The Associate Press isn't falling for the administration's "end to combat operations in Iraq" business. Tom Kent, AP standards editor, sent a memo to his colleagues yesterday afternoon making that point:

[C]ombat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents. Many Iraqis remain very concerned for their country's future despite a dramatic improvement in security, the economy and living conditions in many areas.

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over…. 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on….

Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended. We can also say the United States has ended its major combat role in Iraq, or that it has transferred military authority to Iraqi forces. We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad.

Contrast this with NBC/MSNBC's gushing coverage of "the end of America's Iraq combat mission." 

[Hat tip: Glenn Greenwald]

Contrary to popular perception, the rates of illegal immigration have dropped sharply over the past decade. This is the just-released conclusion of a new PewResearchCenter study:

The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

This sharp decline has contributed to an overall reduction of 8% in the number of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S.-to 11.1 million in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million in March 2007, according to the estimates. The decrease represents the first significant reversal in the growth of this population over the past two decades….

As regards the controversy over our Mexican border, there is this important note:

The Pew Hispanic Center's analysis also finds that the most marked decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants has been among those who come from Latin American countries other than Mexico.

And from the complete report:

The unauthorized population from Mexico grew steadily from 2001 through 2007, expanding from 4.8 million to 7 million during those years. Since then, the number from Mexico has been stable.

You can download the full document here.

Childcare isn't what it used to be, and good thing for that. Here's a section from James Watson's Psychological Care of Infant & Child, 1928.

 

 

The chapter was entitled "Too Much Mother Love."

In case you missed it, Deal did a brief interview Friday with the Dallas Morning News on the subject of Catholic teaching and immigration. It's a short piece, but informative, and included this interesting exchange:

[D]oes a government have a moral right to set limits on the kinds of people who enter?

Kinds of people? Practically speaking, these disputes are always about some group or groups of people.

Just because this case is about Mexicans does not prove, in itself, that discrimination is involved. It only means that the border with Mexico is where the problem is originating. If it were Canadians, the debate would be the same.

I do think this mess is more of our making than Mexico's. For some reason, in 2005 everyone decided to get all crazy about it, when they should have seen it coming for 20 years.

By "kinds of people," I mean that some folks want more highly educated workers let into the U.S.

I don't think entry into the U.S. should be based upon IQ or, especially, university degrees -- they would all become Democrats! (Oh, well, maybe not IQ.)

I don't think we want to make our decisions based on whether a particular group is contributing to the economy. That makes it even more problematic morally. Then you would have debates over who is providing benefits and who is not. You get into questions of what constitutes a benefit. Is it the level of a salary? Amount of taxes paid? Kind of work done? That becomes impossibly subjective.

I have a feeling some may disagree on this point. Do you think there's anything wrong with setting criteria for who may or may not immigrate (and in what numbers)? From my understanding, Canada does that very thing, favoring those in the fields of technology or healthcare. Could that work in the United States, or would it run contrary to our Come-All-Ye-Huddled-Masses character?

Here's the complete interview. As I mentioned, it's short but good.

A press release from Human Life International:

The board of directors of Human Life International (HLI) has announced that after nearly 10 years of meritorious service to HLI as president, Reverend Thomas J Euteneuer has stepped down from his position after being asked by his Bishop to return to his Diocese in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The board thanks Fr. Euteneuer for his leadership, hard work and dedication in carrying on the legacy of Fr. Paul Marx. During his tenure Fr. Euteneuer traveled more than one million miles as a pro-life missionary to the world.

While Fr. Euteneuer’s leadership at HLI and his influence on the pro-life movement around the world will be greatly missed, we are blessed to have gifted staff who will continue to carry out our mission while a search for a new president is undertaken.

Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula, Executive Director of HLI’s office in Rome, will assume Fr. Euteneuer’s responsibilities until such time as a permanent replacement is named.

Well, that was abrupt.

There may be more to this, or it could simply be a matter of a diocese hurting for vocations and needing its priests back. Let's not speculate until we have more information.

According to the Daily Caller, some popular political bloggers are receiving more than news tips from their favored candidates:

In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers.

One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed….

“I can be retained at a quite reasonable rate or for ‘projects,’” Park wrote in an e-mail to campaign officials…

But while Red County’s Hanlon expressed outrage at Park’s pay-for-blogging scheme, questions arose about his own editorial independence when it emerged that Red County itself had been taking money from the Whitman campaign.

In December of 2009, Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then.

Egads, I've been missing out on the payola. There's got to be an archaeological lobbying group out there that will toss me a few denarii for some positive coverage. Trowel and shaker screen subsidies now!

Good news yesterday in the fight against embryonic stem cell experimentation:

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits the National Institutes of Health from funding the research under the administration's new guidelines, citing an appeals court's ruling that the researchers who had challenged the less-restrictive policy have the legal standing to pursue their lawsuit….

In his 15-page decision, Lamberth cited "unambiguous" legislation by Congress in 1996, called the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in uteri"….

"The language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding research in which a human embryo is destroyed," he wrote. "This prohibition encompasses all 'research in which' an embryo is destroyed, not just the 'piece of research' in which the embryo is destroyed," as the Justice Department argued.

We'll be following the story. This is probably a temporary respite.

If you live in Philadelphia and operate a blog, your city government wants to charge you $300 for the privilege. 

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she's made about $50...

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

"The real kick in the pants is that I don't even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous," Bess says….

When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city's now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, "I was told to hire an accountant."

With city budgets in the bright red and career politicians scrambling to cover the bills they've run up, we can expect to see future shakedowns like this one. It's starting in Philadelphia, but it won't end there.

When two mouthpieces of the feisty right come to verbal blows, you know it's going to be entertaining. Yesterday, Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily announced that his popular site is cancelling Ann Coulter's appearance at their "Taking America Back National Conference" in September, because of her decision to speak before a prominent gay conservative organization.

"Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud," said WND Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah. "The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning."

Coulter disagreed, in her typically Coulter-esque way. In a rushed-email to The Daily Caller, she had a few comments about Farah's motivations:

farah is doing this for PUBLICITY and publicity alone…. he could give less than two sh-ts about the conservative movement — as demonstrated by his promotion of the birther nonsense (long ago disproved by my newspaper, human events, also sweetness & light, american spectator and national review etc, etc etc). He’s the only allegedly serious conservative pushing the birther thing. for ONE reason: to get hits on his website….

this is total b.s. for PUBLICITY by a publicity whore.

As for the GOPround event itself, she says she speaks to a lot of conservative groups, including those with whom she disagrees on certain issues.

my fellow evangelicals — and I know lots and lots of ‘em — – all think it’s great that I’m doing this. (of course, they know I’m not changing my mind on gay marriage even though I like gays.)

Who's right?

Family & Life, an independent pro-life organization in Ireland, reports on the latest medical innovation involving the use of adult stem cells: a boy in Northern Ireland became the first child to undergo a successful trachea transplant.

The 11-year-old underwent the operation which involved the removal of his trachea and its replacement with a donor windpipe at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Doctors used stem cells from the boy’s bone marrow to build up the donor windpipe and ensure the organ was not rejected. Four weeks ago, they were able to describe the transplant as a success after proving blood supply had returned to the trachea....

Ciaran’s transplant took place four weeks after a donor trachea was found. The surgical team was led by Prof Martin Elliott, who said, "Ciaran is a wonderful boy and a great friend to us all. His treatment offers hope to many whose major airways were previously considered untreatable."

Even the mainstream media is noticing the rapid advances adult stem cell therapy is making, and the comparatively modest pace of research on embryonic stem cells. Here's the Los Angeles Times, two weeks ago:

For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Some of the new approaches, like the long-proven treatments, are based on the idea that stem cells can turn into other cells... But for other uses, scientists say they're harnessing the apparent abilities of adult stem cells to stimulate tissue repair, or to suppress the immune system.

"That gives adult stem cells really a very interesting and potent quality that embryonic stem cells don't have," says Rocky Tuan of the University of Pittsburgh.

Encouraging news.

Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of the excellent Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, has some advice for the GOP on the upcoming elections.

Stop me if you've heard this before...

Despite their repeated threats to stay home if Republicans deviated from a commitment to conservative social issues, it wasn’t the Religious Right that deserted Republicans in 2008 (or 2006, for that matter). Turnout among self-described members of the Religious Right remained steady from 2004 to 2008, and these voters remained loyally Republican. Roughly 70 percent of white evangelicals and born-again Christians voted Republican in 2006, and 74 percent in 2008, essentially in line with how they have been voting for the past two or three decades.

It was suburbanites, independents, and others who were fed up with the Republican drift toward big government who stayed home -- or, worse, voted Democratic in 2008. Republicans carried the suburbs in both 2000 (49 to 47) and 2004 (52 to 47), but in 2008, suburban voters -- notably wealthy, college-educated professionals, many of whom consider themselves moderate on social issues but economically conservative -- voted for Barack Obama by a margin of 50 to 48.

You see where this is going: Tanner is urging Republicans to focus the 2010 race on the broad themes of Big Government and fiscal responsibility, and not get distracted with secondary culture war debates (i.e., "immigration, the 14th amendment, gay marriage, and when and where mosques should be built"). These issues play well in the GOP primaries, he says, but are handicaps in the general election.

[I]ndependent and suburban voters are now regretting their Democratic flirtation. They didn’t vote for record deficits, the health-care bill, bailouts to banks and auto companies, or cap-and-trade…. But these voters are not culture warriors. Polls show that while they are fiscally conservative, and very upset by excessive government spending and rising deficits, they are socially moderate, tending toward indifference or even support on issues like gay marriage….

If one needs a template for victory, Republicans need look no further than last year’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie did not run as culture warriors. Instead they won their upset victories on issues like jobs, the economy, and a commitment to limited government.

We witness this same debate every other election, and it never seems to lead anywhere. While I'm sympathetic to Tanner's view, I don't think we can make broad statements about the American electorate. November will bring hundreds of individual races, held in districts with concerns and priorities unique to those populations. Elections in border states like Texas and Arizona, for example, may very well turn on the immigration issue, while the same approach would flatline in Connecticut. Common sense dictates that you use what works, where it works.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an important op-ed by Michael Fleisher, president of Bogen Communications, entitled "Why I'm Not Hiring."

It makes for discouraging, but important, reading.

Meet Sally (not her real name; details changed to preserve privacy). Sally is a terrific employee, and she happens to be the median person in terms of base pay among the 83 people at my little company in New Jersey, where we provide audio systems for use in educational, commercial and industrial settings. She's been with us for over 15 years. She's a high school graduate with some specialized training. She makes $59,000 a year -- on paper. In reality, she makes only $44,000 a year because $15,000 is taken from her thanks to various deductions and taxes….

After running through the various government-added costs of employing workers, Fleischer concludes:

When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year.

Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure. Tax increases, whether cloaked as changes in unemployment or disability insurance, Medicare increases or in any other form can dramatically alter our financial situation….

To offset tax increases and steepening rises in health-insurance premiums, my company needs sustainably higher profits and sales -- something unlikely in this "summer of recovery." We can't pass the additional costs onto our customers, because the market is too tight and we'd lose sales. Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretend there will be no consequences.

You need to read the entire column.

The race between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway for Jim Bunning's old Kentucky Senate seat is getting slimy. In this latest episode, one of Conway's supporters dressed up like a Rand Paul fan, slung a racist sign around his neck, and tried to circulate at a Paul rally.

Happily, we live in the era of the video camera.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bpgnkNN7Q 635x355]

UPDATE: The man's name is Tyler Clay Collins, and he is indeed a Democratic activist. His Facebook page -- which he just took down -- lists Jack Conway as a Friend. 

Here's a screenshot taken before Collins removed the page:

 

According to Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to overturn California's Proposition 8 will be difficult for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse. That is because Walker appears to have written his opinion with one specific Supreme Court justice in mind:

I count -- in his opinion today -- seven citations to Justice [Anthony] Kennedy's 1996 opinion in Romer v. Evans (striking down an anti-gay Colorado ballot initiative) and eight citations to his 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas' gay-sodomy law). In a stunning decision this afternoon, finding California's Proposition 8 ballot initiative banning gay marriage unconstitutional, Walker trod heavily on the path Kennedy has blazed on gay rights: "[I]t would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse," quotes Walker. "'[M]oral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest,' has never been a rational basis for legislation," cites Walker. "Animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate," Walker notes, with a jerk of the thumb at Kennedy.

Walker has temporarily stayed his ruling, which I expect we'll be hearing about through the fall campaigns. 

 

How did I miss this? Jay Kennedy, an historian and philosopher of science at the University of Manchester, claims to have made an unusual discovery in the works of Plato. In short, he argues that the philosopher was a closet Pythagorean, and that he left numerous textual clues to that effect.

[Kennedy] used a computer to restore the most accurate contemporary versions of Plato's manuscripts to their original form, which would consist of lines of 35 characters, with no spaces or punctuation. What he found was that within a margin of error of just 1 or 2 per cent, many of Plato's dialogues had line lengths based on round multiples of 1200. The Apology has 1200 lines; Protagoras, Cratylus, Philebus and The Symposium each have 2400 lines; Gorgias 3600; The Republic 12,200; and Laws 14,400. This is no accident, Dr Kennedy says.

''We know that scribes were paid by the number of lines, library catalogues had the total number of lines, so everyone was counting lines,'' he said. He believes Plato was organising his texts according to a 12-note musical scale, attributed to Pythagoras….

Knowing how he did so "unlocks the gate to the labyrinth of symbolic messages in Plato."

Believing this pattern corresponds to the 12-note musical scale widely used by Pythagoreans, Dr Kennedy divided the texts into equal 12ths and found that "significant concepts and narrative turns" within the dialogues are generally located at their junctures.

So if this is true, what was Plato trying to communicate?

As far as Kennedy can tell, Plato's message was one of solidarity simply by acknowledging the relationship between music and mathematics, but he suspects there's more to it. "Perhaps some scholar will find that -- in The Republic, at least -- that there is something like a melody or a score embedded in the text," he says.

I'm suspicious; conspiracy theories almost never pan out. Still, Kennedy's work is being taken seriously, with this current study appearing in the new issue of Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science.

The Democrats don't seem to have much of a strategy for winning the 2010 midterms, and the one approach they've been using isn't working. The National Journal reports:

Dems have tried repeatedly to tie the GOP to Bush's economic policies, which remain highly unpopular. But so far, that hasn't worked, according to officials at the Dem-leaning Third Way think tank.

"Just eighteen months after President Bush left office with the nation's economy in historic freefall, two-thirds of Americans now see congressional Republicans and their economic ideas as new and completely separate from those of the former president," the group wrote in a strategy memo sent to Dem leaders last month.

A majority, 53%, of Americans still blame Pres. Bush for the country's economic woes, while 26% pin the blame on Pres. Obama…. But just 25% of Americans say that the GOP's return to power in Congress will mean a return to those unpopular Bush policies. Fully 65% believe a GOP Congress would promote "a new economic agenda that is different from George W. Bush's policies."

Was Elizabeth Scalia -- known to all as The Anchoress -- the first writer to question the Shirley Sherrod story? Richard Hyfler of Forbes says yes, and adds that she's the only one who emerged from the imbroglio looking good.

When Andrew Breitbart released his heavily edited video -- and most of us assumed it was a case-closer -- Elizabeth had questions:

Doesn’t it seem like, after all of that sort of winkin, “you and I know how they really are” racist crap wherein Sherrod -- intentionally or not -- indicts her own narrow focus, she was heading to a more edifying message? What did it open her eyes about?

….I want to know. Because it seemed like Sherrod was heading somewhere with that story, and the edit does not let us get there. I want the rest of the story before I start passing judgment on it.

As Hyfler notes, Elizabeth seems to have been the only one who displayed the true instincts of a journalist -- ask questions and check facts before coming to any conclusions.

What’s striking is that everyone else -- reporters and editors at the networks disseminating the story, officials at the Department of Agriculture pressuring Sherrod to resign, executives at the NAACP accusing Sherrod of racism and abuse of power -- seems to have forgotten how we listen to the stories that people tell. And having forgotten how to listen, we then forgot how to read.

When someone in the middle of a long, meandering story says, “it opened my eyes,” it’s only natural to ask the question Scalia asked: “What did it open her eyes about?”

Elizabeth is both shy and extremely modest -- "The Anchoress" is a fine moniker -- but she deserves recognition for this. 

Kudos Lizzie!

When it comes to the promotion of ridiculous 'threats to our children,' no-one beats the mainstream media. Take this latest civilization ender, the pastime known as i-Dosing.

Here's how it works, as described by Wired:

i-dosing involves donning headphones and listening to "music" -- largely a droning noise -- which [Web sites] peddling the sounds promise will get you high. Teens are listening to such tracks as “Gates of Hades,” which is available on YouTube gratis (yes, the first one is always free).

Those who want to get addicted to the “drugs” can purchase tracks that will purportedly bring about the same effects of marijuana, cocaine, opium and peyote. While street drugs rarely come with instruction manuals, potential digital drug users are advised to buy a 40-page guide so that they learn how to properly get high on MP3s.

Oklahoma’s Mustang Public School district isn’t taking the threat lightly, and sent out a letter to parents warning them of the new craze. The educators have gone so far as to ban iPods at school, in hopes of preventing honor students from becoming cyber-drug fiends, News 9 reports.

The tracks the teens are downloading contain what are known as binaural beats, usually masked under a loud drone. A slightly different tone is played in each hear, which causes the listener to perceive a third, middle tone, originating in his head. (It's often experienced as a fast, rattling beat, hence the name.) This phenomenon has been known and studied for almost two hundred years, and clinicians use binaural beats for a variety of purposes.

But will they get you high? Not even close. Here's the generally-gullible Daily Mail:

Dr. Helane Wahbeh, a Naturopathic Physician and Clinician Researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University…. denied there was any possibility that someone could experience similar effects to cocaine or ecstasy.

She said: 'We did a small controlled study with four people, and we did not see any brain wave activity shifting to match the binaural beat that people were listening to.

So if that's true, then what's going on with the teenagers? There are two factors at play here. First, listening to any kind of high volume, repetitive beat for an extended period of time will produce in the listener a feeling of euphoria or intoxication. Our tribal ancestors discovered this themselves, using drum, dance and chant to reach altered states of consciousness. We continue that tradition today at rock concerts and dance clubs.

Second, this is a fine example of the power of suggestion. Teens are expecting a high, and have that belief reinforced through YouTube videos and listener testimonials. Throw in a healthy dose of teenage insecurity -- "If everyone else gets high from listening to this, then there's something wrong with me if I don't" -- and you've got a perfectly reasonable explanation for the phenomenon of i-Dosing.

First, Belgium banned the veiled burqa, then two months later, France followed. Spain is considering a ban as well, and while the British government has no interest in joining them, most of its citizens wish it would.

But the most interesting development in the Great Burqa Debate came Sunday, when Syria's Minister of Higher Education announced a new rule forbidding the wearing of the niqab -- the face covering -- in public universities.

Dr. Ghitath Barakat explained that the donning of face veils, which cover everything but the woman's eyes, "opposes the morals and values of the academy"….

The official added, "Our students are our children and we will not abandon them to extreme ideas and practices."

This might stir things up:

A team of paloeanthropologists compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, which date back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with those of more than 300 Amerindians, which date to 1000 years ago. The Paleoamerican remains came from four sites in South and Central America, and the researchers also compared them with more than 500 skulls from East Asia. In all, the team found clear differences in the shapes and sizes of the Paleoamerican and Amerindian samples. That suggests that more than one group of individuals migrated to the Americas from Asia, the team reports online today in PLoS ONE. And due to the age of the skeletons, the researchers say, this other group of individuals arrived before the primary ancestors of today's Native Americans.

Here's the full study.

It's just a matter of time before a Mormon apologist tries to use this as anthropological evidence for the Jaredites (the earliest peoples the Latter-day Saints allege to have come to the Americas). It's bad enough some enthusiasts identify them with the Olmecs.

*          *          *

Yesterday was big for fans of Franz Kafka: Four safety deposit boxes containing thousands of his letters, sketches, and manuscripts were opened in Zurich. Because there's some legal dispute over ownership of the documents, a judge will decide what to do with the material.

I'm just hoping we finally get a conclusion to The Castle. 

 

This story...

The driver of a FedEx tractor-trailer rig lost control of his truck on Interstate 5 after choking on some spicy pork rinds, jackknifed and came to a stop in a muddy ditch, says a Washington State Patrol trooper.

Trooper Keith Leary says 42-year-old Edward Sutherland of Mount Vernon suffered minor injuries Monday. Leary says the man was driving his rig southbound from Blaine when he began choking and veered from the southbound lanes across the median into northbound lanes.

...made me think of this new-but-already-classic Onion video: 

[Thanks Todd]