Jerry Brown, as candidate for Governor of California in 2010, is presenting himself as a strong friend of immigration, but when he was governor in 1975 he was the nation's most outspoken and active foe of immigration by political refugees from Vietnam. It is astonishing, as I visit California this week, to see how this relevant history seemingly has been forgotten.

I remember it very well. After the post-Watergate election of 1974, an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress cut off support for the government of South Vietnam. At the end of April, 1975, it became apparent suddenly that Saigon would fall. Almost as soon, the possibility arose that some, possibly large numbers of Vietnamese would try to flee the country as the Communists took over.

Eventually, about 130,000 Vietnamese successfully settled in the United States. They and their children beame citizens, and, as it happens, many reside in such places as Orange County and San Jose. The nation's first Congressman of Vietnamese decent, Anh ("Joseph") Cao, was elected recently in New Orleans as a Republican.

But in 1975 Gov. Jerry Brown made it starkly clear that he did not want any Vietnamese to come to his state. He went further and tried to stop them from coming. Julia Vedala Taft, who chaired President Ford's interagency task force on refugees recalled, "'The new governor of California, Jerry Brown, was very concerned about refugees settling in his state. Brown even attempted to prevent planes carrying refugees from landing at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. . . . The secretary of health and welfare, Mario Obledo, felt that this addition of a large minority group would be unwelcome in California. And he said that they already had a large population of Hispanics, Filipinos, blacks, and other minorities.'"

At the time, I was Secretary of State in Washington State. I had a friend who had married a Vietnamese woman and was trying frantically to help her family escape. I contacted Joel Pritchard, a member of Congress from Seattle, who said that his information was that few of the "boat people" and other refugees would succeed in getting out. But I knew from history that some determined and perceptive people usually do find a way to flee tyranny, as, for example, in Europe before World War II. I called another friend, Les Janka, who served under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Janka reported that refugees were getting out all right, but that Governor Brown's opposition to any of them settling in his state was making it hard to win national support for helping them.

I then called our own governor, Daniel J. Evans, who was out of town at a conference, but was able to take my call. Evans didn't have a lot of respect for his California colleague and was undaunted by the challenge of differing with him. The next day he assigned two aides, (future Secretary of State) Ralph Munro and Tom Pryor, state director of Emergency Services, to see what the state could do to help. Importantly he announced publicly that, in contrast to California, Washington State would accept refugees from Vietnam. Very quickly, Evans' announcement was welcomed by a relieved State Department. When the time came, Govenor and Mrs. Evans personally met the first planeloads of Vietnamese refugees to land on our shores--after a brief stop at a military base in California. Instead of trying to keep out the refugees, our state warmly welcomed and assisted them.

That was a moment that brought pride to Washington and to Governor Evans. The contrast with the attitude of Gov. Jerry Brown could not be more striking.

It's useful to recall the times: In 1975 the new Vietnamese arrivals represented no voting bloc. Backing them offered no elector advantage, while there was an anti-war sentiment in California that applauded Brown's stand. However, four years later, as he prepared for a run for president, Gov. Brown set up a committee to consider how to help the refugees. But I don't know of his ever admitting that he had been wrong in the first place.

This vivid memory is very much on my mind, therefore, as I hear what seem like opportunistic statements about immigration from the revived gubernatorial candidate of 2010, Jerry Brown. Once again, the man seems mostly motivated by political expediency, not principle.

Private colleges and universities have been quite willing to bow the knee to the federal government since federal aid began to arrive in the 1960s. But that may not be enough. The Obama Administration wants to tie its student loans and other grants to a new accreditation process that would make receipt of any funds--by students or faculty or administrators--subject to conformance to federal standards passed on to the states. This development could lead to an effective control of higher education by Washington, DC.

This threat should stir up even the laziest, conformist college president and trustees. Dissent is frowned up by this Administration. Academic freedom on many campuses already is confined. Now whatever is left may be placed in PC jeopardy. Robert Knight has the story in the Washington Times.

Knight calls attention to a Denver Post article by former U.S. senators Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown, who also have served as presidents of universities in Colorado, warning of the federal Department of Education's plans. "The department's power grab carries with it an implicit invitation for various pressure groups to seek legal mandates requiring colleges and universities to implement their pet theories about curriculum, degree requirements, faculty qualifications, teaching methods, textbooks, evolution, phonics, ROTC, climate change, family policy, abortion, race, sexual orientation, economic theory, etc. ... This assault on academic freedom and institutional autonomy is a slap in the face to regional accreditation agencies whose peer reviews have been bulwarks of integrity and academic quality for decades. Loss of accreditation is literally a death sentence."

Brown and Armstrong warn that action may be taken as early as next month to effectuate the new government role.

Our colleague Michael Medved brought to the attention of his national radio audience today a potentially historic sermon by Atlanta Rabbi Shalom Lewis, delivered over the recent Jewish holidays. Then Michael interviewed the Rabbi, who was nothing if not candid and eloquent.

Here is a Jew who is a member of the ACLU and says he routinely votes Democratic. Rabbi Lewis also says in his sermon that he never voted for George W. Bush. But now he is facing openly what so many American Jews (unlike Israeli Jews) have persevered to ignore--the reality, as Bush realized, that Radical Islam cannot be appeased but must be confronted and defeated. He covers all the arguments and does so with patient intensity. Of course, Islam is not the enemy. Of course, Muslims as a whole are not the enemy. But it does no one any good to ignore that it is a virulent variant of Islam is terrifying much of the world into silence and even paralysis. Cowardice and loss of confidence in our own standards is infecting our own society. It's a kind of political correctness that cannot see reality right dead ahead.

It is no kindness to Muslims, especially reformers, to pretend that things are not as they are. We have a lot of building to do with Muslims who reject the radicals. We need them. But they also need us.

George Gilder's The Israel Test is the best treatment yet in book form of the "canary in the mineshaft" that is modern Judaism and Jewry. Yet until recently at least, most politically liberal Jews have been loathe to face the current unpleasantness because it didin't fit their preconceptions. And many Christians and well-intentioned secularists are just as confused and intimidated. They not only decline to be brave, but they also berate those who are.

Read Rabbi Shalom Lewis' sermon. "Ehr Kumt" is Yiddish: "He is coming!" It's a warning.

Meanwhile, we all should remember the line from Isaiah, also quoted by Rabbi Lewis, "Woe to them that call the day night and the night day."

Almost a month before the mid-term Congressional elections it may seem premature to start analyzing the failures of the new President. But that isn't stopping the pundits, including the previously laudatory Gloria Borger of CNN. "They didn't change Washington," she concludes, and describes the early strategic error of thinking that the White House could push its own agenda while it was trying to rescue the economy, even though it was the economy that had given Democrats their election mandate and complete control of the federal government.

There is a tremendously interesting story developing about breakthroughs in embryology. But ideological blinders--and staff cuts?--are preventing a number of publications from covering the story adequately, or even competently. Our Sr. Fellow Wesley Smith does cover it on his Second Hand Smoke blog, as he did today, chiding the New York Times.

It was hard to believe that a federal court would overturn a state ban on voting by convicted felons serving prison time. But it happened. Now, fortunately, a 9th Circuit Court has reversed that decision and supported the State of Washington--and the 47 other states that ban felons voting.

Had the suit succeeded, can you imagine the nature of politicking in the pen? The precinct meetings? The doorbelling by candidates? The promises of the pols? The vote buying?

Can you also imagine why recruiting votes in the prison might attract certain politicians?

One of the pleasures of the Internet is that it allows one to keep track of predictions for later references. Once again this year we heard that 2010 was going to be a big hurricane year. Well, it's about over, and it wasn't. Once again.

This is how much we know about climate.

Most political observers and public policy wonks are thinking hard about the elections. But war and terrorism won't less us take much of a domestic break.

1) The new Bob Woodward book helpfully forces us to ask (with him) about our nation's resolve in fighting terrorism abroad: "The president's committed to 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan but in these secret meetings in the Situation Room in the White House, he repeatedly says, 'We need a plan to get out. There can be no wiggle room. I'm not going to do 10 years.' He is out of Afghanistan psychologically and the question is, for a commander-in-chief, don't you have to be kind of the guy who's up there, 'Yes, we can, we're going to win.'?"

If you or a family member is a member of our military in Afghanistan, how does this make you feel? Are you willing to be the last man to die in Afghanistan (to paraphrase John Kerry)? Are you "out of Afghanistan psychologically" while still in it physically?

2) There is a similar strain of self-fulfilling defeatism in current Administration policy on preventing terror attacks. In today's Wall Street Journal, former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is matter of fact in describing the recent success in thwarting a series of airport attacks in Europe--based on human intelligence gathered in Afghanistan ("How a Bagram Detainee Foiled the Euro Terror Plot"). But he warns that this rare kind of intelligence is imperiled by the Obama Administration over-reliance on electronic intelligence and unwillingness to employ "military commissions or other special purpose tribunals that can be established by Congress." We are left with a "choice that we kill them with drones or give them Miranda warnings and access to a 24-karat justice system designed for conventional criminals."

All of these suggests a defense policy fuse that leads to very possible, maybe even likely, bombs. Criticism is right out in the open. It's just that the average American is thinking about something else right now.

High tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel was interviewed over the weekend by Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal, among other things asserting that science and technology (except computer technology) are failing to meet expectations.

The same issue describes a new University of Indiana study on sexuality of American adults built, it seems, on questionable data collection. The Kinsey studies of a half century ago came from the same university, you may remember, and have been the subject of a number of professional attacks in recent years.

It is becoming clear that DNA is not all that we were led to believe, says Matt Ridley in "The Failed Promise of Genomics"--see another Journal article in the same issue. (Discovery Institute fellows are well into this subject, by the way.)

And then there is the story of a food scarcity that is likely to follow a poor world record for corn production this year. It is not pointed out in the article, but we are massively subsidizing corn production for ethanol.

Finally, elsewhere reported this this weekend is the news that Dr. Harold Lewis of the U. of California, Santa Barbara (Emeritus), has resigned from the American Physical Society, complaining of the organization's propaganda support for bogus claims about global warming.

All of this in one weekend would seem to confirm the thesis that big science, indeed, is burdened with ideology that sometimes keeps it from running as fast and true as expected by the public that pays the bills.

When the irrepressible Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform makes a speech these days he likes to pass out a sheet that lists all the tax increases that are coming on line in the weeks ahead. (His website provides the list, too.) You get the idea that even if the Tea Party and its candidates swept the elections clean next month there would be no stopping some of the tax hikes. And it all is going to hit in the midst of a de facto recession.

A former Bush economic adviser from Harvard, N. Gregory Mankiw, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times this past weekend that people like him simply will work less when taxes get so high that added income only represents a gift to the government. In effect, they will withhold some of their labor, and it is the economy that will feel the loss.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too young to recall the 1970s when this kind of dis-incentive last obtained. In England, pre-Thatcher, it was even worse. I remember visiting London in those days and remarking on all the highly visible money. I remember exclaiming, Some economic slump!

The trouble was, appearances were deceptive. For a wealthy person, the last dollars (or Euros) he earns in a high tax economy are virtually worthless to him, so he or she not only spends less time working, but more time in consumption of luxuries. You saw lots of Rolls Royces on the street in the old U.K. There was Lucullan, expense account-driven eating at fine restaurants. Business and law offices became grande and imposing. That sort of thing escapes the tax man. Plenty of other money went into pricey property overseas, especially in tax havens like the Bahamas.

What is more powerful, altruism or the survival instinct? Usually the latter, perhaps, but often faith shines a light on our better nature. Chuck Colson has the story on his Breakpoint program.

In Washington, DC today, I find the place awash with polls. All show Republican gains in the Congressional and state elections three weeks off, but the polling range is from a few points in the Democrats' direction nationally--based on registered voters--to a Republican blowout, with gains of 60 or so House seats, based on likely voters and a relatively low turnout. Faced with such data, the political prognosticators descend into complicated matrices of analysis.

Nonetheless, the trend is Republican. However, when Bloomberg News' poll asked voters for their opinion of the Republican Party, 49 percent expressed an unfavorable view. Democrats have a 46 percent unfavorable rating.
So, what does that tell us? Well, to start with, it would be a real surprise if voters ever expressed a strong positive feeling for either party. In our ironic age, one doesn't want to sound credulous--not when the TV is ablaze with negative ads about both parties. In other words, the poll question itself is suspect. People tell you what party they like by telling you about the party they don't like.

But as for the present national trend, one pollster I met today provided the curious, possibly telling (but "anecdotal") information that he was having trouble finding an adequate Democratic sample for his polls. For example, in a state with two to one Democrat registration, he lately has had trouble getting two out of three people to even identify themselves as Democrats. That alone say something about the condition of the brand right now.

On the ground interviews with voters, door to door, in the style of the late Sam Lubell, would be most instructive at this juncture in a national campaign, but I don't know of anyone doing such shoe leather research these days.

Relying mainly on polls is like an intelligence agency resting its judgment mainly on data intercepts rather than "Humint", the human intelligence gathered by old fashioned spies. We don't need spies in politics, but some old fashioned, on the ground interviews would give the current picture more vividness, more clarity.

Rep. Barney Frank's re-election campaign has become the scene of a surprising spate of truth-telling about the economic meltdown in the housing market that began two years ago this fall and still complicates recovery. Several stories have appeared in which Mr. Frank acknowledges his own failure to grasp the true nature of the problem seven years ago when something still could be done. In fact, he and Rep. Maxine Waters of California and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut virtually demonized those warning of danger.

The Bush Administration at the time was trying to promote more regulatory oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and Sen. John McCain was sponsor of unsuccessful legislation on the topic. Unfortunately, they did not push hard enough and publicly enough. When the crisis broke in 2008, Sen. McCain did not even understand at first that his own warnings of three years earlier had been vindicated. He pointed instead at "Wall Street greed."

In fact, a very large majority of bad loans in 2008 were those arranged by federal agencies.

The federal commission that is supposed to be looking into the whole matter is slated to report to the public by December 15 this year. Rumors are that the report is slow in developing and may not make its deadline. Nonetheless, the pressures of campaigning and the current tensions over foreclosures seem to be bringing the subject back into view.

It's important that the full truth of the 2008 economic crisis be told and be told accurately if we are to dig out permanently from the current economic slump.

This article is reposted from Cascadia Prospectus.

Passenger rail advocates from Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., are praising the news that the Canadian federal government has agreed to pay the border fee costs needed to keep a second Amtrak Cascades train running between Seattle and Vancouver. Until late yesterday afternoon, it appeared that the second train, originally started as a pilot program in conjunction with the Winter Olympics, would be canceled.

by Claire Berlinski

The Chief of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate, Ali Bardakoğlu, has issued an admirable statement about the prime minister's efforts to involve Turkey's religious authorities in political debate. Leave us out of the discussion , he said. We're happy to advise you how to get right with God, but making the law, that's your problem.

"Don't leave the headscarf issue to us, let the politicians solve it through dialogue," Bardakoğlu told daily Habertürk on Friday.

Erdoğan had previously called for a solution to the issue through the involvement of the Religious Affairs Directorate, a department within the Prime Ministry.

Bardakoğlu responded by saying the directorate does "not make statements on order."

... "We can only comment on the religious aspect," he said. "It is up to the government to draw the lines of personal freedom ... Islam does not allow for the forcing of any beliefs or behavior upon people."

It's a robust rebuke, and good for him. This is the voice of the highest Islamic authority in Turkey. A perusal of his writings --which discuss, among other things, the historic relationship between the secular state and the Religious Affairs Directorate, or diyanet--suggest that his commitment to the separation of mosque and state is long-standing, deeply considered, and deeply held.

I certainly don't agree with all of his views, and if you look for hints of sloppy thinking, you'll find them. But on the essential and allegedly theologically impossible point--the separation of mosque and state--he's quite solid, and he is no marginal figure.

The White House and Congressional Democrats have been trying to recover from assertions that they have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on unproductive stimulus programs that failed to stimulate. Yet now, in face of a second year with negligible inflation, the President and Speaker Pelosi are promising to give a $250 check to seniors to over-ride the Social Security law that provides a cost of living increase (COLA) for recipients only if there there really is a cost of living increase in the economy. The point of the law is that people on fixed incomes cannot accommodate to inflation, so a cola is warranted in such times. However, we are in an economy with little or no inflation, and where, on the other hand, our future is burdened with ever-increasing federal deficits--now $1.3 trillion.

Reckless U.S. spending is contributing to a weakening of the dollar worldwide. Eventually, with further Fed paper manufacturing expected, the effective devaluation of the dollar will lead to inflation in American prices. Oddly, the President and Speaker Pelosi are causing the very kind of problem they supposedly would like to compensate for.

Candidates this fall who have been had a born-again conversion to fiscal integrity should think hard before they get behind this latest boondoggle. "Rather than pluinge $14 billion deeper into debt, Congress should get to work to save Social Security, averting painful across-the-board cuts for those in an near retirement as scheduled under current law, " is the way Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) puts it.

Some liberal voices already have been raised again the latest cyncial election campaign pander. "On this the president gets a failing grade," says a Washington Post editorial this morning.

Raising taxes--as planned for next year, if President Obama has his way--will likely lead to a continued decline in charitable giving. The poor economy of the last two years already is taking its toll on non-profits that count on donations.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy today reports that the top 400 charities in America experienced an 11 percent decline in contributions for 2009.

As an indication of how stock drops can hurt charity, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund plummeted 40.3 percent in 2009, according to the report.

On the other hand, some charities experienced an increase, perhaps attributable to those with jobs trying to help out more in hard times. Something similar happened in the early days of the Depression. Catholic Charities, for example, rose an impressive 60 percent. World Vision and AmeriCares both posted gains.

The economy is a bit better in 2010 and the charitable sector therefore may stabilize or show a tiny gain this year (the Chronicles report sees a possible 1.6 percent rise). But if taxes go up as planned in 2011--the income tax, the capital gains tax, the Estate Tax, and state and local taxes and fees--you can probably expect a further belt-tightening.

For me, the implication is clear: money the government gets will come partly at the expense of private philanthropy.

The Obama Administration has an answer for the continuing economic slump: more spending. Critics on the right want less spending and more rewards for saving and investment. An excellent example is Social Security. Because there was no inflation last year there will be no cost of living increase for Social Security, which seems straightforward enough. But the Democrats want to provide a $250 check to seniors to compensate for the lack of a cost of living increase. In other words, when inflation goes up, you get a biggest payment. When inflation is flat, you still get a payment. As Debra Saunders explains at The San Francisco Chronicle, this is the pattern.

Meanwhile, our currency is being devalued daily and rewards for savings are shrinking. Senior citizens who watch this development know that their savings are getting negligible returns. How charmed will they be that the Administration's response is yet more spending ($14 billion)--throwing fuel on the inflation fire, as it were?

Rep. Barney Frank is beginning to own up to his mistaken judgment in the runaway spending at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--which played a huge role in the housing bubble. But, meanwhile, the Administration is planning an even bigger bailout for these two semi-governmental entities.

This is the most significant and most neglected issue in the current campaign. The airwaves are alive with exaggerated attacks on opponents' character and slippery insinuations about opponents' policies. But the glaring issue that started the recession--and may cause a double dip--is still not being faced.

In Britain the new Conservative/Liberal government is cracking down on many of the "quangos" (quasi-governmental organizations) that operate largely outside the accountability of parliamentary democracy. But America has not begun to do anything similar.

The love of Darwin, that surpasseth understanding, can easily account for anything you like. The news stories roll on and on; it's a journalistic trope now and "scientists" are happy to indulge it. (See September 22 post, "It's Thanks to Jalapeños That I'm Here.") The only cliché that compares is the "missing link" of one kind or another that keeps getting reported (and later quietly debunked).

Now three scientists at Rice University believe they can explain the economy. Why not? Economics is "the dismal science," after all.

If evolution can explain everything (often opposite things, in fact), of course it can explain economics. Indeed, there is a correspondence in approaches of the two disciplines. A materialist like Stephen Hawking writes about the way new life "emerges" from matter, hoping you don't ask him to explain just how this "emerging" works. Similarly, there is the old joke about the economist and a friend that fall into a deep hole.

"Oh, no, says the friend, how are we going to get out of here?"

"No problem," says the economist. "First, we will assume a ladder."

This year, for the first time, the general public is becoming aware that the huge debts of states and local governments are largely the result of public pensions and salaries that under collective bargaining have far outpaced inflation. As The Economist reports, they now are at a point that they probably cannot be paid back without bankrupting some jurisdictions. Facing freezes or cutbacks, it is no wonder the unions are among the most ardent proponents of tax increases.

What people are discovering, in this and other ways, is that the biggest special interest in government is the government itself. The part of the electorate that is never bored by an election campaigns and that never fail to vote are the public employee unions. Do you want to hold a rally? If you're on their side, they'll supply the crowd. Do you want someone to attack your opponent? Look to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee Union (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their counterparts.

This year is different only in that the power of government unions finally are getting some media attention. The Wall Street Journal has reported that public employee unions not only are bigger than private sector unions, but are supplying more campaign cash than any other group.

How did the government unions get such power? A hundred years ago the study of government was not considered a "science" in any modern way. Americans and Englishmen studied "political economy" or "government," or just "history". Asked how to take a role in government, Churchill advised, "Study history! In history are all the secrets of statecraft."

But starting in the late 19th Century American college graduates found reasons to do advanced study in Bismarkian Germany, where universities had invented something called "political science." Like everything else in their government, the social democrats and social Darwinists of Germany wanted to turn what--since the time of Aristotle--had been regarded as a art or craft into "science", a predictable, testable field reserved to experts. The American graduate students came home to places like Johns Hopkins and Columbia and created "political science" departments.

Twenty nine years ago, Juan Williams was a brash young reporter for the Washington Post. I was at a convivial luncheon party where he didn't really recognize me as a new member of the Reagan Administration. With his guard down he let it be known at our table what contempt he had for President Reagan and his policies. He was so harsh that I remember thinking, I don't believe I should ever allow myself to be interviewed by this man.

Indeed, a couple of years later, I had moved from the Census Bureau to the White House's Office of Planning and Evaluation. One of our initiatives was development of a family issues program--one that led in time to changes in the tax treatment of families, enactment of adoption-friendly policies and an anti-crime effort to protect missing and exploited children. Somehow, Juan Williams got wind of the families initiative and decided to write about it.

Former Bush aide Peter Wehner submits in a Commentary magazine post today that the Juan Williams affair--and the revealing and damaging comment by Vivian Schiller, NPR's CEO, that Juan Williams might want to see his "psychiatrist"--has exposed NPR to new and unwanted scrutiny. The threat to NPR is not so much that the government will cut off its funding--it's only a small share of NPR's budget, assigned through the quasi-governmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting--but that foundations and corporations that in the past have seen NPR as a neutral news source they could sponsor without risk to their reputation may now become cautious. As is, NPR already gets a lot of its money from groups that have an ideological stake in how news is covered.

The most serious immediate repercussion of the Juan Williams firing may be that Mara Liasson's position is now rendered shaky. Liasson is less well known than Williams, but is a generally well regarded newswoman who appears on Fox as well as NPR. If NPR's stated policies regarding Fox are strictly enforced, she may be forced to choose.

Meanwhile, if Republicans win control of the House, you also may see hearings about NPR and its objectivity.

Watch out for what is not being covered prominently in the news. There were many warnings about Islamist terrorism before 2001, including an explosion detonated at the World Trade Towers. Yet Americans preoccupied with domestic politics in September 2001 were caught unawares by the jihadists, changing our lives ever since. Likewise, the Bush Administration itself, and Sen. John McCain, were warning about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mis-regulated housing market as early as 2003. Yet they and all of us were thinking about politics, not economics, when the bubble burst in the fall of 2008, bringing about the slump we still endure.

Today, we are getting news about cyber-warfare that should alert even the politicos and observers fastened completely on next week's mid-term Congressional elections. Seymour Hersh is not my favorite writer, but give him credit for the warning in the latest New Yorker, "The Online Threat".

According to Hersh, there is a bureaucratic territorial struggle between the Department of Homeland Security, which is adding 1000 cyber security staff, and the N.S.A. (Sound familiar?) There is also a struggle between the cause of defending against cyber-attacks--which would militate in favor of everyone, public and private, obtaining encryption (which is available already)--and the interests of the military in having as much acces so computers as possible in order to catch cyber-terrorists in the act.

But surely if we know that encryption is the way to go, so do our opponents? To put it another way, if encryption is outlawed (or discouraged), only outlaws will use encryption. That is an exaggeration, but sanguine predictions that the kinds of terrorists who would like to destroy us (e.g., al Qaida) rather than merely spy on us (e.g., the Chinese) are unlikely to attack successfully and soon remind me of the same sanguine attitudes toward homeland attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon--prior to September, 2001. It will not go well with today's national leaders if they fail this time to protect us. Of course, in case of a successful cyber-attack, it will not go well with any of us.

In case the frenzied American mid-term elections find you feeling anxious, it is nice to know that other people are fretting, too. For example:

The European Union's "Open Europe" news service has compiled an array of stories today about the confusion found nearly everywhere in the Old World about the future of the Eurozone. In the UK, where cost-cutting Prime Minister David Cameron was cheered by news improving economic growth, the PM is offering to ditch the idea of an EU referendum in his country in return for restraint on EU spending. Politically, that will not go down well in large parts of England and Wales where voters long for a chance to express themselves on further EU integration.

Meanwhile, the Germans increasingly are annoyed at plans to stick them with the bill for the financial derelictions of Greece and other big-spenders. The Czechs and Austrians aren't exactly thrilled, either.

A wise approach now might be to consolidate around a more limited and defensible EU that abandons its ambitions to run everyone's life out of Brussels bureaucracies and instead concentrates on least common denominator agreements on such matters as trade and economic development.

Here is the full Open Europe report:

Jay Richards, a senior fellow of Discovery Institute and editor of the new Discovery book, God and Evolution, today debunks the idea that the salience of economic issues in the 2010 mid-term elections means that prospective Republican gains mean that the GOP will be less friendly to conservative social issues. The opposite seems to be true. Social conservatives happen to see a moral dimension to economics that other voters miss.

Most of the new candidates are conservative on all issues, including abortion, for example. It's just that some campaigns are fought over different sets of priorities, depending on the year. Sometimes it is social issues, sometimes foreign policy, and this time it's the constellation of spending, jobs and taxes.

Twenty eight years ago a Census Bureau study by Dr. Gordon Green, an economist and chief of the bureau's Government Division, revealed that poverty was not going up in those days because of lack of federal programs to support the poor, but because of family breakups. This was a splash of cold water on the face of social analysis in America since it contradicted the familiar trope that it is poverty that causes family breakups. In fact, to repeat, it is family breakup that causes chronic poverty in most cases.

Now the Census is out with another study. We see poverty growing again, even during relatively good times (2008, before the economic slump began to bite) and this time it is happening largely because families are not forming at all. Marriage is going out of style among the poor. It is not too much in style among the upper classes, either.

No one wants to talk about this as a public policy issue, but it is major. Some 3.7 million Americans fell into poverty in 2008, which, as I say, was well before the brunt of the recession was felt. Crucially, single mothers bearing children out of wedlock are five times more likely to fall into poverty than those women who are married.

Relatives asked me a couple of days ago if I wasn't concerned about all the "corporate" money coming into campaigns "anonymously" this year. Implicit in the question is the idea that the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has made soft money campaigning so profitable that literally hundreds of millions have been raised outside the two political parties this year.

Surely the cure is to have more laws to control or, even better, prohibit such activity?

Actually, no. If anything, the new money merely begins to compensate for the even vaster sums of money that government unions have long been able to put into campaigns and the natural advantages that our current laws give to incumbents. Even this year, incumbent Democrats, for example, are far out-raising their Republican opponents.

If 75 percent of Americans, according to some polls, don't know who Rep. John Boehner of Ohio is--even though a Republican capture of the House would likely make him Speaker--they surely are even less familiar with Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Chairman of the Republican Conference, Pence is the number two ranking Republican in the House. More importantly, he is being considered as a dark horse candidate for President. Many conservatives comment approvingly about his general voting record, character and "viability."

Tomorrow Rep. Pence is slated to speak on behalf of Daniel Webster, who is running for a Florida seat the GOP is probably going to pick up next Tuesday. According to Politico.com, Pence is going to declare, contrary to some recent DC gossip, that a GOP majority would not be inclined to compromise with Democrats, including the President.

Regardless of how you feel about this theme, don't get too excited. A party that doesn't stand firmly for the program upon which it campaigned (in this case, spending cuts, no tax increases and reduced regulation) would demoralize its supporters. On the other hand, most voters know, as they did with Ronald Reagan, for example, that government entails responsibility to...well...govern. So, if Republicans get control of the House, or even the House and Senate, they still will be unable to roll over the President. What they can do is deny spending approvals and tax increases. They can hold hearings about government abuses, including over-regulation. They can pass good bills that it will force the Senate and the President to go on record, one way or another. And....they can compromise, on those occasions when getting half a loaf is better than none.

What people want to see, I think, is steely resolve to put principles into action. On the other hand, they don't expect or want ostrich-like avoidance of realities. It's hard to see the dividing line, of course, especially a week before an election. But it's there and finding it is a test of leadership.

I was at Harvard with Barney Frank. He was immensely popular in front of a crowd, the scourge of authority, tribune of of uncommon sense, the court jester of liberalism. The more outrageous he seemed, the more the university folk urged him on. Barney learned that you could make rude funny. He later apparently found that in Massachusetts discourteous tactics that would be regarded as out of bounds for a conservative were all right--almost a source of satisfaction--on the majoritarian left. In Congress today, people not his equals in power are afraid of him.

Rep. Frank, along with Sen. Dodd and Sen. Schumer, was one of the biggest defenders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the Bush Administration tried to reform them.

Peter Wallison also was at Harvard about the time that Barney Frank was performing. Peter, an ace lawyer and former Treasury official, is soft spoken, immensely amused by politics and life, but in a gentle way. He also is deeply knowledgeable about the legal and financial mistakes that led to the housing bubble. He warned about it for at least nine years before the bubble burst and then he described that process to any who would listen. A fellow at AEI, he is writing a book about the subject.

Today Peter writes at AEI's American blog about the surprising acknowledgements by Rep. Frank a few weeks ago that maybe, just maybe, it was a mistake to insist on government support for bad housing loans. But, he concludes, the turnaround in Barney's thinking seem to have been a temporary diversion.

One way or another, the new Congress is likely to take up Peter Wallison's topic, regardless of whether Barney Frank is on board.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) is a powerful member of the current House majority. He has serious competition in the election this year, but is expected to survive just fine. One of the bills he loves most and would like to see the Obama Administration embrace is expansion of National Service to make it universal and mandatory. At 18 you would serve either in the military or in some approved civilian (government-funded) position, such as hospital care, education, or parks maintenance. A bill to achieve this aim already has been submitted.

President Obama himself endorsed the idea in the 2008 campaign, but then dropped it, as World Net Daily reminds us today, and it is a favorite of many progressives. It also is an idea that has been around since well before the military draft was abolished in the early 70s. That means that the arguments are well known. Ultimately, the sides trace to differing worldview conceptions of freedom and service. Progressives of an idealistic bent suppose that if voluntarism is good, the benefits would only increase if service became universal and compulsory. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead suggested back in 1966, think of the crooked teeth that could be straightened if all young people came through the hands of the government in their late teens; think of the improvements to study habits and personal hygiene that could be effected by a stint in "service". You see, we could help the younger generation (the folks who have trouble otherwise cleaning up their rooms) even as we taught them to help others.

by Claire Berlinski

I recently interviewed Turkey's former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled--like many in Turkey--by the soft-headedness of the Obama' Administration's diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama's speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. "Obama can't play the religious game," he said. "He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism."

It's not merely the ideological color of the Obama Administration's diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I've lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey's "No" vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I'll be writing about this elsewhere; and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity--and obviously there was--in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear fuel swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program? It's inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.