazine of the guilty “pleasure liberals took in bad news from Iraq, which seemed sure to hurt the administration.” According to Andersen, the successful Iraqi elections changed the mood. For Bush critics, this inspiring event was “unexpectedly unsettling,” since they so “hat[ed] the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team.”
...
Has the administration gotten a few fortunate breaks in the Middle East lately? Well, yes. Asked how he seemed to make so many lucky saves, the great Montreal Canadien goalie Ken Dryden explained that it was his job to be in the right position to get lucky. By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the region.

I'll have to remember the word glueckschmerz, as yourish.com insists it should be spelled.

Hezbollah has arranged a huge counterprotest against Lebanese independence:

Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in a central Beirut square Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.

Organizers handed out Lebanese flags and directed the men and women to separate sections of Riad Solh Square. Loudspeakers blared militant songs urging resistance to foreign interference. Demonstrators held up pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and signs saying, "Syria & Lebanon brothers forever."

Other placards read: "America is the source of terrorism"; "All our disasters are from America"; "No to American-Zionist intervention; Yes to Lebanese-Syrian brotherhood."

Black-clad Hezbollah guards handled security, lining the perimeter of the square and taking position on rooftops. Trained dogs sniffed for bombs.

First the bad news: This is seven times as big as the protests for Lebanese independence. And while many people have argued that the numbers were exaggerated and people were forced to participate (remember Saddam's rallies?), it's also true that Hezbollah is immensely powerful and, unfortunately, popular.

Now the good news: While it is easy to arrange rallies when you're in power, in places like Lebanon it's very hard to arrange them when you're not in power, so doing a direct numbers to numbers comparison is not very useful. Second, the fact that Hezbollah feels the need to arrange this protest, and to demonstrate their massive numbers, shows that they're worried. There's something ultimately self-defeating in this attempt to show that a majority opposes independence, since it concedes that the will of the people matters, and re-inforces democratic principles. That doesn't necessarily mean democracy will come from it, since plenty of tyrannies pay lip service to the will of the people, but it admits that this is a battle of hearts and minds rather than guns and bombs.

Finally, the most important aspect of this is that Hezbollah has chosen a side, and demonstrated publicly that they are against freedom. This is important, considering that for a time Lebanese opposition leaders were courting Hezbollah's support. Now they and everyone else know whose side Hezbollah is really on. One of the purposes of our actions in the Middle East is to marginalize terrorists and terrorism, and the way to do this is to show that what terrorists want is not what is best for the people. Thus it is a good thing to see terrorists standing against the rising tide of freedom, because it demonstrates to all who would admire them what they really stand for. And if they're drowned by that tide, so much the better.

On that note, I'll end with a quote from Considerettes:

Aside from all the schizophrenia going on here, the larger point to be made is that Bush and crew were often derided when they said that the perpetrators of 9/11 attacked us because they hated our way of life, our freedoms. Detractors insisted that the reasons had to do more with our foreign policy and our pro-Israel stance. But as the insurgency in Iraq and these demonstrations by Hezbollah show, it really is democracy that they fear. They'd prefer to be an occupied country than have the will of the people heard. That's why they hate us; because we're free.

Iowahawk predicts that the Supreme Court has only begun to apply foreign law to the US:

In a far-reaching decision that will likely create complicated consequences for the American livestock and wedding-planning industries, the Supreme Court this morning ruled 5-4 that all US marriage dowries "must include three non-diseased oxen."

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited "the weight of the expansive penumbra surrounding the historically emerging and prevailing opinions of tribal shamans from Lesotho to Myanamar" in issuing the historic ruling in American Cattleman Association vs. Modern Bride, Helverson, et al.

Read the whole thing. I especially like Scalia's response.

Man, we need more justices like Scalia. Judges who want to limit the power of the courts are few and far between.

It looks like the Armanious murders were not religiously motivated:

The upstairs tenant of an Egyptian Christian family found slain in their home in January and another man have been charged in the killings, and authorities said Friday the motive was robbery, not religious fanaticism.

Two men already on parole for drug offenses pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder in the Jan. 11 killing of the Armanious family, which had caused tension between Christians and Muslims in New Jersey.

I never thought that the murders were organized terrorism, but I did think that religious hatred seemed like the most likely motive. Looking at what I wrote about this earlier, I feel somewhat foolish, as it looks like my gut feeling was wrong. Still, while my thoughts on the particulars of this case were wrong, I haven't changed my mind about any of the general remarks.

It sure looks like it, doesn't it? Mark Steyn rattles off the statistics:

Consider just the past couple of days' news: not the ever more desperate depravity of the floundering "insurgency", but the real popular Arab resistance the car-bombers and the head-hackers are flailing against: the Saudi foreign minister, who by remarkable coincidence goes by the name of Prince Saud, told Newsweek that women would be voting in the next Saudi election. "That is going to be good for the election," he said, "because I think women are more sensible voters than men."

Four-time Egyptian election winner - and with 90 per cent of the vote! - President Mubarak announced that next polling day he wouldn't mind an opponent. Ordering his stenographer to change the constitution to permit the first multi-choice presidential elections in Egyptian history, His Excellency said the country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy". The state-run TV network hailed the president's speech as a "historical decision in the nation's 7,000-year-old march toward democracy". After 7,000 years on the march, they're barely out of the parking lot, so Mubarak's move is, as they say, a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Damascus, Boy Assad, having badly overplayed his hand in Lebanon and after months of denying that he was harbouring any refugee Saddamites, suddenly discovered that - wouldja believe it? - Saddam's brother and 29 other bigshot Baghdad Baathists were holed up in north-eastern Syria, and promptly handed them over to the Iraqi government.

And, for perhaps the most remarkable development, consider this report from Mohammed Ballas of Associated Press: "Palestinians expressed anger on Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes."

No disrespect to Associated Press, but I was disinclined to take their word for it. However, Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs website has done an invaluable job these past three years presenting the ugly truth about Palestinian death-cultism, reported that he went hunting around the internet for the usual photographs of deliriously happy Gazans dancing in the street and handing out sweets to celebrate the latest addition to the pile of Jew corpses - and, to his surprise, couldn't find any.

Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30. Don't take my word for it, listen to Walid Jumblatt, big-time Lebanese Druze leader and a man of impeccable anti-American credentials: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen."

Elections in Iraq and Palestine, reforms in Egypt, the Syrian puppet government resigning in Lebanon... it's crazy, but we might actually see democracy throughout the Middle East in the next ten years, and we'll have Bush to blame.

Now if only we don't lose it in Russia.

Update: Welcome, Slate readers! If you're wondering where I said Bush was too moderate, that would be here. Slate makes me sound like I'm way off in the far Right.