What Larry Summers Needs Is A Good Speechwriter

And John Leo has put himself up for the job: THE EVIDENCE PILES UP: MEN AND WOMEN ARE INDEED DIFFERENT

"Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski, well-known researchers at Vanderbilt University, have spent more than 20 years tracking a group of 5,000 males and females who had been identified as mathematically gifted when they were 12 to 14 years old. Eight percent of the males, but only 1 percent of the females, pursued doctorates in math, engineering or physical science. More females than males received degrees in the life sciences, health or medicine. The females did not veer away from the hard sciences out of lack of opportunity, doubts about competence or fear of failure. The 5,000 gifted children knew they were good, but the females had different values and many made different choices.

"What is the lesson here? That it may be a great mistake to insist on equal male-female representation in every area of academia. The social sciences are now heavily female. Law and medicine may well become predominantly female too, while the hard sciences stay mostly male. Is there anything wrong with that? Benbow and Lubinski say frankly that 'there may be a need to consider a degree of unequal representation' in certain fields. 'Unequal representation' is threatening only if we think that respect for the choices made by our young people is less important than worrying about a perfect gender balance."

The only problem is that Summers isn't all that interested in proclaiming uncomfortable truths anymore. It seems its much more important getting invites to the right cocktail parties.

An Unlikely Pair, Togo & Omaha

Its a good day for the World-Herald: Pull of Nebraska felt from Africa

In the west African country of Togo, visitors check in daily at a place with an unlikely name - the Ak-Sar-Ben Hotel.

The owner, Amezi Sedjro, loves Nebraska. That's his explanation for spelling the state backward on his 19-room inn.

He swears he loves America, too. Friday he raised his hand and took the oath, becoming a naturalized citizen.

It came on the day that the president of the United States visited Omaha, making Amezi's citizenship ceremony extra-special.

"This has been a great joy for him," said daughter Linda Sedjro, who is working on a master's degree in communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

The day was special for Linda, too. She had tried hard to obtain a ticket to President Bush's appearance Friday and felt lucky to get one the night before from a fellow member of UNO's Student Senate.

We Americans take democracy for granted. The Sedjros do not.

"Every day of my life, I pray for this president," Linda said. "It's my duty, even as a foreign person, to pray for this president to have the wisdom to lead this country and the world."

I'm a sucker for these types of stories. I've very pro-immigration. This country is better for having the Sedjros' a part of it. Period.

I did love this line:

America, she said, is a great democracy. And compared to Togo, she said, Omaha is "really calm."

Hell, Omaha's calm compared to Iowa.

From The "Not A Good Idea" Department

Via the Omaha World-Herald:

A friendly card game in an apartment near 16th and William Streets burst into chaos about 3 a.m. Saturday when a large fireworks device unexpectedly exploded.

Police Officer Chris LeGrow said a commercial pyrotechnic device "similar to what is used at a fireworks show" detonated in the living room of the apartment at 1255 S. 16th St.

Machala Quinones, 27, was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in critical condition. No further information on her condition was available.

Debra Resendiz, 47, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released.

The explosion blew out a first-floor window in the two-story wood frame residence. The building contains two apartments.

Resendiz, who lives at the apartment where the explosion occurred, said she was playing cards with some friends when Quinones stopped by carrying a box with the fireworks.

"She said she had some kind of fireworks," Resendiz said. "She was showing it off, and the next thing that I knew, it exploded. My ears are still ringing."

Resendiz said Quinones was smoking a cigarette, but she didn't know if that set off the device.

Gee, what are the chances?

Churchill (Not Winston) Redux

The Rocky Mountain Post has a round-up on our good friend Ward Churchill (long may he rot.) Bruce Fein offers a servicable, but not forceful enough, call for Churchill's dimissal in CU would be perfectly within its rights if it fired Ward Churchill.

Eugene Volokh's pro-Churchill attempt, Dismissing controversial professor would set a frightening precedent comes off much the worse being nothing more than the most vacuous of slipperly slope arguments. Volokh seems to notice as much since he has posted a defense of using such arguments on his blog. His reasoning comes down to, "Its bad when others do it, but its just fine when I do." Yeah, real convincing.

Neither Fein or Volokh even mention Churchill's repeated advocation of violence against those that disagree with him. For me, that is what places this case in the "need to fire" category. I just don't see where there is even any room for doubt.

Neither does Paul Campos from Colorado's Law School: Real question is, how did prof get on CU's faculty in first place?

Anyone who reads widely in the collected works of professor Churchill, and especially anyone who listens to his speeches, will, if they are not blinded by certain ideological commitments, recognize the essentially fascist tendency of his work. If a white American were to speak of any foreign people or nation in anything like the way Churchill discusses America and Americans, the fascist character of his work would be obvious to everyone.

This point is only underlined by the behavior of Churchill's supporters, who, while not actually wearing brown shirts, did a quite convincing impersonation of fascist thugs at Thursday's meeting of the University of Colorado Regents.

All this was merely par for the course for Churchill, who believes that a Columbus Day parade is an incitement to genocide, and therefore something that he and his followers have a legal right to disrupt.

But while the question of whether a brilliant scholar with a fascist streak ought to be considered for a place on a university faculty retains at least some academic interest, it has nothing to do with Churchill, whose writings and speeches feature an incoherent farrago of boundless paranoia, wildly implausible theories, obscene celebrations of murder, and atrocious prose.

The question of whether a serious research university ought to hire someone like Churchill is laughable on its face. What's not so funny is the question of exactly how someone like him got hired in the first place, and then tenured and named the head of a department.

That, in the end, is a more important question than what will or ought to happen to Churchill now. Churchill is a pathetic buffoon, but the University of Colorado is far from alone in having allowed itself to toss intellectual integrity and human decency overboard in the pursuit of worthy goals.

Speaking truth to power, giving a voice to those who have been silenced, pursuing controversial and unpopular ideas in an intellectually rigorous way - these are all things that the university in general, and this university in particular, has done and continues to do.

That through whatever combination of negligence, cowardice and complicity we have allowed Ward Churchill to besmirch those ideals by invoking them in the defense of his contemptible rantings is now our burden and our shame.

Brave words coming from Campos, since its obvious that A) Churchill knows where he lives and B) Churchill advoctes violence against his political "enemies." How can anybody say with certainty that other members of the University of Colorado community have not been silenced because they fear that Churchill, or his "thugs" might actually do what they say they want to do? Is that really what a University community is supposed to be? The greatest amount of damage that could be done to the notion of "Academic Freedom" would be done by retaining Ward Churchill, not by firing him.

So Long Pulitzer Co.

I voiced some concern earlier about the pending sale of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (See Pulitzer Era Over?) It has since been purchased by Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa.

My first reaction is that I'm glad that the Post-Dispatch will still be a "flagship" newspaper for the new company. The Pulitzer purchase is by far the largest aquisition ever for Lee, so there is hope that the newspaper will not become the bastard step-child. I'm also heartened by the fact that it was bought by a Midwest company. Hey, we're not Iconic for nothing!

Read all you might ever want to read about this at the following links:

Pulitzer purchase is largest in history of Lee Enterprises

Pulitzers sought a responsible steward for company

Lee promises quite a ride for its new Pulitzer employees

It's never too late to start sucking up to the new bosses

Don't Knock On The Wrong Door....

...Or you can get sued: Cookie klatch lands girls in court

Two teenage girls decided one summer's evening to skip a dance where there might be cursing and drinking to stay home and bake cookies for their neighbors.

Big mistake.

They were sued, successfully, for an unauthorized cookie drop on one porch.


Anybody who says our society isn't too litigous is out of their mind.

(Gleaned from Dougpetch.com)

Fighting Back Against The Terrorists

Reports are that some in Iraq are rising up against the jihadists. Iraqi citizens Kill 5 terrorists

Citizens of Al Mudhiryiah (a small town in the "death triangle") were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.

The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars.

3 citizens were injured during the fire exchange. The Shiekh of the tribe to whom the 3 wounded citizens belong demanded more efforts from the government to stop who he described as "Salafis".

And from, Iraqi insurgents resume deadly attacks:

TONY EASTLEY: Mark Willacy, we've heard reports about the high voter turnout, but now there are reports of how some voters have taken on the insurgents in order to vote, you know, the people are fighting back.

MARK WILLACY: That's right, Tony. The Iraqi police have investigated a case in the village of al-Mudhariya, which is just south of Baghdad. The villagers there say that before the election insurgents came and warned them that if they voted in last weekend's election, they would pay.

Now the people of this mixed village of Sunni and Shia Muslims, they ignored the threat and they did turn out to vote.

We understand that last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al-Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents' car. So the people of that village have certainly had enough of the insurgents.

TONY EASTLEY: Do you think that is a one off, Mark, or is it a sign perhaps that some Iraqis are no longer sympathetic to the insurgents' cause, or at least no longer willing to turn a blind eye?

MARK WILLACY: It would appear that people are getting sick of the insurgency. I understand, though, that this is the first report of Iraqis confronting insurgents and actually fighting back in such a way.

Tipping point anyone?

Saying Something Nice About Howard Dean

Over at the Moderate Voice, Joe Gandleman seems a little vexed about the re-emergence of Howard Dean as the probable chair of the DNC: Democratic Party May Be Readying The Kool Aid

Commenting on an anti-Dean piece in the L.A. Times by Jonathan Chait, Gandleman states:

...watching the Democratic DNC chair be whittled down and Howard Dean roar into Big Mo territory raises these two questions, plus this one: does anyone in the Democratic party have a CLUE that part of the party's problem is an IMAGE problem as well as a vision and cohesive policy problems?

Although Dean can be a solid speaker, and the scream denunciations were overdone (which makes no difference since it was catastrophic to his candidacy), it's unlikely his image is going to bring back straying Democrats who seemingly deserted the Democratic party in 2004 the same way they left to become Reagan Democrats in the 80s.

I have to say, much to my chagrin, that I don't think this does much justice to Howard Dean. Oh, I thought he would have been just about the worst possible person to be in the Oval Office...hell, I think he shouldn't be allowed on the White House tour...but he did a number of things well in his campaign run.

Alone of the Democratic candidates, Dean had an effective grassroots organization. His campaign implemented new ideas effectively, raised lots of money, and easily retained a highly motivated and energetic core of supporters.

The failures of the Dean campaign were more failures of tactical decision making than anything necessarily inherent in Howard Dean.

1) They threw away their monetary advantage by diluting their media campaign across too many states and

2) Dean counted on the Democratic primary electorate being more uniformily against our being in Iraq then they proved to be. Kerry wound up being able to undercut potential Dean support by merely voicing vague sounding "concerns" about Iraq.

One artificial aspect of presidential primary campaigns is that you are not given time to learn from your mistakes. One misstep and you have to play catch-up. Two missteps and you are gone.

The DNC job isn't that type of affair. In fact it would seem to call for someone who did the positive things that Dean's campaign in fact did. Across the south the Democrats would be well served by building exactly the grassroots organizations that exemplified Dean's campaign at its best. Dean himself tried to voice something of this during the campaign, before he was cut down to size by the PC police.

Some might argue that Dean wasn't able to translate his grass roots core to the larger electorate, and while that is indeed true, I feel that was due more to the difficulty with his tactical decision to rely on the anti-war left during the primaries. He never tried to present a more moderate/centrist approach. That doesn't mean he as an ironclad rule wouldn't be able to.

As well, I don't put much stock into the primary postmortems that derided him as a lousy "manager" of his campaign. People whose profession it is to work in political campaigns always blame the candidate when things don't work out. "It wasn't my fault!" they all chime, "Please hire me for other campaigns!"

Look, Dean could be a disaster for the Dems. He might really be a nut. But, he might not. I'll wait and see before rendering a judgment.

Ward Churchill Is Fabulous......

...or so says Bill Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News: Churchill not alone in pointing accusatory finger

Actually, Johnson does level a criticism at Churchill:

The University of Colorado professor could have used a good editor.

Um...that's about it really. Churchill's repeated advocating of violence against fellow Americans gets a complete pass from Johnson. It doesn't even get mentioned, even though it was reported by the very same Rocky Mountain News. (Does Johnson not get a subscription or something?)

At least Gerald Dworkin had the common decency to lapse into uncomfortable silence after the true nature of Mr. Churhill's character had been revealed.

The Rocky Mountain News columnist could have used a moral conscience.

When I'm Wrong, MAN Am I Wrong

This link is in one of the comment sections below, but its important enough to be right out front. From the Rocky Mountain News: Regents should show Churchill the door

Indeed, for much of his career, Churchill has been belittling the activist left for abandoning armed struggle for various forms of non-violent protest. Without violence as a tactical option in its arsenal of weapons against state capitalism, he argues, the left ends up defending and reinforcing the same status quo it claims to oppose.

Such calls to action are given fuller treatment in Churchill's main polemical work, Pacifism as Pathology, which pays special tribute to Diana Oughton, one of three members of the terrorist Weather Underground who accidentally blew themselves up in 1970 while making bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse.

Predictably enough, the book, which was published in various forms between 1986 and 1998, evolved from a workshop Churchill delivered in the early 1980s entitled "Demystifying the Assault Rifle," the objective of which was to help squeamish pacifists conquer their fear of weapons. After two hours of handling Heckler & Koch assault rifles, participants were apprised of the "applicability of various types of guns to different situations" and "the role of arms in assorted political contexts . . ."

It wouldn't be unusual for a professor whose field is ethnic studies to decry injustices committed against indigenous peoples in the United States and elsewhere. But in his public lectures around the country, Churchill has exhorted his troops to violence. In one speech, for example, he urged using violence to prevent tourists from going to Hawaii. "You want to do something constructive for indigenous Hawaiians? Stay home. And if you have to break their kneecaps in order to get them to, do it."

---

It's no small matter to rescind tenure, but there are surely times when it's appropriate - criminal behavior, for example. Or a historian of the Second World War who argues that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. Academic freedom is not the same as First Amendment protection. Of course Churchill has First Amendment rights. We would defend his right as a citizen to make all the statements we have cited. But academic freedom, while it should protect a wide variety of speech, even offensive speech, has limits. Surely public officials must draw that line at someone who consistently advocates violence as an antidote to society's ills.

This is absolutely right. In more than one place in the Blogspace I said this man shouldn't lose his job, based on what I had heard. Having read the Rocky Mountain News piece I can say that I was wrong. Not really all that surprised...I called him a bastard for good reason...but clearly this man has to go. One of the reasons for being for any University is that is a place where you can have disagreements but you don't render violence upon the people you disagree with. Ward Churchill wants to visit violence upon those he disagrees with...or to put it more accurately...Ward Churchill is an Osama Bin Laden type coward who wants other people to act violently against those he disagrees with on his behalf.

A big thank you to Marc from American Future for pointing out the error of my ways.

I will also add that Left2Right has disabled posting on this subject for some unstated reason. It sort of seems a cowardly way of saying that Gerald Dworkin position on Mr. Churchill has become untenable.

Speech And Consequences

Over at Left2Right Gerald Dworkin has chimed in on the Ward Churchill situation: Academic Freedom

As you might expect from the title, Dworkin feels people are being too hard on poor ol' Churchill.

Here is the full text of the article that is causing so much controversy regarding Churchill's invitation to speak at Hamilton College. So far he has had to resign as chair of the Ethnic Studies department at Boulder and his speech has been cancelled because of "credible threats" of violence at Hamilton.

While some of the language is disgusting (little Eichmanns for those killed in the WTC) and some of the claims are bizarre (were the secretaries, janitors, fireman, waiters in the restaurants, stock clerks, etc. also part "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire?) the main theses represent moral, political, and empirical claims about the cause of the attack, and its moral character. No faculty member should be dismissed because of such claims.

Welcome to the straw-man part of the argument! Criticizing Churchill and protesting his statements at Hamilton College is now equivalent to "dismissal." Now, some people, like myself, might wonder how Colorado hired him in the first place or might wonder if this is what the University is looking for in its "scholars." That, however, isn't the same as asking for him to be fired as such. Lord knows, if you fired Churchill for being the nut job that he is, you'd have to fire hundreds of other moonbats in universities and colleges across the country. What idiot would want to open that can of worms?

I've got a few comments over on the Left2Right site for anyone to check out. It should be an interesting debate.

Dancing About Architecture

For no reason in particular, I've started up another project for myself. Over at my new blog Beatlescrit. I've begun a track by track, album by album appraisal of the Beatles music. It should take me forever to do, but it should be fun.

Drop by sometime and watch it unfold or disintegrate.

Attempting The Impossible

Marc, from over at American Future, trys to make some sense out of George Soros and finds it rough going. Soros Speaks; I Fisk

OK, George. So you're telling me that such sacrosanct American values as freedom, liberty, and democracy are not and should not be universal values. And if they aren't, then their opposites -- slavery, tyranny, and totalitarianism -- shouldn't always be abhored (it depends on the circumstances, of course). But there's something I don't understand, George: how can a society be "open" if its political system is a totalitarian tyranny that enslaves the people? And what about your concern for human rights? Boy, am I confused!

Marc was probably crazy to attempt it in the first place.

Remembering What You Forgot

Mark Brown at the Chicago Sun-Times is worried that he might have ot give George Bush some credit. What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?

Maybe you're like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started -- not to the point of joining any peace protests, but at least letting people know where you stood.

You didn't change your mind when our troops swept quickly into Baghdad or when you saw the rabble that celebrated the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue, figuring that little had been accomplished and that the tough job still lay ahead.

Despite your misgivings, you didn't demand the troops be brought home immediately afterward, believing the United States must at least try to finish what it started to avoid even greater bloodshed. And while you cheered Saddam's capture, you couldn't help but thinking I-told-you-so in the months that followed as the violence continued to spread and the death toll mounted.

By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval.

But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?

It's hard to swallow, isn't it?

Brown needn't have worried himself. There is just no need for most of the anti-war crowd to go so far.

Why is that?

Well, just because you didn't care for the approach that Bush and Co. took to Iraq you don't have to run down the power of democratic ideals. Most Democrats are good democrats. They already know that democratic ideals and principles are powerful in and of themselves. All they need to say to themselves is, in this particular situation, those ideals were so powerful that they have overcome Bush's bumbling. You can still believe that Bush wasn't terribly effective or an actual hindrance to the political future of Iraq, and you can continue to believe that even if Iraq develops in promising ways.

I guess this is my way of saying that, no matter what happens in Iraq, I'm not expecting Mark Brown to vote Republican in 2008.

No reason he should.

Iraq = Vietnam ad Nauseum

In case you missed it, Chistopher Hitchens is a little queasy after hearing too much "Iraq is another Vietnam" chatter. (Note the huge breasted Pythonisms in the foreground.) Beating a Dead Parrot: Why Iraq and Vietnam have nothing whatsoever in common.

I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy.