IMRA - Monday, March 22, 2004 Background: Marginal Cost Of Post-Yassin Attacks Zero?

Economics:

I have considered this proposal, which I saw on Allah's blog, for a little while now. Considered coldly as an economic question, I can't see anything wrong with the logic.

There is every expectation that the killing today of Ahmed Yassin, head of
the Hamas terrorist organization, may lead for the various terrorist
organizations to make a maximum effort to carry out a "reprisal" attack or attacks.

With the killing of Yassin, Israel's decision makers find themselves in the curious situation that the marginal cost of killing more terrorist leaders in the coming days, at least in terms of terrorist response, is zero - and probably negative as the killing of additional terrorist leaders could disrupt terror operations.

Considered as a question of military science--the same. Unless the actions against terror groups bring actual state actors into the fray, escalation is not now possible. Which state actors would involve themselves in this fight? Syria? Lebanon? Both border Iraq, where the 101st Airborne and 1st Marines are currently stationed. Declaring yourself outright in support of Hamas against Israel might get you on the wrong side of the Bush doctrine--which is to say (and indeed, I find myself a bit shocked to say it) that the Middle East may, as a result of the Bush doctrine and the war in Iraq, enjoy more stability now than it has had in decades. The probability of an actual nation-state war against Israel is lower than it has been in our lifetimes, regardless of who you are reading this.

Egypt? I don't think they can afford it--they are now the second largest receipient of American foreign aid, but their military situation is weaker than it's been recently, and there will be no allies in this invasion. Iran is distracted by internal revolt, and too distant. It's not the time for the Gotterdammerung.

Terrorism has been a proxy weapon for these states for quite some time. The next few weeks will be a test of that weapon. Israel has committed itself, and there is no reason in economics or probability that it shouldn't carry through to the knife. There might be a reason in religion, but not in the Jewish religion as I understand it.

The word for the third food, "Karsi," leeks or cabbage, sounds like the word "kares," "to cut off/destroy." We therefore say a Yehi Ratzon that asks "may... our enemies be destroyed."

The word for the fourth food, "Silka" or beets, sounds like the "siluk," meaning "removal." We therefore say a Yehi Ratzon that requests "may our adversaries be removed."

The word for the fifth and final food "Tamri" or dates, sounds like the word "sheyitamu," "that they be consumed." Hence, we sat a Yehi Ratzon that implores "may... our enemies be consumed."

No peace is coming out of all this, though. That much seems certain. We have seen much of the promises of revenge from Hamas and others, and they echo the promises we have seen from each of these terror groups when they suffer some setback. But their enemies in Israel can promise too:

2 God is jealous, and the LORD avenges; The LORD avenges and is furious. The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies;
3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The LORD has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, And dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, And the flower of Lebanon wilts.
5 The mountains quake before Him, The hills melt, And the earth heaves at His presence, Yes, the world and all who dwell in it.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are going to see increased violence in the weeks ahead. There is now nothing to restrain either the terrorists or the Israelis--in the last case, not even the chance that state actors might involve themselves. Irony abounds, for stability among nation-states has made this war between Israel and non-state armies the more likely. Gotterdammerung may not be here, but these few poor mortals look ready to cast themselves into a tragedy no less wrenching. I see no alternative but to hope, or to pray, that good comes from it at last: to mourn for the doomed, and to hope for the valiant. If more good than that can be done, I can't imagine what.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club has its own thoughts, entitled "Survival Strategies in a Barroom Brawl."

Mudville Gazette

Mudville:

Welcome back to the Mudville Gazette. New server, Greyhawk says. I say the Weekly Standard broke him. Nice writeup, by the way.

Deuddersun

Deuddersun:

Left-leaning Marines are kind of an oddity in my experience, but--though the smallest of the services--the USMC is big enough for all kinds. Well, all kinds ready and able to take and keep their oath of enlistment or oath of office. Welcome to Deuddersun. Ooh-rah, Semper Fi.

pandagon.net - your fifth rental is free

On Topic:

I'm not usually one to post a lot of links without analysis, but this one (like the last one) is deserving. Ezra Klein at Pandagon has a really good piece. It all started when, in the course of writing an essay attacking Donald Rumsfeld's latest op-ed, he admitted that he kind of liked the SECDEF...

From the Halls to the Shores

Mike:

Mike the Marine has a letter you should read.

Media Release: SWORDS TO BECOME PROHIBITED WEAPONS

Gentlemen:

A gentleman, I recall the Oxford English Dictionary says, is distinguished by the right to bear arms. The kind of arms they mean are symbolic--that is, heraldic arms. That symbol arose from a genuine, historic right to bear real arms, however: a right, and in fact, a duty. Swords in particular were a symbol of free men in England, such that even the Normans did not disarm the free Saxon Yeomanry--and wisely not, as they later relied upon the Yeomanry heavily for their successes in war, such as at Crecy.

So it is with some real sadness that I note the new law in Australia to ban all swords, and confiscate them from existing owners. It happens to be a consequence of their tremendously successful gun-eradication program which has also led to spiraling crime rates, particularly against women, the elderly and the very young, as well as an increase in shootings. There must be some reduction in the availability of guns, though, as the ban has led to an explosion of swordfighting. Street gangs roving about with clattering steel--it is like Alexandre Dumas' Paris in The Three Musketeers.

New Zealand's police show better sense. Asked about a similar measure there--only to register, not to ban and confiscate all swords--they said this:

Police say they are not looking at seeking laws requiring owners of samurai swords and similar weapons to register them.

Inspector Joe Green, of Wellington, said yesterday one problem was that people unlikely to pose a threat were likely to comply with such requirements, but people most likely to pose a threat were unlikely to fall into line.

Well, indeed, that was always the problem, wasn't it? The Normans couldn't make it work either. Instead, they turned the armed yeomanry into allies in the defense of the state and the common peace. That is still the function of the armed citizen today: to defend himself, his family, his community, and the common peace of the Republic. It is sad to see Victoria so intent on the degradation of her citizens.

3/11 Bombings

3/11:

Some are arguing with passion and eloquence that the Spanish elections represent a surrender to al Qaeda. One of my friends from Spain wrote the following article, which he has kindly permitted me to reprint below.

The Spanish elections, Al-Qaeda and the 3/11 Massacre
by Ricardo Carreras Lario

An easy interpretation about the surprising electoral victory of Spain's main opposition party, the Spanish Socialist Worker's Party or PSOE, at the recent polls in Spain is that voters have blamed the support given to the US-led coalition by the conservative People's Party for the terrible attacks of Madrid, probably undertaken by Al-Qaeda mass murderers.

Nevertheless, the party that most vehemently opposed the Iraq war and that could more clearly launch this accusation is the United Left (IU) coalition centered around the Communist Party. This IU Coalition obtained a worse result than in the 2000 general election with its representation in the Spanish House of Representatives falling from 8 to 5 deputies, out of 350.

How can we explain this? There are other factors we should consider.

For starters, Spanish electoral rules forbid the use of polls during the last seven days prior to an election. This always causes a "tunnel effect" and a considerable gap between the last polls a week before and the actual result. In this case, the dynamics of the race were favoring the PSOE, which had already cut in half the distance with the People's Party from 8 to 4% a week before the elections. And they were ascending. This means that even before the 3/11 tragedy, results would have been tighter than foreseen a week in advance.

On the other hand, we have the participation factor. In a country like Spain, ideologically center-left, a high turnout always helps the parties of that political tendency. Unlike what happened in 2000, when the apathy of many center-left voters gave the PP the absolute majority, it is clear this high turnout has favored PSOE. In that sense, the tragedy has had an indirect effect, increasing the feeling that voting was a moral, patriotic duty, as a civic reaction to the massacre.

Finally, another indirect effect has been the communication management of the crisis. Many voters have felt that the government was not accurately informing the public about the tragedy's investigations. The government insisted that the ETA terrorist band was behind the massacre and some interpreted this as evidence that the People's Party wanted to benefit from it politically. It also reinforced pre-existing perceptions about prior crisis, in which many believed the government was not being completely honest, such as the ecological disaster brought last year by the Sinking of the Prestige ship, or the crisis around an airplane accident that killed more than 60 military men coming back from Afghanistan -- and finally, criticism about the partiality of the public media.

Spanish public TV was condemned by the Supreme Court for not informing fairly about a general strike. The message "no more lies, no more manipulation" was part of the PSOE campaign before the tragedy.

All these effects combined and reinforced themselves mutually, and also caused an increase in a "useful vote" for the PSOE the Spanish electoral system favors big parties- and against the People's Party.

The conclusion is that this horrible massacre affected the result, but only indirectly, through the civic reaction to it and the poor management of the crisis by the government.

Bin Laden did not win the election. Democracy did -- in Cuba or North Korea there are no electoral surprises.

To suggest, simplistically, that Spaniards are cowards who give in to the desires of Al-Qaeda terrorists, is to deeply ignore both our history and the fact that our domestic ETA terrorism has caused more than 800 dead without achieving any of its objectives.

The Heroic Life

The Heroic Life:

The quote of the month has generated some vigorous discussion, and so I figured I'd bring it back up to the top of the board. Grim's Hall, according to my sideboard, is meant to be about:

[P]olitics, ethics, mythology, history, and the heroic life.

Today we get to talk about the last.

I don't know du Toit at all, so I can't say whether or not he has demonstrated a failing of character by having been twice divorced. I know other men, with a similar number of ex-wives, who are of the highest character themselves--they've just had poor taste in women. In fact, one of the oldest and best friends of our family is in just that position, and he is a king among men.

I'm no fan of no-fault divorce. I think it has done more to undermine marriage than anything, or everything, else. Still, it's the law, and if we're going to trust people to decide that question as a "personal matter," we ought to trust them in fact.

In any event, I disagree with Eric's reading, which is that

du Toit is preaching a sort of endless adolesence, and I have lately lost all patience with such nonsense. It is not an excellent argument if you think about it at all.

Mr. du Toit isn't advocating that you should go out drinking and carousing all the time. He's only advising it for when 'life gets a little too much.' That happens to everyone, in any life, and you need one remedy or another for it.

The one he suggests is a good one: throw yourself back into life with vigor. Edward Abbey--about as different a character as possible--wrote that:

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

What's being advised here is a way of dealing with the hard parts of life. In my experience, it's the best way. It's the only way that really works. You can substitute other things for drinking and shooting guns, which just happen to be du Toit's favorite things. Maybe you prefer judo to good-natured fistfights, or singing old country songs with your buddies to hitting the shooting range.

The thing to be avoided is the Prozac. The thing to be avoided is letting some so-called "scientist" from the so-called "helping professions" convince you that you need to be altered. They've got a lot of models of the mind, and a lot of drugs that change how your brain works. Their models, though, are untestable, and their drugs may be turning off the parts of you that make you worth having. It is astonishing how widely accepted these poisonous philosophies, psychology and counseling-by-medication, have become.

Life gets hard for everyone. There are times when it is too much for the best of us. There are two cures on offer, one healthful, and one poison. The one option is to poison yourself, so that your body loses the capacity to feel the things that bother you. You are therefore left with no better way to address whatever problems life has thrown you than cold reason. I have known people on Prozac, and other things, and this is what I have seen: that instead of laughter, they have only irony; that instead of joy, they have an absence of pain; that instead of pain, which at least unites all humanity and leads to true sympathy and understanding, they have a gulf of emptiness between them and all mankind. Standing off alone, watching and thinking without really or fully feeling, they are poorer than when the pain had them by the throat.

There is another way. Throw yourself into life. Cure too much, as it were, with even more. Take on new challenges that remind you of what is best in life: to be brave, to be strong, to be of mighty spirit. Address the weight of sadness with an equal weight of joy, and thereby find your balance: or better, unbalance with joy, and crash into mirth. When you rise again from that fall, you rise with new strength and a fellow-feeling for all sufferers. That sympathy ennobles anyone, and it brings charity and mercy into the heart.

Charity, mercy, strength and courage. If you know a better vision of a heroic life than that, I'll be glad to hear it.

Excelsis Ratings/Reviews - Ranma & Shampoo

Grim's Hall:

As longtime readers know, I always try to link to anyone who links to me. (If you link to me, and I don't link to you yet, email me.) While trying to snuff out any new blogs that have linked to me, I ran across an anime site that mentions this place. I'm not sure who Ranma & Shampoo are, exactly, but I am honored by their description of this place: "For those who like a mix of Tolkien-like prose and shrewd political commentary."

Thank you. It's a most kind thing to have said.

Sir Walter

Sir Walter Scott:

John Derbyshire over at The Corner states this:

Readers of my own pro-Crusader piece will be aware, but others may not be, of the greatest of Crusader novels, Sir Walter Scott's THE TALISMAN.

I am amazed that there aren't periodic -- once a decade, perhaps -- Scott revivals. He is a wonderful storyteller (though you can't take the history too seriously).

John earlier wrote a piece on the crusades which cited The Talisman and a book by Alfred Duggan called Knight with Armour. I actually ran down copies of both of these and read them, being a fan of historical novels, and particularly Medieval ones. The Duggan novel is without question the most concentrated piece of despair and misery I have ever read.

The Scott novel, however, is indeed grand, though it's not only the history that is implausible--the geography, and one of the key plot devices are equally so. By far the most excellent piece of Scott's writings is Ivanhoe, parts of which I can quote from memory.

In any event, I've been trying to spark a Scott revival for some time. For a while now, Scott's collected works have been listed under "Honor & Virtue," to the right and down. His poetry is good too, although it lacks the power and the variety of Chesterton's. Still, some of it is rollicking, like "Harold the Dauntless," which is about a Viking:

Woe to the realms where he coasted, for there
Was shedding of blood and rending of hair,
Rape of maiden, slaughter of priest,
Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast!
When he hoisted his standard black
Before him was battle, behind him was wrack!

If you're looking for a hearty way to spend a day or two, take up Ivanhoe. It's worth the time and effort, if only to read the scene where Richard Coeur de Leon shares wine and songs with Friar Tuck.

UPDATE: I had forgotten how good John's piece on the Crusades was. He has a habit of saying things that challenge the ear, but he doesn't do it to shock or get attention. He does it to knock you out of the easy assumptions we all rely upon. One of these things, taught as Gospel in most textbooks, is that the Crusades were bad. John replies:

Is there anything at all redeeming that can be said about these sorry episodes? Well, yes....

[I]f we are to take sides on the Crusades after all these centuries, we should acknowledge that, for all their many crimes, the Crusaders were our spiritual kin. I do not mean only in religion, though that of course is not a negligible connection: I mean in their understanding of society, and of the individual's place in it. Time and again, when you read the histories of this period, you are struck by sentences like these, which I have taken more or less at random from Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades: "[Queen Melisande's] action was regarded as perfectly constitutional and was endorsed by the council." "Trial by peers was an essential feature of Frankish custom." "The King ranked with his tenant-in-chief as primus inter pares, their president but not their master."

If we look behind the cruelty, treachery, and folly, and try to divine what the Crusaders actually said and thought, we see, dimly but unmistakably, the early flickering light of the modern West, with its ideals of liberty, justice, and individual worth. Gibbon:

The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for their chief the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws of [the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem] are derived from the purest source of equality and justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is the assent of those whose obedience they require, and for whose benefit they are designed.

No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon been elected supreme ruler of Jerusalem, eight days after the Crusader victory (he declined the title of "king," declaring that he would not wear a crown of gold in the place where Christ had worn a crown of thorns), than his first thought was to give the new state a constitution. This was duly done, and the Assize of Jerusalem--"a precious monument of feudal jurisprudence," Gibbon calls it--after being duly attested, was deposited in the Holy Sepulchre (which had been reconstructed some decades before)....

[T]he virtues of men like Saladin rose as lone pillars from a level plain. They were not, as the occasional virtues of the Crusaders were, the peaks of a mountain range. The Saracens had, in a sense, no society, no polity. Says the Marquis to the Templar in another great crusader novel, Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman: "I will confess to you I have caught some attachment to the Eastern form of government: A pure and simple monarchy should consist but of king and subjects. Such is the simple and primitive structure--a shepherd and his flock. All this internal chain of feudal dependence is artificial and sophisticated." Well, artificial and sophisticated it may have been, but in its interstices grew liberty, law, and the modern conscience.

If we are to have the Crusades thrown at us by the likes of Osama bin Laden, let us at least not abjure them.

There is much to be said for that position. Leaving aside the question of whether the Crusaders are "spiritual kin" in terms of religion after all--not only is the West less united on the question, but also their particular form of Catholicism would be hard to find today--he is certainly right about the early developments of Western liberty. The Roots of Liberty has been a frequent topic of discussion here. A good bit of it predates the Crusades, as we talked about when discussing the question of paganism in schools. But this part does not: the idea of a separation of powers in government, and their balance. As John correctly writes, it was the tension between those opposing powers that provided the space for our idea of liberty. That tension opened spaces where a man couldn't be pushed around by one power without having an appeal to another. Having done so, we that human nature flourishes when liberty is assured. The Magna Carta, the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish Covenanters, the English Civil War, the Jacobite Risings, the American Revolution, and even the American Civil War have been battles in the attempt to preserve and reinforce those spaces, and to maintain that tension. We owe its origin to feudalism, and the kind of men who went on Crusade.

DragonRiders: Sovay

Who is Sovay McKnight?

Now that I have given in to the evil cause of Left Liberalism--just far enough to help Sovay McKnight set up a blog--some of you are probably wondering who she is, besides, obviously, an old friend of mine. Thanks to the magic of Google, we have several possible answers from the OSINT.

Answer #1: Sovay, Dragonrider of Pern!

Sovay is a meek person. She loves Faluril with all her heart and would never do anything to displease him. In fact, displeasing him is her greatest fear. Life Story : Sovay grew up sitting at the feet of her mother and learning everything about managing a household. Her greatest dream was having a home of her own with a loving husband with many children.

Answer #2: Sovay, Female Highwayman!

Sovay, Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man's array
With a sword and a pistol all by her side
To meet her true love to meet her true love away did ride.

Answer #3: Sovay, Demi-Fox Queen of Terra!

[Note: click the black & white picture to see Sovay in full color glory!]

Due to the rather quirky sense of humor the Atlantian artifact, she not only was given a rather larger breast size, but was also youthened to a young woman only a bit YOUNGER than her daughter, Exotica. Also, the rather "perky" nature of the demifox rather agrees with this woman, and enjoys it very much. Very energetic.

Intelligence is always speculative, of course, so it could be that the truth is somewhere in between.

ParaPundit

An Interesting Point of View:

Via ParaPundit, I found an article from The Atlantic on the US military liason to Outer Mongolia, Colonel Tom Wilhelm. There's quite a bit that will be interesting to PRC watchers, but there's also this little tidbit from the Colonel himself:

The full flowering of the middle ranks had its roots in the social transformation of the American military, which, according to Wilhelm (a liberal who voted for Al Gore in 2000), had taken place a decade earlier, when the rise of Christian evangelicalism had helped stop the indiscipline of the Vietnam-era Army. "This zeal reformed behavior, empowered junior leaders, and demanded better recruits," he said. "For one thing, drinking stopped, and that killed off the officers' clubs, which, in turn, broke down more barriers between officers and noncoms, giving the noncoms the confidence to do what majors and colonels in other armies do. The Christian fundamentalism was the hidden hand that changed the military for the better. Though you try to get someone to admit it!

Drinking did what now? Maybe among the soldiers stationed in Mongolia... I hear rarg isn't the usual cantina fare. Still, I doubt it's true even there. Certainly the Mongolians have a way to encourage drinking:

The way to drink is special there: when guests have a meal, some beautiful girls in traditional costume stand beside the table and sing songs. And then they'll go to guests respectively, holding hada [silk scarves]... in their hands and a little silver bowl with spirit in their right hands. The spirit can't be refused and must be "bottomed-up". If somebody refuses to drink, the singer will continue singing until the guests drink all the spirit in the little bowl.

I've had this kind of spirit, and I'm here to tell you, the singing is necessary. To explain it in Western terms, I'll relate one of my father's favorite stories:

A man was out hiking around the hills of Tennessee when he came across an old man walking up a road, carrying a jug under one arm and a shotgun under the other. They got to talking and, after a while, the old man offered him a swig. When the man tried to refuse, the old fella leveled the gun at him and said, "Boy, around these hills, when a man is offered a drink, he takes a drink."

Seeing his point, the man took the jug and had a swig. He nearly died trying to choke it down, but finally managed to finish the swallow.

"Stuff's awful, ain't it?" laughed the old man. "Here, you hold the gun on me while I take a drink."

The tale is entirely unfair to the quality of Appalachian moonshine, which is often excellent. Lots of those fellows up in the high hills are Christian Evangelists too, but that moonshine still seems to get made. Another thing my father always said was, "The difference between a Baptist and a Methodist is that a Methodist will share his beer with you," and I suspect that our Colonel may have forgotten the truth behind that jest.

Spain

Spain:

For those of my readers who can do Spanish, and in honor of the 11-M bombings, I have added El Pais to the News links.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Chess! What is it good for?

Chess & War:

The UK Guardian has this look at how modified games of chess can be used to study warfighting:

By modifying key variables, such as the number of moves al lowed each turn, or whether one player can see all of the other's pieces, they are investigating the relative importance of a host of factors that translate to the battlefield, such as numerical superiority, a quick advance and the use of stealth....

One major difference between chess and war is that chess does not contain what the military terms "information uncertainty". Unlike a battle commander, who may have incomplete intelligence about his opponent's level of weaponry or location of munitions depots, one chess player can always see the other's pieces, and note their every move. So Kuylenstierna and his colleagues asked players to compete with a board each and an opaque screen between them. A game leader transferred each player's moves to the other's board - but not always instantaneously. For instance, one game modification resulted in a player being prevented from seeing their opponent's latest two moves.

The lessons they've extracted so far appear to be applicable to all similar games--checkers, for instance. The lessons will sound familiar to students of modern American warfighting:

[A] fast tempo can be important, particularly in combination with "deep planning". Deep planning involved, at every move, each agent considering all their previous moves and their opponent's responses, and their responses to those responses, and using this to develop a "tree" of possible strategic paths they could follow to win. "A deeper planner is one who can search deeper into time, and has more possible end points," says Calbert. In general, deep planning plus a fast tempo was devastating - even if the opponent was numerically superior.

Do they apply to real war? It sounds very similar to the Afghan campaign, where the US footprint was tremendously limited, but used tempo and intel to take a much smaller and embattled Northern Alliance to victory over dug-in Talibani in short order. And Iraq?

The build-up to the war in Iraq coincided with the first results from the chess simulations run by Jason Scholz and his team. "We watched with great interest the dialogue between General [Tommy} Franks, who wanted to use more materiel, and Donald Rumsfeld who wanted a fast tempo and lighter units," Scholz says. Based on the chess results, which favoured a fast, decisive attack strategy, Scholz says his advice would have been to go along with the US defence secretary's ideas. "In the end, there was a compromise," he says. "But a relatively fast tempo did really gain a very decisive, rapid advantage in Iraq."

Hat tip, Arts & Letters Daily.

The Liberal Conspiracy - Satire, Informed Commentary and 9-11 Research

Catblogging:

Sovay--who lives a few miles away from me--has decided to carry on the old CalPundit tradition of catblogging. I should note that she left off one of Sam's several names: Assassin. That cat dropped a metal stool on my head once, from off the top of her refrigerator.

AllRefer Encyclopedia - Bob Dole (U.S. History, Biographies) - Encyclopedia

Honor & Nonfeasance:

If you appoint somebody to repair your roads, and pay them the monies promised, and then they don't bother to show up and do it, you've got a situation called "nonfeasance." If some small-town official doesn't perform the duties they've been elected or appointed to perform, but takes the money, they're subject to penalties under the law.

But what of a high official, say, a Senator? The Senate requires both more and less, as it turns out. For the man of honor, it demands more. A Senator takes a Federal oath of office:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

All Senators are entitled to be called "Honorable." Alas, not all of them live up to the honorific, or to the honor of their office or their oath. Some do:

In June, 1996, Dole resigned from the Senate in order to devote more time to the presidential race[.]

Some, alas, do not:

Presidential hopeful John F. Kerry [related, bio] has been a virtual no-show in the U.S. Senate over the past 14 months, but he hasn't missed a paycheck, even though a dusty federal law says some of his $158,000 salary should have been withheld.

During his run for the presidency, Kerry has missed every one of the 22 roll call votes in the Senate this year and was absent for 292, or 64 percent of the roll call votes last year, according to a Herald review of Senate records.

That means the Massachusetts senator has been away from his post in the Senate chamber for at least 128 days over the past 14 months.

Kerry is not the only political truant. U.S. Sen. John Edwards [related, bio] (D-N.C.), the runner-up behind Kerry in the hunt for the Democratic nomination, has also missed every roll call this year and skipped 178, or 39 percent of the votes last year.

Kerry, when the assets of his wife are included, is one of the wealthiest members of the Senate with a reported net worth somewhere between $198 million and $838 million.

The first duty of a Senator is to represent their constituents. That is the most important of the duties of office that they swear faithfully to discharge. We cannot be there in the Senate, hearing the testimonies and voting on the laws. We entrust that to Senators. We trust them to keep their oath of honor.

When they do not, there is a penalty.

However, he and the other AWOL candidates have been spared the automatic paycuts called for in a long-ignored federal law passed in the 1850s.

Section 39 of the United States Code Service requires the Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House to deduct daily pay from members for each day they are absent.

The only legal excuse is if the senator or representative, or one of their family members, is ill, the law states.

Or at least, the law says there is a penalty. In fact, there is none: the Secretary of the Senate has apparently never enforced this federal law, and the current one is citing that as a good reason to carry on not enforcing it.

This is no surprise. The lesson we ought to have learned by now is this: no law can restrain the honorless. No one who will not be restrained by his oath of office is fit to sit in the Senate, nor any judgeship, nor any other position of authority. We have seen that the law cannot restrain the powerful if their word will not restrain them.

Kim du Toit - Weekly Rant

Quote of the Month:

Good lad Kim du Toit has what I think may be the finest thing I've read in quite a while. If it doesn't strike you so, you're entitled to your own opinion.

Note to Virginia Postrel: real men don't take Prozac.

If life gets a little to much for a real man, he gets drunk, has sex, goes to the shooting range or gets into a fistfight while getting drunk. 'Twas ever thus, and men did quite fine thereby for centuries, until some pussywhipped doctors decided that it would be soooooooo much better just to medicate men into being women.

Yeah, "sound medical reasons", "ameliorating effects" blah blah blah.

You tell 'em, mate.

Spain

Spain:

I've been asked to share this with anyone interested.

The Embassy of Spain convenes a silent demonstration tomorrow, Friday, March 12th, to express its outrage for today's terrorist attack perpetrated in Madrid, in which approximately 200 people have died and 900 have been injured.

The demonstration will take place at the Washington Circle (Pennsylvania Ave and 23rd St NW) at 12 am.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China doctor calls 1989 'mistake'

Communist Awakening:

Dr. Jiang Yanyong, subject of the People's Republic of China, is a very brave man. Last year he exposed the Chinese government's coverup of the SARS virus. Now, he is calling for the Chinese Communist Party to admit that the Tiananmen Square massacre was a mistake:

Jiang cited former President Yang Shangkun as telling him that "the June 4 incident is the most serious mistake committed by our party in history."

One thinks of the Great Leap Forward (which left thirty to sixty million people dead of starvation) as a competitor for that title. There's also the Cultural Revolution, and the repression of the Hundred Flowers period, the founding of the Red Guards... but let's not quibble. It's a bold step, and I wish them well with it.

Yahoo! Mail - bjarnr@yahoo.com

Spymaster:

The Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday heard DIA Director Vice Admiral Jacoby. His testimony is available at that link (PDF warning). It's a balanced report, and one of the most complete world-sitreps I've seen available as OSINT. I assume our enemies will take advantage of the opportunity to read it; you might as well too.