Oct 21, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Sol Stern in the New York Sun on Oct 21:This September's re-education sessions for teachers drove home the party line relentlessly: Your students must not be sitting in rows. You must not stand at the head of the class. You must not do "chalk and talk" at the blackboard. You must have a "workshop" in every single reading period. Your students must be "active learners," and they must work in groups. As one circular distributed to principals put it: Your teachers must transform themselves from the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side."
Stern has a longer article on the subject in City Journal.
Oct 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto last Friday:One of the few serious "hate crimes" to occur in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, in Mesa, Ariz. Yesterday a jury sentenced the killer, Frank Roque, to death for his crime. "The jury brought justice back to our family," Lakhwinder Singh Sodhi, the victim's brother, tells Reuters. "They brought the truth in front of the whole world and showed that we are all Americans."
United Press International notes that today is "World Day Against the Death Penalty," on which "the European Union will use the occasion to stress its outright opposition to the death penalty and urge countries that still believe in capital punishment to abolish what it considers a medieval practice."
Oct 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto found this at the bottom of an AP dispatch:In the West Bank town of Nablus on Thursday, one person was killed in an explosion in the courtyard of the hospital. Palestinian security sources said the man apparently was playing with an anti-tank missile when it exploded.
Oct 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" intelligence showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, US intelligence sources said yesterday.
MI6 had more than one "different and credible" piece of intelligence to show that Iraq was attempting to buy the ore, known as yellowcake, British officials insisted. But it was given to them by at least one and possibly two intelligence services and, under the rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared with anyone else without the originator's permission....
British officials admitted that the country was Niger but insisted that the intelligence behind it was genuine and had nothing to do with the fake documents. It was convincing and they were sticking with it, the officials said.
They dismissed a report from a former US diplomat who was sent to Niger to investigate the claims and rejected them. "He seems to have asked a few people if it was true and when they said 'no' he accepted it all," one official said. "We see no reason at all to change our assessment."
The fake documents were not behind that assessment and were not seen by MI6 until after they were denounced by the IAEA. If MI6 had seen them earlier, it would have immediately advised the Americans that they were fakes.
Oct 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From Slate: Wesley Clark's Patriot Act by Chris Suellentrop.
From FoxNews: Democrats Battle for Heart of Clark Campaign.
Oct 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, yesterday urged America to recognize that terrorists can "have serious moral goals". He said that while terrorism must always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were devoid of political rationality. "It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable." He said that in ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa'eda, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality."
I.e., "everybody is right, by his own standards." Whether the standards are based in reality or not, whether they are honest or not, is irrelevant to people like the Archbishop--who by the fact that they don't care about reality, condemn themselves as dishonest. And what are these goals that Al Qaeda shares with "those who would not dream of acting in the same way"? The imposition of a theocracy and the subjugation of the Jews, perhaps?
