A recent advertisement from the World Wildlife Federation.

When you read way down in Debra Saunders' excellent column on global warming that appears in The San Francisco Chronicle you will find the unexpected nuggets that 1) there may have been no global warming for about 13 years now, and 2) a link is developing between global warming alarmism and eco-terrorism.

One of four Seattle homes that was destroyed in an eco-terrorist attack last March.

It is hard to write good political satire and harder still to get it past editors. I did once and was told I had to label it satire since some readers might think it was serious.

What is almost as funny as the adroit whimsy of Katherine Kersten's piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reading the turgid criticisms of some readers in their comments that follow it. Don't miss them.

The Canadian media are filled with the exciting story of a possible, even likely, removal of the Conservative government after only six weeks' tenure since October's parliamentary election. Conservatives, with 46% of the seats in Parliament, still lack a majority and now the other parties--the Liberals (who have about a quarter of the seats, the New Democrats (NDP) and the Bloc Quebecois--have decided to close ranks to form a coalition. A new Government could well be made up of parties that were last fall's election losers. The participants publicly have agreed on Stephane Dion as the new Prime Minister, even though the Liberal leader is under criticism in his own party for the recent poorly executed Liberal campaign. Internal Liberal divisions open a chance, indeed, that Dion could be sworn is as the new PM and yet get ousted before the next election in a party leadership contest.

When Discovery Institute in Seattle held a review of the Canadian results on October 15, the day after the Parliamentary election, I asked two esteemed experts on Canadian politics why the Liberals and NDP didn't just combine forces on the left. The answer was swift and stern (stupid me!). There is just too much ideological difference between the relatively free market Liberals and the socialist NDP, and too much history, too, I was told.

Well, six weeks later there doesn't seem to be so much difference. Not at the moment, anyhow. In the coalition deal, Liberals will organize the Government and get most of the cabinet seats, while the NDP will get a mere six cabinet posts--but that is more than it has enjoyed in my memory--and the Bloc, whose long term policy is separatism, will vote to sustain the coalition agenda, but not take part in the new Government ("Government" approximates a U.S. "Administration" in parliamentary terminology). There are fateful photos of the three joyful party leaders after signing their joint agreement: The NDP's Jack Layton, the Liberal Stephane Dion (center) and the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

I have a feeling that that photo may come back to haunt the three. There really are differences among the parties--as well as within the Liberal Party. It is hard enough to keep the Talking Points and lines of authority clear within one party, let alone among three. Then there are the personality differences and rival power ambitions among long term rivals.

With that in mind, it would seem to this outsider that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be smart to let the conspirators succeed for now. They have the votes to oust him anyhow and the most he can do (with approval of the Governor General, the seldom-more-than-nominal head of state) is "prorogue" Parliament for a few weeks--essentially, force a temporary adjournment so the Conservatives can think of something else to do and hope the Opposition Coalition plan will unravel over the Christmas holidays. That is probably a vain hope, however. Right now, the public is uneasy about changing the Government so soon after an election and in the middle of a bad recession. But even if the majority of the public are wary of the new coalition initially, Harper could find that his support in the public might recede as a stalemate wore on.

But the present strategy of the Conservatives seems to be to dig in, to do everything they can within the law to stop the plotters. So far they mostly seem to be sputtering in their surprise and indignation. Their first hapless charge is that the Liberals have made a coalition with "socialists and separatists." The charge is arguably true, and it is also true that the Bloc especially is not trusted in most of the country. But the trouble is that the coalition probably is going to be able to show that the Conservatives themselves were willing to play footsie with the Bloc in the past when it served their interests. And whatever the country is, it is not majority Conservative. The Tories got only 37.6% percent of the votes in parliamentary ridings (districts) in October, even though the electoral logistics worked out to convert that total to 46% of the seats in Parliament. If a contest were held between between the "Conservatives and Everybody Else," it hard to see the Conservatives winning.

There is another publicity tack the Tories are taking that seems ill-advised. Conservatives are trying to make it seem as if the coalition maneuver is nearly illegal, and certainly illicit--unethical, if you will. A coalition may be highly unusual and a bald power play, but it is not illegal or illicit. The coalition could have formed a Government right after the election if the three losing parties had so wanted. A party with 46% of the seats (the Conservatives) doesn't automatically have a property right to govern just because it is bigger than the next largest party.

On the other hand, if PM Harper were to go before the nation, express his dismay that the opposition parties will not let his steady leadership continue to assist Canada through a difficult economic period, and then (bowing to the express intention of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc), he were to ask the Governor General to invite Stephane Dion to form a new Government, here is what might happen: 1) After the champagne and back slapping was finished, gripes among the Liberals against Stephane Dion as Leader would re-surface. 2) With Conservatives still an imposing minority consistently voting against the Coalition, Inter-party Coalition strains inevitably would grow as various issues were raised. Inter-party coalition loyalty would be tested again and again, one controversial issue after another, and eventually would rupture. 3) Once the breakdown came, the Governor General would almost surely call an election, even though the public probably wouldn't feel ready for one. 4) If this all happened in a few months' time from now, Conservatives just happen to be better prepared to contest another election and would have a ready-made issue; namely, the demonstrated incompetence of all the opposition parties.

Of course, there is no predicting events. The Coalition could turn out to be a huge success and there might emerge a long-term stable Government from it. The Conservatives also could suddenly have their own leadership fight after the Coalition took over. (Some might ask, for instance, why Harper so antagonized the other parties after the election that they got over their own mutual antagonisms and formed their new alliance).

But, on balance, I wonder if centrifugal forces bidding to pull a coalition apart might not prevail in coming months against the centripetal forces that presently are pulling it together. Parties work well to enforce cohesion, while coalitions invite back stabbing divisions. Centuries of political experience in all countries show it.

So it seems to me that the Conservatives might be better off in both the next year and long term--and at the next election might even obtain the parliamentary majority that has eluded them so far--if in coming days they handed the opposition parties the very Government hot potato they claim to desire. The Coalition plotters could turn out in the end to have been "too smart by half." The Tories are going to lose control of the House of Commons within weeks anyhow (unless the Coalition comes unglued even sooner). Why not let necessity become an intentional choice?

Mind you, of course, I am just an American observer. What do I know?

**

Update:

Here is an online poll that does ask the question about the prospect of a Coalition Government. It is probably not scientific; still, it is interesting to see the near-even split.

News links:

These two links to CBC News - here and here - and to The Globe and Mail, provide some very useful background information to the story.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper--spiting his opponents in the Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Quebecois parties--today asked the Governor General, Michaelle Jean, to "prorogue" the Parliament, and she agreed. (Photo below.) The national legislative body therefore is now in suspension and the House of Common doors are locked, and not just until the New Year, as many expected, but until January 26.

If the word "prorogue" is strange to American ears (and unless you studied the public life of England in the Middle Ages, it probably is), don't worry; it is mostly a new idea for most Canadians, too. In fact, it is almost as novel a device (though legal) as the three Canadian opposition parties' scheme (also legal) to close down the Conservative Government that Harper heads and install one of their own. Prorogation, indeed, is Harper's stall tactic to prevent a nearly certain vote of "no confidence" in Parliament by the opposition parties next week. Harper's Conservatives have only 46% of the House seats, the three opposition parties 54%. If they unite, they get to govern.

But now there will be a period of forced Parliamentary hibernation--and all sorts of political speculation. Which leaders and which parties are most likely to crack in the two cold, dark months ahead? Will the uneasy combine of Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois break up as specific difficult issues arise and the three party warlords start contradicting one another? Even before that, will an ambitious insurrection within the Liberal Party undertake the ouster of the current leader, Stephane Dion, the somewhat melancholy former academic whose campaign management floundered in October's national elections? If so, will that intra-party struggle weaken or strengthen the inter-party agreement?

Or will it be the Conservatives who fall apart as the economy continues to weaken and as demands grow for stimulus programs that only a sitting Parliament can authorize? If it is this course that events take then Harper probably will not merely be voted out on January 26 but trampled underfoot.

My unbidden opinion (see yesterday's blog below) was that Harper's best option was not prorogation, but resignation, handing the palace coup makers their supposed dream: power right now. My reasoning was that triumverates are seldom stable. Put Caesar, Pompey and Crassus jointly in charge and before you know it they will be fighting one another. On the other hand, before they achieve power, members of a triumverate have every reason to collaborate amicably and forge a tight union against the incumbent, in this case, Harper. Therefore, if you are Harper and you are being a bit Machiavellian, you might have given your varied opponents (one liberal centrist party, one socialist and one separatist) the very thing they think they wanted, and then watched and waited as they started to plot against one another.

Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives have taken a different tack, however. They are probably betting that the Coalition will melt apart over the holidays or at least in a January thaw. Meanwhile, he will present what he hopes is a popular set of new economic policies to the country.

Well, we'll see. We Americans--as is said in Kentucky--don't have a dog in this fight. But it is curious to watch, nonetheless.

Most Canadians, except in Quebec, seem to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to force Parliament into a cooling-off period just as the Conservatives' opponents were exhibiting a rare unified determination to vote for a new PM, Liberal Stephane Dion.

That probably also reflects the public's greater trust in the Conservatives on the economic issue. Indeed, polls show stronger support for the Tories on that issue than on the issue of prorogation (sending the House of Commons into forced recess).

Now there could well be a debilitating fight for the top leadership post among the Liberals, and their leader--and the Coalition's putative head--Dion doesn't even seem certain to prevail in it. Not only will he not become the new PM, he may not last as Liberal Leader. Dion was seen as the only horse to ride in a crisis, but now that the crisis is on hold for the next two months (when Parliament returns), the dolorous former professor's intra-party rivals seem likely to surface. It's hard to see how internecine Liberal jousting can help the Coalition, in any event.

Meanwhile, the relative popularity of Harper, as I wrote below, could easily start to evaporate if the PM does not respond strongly with an economic program the country can accept.

Harper lately has had the sense to offer to work on the program with the opposition while they are cooling their heels and sending out their Christmas cards. But he made a mistake by not adopting a more irenic approach earlier. Where did he get the idea that it was safe for a minority Government to propose taking away the public financing of the opposition parties? (Under his proposal his Conservatives would have lost the public cash, too, but they are better situated to get private funding.) If Harper & Co. had wanted to find a way to unite the usually fractious Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, he could hardly have found a better device. They were plotting against him anyhow, but the attempt to raid their political piggy bank gave made them genuinely passionate.

Al Alusi, consoled by American soldiers after his sons were killed in 2005

We have on various occasions demanded fair treatment of Mithal al Alusi, the brave Iraqi member of Parliament who has traveled twice to Israel to discuss terrorism issues. Doing so caused him the loss of friends, party membership (he had to create a new party) and official security protection. It may have cost him the lives of his two sons who were killed in a terrorist ambush that was aimed at him. It also has encumbered him twice with threats of prosecution in the courts. Had he been sent to an Iraqi prison he probably could not have survived long.

Happily, the latest assault on his official standing and freedom was taken to the supreme court--and Mr. Al Alusi has been completely vindicated. Moreover, without anyone much seeming to notice, Iraqis are now free to go to Israel or any other country. That is highly unusual in the Middle East and sets the stage for any number of future peaceful exchanges and other diplomatic initiatives. The politicians could not establish that right, but the constitution they adopted a couple of years ago did. In any case, that is what the Iraqi supreme court has ruled.

Tom Friedman uses the Al Alusi case as an illustration of the transformed Iraq that is being handed to the incoming Obama Administration. It is a good piece, although Friedman is so partisan that he cannot bear to give President Bush any credit for the changed situation. No thanks to Friedman or The New York Times that employs him, Iraq really may be a major victory for freedom in the seething Middle East.

A more dispassionate pundit would admit that Bush was instrumental in that victory.

The U.S. Federal Government is printing mountains of money and will continue to do so as more "stimuli" are adopted to combat the recession. Some stimulus is well-warranted, especially in regard to neglected public works projects. To qualify for infrastructure grants, local and state government have been told to come up with proposals that are "shovel ready." That will accelerate certain road and bridge projects, for example. Recall, however, that not two years ago the Congress was being attacked for such "pork" spending. Actually, much of it was sound investment in decaying transportation and communications systems. Too bad more of that pork hadn't been approved; it would have been helpful to have more work underway right now.

Sadly, the longer term infrastructure we need, such as a 21st century national passenger rail system, is unlikely to get funded.

Regardless, public works projects that can turn dirt in 90-120 days undoubtedly will help get people hired and does meet a real public need.

The trouble is that the Obama Administration apparently also is thinking of giving stimulus money out directly in the form of so called tax rebates of the kind the Bush Administration reluctantly approved last summer. That "stimulus" was mostly a waste of federal credit and certainly didn't stop the onset of recession. Now, when prices are stable or even declining (gasoline, retail products, housing), people with jobs are not needy. Post-Christmas present bonuses for them will do the economy little good, but printing the money to cover the costs will help attract the notice of the Demon Inflation that is prowling just over the horizon.

Keep using up the credit of the U.S. Government and eventually people will stop investing in our investment instruments (T-bills, and the like). When that happens, the dollar will go down again, the relative cost of fuel and other imports will go up, and we will have a bad recession and bad inflation simultaneously. That would be ruinous.

So what, in addition to short term public works projects, might help the economy and not boost inflation? Pro-growth investment policies. It is growth we need--the kind that comes from individuals and businesses making prudent decisions that are beyond the competence of Congress or regulators. Government bailouts become addictive. Then they become disastrous.

It is because we cannot spend beyond our means for much longer that we need policies that spur investment and growth. One idea I'd like to offer now: Give people with regular 401(K) plans relief from the current requirement that any sales from IRAs will be taxed at the rates applied to regular income. As it is, many (most?) people who over the years put, say, $100,000 into their IRA or SEP-IRA are now finding that their stock investments there have shrunk, not grown, in value. Yet the government insists on taxing any sales as regular income.

It was one thing to state that $100,000 that grew to $200,000 should have, say, a 33% tax on it when sold. That was meant to deal with both the original (untaxed) money invested and the gain on that investment. But now people who have seen their $100K shrink to, say, $50K are totally disinclined to sell because their depreciated value is taxed as if it were all gain. In other words, unlike regular stock accounts where one can accumulate losses to help offset gains for tax purposes, the government seems to regard gains in IRAs as their business and losses as your business. That is a deterrent for people who need to sell in this market or to use IRA money for investments of other kinds, say, real estate. Some are finding that they have to sell from their IRAs to pay their taxes.

Hard cheese for them, you say. Well, sure, but it also is bad for an economy that needs investors--people who sell and then buy other stocks, real estate and make other investments that will stir market forces and create jobs. A huge number of ordinary people have those IRAs. Right now, some are having to sell in desperation out of their IRAs in order to pay taxes. That also acts as a damper on the stock market's recovery by depressing prices. Give IRA holders relief.

Another idea: stop forcing elderly workers who already have completely vested in Social Security to keep paying into the Social Security system at the full rate and on all their salary income. Isn't it enough that they have to pay tax on the benefits they receive from Social Security?

Effectively, the current system is a disincentive for older people to keep working. When they stop working--and paying Social Security taxes, they also stop paying income taxes, of course and the Treasury loses revenue. It would be one thing if the older workers were in jobs that unemployed young workers were seeking, but that is seldom the case.

Moreover, older workers are likely to use unspent funds for investments that will create growth. Why double tax them on Social Security? Why not derive even greater benefit from the productivity of hard working older people by exempting them from continued payments into Social Security after they are already vested? By the way, with the market downturn, more older people have to work now. For them the double tax is an equity question as well as an economic one.

In the campaign, Sen. Obama pledged tax cuts for 95% of Americans. If that means one-time rebates (or handouts), it does almost nothing for the economy. But relieving people from tax policies that punish investment and working past the supposed retirement age would be the kinds of real tax cuts that would build a more productive, job-creating economy.

These are just a couple of examples. We need other ideas now that will spur growth in the economy, not just growth in the money supply.

Colleges and universities are having to cut back in these hard times. Tuitions that have gone up at twice the rate of inflation for decade--and now exceed $50,000 a year in the Ivy League--are beginning to meet market resistance from parents (remember them?). Eric Gibson in the "de Gustibus" column of The Wall Street Journal ("Pleading Poverty: Colleges Want Parents to Foot the Bill for Their Largess," December 5, 2008) takes a welcome cynical view of collegiate administrations' arrogance and presumption.

Anyone who has escorted a 17 year old on a college tour knows what it is like to see the world class new athletic facilities that are better than anything the parent has available to him, the superb library with the cushy chairs, the Lucullan dining facilities, the free high tech support, etc. It turns out that the bill-paying parents have been covering the increases, the students are oblivious and the school endowments have just kept growing as alumni are festooned with laurels by very professional university flatterers.

But now parents are beginning to hoard their resources. A few have figured out at last that the big college diploma is not necessarily the ticket to big success any more and that the family might like to do something else with a quarter million per kid. Alumni are having trouble with their stock portfolios, too..... and so, by the way, is old Slippery Rock U. itself.

Meanwhile, as Victor David Hanson describes, the original ideal of higher education--the liberal education of future leaders--has fallen by the wayside.

Harvard, founded almost four centuries ago by Puritans as a seminary for pastors, is so provincially smug and so vehemently secular that the faculty kills potential courses on religion as injurious to the university's reputation. (Harvard has no concept of what Veritas means anymore, of course.) The University of Virginia, founded by Mr. Jefferson as an example of how a free republic should raise up leaders capable of governing, is in thrall to rank careerism. The Progressives of a hundred years ago presented the University of Wisconsin as an advertisement for the "laboratory of the states." Madison today is synonymous with stultifying conformism.

Who needs these places? They are killing our culture, not advancing it. They are anti-scientific now--following dogma instead of evidence--and they are definitely anti-humanities. Forget going to college to learn philosophy, it's dead. Ditto poetry. Ditto the Great Books and English, unless you long to study "theory" and become a professor yourself. Are you interested in politics and public life? Then don't bother with the so-called Political Science Department. It is not about politics or science or anything real. And it is withering anyhow.

One does not go to a university any more to experience disinterested research and practical ideas. For those one goes to independent think tanks. One does not go to college to enjoy free speech, unless the free speech he seeks is on the Left. Universities are now the least free of intellectual environments.

It is doubtful that the reader's alma mater is any different. During the past 40 years the Left has marched through nearly all of the schools of higher education, including ones that still try to fool alumni givers into thinking that they are genuine groves of academic inquiry. The exceptions are maybe a literal handful of evangelical schools and a like number of traditional Catholic schools.

So show some backbone as the year ends. Stand up to the cagy development officers, the scholarship students they pay to call you and especially to your deluded former classmates. Save your money for somewhere that deserves it.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer today proposes an increase in the Washington State gas tax as a way to pay for increased infrastructure costs, but the editors also propose to make the tax increase temporary and "flexible." That is, the tax increase would be removed when gasoline prices get back to where they were six months ago. Think of it as a temporary "windfall" tax on consumers who are benefitting from gas prices that are under $2.00.

Low prices at the pump keep us dependent on foreign oil and retard investment in alternative fuels and technologies. A per-gallon tax increase reverses some of those influences. In a recession it also can be justified as a way to pay for much-needed infrastructure improvement and to provide revenue to offset cuts in other taxes. The tax cuts especially should be tied to increasing investments in new industries and jobs.

I privately advocated this idea for several years, but finally abandoned it a few months ago, thinking high prices were here to stay. But now it makes sense again. The question is whether the temporary tax increase is really tied to prices below, say, $3--so consumers don't get gouged when prices rise again, which they will. The danger, of course, is that government will make the tax increase permanent. A sunset provision at least would make that less likely.

From Logan Gage:

Late on Wednesday evening, Congress (FINALLY!) passed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act and by unanimous consent. It sounds like an easy achievement, but behind that unanimous consent lies the fact that this bill took two years to hammer out. Bureaucratic opposition was strong and yet almost mute.

Neither side got all it wanted, but the end result appears to be a commendable bill that offers hope for the hundreds of thousands of enslaved and trafficked human beings (mostly women in sex slavery and men in forced labor). Senators Joe Biden and Sam Brownback deserve high praise for their willingness to compromise and make sure an effective law was passed. Credit outside Congress the many human rights NGOs and give particular praise for Michael Horowitz of Hudson Institute who has labored on this and other human rights issues. We at Discovery are also proud once again of the role of our Senior Fellow John R. Miller.

Let us hope that the incoming Obama administration puts serious effort into enforcing the strong provisions of the law.

Nobody anywhere in the developed world seems to be erecting elevated freeways in urban downtown areas, but that is one of the two choices now presented to the supposedly progressive city of Seattle. The other is a head in the sand choice of tearing down the current decrepit Alaskan Way Viaduct and letting the streets and transit handle the huge traffic load.

Badly neglected is the option of a deep bored tunnel for through traffic combined with a gracious waterfront boulevard for local traffic. New technologies make a tunnel financially attractive. Building a structure that will have twice the life span of an elevated freeway and produce far more project-influenced tax revenue in a revitalized harbor front also speak to the financial advantages of deep bored tunnels to carry cars and trucks.

The Hobson's Choice from the planners was not at all well-received by the large stakeholders group that has been following the subject and it is very possible that that this week's "decision" will come undone. Then reason--and vision--will prevail. Other parts of the world may wind up admiring our choices, after all.

Crosscut.com, the Northwest online news organization, runs an article by yours truly today on the whole affair. http://crosscut.com/2008/12/12/alaskan-way-viaduct/18705/

Scroll down to the December 10 item of Evolution News (Rob Crowther) and enjoy the lovely whimsy.

The economy not only is terrible, but no one really seems on top of the problem. The terrorists proceed as if the United States hadn't just had an election (didn't anyone tell them to knock it off?). The weather outside is frightful (let it snow, let it snow, etc.), but it all is global warming, anyhow, warm or cold. In short, we should all be in a bad mood.

But in churches all across the world this is the third Sunday in Advent, and Christians are joyful--in the very teeth of adversity.

Can you understand why?

Some of the best political reporting in Pacific Northwest broadcasting is by C. R. Douglas on the Seattle Channel. That is remarkable because the station is part of city government, with offices in the basement of the new City Hall. But the host, who founded the operation about ten years ago, has mastered the art of provoking his guests without sandbagging them. In preparing for last week's debate about the future of the Seattle waterfront (new elevated Viaduct, all-surface option or a combined deep bore tunnel and waterfront boulevard), one of the participants challenged Douglas, "You sound like a television reporter!"

"He IS a television reporter!" I pointed out. In this case, that is a compliment. Here is the piece if you'd like to watch it.

The Washington state analog of the Seattle Channel It has been around since the 80s and now has its own building in Olympia. I don't know but I suspect that TVW probably does a better job of covering state issues--always broadly understood, too--than their counterparts elsewhere in other states.

Then there is C-Span. In some ways it is the grand-daddy of such outfits of course, attracting serious national listeners in serious numbers (about 250,000 at a time). Sometimes I think C-Span is the real public television in America since it credits the viewer with enough intelligence to figure out for himself whether speakers or debaters are telling the truth or fudging. As a result C-Span is popular with both parties, even though there is no public money in it. The cable companies pay for it.

Right now C-Span is airing its own documentary on the White House, its history and current operations as seen from the inside. Having worked there once (under Ronald Reagan) I found myself surprised and fascinated last night as the cameras not only explained how the public areas were developed, but also how the President's private areas work now. It is engaging and beautiful, and frankly makes you proud to be an American. You can order copies of the 105 minute program for only $9.95, though they won't guarantee arrival before Christmas.

I don't mind promoting C-Span or this production. Like Seattle Channel and TVW--and their counterparts around the land--they think it a service to show you what is going on and to resist the call to self-dramatizing sarcasm and irony. For all that they deserve praise and gratitude.

The Bush 43 presidency has seen a number of innovations, one of them the institution of Chanuka parties in December at the White House. The place is uniquely and beautifully decorated and it doesn't take too much movement to re-organize from Christmas to Chanuka. Psychologist Diane Medved was there two nights ago, with her son, Danny, joining her, while husband Michael continues his big five week book tour for Ten Big Lies About America (number 18 already, Diane says, on the NY Times list).

Diane describes the Chanuka festivities on her blog and holds out some "surprises" for a later report that I also will link to. (She was at our house last night and filled me in, but I am not so mean as to scoop her here!)

Suffice for now that George W. is the first president to institute a Chanuka party. In a season of many Christmas parties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it is a welcome addition. The happy reality is that--in our country, in our time--almost all Christians are delighted to recognize their Jewish friends' religion, and the same can be said in return. The Medved family is especially well known for combining resolute Jewish faith and a warm ecumenical embrace. There is no one on radio, for example, who is so persistently amusing as Michael in ridiculing the secularists who campaign to keep Christmas trees out of public places.

Michael completes his book tour with broadcasts from sunny Hawaii over the coming two weeks. Somehow, he was able to persuade his family to accompany him and show their support.

** Update: Ron Radosh, also at the Chanuka party, shares his views on George W. Bush.

Second update: Diane Medved describes (December 18) the unexpected and joyous dancing the culminated the Chanuka party.

There is no point reading The New York Times story about Paul Weyrich, who just died in his Northern Virginia home. It is askew. Paul's entry in Wikipedia has been updated today, but otherwise it is a tendentious liberal slander. It makes out Weyrich to be a "dominionist". That supposedly means he was a theocrat. He was not.

Paul Weyrich was a social issues conservative and one of the best in the past century. He thought religious people had always had a right to take part in politics and he encouraged them throughout his career to do so, and with vigor. In almost all other respects he was a conservative, too, but there was unusual passion in Paul for the dignity of the human being--he was a leading layman in the Melkite Catholic Church --and that gave particular force and color to his political views. He lacked the pure Libertarian's abstract attitude toward humanity. Like Burke, he saw the person in people.

Articles you will read about Paul Weyrich in coming days will recount his role in founding the Heritage Foundation with Ed Feulner and then the group he headed until his death, the Free Congress Foundation. In fact, he was a luminary among conservatives for decades. When the Reagan, then Bush 1 & 2 Administrations came along, he was a stern, unyielding presence quite prepared to admonish presidents against compromise. Yet, at the same time, behind the scenes he was promoting the careers of solid conservatives who sought Administration posts.

Sometime in the 70s he started a weekly luncheon meeting at Free Congress offices to allow conservative activists representing various organizations to hear confidential updates from White House and Congressional leaders and then to share amongst themselves the progress of their own agendas. Whereas the larger gatherings held by Grover Norquist, also on Wednesdays (a couple of hours before the "Weyrich lunch") would cover the legislative and political waterfront, Paul's meetings got down more to legislative details and had a stronger social issues orientation.

Paul was famous for his wit and his ascerbic style. You didn't want to be on the other side from him. Rhetorically, he didn't take prisoners. But, he had a reflective and studious side, I discovered, and once he came to trust someone he cut them some slack. Especially in the ten years since the onset of serious illness he drew deeply on the spirit of his faith. I asked him a couple of years ago what he had learned from his repeated hospitalizations. He looked almost stricken, for Paul was the last person to admit to any vulnerabilities. Then he replied quietly, "I've learned how kind people are, and often people who might surprise you." It was a moment of grace, surely.

We served together on the Amtrak Reform Council a few years back and, honestly, it was enjoyable service, as well as briefly productive of policy reform. Paul's uncompromising conservatism did not entirely extend to transportation, at least where his long love for rail transit was concerned. (Historically, transportation has had a public dimension for almost the entire life of the Republic, of course.) I think it was a relief for Paul to work on something that was not ideologically driven.

Many young people benefited from Paul Weyrich's patronage and encouragement over the years. He started many a good cause and kept at them. He was an innovator, a public policy entrepreneur. The modern conservative movement he helped establish and guide will find new leaders, but I doubt that any will equal Paul Weyrich's style and verve--and his deep devotion.

I did not know his family, but every thing I have heard leads me to think he was blessed at least as much at home as in his life's labors.

President-Elect Obama's selection of Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) to be his Secretary of Transportation is a true case of political bi-partisanship and a hopeful sign that progress can be made on a number of key infrastructure issues.

The DOT often does not attract much attention, but the prospect of major infrastructure improvements in 2009 as a favored way to use economic stimulus funds means that the sometimes sleepy Transportation department may be coming awake.

Since the days of the Erie Canal and the early post roads, transportation not only has been seen as a legitimate government issue, but also a federal one (as well as state and local). Sadly, however, transportation hasn't had much of a constituency lately. Maybe that will change now.

LaHood's district is in one of the few regions (central Illinois) that enjoys good passenger rail service so it is understandable that he has been a strong backer of Amtrak and a skeptic of privatization of passenger rail. Nonetheless, he is the kind of practical person who will want to review carefully the proposals of the recent Amtrak Reform Council studies that gained wide support for joint public/private partnerships in expanding passenger rail service in America. Real Amtrak reform would assure broad GOP support and the prospect of much more extensive passenger rail would assure Democratic enthusiasm in the heavily rail-dependent Northeast Corridor. Businesses will appreciate an alternative to planes for middle distance trips and environmentalists will cheer the green benefits of rail over nearly any other transportation option for either people or goods. Labor would need to address out of date rules and unwarranted costs. If necessary, the present union members could receive grandfather benefits. But surely union leaders could be persuaded--by a Democratic president--that sustainable passenger rail expansion would be substantial membership increases for the affected unions.

Rep. LaHood reputedly has good relations with Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the new Obama Chief of Staff, and is known to support the Chicago bid for the Olympic Games. Winning those games will require restructuring of the outmoded rail yards and services, a massive public works program that LaHood presumably--at DOT--could help enable. (Don't knock a little home state favoritism in the White House; it happens with almost every new president.)

Regardless, it would be a huge win-win strategy for an Obama Administration to make a commitment to an expanded passenger rail system at this time. With track improvements and new equipment and timetables, it is possible to revitalize passenger rail in only a few years.

How odd that neither Presidential candidate made an issue of passenger rail in the recent campaign. Still, this wouldn't be the first time for a president to govern with innovations that he didn't campaign on.

DOT, meanwhile, also can be home to other bi-partisan and green initiatives, including the plug-in hybrid car that Senator Obama has supported in Congress.

Maybe Secretary-designate LaHood also would be willing to take on a subject that is not so much an opportunity as it is a headache: the declining quality of air service in America.

Then there is the highway program. It would be a huge step forward if the DOT would start to show publicly its support for urban freeway tunnels to help reclaim the space lost to broad, single purpose highways in the 50s and 60s. Discovery Institute just happens to have a favorite pilot project available on the Seattle waterfront where the Alaska Way Viaduct has to be replaced.

Once again, appointment of a Republican Congressman to head DOT could turn out to be an inspired choice for a president wanting to get things done within a bi-partisan consensus.

Discovery Fellow Wesley Smith (in The Weekly Standard) tells the story of another aggrandizing judge who confuses his views for the constitution and laws of the land. When judges abuse their trust in such ways they truly erode the foundations of our democratic republic.

Giving blood is easy and relatively painless (like getting a flu shot), so it's hard to understand why more people don't participate in blood drives. Unfortunately, winter holidays are needy times for blood banks; think of all the accidents and other emergencies. Bad weather often complicates blood drives, and that is especially so in recent days as snow storms penetrated most of the continent. Calls are going out; a "blood emergency" is declared.

So, regardless of what community you live in, think of using a bit of your free time over the holidays to make a gift to strangers. The Internet or the phone book will yield the number of your local blood bank and the representative you reach by phone will be delighted to schedule an appointment. In most locations drop-ins are welcome, too. They'll treat you right.

Iran is not the puritanical Islamist state you think; it's worse than that, corrupt and immoral. The mullahs are on the take and there is a growing scandal of coerced prostitution (sex slavery in the modern parlance). But the social ills are not adequately covered yet in the West. We avert our eyes.

Iran today is overwhelmingly "young" and students are mostly alienated from the government, and not only from President Ahmadinejad, but also from the mullah puppeteers above him.

Here are some remarkable photos by Mehdi Gasemi, taken of demonstrations on December 6 ("Student Day" in Iran). Funny, I don't see any "Death to America" posters.

Why is our government so uninterested in helping the dissidents? Are we we afraid of a regime that already is implacably opposed to us? Would we rather let Iran's rulers build a nuclear bomb and then bomb the sites, starting a major war?

Even in the Cold War, when the Soviets were sponsoring anti-American groups in this country, we did all we could to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. Why is Iran different? Please don't tell me the dissidents don't want or need help from us. Who says so--and in what context?

"You should dream of a white Christmas, not pray for it!" joked Fr. Mike Ryan of St. James Cathedral in Seattle this week. The unusually insistent snows of recent days were frustrating for anyone trying to organize anything, including church services, but they also were lovely. They fed nostalgia, even for days before we were born.

A couple of weeks ago, Curtis Roosevelt, a distant cousin of my wife's, came through town on a book tour for Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor (Perseus Books). Pat Baillargeon, a thoughtful mutual friend, got us together to plumb the family stack of stories.

Mr. Roosevelt, 78, the oldest of FDR's grandsons, known as "Buzzie" to family members and the public that followed his activities of the time, still exudes that Hyde Park Roosevelt charm that comes through many an old newsreel and history book of the 30 and early 40s. His book I can now recommend for anyone who wants to experience vicariously the private "sun" of FDR, and, if you will, the magnetic "moon" of that most famous First Lady, Eleanor. There is a melancholy tinge to the story, frankly, because, just as almost all celebrity deceives and betrays unexpectedly (loss of privacy, to begin with), for the children of celebrities--and, in this case, the grandchildren--there is a particular vulnerability to the surprise sting. And, yet, in this telling the melancholy is sweet and compelling.

Some of the most poignant passages surround Christmas. Most of us remember keenly and are likely to romanticize, of course, what it was to be a child at Christmas. But imagine that you enjoyed the season as an impressionable youth growing up in that most unique estates, The White House, coddled by grandparents, including--again, imagine!--a President who liked to see you and your sister each morning when he had breakfast in bed, and at Christmas liked to entertain you and others with grandiloquent readings from A Christmas Carol.

Think of yourself, during the Depression years, spending much of your time in the Family Quarters on the second floor of the White House.

"Late on the afternoon of Christmas eve, the family, plus a few close friends," Curtis recalls, "joined to watch the first lighting of our private Christmas tree, placed in the East Hall as it was about twenty feet tall, This was a moment of high suspense and anticipation mixed with anxiety. Real candles, each about three inches high, had been placed on all the branches. Buckets of water and sand, meanwhile, stood ready in case of a flaming disaster."

Apparently, even in the 30s there were bureaucrats who had to be consulted about whatever went on in the nation's number one unit of public housing. "Im told," Curtis now reports, "that the the government maintenance officials, horrified at the potential fire hazard, simply closed their eyes when told that the President insisted" (on real candles).

"During the couple of hours leading up to this climactic moment, my grandmother, uncles, and aunts had been decorating the tree with colored balls and tinsel. No friends were allowed to help--only family, only adults--with this tricky exercise.....Papa (FDR) came in to watch the last half hour, commenting drolly on the decorators' efforts and bestowing his approval on the placement of each colored ball. He could be corny at such times, but, even then, his delivery had an unmatched style.

"Now it was time for the lighting. Illuminating all the candles on our tall tree took several minutes. Stepladders were brought in to reach the higher branches, and my six-foot-plus uncles took care of the top ones. When the last taper had been lit, a great sigh of relief could be heard, although nervousness still hung in the air as we sang, rather poorly, one or two verses of 'Silent Night'."

Eleanor, in this and other accounts, is someone who is warm and emotive with strangers, yet finds intimacy with her own family difficult. But the same story also describes a woman of exquisite consideration for those same family members; For only one example, she personally prepared heaping Christmas stockings for all her grandchildren, and even her grown children, with apt gifts, some "practical", like socks, and some fanciful, like toy soldiers.. She knew them pretty well.

In the toe of each stocking was an orange--still an exotic treat in those days. A decade later in our very modest Midwestern home, my brother and I got oranges in our stockings, but by then they were mainly to provide ballast.

Our family gave up real Christmas candles sometime in the early 40s. They were too dangerous, we were told, and the electric lights were so much more colorful.

But my own household resumed the lighted candle tradition after we lived in Austria in the 1980s. There's no need for buckets of sand and water next to our tree, however. My wife keeps a fire extinguisher nearby.

Hans Andreas Zeiger is a young and serious public intellectual trying to make sense of conservatism in the new age of Obama. He makes a useful start with an article in Crosscut. He could write the same message, more or less, however, about other regions with a distinct identity.

It seems to me that one of the strongest advantages of conservatives in any region, or nationally, is public frustration with bureaucratic micro-management of the economy, the environment and our lives. Disraeli said that the biggest difference between conservatives and liberals (I paraphrase) is that conservatives make you fill out less paper. That is not a small matter. To prevent anything from ever going wrong, the left tyrannizes us with unreasonable regulation. Short term victories in security are won with long term losses in freedom and progress.

For example, Seattle pettifoggers who decided that this week's ice-ridden streets should not be subjected to salt treatments operated out of what even some environmentalists regard as an excess of political correctness. People had accidents in cars and on foot. They couldn't get to work. They didn't shop. Stores were hurt at the most crucial time of the year. And--do I finally have your attention?--revenues from the sales tax went down. Some of that would have happened anywhere, but here a bad situation was made worse. Public Pecksniffs can only see what is written in their policy manuals and not the reality of life as people live it.

Conservatives should protest rule by wasteful and destructive abstractions and speak up for common sense. They are closer, usually, to the inherited wisdom of a people. They have been spared the studied ignorance of career academics.

So start with common sense writ into law and governance. When you combine that with an imaginative vision for how traditional principles can be employed creatively to improve our world, you have a winning political proposition. Apply to transportation, health care, the environment, trade and commerce, taxation, foreign aid, education and culture (broadly defined). Include the conduct of politics, where would-be reformers have made honest politicians the goats of government scolds, while true crooks like Gov. Blagojevich get away with old fashioned corruption for years.

Some liberals can get the common sense formula right on certain issues, but their problem is that they are bound to government-first answers and tied to the vocational imperatives of public employee unions. The public employees themselves are often realistic and dedicated individuals, but their unions are just as often rigid and purblind. The danger of liberalism is not just governmental bigness, but a change of de facto emphasis from that of Lincoln ("government of the people, by the people and for the people") to government of the government, by the government and for the government. Breaking the hold of that dispensation is the challenging hope of regional conservatism--that, and, as I say, a firm commitment to amelioration through proven principles that are re-stated for the present.

People like Hans Zeiger will be in the forefront of conservatism's revival. I'm glad he's on the case.

The continuing decline of the Church of England is attested to not only by its manifest confusion over theology, but also in its attempt to distract attention by attacking others.

I certainly am not making a case for the Labor Party ("Labour", to UK readers), but I do think it ridiculous that bishops of a state church should fancy themselves serious participants--at least as the Church--in such plainly political matters as debt management.

The housing bubble was first pricked in Miami condos in 2006 and tourism statewide in Florida is down about three percent this December from last. But you wouldn't know it from the stuffed Alaska Airlines flight to Miami or the discouraging realization at Hertz's lot near Miami International Airport that all the cars are checked out--even for "Gold Club" members with reservations. In Miami, supposedly Number One Hertz, indeed, is a metaphor for a straining Boom--too many customers, apparently, and exasperated clerks. It doesn't look or feel like an eagerly aspiring company that is worried about staying on top.

Up the coast in Boca Raton you can barely find a shopping cart at the Publix supermarket. The out-of-town papers from New York, Toronto and London are nearly all snapped up. A "Help Wanted" sign pleads for attention at the Cote France sidewalk cafe nearby in Royal Palm Plaza.

Here is an enterprising "mere et papa" place along a sidewalk that really does suggest Nice in the summer--shadowy porticos, some blocks back from the beach, palm trees. The pastries and people-watching make you want to linger and savor. There is still a line at 2 p.m. and a bit of jostle when I come back at night. Don't these people know that times are tough?

In the sunny mid-day, here come a pair of face-lifted ladies "of a certain age", each walking a poodle. And there, across the street at 7 p.m., is a lively scene in front of Lemongrass Bistro, where lovely, noisy twenty-somethings seem blissfully unaware of the financial depredations of that local country club scoundrel, Bernie Madoff.

Pull up a chair, order a Tarte Tartin and pull out a paperback copy of Amity Schlaes' The Forgotten Man, "A New History of the Great Depression." It is comprehensive, readable and surprisingly droll. It will get you out of your funk about the economy and make you realize that our present difficulties are very different from those that produced hard times in the 1930s. Yet there are so many lessons in these pages, too, that make the book pertinent. Such as, 1) the importance of predictable policies and the danger of experimental ones; 2) The need for encouraging, rather than punishing, private investment, and; 3) The genius of the American economy that really does not need instruction from overseas.

"What a time we live in!" a local exclaims to me. "You put money in the bank and they give you 1.5 percent!"

"Be glad if your money at least is safe," I smile, and go back to my book.

Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar speaks in 2006 at the Discovery Institute about deposing the mullahs in his native Iran.

Is it too soon to speak of revolution within Iran? Many U.S. opponents of the Iranian regime think the U.S. is doing next to nothing to support indigenous dissidents, but are appearances accurate?

Here is a story--not much noticed in the MSM--that suggests otherwise.

Mr. Tierney of the New York Times

John Tierney of The New York Times is an accomplished journalist with a reputation for fairness when he covers religion stories. But his recent column on the value of participation in religious services is unintentionally condescending and unwittingly revealing.

From card-carrying Darwinists to parlor agnostics, elites in the dominant culture seem to regard religion as a social construct. For them the only question about its effects is how to identify the materialistic causes at work. Extensively funded studies are undertaken for this supposedly sober object.

It never seems to occur to such worthies--including Mr. Tierney--that there might be another explanation; namely, that God is real and that worshiping him in a group ("where two or three are gathered together") pleases him. The self-control, inner peace and happiness that Mr. Tierney notes are not the product of some sort of evolutionary process or societal therapy. They are not even the point of religion. They are the byproducts of a genuine relationship with the true God who loves us and wants us to know him. He is present to us in prayer and often especially so when we pray in a group; hence, religious services. Faith is not properly understood as some negotiation or exchange, but the acknowledgement of, and enjoyment of, the Creator by those he created. There is more, but that is enough, and that--it turns out--is plenty.

Open yourself to such an explanation, Mr. Tierney. Recognize it, at least. Because It makes a lot more sense than the explanations you consider in your well-intended but fruitless article.

This has been a bad year for Somalia and a bad year for the Somalia front in the War on Terrorism. It is not a glorious account for the United States, the European Union or our supposed friends in the United Nations. A Voice of America report tells a good deal of the sad story.

But the background is even worse that what appears up frront. The Ethiopians sent troops to Somalia (partly at our request) in the expectation that we would back them up with financial support for the U.N. approved transitional government, as well at the Ethiopians themselves. If there has been support, it has been too little. Now the Ethiopians are going home, assuming that they can fight their way out of the country.

The long internecine political strife between President Yusuf and his prime ministers is partly tribal, but also partly the consequence of inadequate funds with which to pay bureaucrats and the military, let alone provide help for the general population. Don't be surprised if allies break up internally when stressed out. Mr. Yusuf's return to relatively calm Puntland is not a sign of peace ahead, but a sign of general political and military failure.

Somalia is in a critical location in the Middle East. It has oil. It is close to shipping lanes, as the pirates have shown us. It has attracted Bin Laden supporters. There are Somalis in the United States--Minneapolis, Seattle, Cleveland, etc.--raising money for BIn Laden (I am told) and Somali young men who have resided in the U. S. who have returned to Somalia to fight on the terrorists' side.

There has been very little, if any, MSM coverage of all this (except for the attacks of the pirates), even though Somalia has the markings of a prospective debacle for the United States and our allies in the months ahead. We are so preoccupied with the economy, the Israel/Palestine conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan that we seem unwilling to face the facts in Somalia. They are facts, nonetheless. They could determine a foreign policy catastrophe for the Obama Administration in 2009.