The Angry Left Asks Bush If He's Ashamed

It’s good that lefty Harry Taylor got a chance to ask President Bush about the NSA surveillance program. Lefties ought to get a chance to question the president. Often. According to the Associated Press he got to

tell Bush that he's never felt more ashamed of the leadership of his country. He said Bush has asserted his right to tap phone calls without a warrant, to arrest people and hold them without charges and to revoke a woman's right to an abortion, among other things.

His question gave Bush a chance to tell his side of the story: That he had been criticized for not connecting the dots, and had asked his people what else the government could do, and they told him that they needed to monitor the conversations between Al Qaeda and contacts in the United States, and that they told him it was legal.

Harry Taylor’s question gave Bush a chance to play the good guy. The audience booed Taylor but Bush “urged the audience to let Taylor finish.”

You wonder. What would Bill Clinton have done? And what would the MSM have done with a right-wing questioner attacking the president back in the 1990s?

A Radical Architect, Classical

Philosopher Roger Scruton used to be Britain’s one and only conservative. Until he gave up and came to live in the United States. But he is not so Americanized that he does not know the protectors of the permanent things in England. Like architect Quinlan Terry.

Terry is a radical architect. That is, he rejects the modernist terrorism and the postmodernist irony and designs in the classic tradition. Thus the book about his work, Radical Classicism, reviewed by Roger Scruton (reg. reqd.) in the London Spectator.

For three millennia Western builders looked back to their predecessors, respecting the temple architecture of the ancients, refining its language, and adapting it to the European landscape in ways that are subtly varied, entirely memorable and above all humane. Then Le Corbusier burst on the scene. His plan was to demolish Paris north of the Seine and to put all the people into glass boxes.

When Quinlan Terry was studying architecture he had to educate himself, traveling to see great monuments, country churches, and ordinary streets in defiance of his tutors.

Needless to say, Terry’s projects, submitted as his thesis, were failed by the examiners. In satirical spirit he submitted hubristic modernist designs instead, and was allowed to pass.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about architecture as a near erotic experience, as the cover of the book tells us.

See what I mean? Why on earth did we throw all that away?

Well, Quinlan Terry didn’t, and now he’s built buildings all over the place.

Terry’s break came in 1984, when Haslemere Estates commissioned his designs for Richmond Riverside, which was to become one of London’s most popular tourist attractions. This harmonious collection of classical buildings, rising on a knoll above the Thames and enclosing offices, restaurants and private dwellings, illustrates Terry’s principles: to fit into the landscape and townscape; to use an architectural language that puts a building into relation with its neighbours and with the passer-by; to use natural materials and load-bearing walls so that the building will last and weather; to respect the realities of climate and the human need for light and air; to create forms and spaces that will lend themselves to the changing purposes of their residents and which will not die, as modernist buildings usually die, with their initial function.

Popular tourist attraction, eh?

Girl, 14, Drives Drunk; Parents Disabled

The Brits have been enjoying the spectacle of the family from hell, the Blacks, whose daughter Leighanne got arrested and then convicted for driving under the influence without a license. What’s the fuss, you ask? Leighanne is only 14, and this is her second driving offense.

The fair Leighanne is a bit young for driving and drinking, it’s true. But that is not why she became famous.

She got famous because of the forcible manner in which she expressed exception to her sentence: she shouted abuse at the magistrates and then threw a carafe of water over them, before punching the prosecuting counsel.

That’s more like it. And then her mother “mooned” the journalists attending upon this solemn occasion.

But that is not the point. The point is that, according to Ron Liddle in the London Spectator, her parents, Nora and Maurice, are both disabled.

Nora and Maurice are on benefits on account of his cancer and angina and her lung trouble and high blood pressure.

Oh well, Nora is 54 and Maurice is 62. Maybe they need to slow down a bit. It’s all perfectly harmless. But there are 2.7 million Brits on disability, around nine percent of the work force of 30 million. Only about 900,000 are unemployed. A pretty sickly lot, those Brits.

Here in the United States, things are far different. Out of a work force of 150 million a mere 8.1 million under 65 are drawing benefits under the Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income programs. That’s a mere 5.4 percent.

Let us put this in perspective. In Britland, there are about three times as many people getting money from the government for disability as there are people unemployed. In the ruthless United States, the ranks of the disabled are about the same as the ranks of the unemployed.

What does that tell you?

John Stossel and the Teachers, contd.

Remember John Stossel and his ABC-TV documentary, “Stupid in America?”
Remember how the teachers union demonstrated in front of ABC, chanting “Shame on You?” And remember how they invited John Stossel to teach at a public school so that he could find out what it was really like teaching kids?

And remember how John Stossel agreed to take the teachers union up on their offer?

A funny thing happened on the way to the classroom, writes John Stossel.

First of all, the union selected Beacon High School in New York, a special high school. “Ninety percent of Beacon's students graduate, while the average graduation rate for New York City public schools is only 53 percent.” OK. So the teachers union wanted Stossel to see the best of the schools, not the worst.

Then there were meetings. Lots of meetings. Finally they decided that Stossel could teach history and media studies. Then they had Stossel sit in a class with a “superstar” teacher who “seemed to teach 'victimhood in racist America' rather than history.”

Then it was all called off. They said that Stossel’s project “might be 'disruptive' and that it might 'set a precedent' that would open their doors to other reporters.” I’ll say.

Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent.

And that is exactly why the education establishment does not want cameras in the classroom. It’s ok to stage a rent-a-crowd demo for the cameras down at ABC headquarters and shout “Shame.” But God forbid that TV watchers should actually get to see what goes on inside the classrooms for which they cough up five percent of their income.

What do you think, you mothers of America? Are you fed up enough yet?

Global Warming, Global Cooling, Natch

Conservatives love to recall how Newsweek heralded a new ice age back in 1975 just as the current warming trend was getting under way. Now the Washington Times has actually printed on line the article from thirty years ago, The Cooling World by Peter Gwynne.

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production... The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.

That must have got their attention back in the April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweek. The growing season in England had declined by 2 weeks between 1950 and 1975, and guess what: violent weather was a factor.

Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

You gotta love this stuff. An outburst of tornados means we are in for global cooling. But what about the devastating hurricanes of the 1960s. Don’t they get a mention? Then there are the experts.

Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras -- and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Of course, Newsweek was deeply worried that nothing was being done about the looming crisis. “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.” There’s a voice from the past. Remember the “planners?” Haven’t heard much about them lately. Not since the end of the Soviet Union.

Good Old Tom Delay

I first heard the name Tom Delay when working on Rick White’s campaign for Congress in 1994. Tom was obviously Rick’s goto man in Washington DC, for advice and no doubt for money.

Now he’s gone, but you can certainly say he had an impact.

And you can certainly say that the Republican Party is ruthless when it comes to tossing grannie from the train. Delay isn’t exactly a grannie, but he had certainly become Republican baggage.

Is that what Democrats mean when they say that Republicans are mean-spirited?

We don’t really know too much about Tom Delay. There have never been the usual fawning profiles that are routine in the MSM for rising stars and big hitters in the Democratic Party. So it’s good to read Tony Blankley’s appreciation.

Tom has served the Party magnificently over the last two decades — both as a principled conservative legislator, and as a shrewd and tireless political operator. And he has had the good judgment to exit on his own two feet. Both the Party and the country are stronger and better for all that Tom Delay has contributed.

But the fact is that nobody is indispensible. Tom Delay had become an embarrassment and so he had to go.

But we thank Tom for all he has done, especially since a lot of it has been the bare-knuckle stuff like the Texas reapportionment that a political party needs someone to do, but is embarrassed to admit to.

And I always liked him that people sneered for his being once a pest exterminator. Why would they think that? We need more pest exterminators in the Republican Party.

Let's Wish Katie Couric Well

Conservatives are understandably a bit sour about the accession of Katie Couric to the news anchor position at CBS News.

While liberals are doubtless agog at the big “first,” the first woman ever to become a major solo news anchor, to us it’s just same-old same-old. Another liberal face gets to read the news at a liberal news desk.

Yes, there’s a long conservativev rap sheet on the “perky” Katie Couric, and Lowell Ponte is up to the challenge of reading it out in full.

But let us hear it for Katie. She’s a liberal feminist, and she has reached the peak of her profession. Good luck to her.

Anyway, the liberal slant of the news doesn’t come from the on-air talent, it comes from the news organization itself. CBS News is a liberal news organization and it ought to have a liberal on-air anchor. And as a liberal news organization it ought to be first to have a solo woman news anchor.

The problem with CBS News and with the rest of the liberal news media is highlighted by Michael Barone. If you were setting up the news media from scratch would you staff it with people so that 90 percent adhered to one political party and 10 percent to the other? Er, no, you probably wouldn’t. Unless you were like the broadcast news executive in this exchange:

"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."

"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."

He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."

Really, we Republicans and conservatives shouldn’t be discouraged by this. When our adversary displays such a staggering blindness, we ought to be able to exploit it, all the way to the presidency, to majorities in both houses of Congress, and even to the Supreme Court.

By the way, let us credit Rush Limbaugh for the sobriquet “perky.” Rush’s epithet perfectly describes the reality of Katie’s talent. It is her attractive, female, woman-next-door qualities that have made her a success. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—unless you are a liberal.