Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor and author of "The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law," reminds us what's old -- really, really old -- is new again:

Appearance-related bias... exacerbates disadvantages based on gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and class. Prevailing beauty standards penalize people who lack the time and money to invest in their appearance. And weight discrimination, in particular, imposes special costs on people who live in communities with shortages of healthy food options and exercise facilities.

So why not simply ban discrimination based on appearance?

Yes, why not? A beautiful idea. What could possibly go wrong?

(Via John Miller at The Corner.)

Joseph Wesley Postell, assistant director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for American Studies, has a pretty good piece in the Washington Times today on the decline of constitutionalism and the rise of the administrative state:

The Founders confronted a basic problem: How to vest government with sufficient power to get things done without giving it the instruments to exercise tyrannical control? To protect individual liberty and rights, they established (among others) two basic principles at the center of our constitutional order: representation and the separation of powers. To assure that government operated by consent, they provided that those responsible for making laws would be held accountable through elections. Moreover, legislative, executive and judicial power would be separated so those who made the laws were not in charge of executing and applying them.

Our modern administrative state violates these principles. That also is by design, courtesy of the progressives - the original architects of the administrative state. Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson disdained the idea of government "by the people" and sought to replace it with government by the experts. Wilson complained of America's "besetting error of ... trying to do too much by vote." "Self-government does not consist in having a hand in everything," he argued.

Postell argues, in brief, that conservatives need to do a better job explaining to the public the evils of the administrative state and develop a roadmap for restoring representative government and separation of powers, rightly understood.

"The question is not necessarily how to make government smaller," Postell writes, "but how to get it back under popular control and accountability."

(Hat tip: Julie Ponzi at No Left Turns.)

(Cross-posted at Freedom Pub.)

After a hiatus, the podcast returns at the tail-end of tax season and tea party mania. Ben Boychuk and Robb Leatherwood last month interviewed John O'Hara, author of A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes. We very much wanted to post this sooner, but paying work got in the way. Our apologies to O'Hara, who gave a great interview here.

Among the questions we explore:

• Who's running these tea parties?
• Are the tea parties really creatures of the Republican Party?
• Is there a coherent tea party platform?
• Aren't tea parties really just astroturf?
• Can the tea party movement move beyond street protests to shape political reform?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "Anarchy X," Queensryche
• "Gun Battle," (From the "Billy the Kid" Ballet Suite), Aaron Copland/London Symphony Orchestra
• "New Avengers-Raw Deal Mix," Snowboy
• "Tax Free," Jimi Hendrix
• "Traitors (Verräter)," Peter Thomas
• "Always Tomorrow," The Shazam
• "Eyes of a Stranger," Queensryche

My friend and colleague, Zack Christenson, has produced a great video for The Heartland Institute about the Tea Party movement. Not only is it packed with historical references, it's also very well-produced.

I expect this essay in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal will have people animated. Here's the crux:

A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, "We still have the power to shape history." But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

Of the two great societal goals—freedom and "the good"—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.

It's not just about Obama, then. It's about what Obama's America will look like after the man is out of office. Is freedom really in tension with the "good" society? Or is this a narrow understanding of what is "good" and just?

The legal challenges to ObamaCare are sure to come, on many grounds. It is not wise for opponents of this monstrous usurpation of liberty to get their hopes up — though I find it interesting that the list of state Attorneys General lining up to challenge the mandate to purchase health insurance continues to rise.

However, Ed Morrissey over at HotAir has unearthed an interesting memo that the sacrosanct Congressional Budget Office issued in 1994, the last time government-run health care was a hot political topic:

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

Federal mandates typically apply to people as parties to economic transactions, rather than as members of society. For example, the section of the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires restaurants to make their facilities accessible to persons with disabilities applies to people who own restaurants. The Federal Labor Standards Act prohibits employers from paying less than the federal minimum wage. This prohibition pertains to individuals who employ others. Federal environmental statutes and regulations that require firms to meet pollution control standards and use specific technologies apply to companies that engage in specific lines of business or use particular production processes. Federal mandates that apply to individuals as members of society are extremely rare. One example is the requirement that draft-age men register with the Selective Service System. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not aware of any others imposed by current federal law.

Note the CBO said a mandate on conditions of citizenship, such as what ObamaCare would impose, are "extremely rare," not unprecedented. Yet other than Selective Service registration, the CBO cites no other examples. If they are so rare, one would also think them memorable, and perhaps another example or two would have come up in the evaluation. Interesting. And, of course, one difference between the Selective Service registration and the forced purchase of health insurance is that the former is cost-free.

Yes, I've anticipated the argument that American citizens are forced to pay income taxes — with the targets of the tax and the amount dictated by ever-changing statute. And I'm sure that will be a counter-argument we'll hear in court from ObamaCare defenders. But one may note that the income tax itself was not instituted by mere statute, but by a constitutional amendment. So the people, in a manner enormously more difficult than the way ObamaCare was rammed through, approvingly validated the income tax by making submission to the tax a constitutional requirement of citizenship.

Alas, that was a different time, when even the progressives understood that epochal proposals remaking America and the relationship between the citizen and the state required overwhelming public validation. Today's progressives are of a different breed.

(HT: Daniel Foster)

More fallout from President Obama's denunciation of the Supreme Court during Wednesday's State of the Union. The Wall Street Journal's editors "unpack the falsehoods" the president managed to load into three sentences:

The Court didn't reverse "a century of law," but merely two more recent precedents, one from 1990 and part of another from 2003. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 had set the Court in a markedly new direction in limiting independent corporate campaign expenditures. This is the outlier case that needed to be overturned.

Mr. Obama is also a sudden convert to stare decisis. Does he now believe that all Court precedents of a certain duration are sacrosanct, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal, 1896), which was overturned by Brown v. Board (1954)? Or Bowers v. Hardwick (a ban on sodomy, 1986), which was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003)?

The President's claim about "foreign entities" bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions. His use of "foreign" was a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a President who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?

I think the last point is arguable, but the bottom line is strong.

Meantime, on the opposite page, Randy Barnett expands his criticism of Obama's demagogic assault on the judiciary:

Judge not the words themselves, but their effect on the audience. The president fully expected that his hundreds of supporters in the legislative branch would stand and cheer, while the justices remained seated and silent, unable to respond even afterward. Moreover, the president's speech was only released about 30 minutes before the event, after the justices were already present. In short, the head of the executive branch ambushed six members of the judiciary, and called upon the legislative branch to deride them publicly. If you missed it, check the YouTube video. No one could reasonably believe in their heart that this was respectful behavior.

Then there is the substance of the remark itself. It was factually wrong. The Court's ruling in Citizens United concerned the right of labor unions and domestic corporations, including nonprofits, to express their views about candidates in media such as books, films and TV within 60 days of an election. In short, it concerned freedom of speech; in particular, an independent film critical of Hillary Clinton funded by a nonprofit corporation.

While the Court reversed a 1990 decision allowing such a ban, it left standing current restrictions on foreign nationals and "entities." Also untouched was a 100-year-old ban on domestic corporate contributions to political campaigns to which the president was presumably referring erroneously.

That is a whole lot to get wrong in 72 sanctimonious words.

Ouch. Just imagine what would happen if Barnett turned his attention to the other 7,100.

Finally, I can scarcely believe I agree with everything Jonathan Chait writes here. But I do!

Hillsdale College's Kirby Center in Washington D.C. sponsors an excellent monthly speakers' series called "First Principles on First Fridays," in which Hillsdale academics or friends of the college discuss Big Questions. All of the talks are online and available for download as podcasts. I'm currently listening to Larry Arnn's November talk on The Crisis of American Constitutionalism. Good stuff.

Menifee's absurd dictionary ban made me reach for my own copy of Webster's -- I don't actually have the "controversial" Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition in my library, but I do have a copy of Webster's II New College Dictionary. And therein lies a short story.

The dictionary was a gift from my late friend Chris Warden, on the occasion of the birth of my son Benjamin. Chris loved the language; he knew I did, too; and so he expected I would impart that love to my first-born. Lord knows I'm trying.

Truth is, I had forgotten where this dictionary came from. And so I forgot what Chris wrote on the flyleaf. Here it is:

To combat consternation
Consider contemplation
Calm, cool cerebration
Conquers conflagration

A concatenation of confusion
Conspires with chaos, a constant collusion
Yet a conservative confluence
of candor and comprehension
Will compel composure, commute contention

Cherish freedom
Collect the truth
Claim your faults
Celebrate youth.

A happy accident... and a charming, bittersweet reminder of Chris's wit and wisdom.

Mark Helprin has a new piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal warning against repeating the mistakes of the past while reacquiring some old habits as the country emerges from the Great Recession:

How things will turn out is anyone's guess, but it would be nice if, as in the quiet during and after a snow storm, Manhattan would reappear to be appreciated in tranquility; if cops, firemen, nurses, and teachers did not have to live in New Jersey; if students, waitress-actresses, waiter-painters, and dish-washer-writers did not have to board nine to a room or like beagles in their parents' condominia; if the traffic on Park Avenue (as I can personally attest it was in the late 1940s) were sufficiently sparse that you could hear insects in the flower beds; if to balance the frenetic getting and spending, the qualities of reserve and equanimity would retake their once honored places; if celebrity were to be ignored, media switched off, and the stories of ordinary men and women assume their deserved precedence; and if for everyone, like health returning after a long illness, a life of one's own would emerge from an era tragically addicted to quantity and speed.

Rethinking “Rethinking Mathematics”

A Review of A Zany, Fun Approach to Mathematics Education!

As 2009 winds down its tumultuous track and heads into 2010, let us begin the next year in a Spirit of Cooperation & Unity. After that, well. Who knows? But we can at least begin by all agreeing that this is a travesty on ice.

The supplemental textbook Rethinking Mathematics is part of the all-devouring “Rethinking Schools” project, and goes wrong pretty much at the subtitle:

Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers

Let’s let the project’s proponents speak for the text:

“This unique collection of more than 30 articles shows teachers how to weave social-justice principles throughout the math curriculum…”

“Rethinking Mathematics will help teachers develop students' understanding of society and prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy.”

"I thought math was just a subject they implanted on us just because they felt like it, but now I realize that you could use math to defend your rights and realize the injustices around you..."[9th grade student]

And my favorite:

“With clarity and insight, this book shows how teachers who are dedicated to social justice can act on their commitments in a subject that has, for too long, been seen as simply a technical area."

Huzzah! We can finally inject social justice propaganda into one a' them “technical” areas of study! Because, you know, there’s really no such thing as objective truths, technical studies, or subjects that parents can rely on to be agenda-free!

Click "Read More" to read the whole painful thing.

The case of three Navy SEALs facing court martial for striking a terrorist captive in custody is the latest story of U.S. servicemen who may have gone too far in the course of fighting America's war against jihadists. But Americans have done much worse than that, Warren Kozak writes in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal:

You don't have to dig too deep to understand that war brings out behavior in people that they would never demonstrate in normal life. In Paul Fussell's moving memoir, "The Boys' Crusade," the former infantryman relates a story about the liberation of Dachau. There were about 120 SS guards who had been captured by the Americans. Even though the Germans were being held at gunpoint, they still had the arrogance—or epic stupidity—to continue to heap verbal abuse and threats on the inmates. Their American guards, thoroughly disgusted by what they had already witnessed in the camp, had seen enough and opened fire on the SS. Some of the remaining SS guards were handed over to the inmates who tore them limb from limb. Another war crime? No doubt. Justified? It depends on your point of view. But before you weigh in, realize that you didn't walk through the camp. You didn't smell it. You didn't witness the obscene horror of the Nazis.

Earlier, Kozak recounts a similar story about German and American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge. "Was the U.S. a lesser country because these GIs weren't arrested? Was the Constitution jeopardized?" he asks. "Somehow it survived."

Perhaps. But no worse for wear?

Men have struggled over the centuries to find a "permanent peace." The League of Nations even made a treaty once. Abolishing war is a folly. But maybe the greater folly is the effort to civilize it.

I'm probably not the best test case for this question based on many of my posts and comments around here, but an article in Science magazine posits that conservatives are "happier" than liberals. Or, at least, residents of "red" states feel happier than residents of "blue" states. The New York Times, riffing in a story about the study, says of to its home-state readers:

It’s rather dismal. If there were a National Happy League, we’d be the New Jersey Nets. We’re No. 51 out of 51 [Ed note: The District of Columbia was polled to get the list to 51].

This is an enormous generalization, but I've long thought that was true — that liberals are grumpier (or at least have less mirth and joy in their lives) than liberals conservatives — based on anecdotal evidence, my observations of political discourse over many years spanning all sorts of varieties of who is "in power," personal experience, and other reasons I won't get into here ... at least not at this late hour. But, it appears that the polling data says says so, too, when it gauges "Gross National Happiness." As John J. Miller at The Corner says:

One snap conclusion, from scanning the list: Red states are happy, blue states are sad (relatively speaking). Make of this what you will.

And I suspect that we might make something of that conclusion around here. That all said and shared, I'm sure Joel and Khabalox will disagree with that study — and, in fact, insist that the opposite is true — yet still have a joyous Christmas. At least I hope so, because I wish it upon them.

George Will is dripping with contempt for Barack Obama's "successes" in Copenhagen and with health care "reform" in his Tuesday column: "It was serendipitous to have almost simultaneous climaxes in Copenhagen and Congress. The former's accomplishment was indiscernible, the latter's was unsightly."

And that's just the lede!

Its students are disloyal and subhuman.

(Click "read more" below for shocking photographic evidence.)

Looking for a comprehensive round-up of news links on climate change skepticism? I just discovered, perusing our referral logs, Tom Nelson's blog. Nelson kindly linked to my snarky little post last night about China's reluctance to sign on to any economy-killing agreements at Copenhagen.

One good turn deserves another, so I encourage you to pay Nelson's site a visit.

That's a trick question. "Contrary to conventional wisdom," writes Chris Woolston at a site called MyOnlineWellness, "there's no surge in suicides around the holidays."

But if there were a spike in people killing themselves in the days leading up to December 25, I submit that stories such as this one in the Telegraph would help explain why:

Dr. Nathan Grills from Monash University in Australia said the idea of a fat Father Christmas gorging on brandy and mince pies as he drove his sleigh around the world delivering presents was not the best way to promote a healthy and safe lifestyle among the young.

Writing on bmj.com, Dr Grills said: "Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1 per cent to damage millions of lives."

He said the image of a healthier Santa could be very effective in promoting a positive message about diet and lifestyle to the young.

Chad the Elder quips: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the public health experts."

Oh, I dunno. I bet with just a little digging, we'd learn that Dr. Grills could be buried under the mountain of coal that Santa has left in his Christmas stocking over the years. Good grief, what a killjoy.

I'm up to my eyeballs in California land-use regulations, so I didn't actually listen to President Obama's speech in Oslo today and just read it quickly. I haven't quite digested it enough to have an opinion, but I see that Joel played off of Justin Paulette's analysis at NoLeftTurns. I think Joel is a bit to quick to dismiss "just war" theory, what with its centuries-old intellectual pedigree and all.

I do think Daniel Drezner's post-speech challenge is worth highlighting, however:

A contest for readers: pour over the speech and look for evidence suggesting Obama favors the following approaches:

• Neoliberal institutionalism
• Social construcivism
• Democratic peace theory
• Feminist IR theory (I think it's there, but you have to squint)
• Human security

It's easy... and fun!!

The Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll seems to have noticed the same thing, but offers a more dour take: "What comes first — freedom or peace, interests or values? For those with a taste for textual deconstruction, President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech offers ample opportunity."

Jules Crittenden, rarely one to play coy, praises the speech with faint damns: "Maybe, like Nixon going to China, it takes an Obama to make the defense of freedom acceptable. I wonder what happened to him in that Situation Room. Hard, inescapable dose of responsibility?"

Even Commentary's Jennifer Rubin found much to like: "But this speech is perhaps the closest he has come to throwing the American antiwar Left under the bus. America will defend itself. There is evil in the world. And yes, we are at war with religious fanatics... It is not at all what the netroot crowd that lifted him to the presidency had in mind. It seems that reality may be dawning, however dimly, on the White House."

Obama is no neoconservative, and just as it was too early to hand him this rather overblown "honor", it's still too early to say whether this administration is waking up to reality. As always, I recommend anything and everything Angelo Codevilla has to say about foreign policy generally, and Obama's foreign policy in particular.

What do you suppose Joel's bête noire and I have in common? Turns out, we both contributed to the Claremont Institute's latest annual holiday books symposium.

It's the largest such symposium I've ever seen from Claremont. When I used to put them together, I was lucky to get six or seven contributions. This one has 28! (Glad I kept my suggestions short.) John Kienker, my friend and successor as managing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, reports that this year's list includes 144 around 140 books*, 6 audio books, 7 pieces of music, and two television shows.

I think there is something for just about everyone on it -- including Chris Rywalt and Khabalox -- so check it out.

* Four books repeat.

Duke Hefland of the L.A. Times has a predictable story today about the American Humanist Association's campaign to promote secularism during this month of religious holidays. I say "predictable" because, of course, such "offbeat" and contrarian features are more likely to get into print than articles about this or that denomination's efforts to minister to the sick, the homeless and the lonely during this season. According to the story:

The group, consisting of atheists and others who say they embrace reason over religion, has launched a national godless holiday campaign, with ads appearing inside or on 250 buses in five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco starting today. The placards depict smiling people wearing red Santa hats with the slogan: "No God? . . . No problem!"

Just as predictably, some religious organizations think the atheists' $40,000, five-city ad campaign amounts to... (sigh)... "an assault on religion." Hefland does his best to sample the reactions of Catholics, Jews and Muslims. I found myself wincing at the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, nodding at Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and feeling my eyes widen at the pronouncements of Imam Muzammil Siddiqi.

Now, Joel and I tackled the "war on Christmas" for the Scripps-Howard column a couple of weeks ago. "All most people want is to say "Merry Christmas" without a bunch of politically correct Grinches and litigious Scrooges getting bent out of shape," I wrote. "We've traveled a long way to reach this absurd point in American life."

Indeed we have. But the American Humanist's ad campaign doesn't bother me one bit. First, because it doesn't seem to be aimed at anyone other than co-relig... er, fellow skepto-agnostic-Americans. They're preaching to the converted, for the most part, and trying to reassure the faithless that doubt is indeed safe. (As if there was any doubt about that.)

Second, because the ads betray a certain insecurity. As the Times story notes, "Humanist leaders say the... ad campaign... is meant to counter a barrage of religious messages during the holiday season, letting free-thinking atheists and agnostics know that they are not alone." Well, no kidding. Is the American Humanist Association worried that 30 days of incessant department store sales, 987 covers of "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night," and the odd broadcast of "It's a Wonderful Life" will lure their members into the embrace of monkish superstition or evangelical Christianity? Dawkins forbid! Seems like the opposite would be more likely.

Although my own faith isn't what it used to be -- and that may well be an understatement -- I've never understood the weird, embattled sense of entitlement espoused by some atheists and agnostics. Is it the idea that so many people believe "nonsense" that grates? As if secularists aren't prone to irrational flights of fancy. I realize that it's impossible to simply "live and let live," but the Christmas season was so much more pleasant and peaceful when people swallowed their personal grievances for a flawed but nevertheless greater good.

If the holidays are supposed to teach anything, regardless of whether or not you are a person of faith, it's that it isn't about you. If you drop the "faith," you're still left with "hope" and "charity" -- and two out of three ain't bad.

Monkey friend and frequent comment contributor Rick — otherwise known as Deregulator — sent me an email asking why I haven't been all over the collapse of the global warming fraud. Thanksgiving week explains most of it. And there is also the fact that there is just so much fraud to expose and comment upon.

Since the blogosphere is already well down the field on the Climategate scandal — I like the term "Climaquiddick" — I'll contribute here by sharing what a columnist from the Toronto Sun found when trolling through the incriminating emails that expose the global fraud meant to reorder the societies of the Western world. Actually, the columnist didn't find it. The nerd the global warming statists hired to analyze the data found it.

From a column aptly titled "Botch After Botch After Botch," the nerd put in charge of trying to make sense of the data upon which the United Nations (and our Congress) would impose punitive taxes and force us to live more "green" ... well, could make no sense of it. This matters because this guy is a programmer, and he could make no sense of the program that crunched the "science is settled" data:

"But what are all those monthly files? DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that's useless ..." (Page 17)

"It's botch after botch after botch." (18)

"This surely is the worst project I've ever attempted. Eeeek." (31)

"Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite." (37)

"... this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!" (45)

"Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!" (47)

"As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless." (57)

"COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!" (71)

"What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no 'supposed,' I can make it up. So I have : - )" (98)

"You can't imagine what this has cost me -- to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a 'Master' database of dubious provenance ..." (98)

"So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option -- to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations ... In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad ..." (98-9)

"OH F--- THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done, I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases." (241).

- "This whole project is SUCH A MESS ..." (266)

Looking at this bit of evidence, Toronto Star columnist Lorrie Goldstein asks:

And based on stuff like this, politicians are going to blow up our economy and lower our standard of living to "fix" the climate?

Are they insane?

Yes. But are we?

Joel and I tackle the so-called "War on Christmas" in this week's Scripps-Howard column. Joel thinks the whole business is a construct of the theocon-Fox News-Industrial Complex, and urges everyone to chill out. I think the whole business is a construct of ACLU provocateurs abetted by lily-livered bureaucrats, and urge everyone to chill out.

It's the least plausible column we've done in quite some time.

I believe that Joel, for one, said he was looking forward to watching AMC's mini-series "The Prisoner." My colleague, Sam Karnick, over at The American Culture was not impressed. And a smart observer — a veritable scholar of the original series — notes in the comments just how awful this reboot was, and is well worth reading.

I also left a comment there, which contains spoilers so I won't repeat it here. But I'm curious about the reactions of other Monkeys and Monkey Readers.

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a fitting tribute...

I don't think so. But the Governator clearly inserted a special hidden acrostic in a veto note he sent to the Legislature earlier this month. (Warning: It's naughty.)

Naturally, the Schwarzenegger people deny it, though it probably wasn't a coincidence that the governor's veto was directed at a bill by Tom Ammiano, who just days before had invited Arnold to kiss a part of his homosexual anatomy.

Honestly! These guys make Alan Grayson look like Winston Churchill.

Update (10/30/09): Jack Pitney has just the right take at The Corner:

Granted, cussing is not the deadliest sin. In moments of anger, many of us mutter expletives. YouTube is full of embarrassing “open mike” incidents in which public figures have used bad language. But this case is different. Schwarzenegger deliberately etched an obscene word into the official public record, where it will stay forever.

It probably took his staff a good deal of effort to devise the acrostic. So think about it: Amid a fiscal crisis requiring severe cutbacks, a public employee had to use government time and resources to carry out the governor’s potty-mouth prank. This incident sends the message that he does not take the crisis very seriously. And one hopes that he did not assign a female aide to the task: Such is the stuff of sexual-harassment lawsuits.

Nobody should expect elected officials to be perfect in their private lives. But we can expect them to behave like adults in their public lives. By pulling a stunt that would land a junior-high-school kid in detention, the governor has flunked this standard.

Because we haven't argued enough in the comments of this global warming post, why not hit the subject again? Yet another green weenie from Not So Jolly Old England, Lord Stern of Brentford, says we need to give up eating meat if we're going to save the planet.

That's right. It's not enough to give up our cars, our industries, our economies, our light bulbs, and even the freedom to have as many children that God may bless upon you. Because of all the water and grain necessary to produce meat — not to mention the methane cows emit from their arse, which is 23 times worse than carbon dioxide emissions — we need to give up the freedom to eat red meat, too.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

That would be the same Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that Obama and the Democrats in Congress want the United States to adhere to as a binding treaty. Rejecting Kyoto was an insult to the "international community," and that's just not going to be repeated on Obama's watch. If we have to see enormous increases in the price of food — not to mention destroying the beef industry in the United State and worldwide — that's just too bad. Individual freedom must be sacrificed for the "common good," based on the myth that we're going to make the planet uninhabitable within our lifetimes.

There seems to no area of life that the environmental movement does not want to control, and we seem to be moving slowly but inexorably from mere encouragement to be "responsible" to outright coercion by the force of government. It's been said that "green is the new "red," and it's hard to argue with that.

I get the sinking feeling that the green movement will not be satisfied until civilization is rolled back to the "sustainable" Dark Ages, where at least everyone shared misery rather evenly.

Via Big Hollywood comes word that some of your favorite Hollywood stars are going the super, big-time, extra mile to do their part to stop the myth of global warming.

Jennifer Anniston says: "I take a three-minute shower.” And she's so green, she even finds time to brush her teeth in that quickie shower, as well.

Either she's lying to one-up her Hollywood green-weenie friends, she's joking, or she has super-human speed going from shampoo to soap to toothbrush. Me? I spend at least 5 minutes just enjoying the hot spray of water on my skin. But since I don't travel on private jets, I can do that every day if I live to be 328 years old and have a smaller carbon footprint than the private-jetting Jen. Continuing ...

"Entourage” star Adrian Grenier has lived in an apartment insulated with old pants.

Not only is that weird in the extreme, it's lame. I insulate my house with live homeless guys standing shoulder to shoulder between my drywall and the stucco. Once they are too thin to be effective, I let them out for a couple of weeks to fatten them up ... then the pattern continues. Beat that, Adrian! I practice the ultimate in recycling!

Vegetarian and planetary crusader Tobey Maguire reportedly has banned all leather products from his house. He also “makes everyone take off their leather belts and shoes and leave them by the door!”

Got him beat, too. Inspired by one of Hollywood's greatest productions, why not make human skin into leather ... which I can then make into clothing and put on animals to raise their self esteem? Hey Toby: "Now it places the lotion in the basket. ... PUT THE F*&^ING LOTION IN THE BASKET!!!!

Leonardo DiCaprio “stays green at home, too—with his $3,200 eco-friendly toilet!”

And how much carbon did it take to make that stinky-ass toilet of yours, Leo? Oh, never mind ...

To read the whole green-weenie Hollywood story, go here.

Lefty intellectuals have been riding the "Population Bomb" hobby horse for almost 40 years — from predicting a world population hundreds of millions below the current level was not possible (we'd have run out of food), to the idea that all those people would consume all the oil already, and we'd be back to the stone age. Blah, blah, blah.

But that self-loathing — human-loathing, is more accurate — has been taken to a new level by Alex Renton at that flapping standard of Euro-leftist thought, The Guardian of London. His thesis: Couples in the Western world need to restrict themselves to just one child, so to reduce their family's carbon footprint one generation at a time. This loony theory presumes (1) that carbon emissions are killing the planet (I don't), and (2) the technology your children and grandchildren will move away from carbon-based fuels (history shows that will happen, when we need it to). But it does have a sick logic to it: If every couple over the whole planet had just one kid, the population would be cut in half one generation at a time. That adds up pretty quick.

But Renton is so consumed with guilt over the life-improving and life-extending technology Western Civilization has created, that he goes even farther off the deep end. It's only those who live in the West who must show restraint. And, naturally, he want to provide incentives for couples in America, Australia, Britain, etc. to have fewer children:

Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?

Note the leftist impulse. An "incentive" is not really an incentive, but a totalitarian mandate. If you have only one child — and, presumably, present proof to the state that you have been sterilized — you "may" fly to Florida. Everyone else would not be allowed to fly to Florida, or the "incentive" is meaningless. Say goodbye to the vacation dollars of people from Utah, Mickey Mouse!

How can this abhorrent and stupid idea get worse? Here's how: Renton would let the "Third World" continue to have as many kids as they'd like.

In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis... As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: "Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso." So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy..?

Ahhh. If we could only all live in the idyllic paradise of an African backwater like Burkina Faso. But what is so asinine about this line of thinking is the fact that the poorer your country, the dirtier it is. The Third World, and even advanced economies, like China, use the oldest, cheapest and dirtiest energy technology.

Besides, as Mark Steyn relentlessly points out, the West (with the exception of the United States) is already well into a negative-birthrate spiral. And any increase in population in the European West these days is from immigration from the Third World — and they tend to set up shop, consume lots of carbon, and have lots and lots of babies.

But why should facts, logic and something as basic as reproductive freedom (gasp!) get in the way when there is power over our lives to be grabbed?

Joel is pleased the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act will now cover gays and lesbians and peeved that some Republicans opposed the new legislation.

Joel writes:

There’s a solid argument to be made against hate crimes of any sort: We shouldn’t be singling out any group of people as a “protected class.” I respect that argument. But as a legal and practical matter, we’ve long recognized that there are groups of people who are particularly vulnerable to being victimized and that society has an interest in discouraging acts against those people.

In any case, it’s worth remembering the Republicans controlled Congress and the presidency for much of this decade. If they felt that “hate crimes” legislation is generally bad, they certainly could’ve made an effort to repeal the law. As far as I know, they didn’t. Draw your own conclusions.

I conclude that Republicans were too busy larding up spending bills with earmarks and passing new entitlements to pay attention.

Congress passed the first federal hate crimes law in 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. One justification for that law, much like the rationale for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was that federal intervention was necessary where the states failed or refused to act. That's why Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce court-ordered desegregation, because state governors refused. And that's why the Civil Voting Rights Act singled out certain states and districts within states, because of the pervasive history of discrimination in those places.

No similar rationale exists today for a federal hate crimes law.

The federal legislation aimed at protecting gays and lesbians from hate-motivated crimes is named after Matthew Shepard, the Wyoming man who was murdered in 1998 perhaps because of his homosexuality, and James Byrd, the black man dragged to his death the same year by three white racists in Texas. In both cases, the animals who committed the crimes were caught, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson are serving two consecutive life terms for Shepard's murder. Lawrence Russell Brewer and John William King are sitting on death row for Byrd's murder and Shawn Allen Berry will spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in the killing.

Was there a miscarriage of justice in either of those cases that I'm unaware of? Or is this yet another case of Congress cynically abusing its authority to pile federal laws atop of state laws?

In other words, if it were the case that state and local prosecutors were ignoring or downplaying crimes against certain groups of people, there might be a rationale for a bigger and more robust federal hate crimes law. But they aren't and there isn't.