Candidates who are a bit behind in the polls are counting on either "enthusiasm" or their "ground game" (or both) to win for them.

The ground game is mainly about painstaking efforts to identify voters--door to door is most effective--and then get them to the polls. As Ford O'Connell and Steve Pearson of The Daily Caller observe, in modern campaigns TV is essential but insufficient, particularly in a close race.

Polls show a Republican tide, but look closely and you see that while people who seem to be "likely voters" are prepared to vote Republican this year "registered voters" are more Democratic.

Organizational action can make up for a deficit of commitment on the part of voters. Public employee unions are good at the ground game, whereas only once recently, in 2004, have Republicans developed a ground game that was very successful. Therefore, to the extent Democrats are able to get their voters out they will cut their otherwise major losses tomorrow.

Of course, one problem with a ground game: getting voters to the polls may bring out a goodly proportion that don't wind up voting your way!

We are ending a nearly year long vacation from international affairs as the US of A swam, waded, waddled and frolicked in the mid-term election campaigns. Nothing wrong with that, except that Iran, Israel and....al Qaeda are not issues we can neglect further.

Michael Ledeen continues to offer superb and unique access to all these topics, especially the problem of Iran. His writing is well worth your attention. In the very near future we are going to be back--mentally speaking--in the Middle East. Arm yourself.

Start with what is plain now, if only suspected before, that Iran is assisting in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The pundits, if not the people, have spoken and the Republicans are expected to make major gains in Congress. There probably will be some nail biters that signal plane loads of party lawyers to descend on whatever unfortunate jurisdiction has the close race. If the anguishing contest(s) happen in a state with all mail or mostly mail-in ballots, expect weeks of frustration and outrage. Just what you wanted at the end of a long, bitter campaign

But that's not the half of it. Remember the Lame Duck session? It has to happen. All the big tax and budget decisions were put off in order not to rile up the natives. The natives, having become quite riled up anyhow, will now watch, and comment on, either a statesmanlike effort by Democrats to compromise with the outnumbered, but just-mandated Republicans, as a pile of prickly issues grows on legislative desks. Among them: income tax rates scheduled to jump in January; the Alternative Minimum Tax (many millions of middle income families will pay if this annual adjustment is not approved, and even if they are forced to pay now, they will pay back later the party that hits them with a tax supposedly levied on the rich only); and the estate tax (death tax) that, if not prevented, will rise to 55 percent in January ("Shoot me now!").

When they've got all that settled, they can resolve the budget that didn't get passed.

The Tea Party taught the pros in both parties several lessons, including the value of a clear populist message, but the pros have shown the Tea Party a thing or two, also. Decades ago Ray Bliss, Republican National Chairman, preached the importance of "organization," to the point that sound policies and a compelling campaign message were relatively neglected. Regardless, there was no doubt that Bliss' home state of Ohio in those days, and even today, was famous for its GOP organization in depth. This year the Republicans won back control of the governorship, both houses of Ohio's legislature and replaced one Republican senator (Voinovich) with another (Rob Portman), and added four new US House seats.

This year the Republican Party National Committee did much less well in fundraising than did the rival Democrats, and it showed in turnout efforts. In contrast, the NRCC (GOP House campaign committee) did much better than its Democratic counterpart.

Meanwhile, outside conservative groups like American Crossroads were immensely successful in matching overall pro-Democratic spending on ads and internet efforts. Trouble is, TV ads this year went beyond saturation to over-kill. Sometimes the ads piled on top of one another. Yet Republicans paid in places like Nevada and California for lack of year round paid organizational effort.

America is becoming a more heterogeneous society, with growing percentages of people from other countries and cultures, especially Latin Americans. The election of 2008 was thought to be the watershed moment when the old stock white Americans, who tended to vote for people like John McCain, were overcome in influence and votes by the new Obama coalition that included blacks, Latinos, urban progressives and "mind workers", blue collar workers, gays, and youth. James Carville wrote a book called "Forty More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation," that limned this theory.

There is something to it, but the obvious hole in it is the same that is seen in all theories of social determinism--the assumption that the future will be a direct line projection of the present. Once upon a time, for example, "Irish Americans" voted Democratic and, as their numbers grew, it was thought, so too would their role in expanding the Democratic party. Trouble was, starting with Eisenhower in 1952, voters of Irish ancestry started swinging to the Republicans. Something similar may happen to Latinos, who are not a monolithic group even now. Likewise blacks. Several Republicans with Latino background were elected this Tuesday, including two governors (Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Brian Sandoval in Nevada), at least four new House members (Jaime Herrera in Washington, Francisco Conseco and Bill Flores of Texas, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and David Rivera in Florida) and Marco Rubio of Florida in the Senate. (Florida has two other House seats occupied by Republicans of Hispanic background.) Two new members of the House Republican Caucus are black, West of Florida and Scott of South Carolina.

The economy needs investors to get back to investing. They have demurred out of fear of tax rate increases and a general uncertainty about the government's intentions. A short term (e.g., two year) extension, as the Administration, post-election, seems prepared to grant, will not work well. It is urgent to settle the Bush tax cuts as normative until at least after the next election, as our senior fellow, John Wohlstetter, points out in his Letter from Washington:

"The outlines of a compromise tax bill are being suggested by pols & pundits alike.  Essentially, the compromise under consideration would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for those below a certain income ceiling ($250K is Obama's number, $1M is Chuck Schumer's number), while extending the tax cuts for those above the ceiling for two years.  GOP leaders may support this idea.

"Here is the trap: Tax cuts only increase incentives to invest if they are sufficiently long-term to induce investors to increase investment.  Ideally the reductions would all be permanent, maximizing incentives to invest.  Tax rebates (such as those signed by President Bush 43) do not change incentives, and thus to not stimulate economic activity.  Permanent tax cuts (e.g., President Reagan's 1982 cut & the 1978 & 1998 capital gains tax cuts) increase government revenue (capital gains historically increase in the first year the new rates take effect).

In order to get the post-election agenda right, it is important that the election itself be understood. It was about issues: spending, jobs, taxes, over-regulation. William Galston's article, "It's the Ideology, Stupid," gets that right at the liberal New Republic. Others are trying to rationalize the outcome; people were confused, the White House didn't do a good enough job communicating, etc. The best path ahead for Democrats is to come to terms with reality.

The old legislative rubric is, if you have the votes, vote; if you don't, talk. In this election the rubric was, if you have the issues, campaign on the issues; if not, throw sand in the voters' eyes.

Republicans disappointed that their gubernatorial and senatorial candidates lost in California have been writing off the future of the Golden State as far as two-party competition is concerned. Among other things, in comparison to the country as a whole, the political identification of voters going into the polls in California Tuesday was far more Democratic--by 13 points. Seen that way, it's surprising that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina did as well as they did.

Moreover, once in the voting booth, Californians voted this year to end the budgetary restraint that exists now and allow a simple majority, rather than two thirds, of the Legislature to approve a budget. It seemed like a harmless vote, a way to end gridlock, but effectively it assures runaway spending, followed by higher and higher taxes. The voters also voted against Proposition 23 that would have delayed implementation of California's severe new anti-global warming law until unemployment dropped to five percent.

In the past--under Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 and Bush 43--Republican strategists believed that some curse afflicted them when it came to the timing announcements for unemployment and jobs figures. It seemed that just after any campaign wherein the Republican president and his party were attacked for high unemployment rates the picture would improve almost immediately after the election. That was frustrating.

Now the curse seems to have settled on the Democrats. Today's jobs report shows 151,000 new jobs created in October, the greatest gain since April. Had the numbers come out last week there would have been quite a lot of partisan crowing. The "summer of recovery" finally would have arrived, albeit a couple of months late. Instead, there has to be some gnashed teeth at the White House and the Democratic National Committee. Of course, skeptics might point out that the unemployment rate remains stubbornly at 9.6 percent.

The employment/unemployment numbers are collected each month by the Census Bureau (in two forms, based on business' unemployment figures and on self-reported figures by individuals). Then they are analyzed and publicly announced by the Labor Department. No peaking allowed at the White House, which is probably a good thing if you want people to believe in the objective of our statistical services.

If, as the previous post notes, there has been a small uptick in hiring nationwide, there is one precinct in the country where hiring suddenly is red-hot: Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Of course, as a result of Tuesday's election unemployment rates there also are high. The turnover in the House is greater than after any election in sixty some years. As a result, Republican Members are encountering a dearth of seasoned talent, unless they want to hire Democratic staffers on their way out. Some old Republican staff veterans of the Hill who retired years ago are fluffing up their resumes and sending them in. Experience may not count much any more in elections, but it still does in staffing Hill offices.

Meanwhile a similar picture is emerging in state capitols, where the GOP picked up some 680 new seats around the country, a bigger shift than any since the 1920s. The staffing needs are less than in a Congressional office, and some cover only the Legislative sessions that typically start in January next year and end three months later.

Two newly elected Congressional Republicans who are black--from Florida and South Carolina--are rather sure to end the bogus campaign charge that The Tea Party was racist. Allen West, elected to the US House from a long time Democratic seat in Boca Raton, Florida, had fun with Sean Hannity on the subject. Speaking of leftist tactics, West, a former Army Colonel, said, "(T)he No.1 thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist."

So true. But that truth has more clout when the speaker is both black and a big supporter of the Tea Party himself.

West points out that the "Tea" in Tea Party stands for "Taxed Enough Already." The transparent purpose of the movement was to elect officials who would stop runaway federal spending, prevent tax increases and support Constitutional government. Making out such people to be racists was a sign of desperation on the part of their foes.

This ran last summer in the Manitoba Herald, but is getting wide circulation now, for obvious reasons.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS OUT OF CONTROL
by Clive Runnels
The Manitoba Herald, Canada
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party are prompting an exodus among left-leaning U.S. citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

Syndicated radio host Dennis Prager, who lives in Orange County, asks, what is the difference between Californians and the passengers on the Titanic? The answer:

"The passengers on the Titanic didn't vote to hit the iceberg."

I have my own question: How can the United States recover from the slump when California, home to Silicon Valley and representing one-tenth of the nation's population, is bent on destroying its economy? Voters in California, as noted before, have voted to give themselves a huge hike in energy costs for the dubious honor of combatting global warming and have elected the same governor, Jerry Brown, who in the 70s opened the door to collective bargaining for state workers, even though the government now has $500 billion in unfunded pensions and already is unable to pay its bills. They have passed an initiative sponsored by the teachers union that will make it easier for the Legislature to increase spending and taxes.

The Census count for 2010 is expected to show that for the first time in its history, California is not growing enough to add a new House seat. It soon may be showing a substantial outflow of middle class voters. What's left are those too rich to care about taxes and those to poor to care. Ah, but the real tax base is in the vast middle, and that is about to shrink.

The states that will benefit most are Texas, Arizona and Washington.

It's a week after the election supposedly was concluded, yet Washington State is still counting in a big way. Several close races remain undecided, as has become commonplace since the all-mail ballot was adopted statewide (except in Pierce County--Tacoma).

There is no other state that I know of where political operatives seem to become busiest after the returns start coming in. On election day in Washington, come 8 p.m., PDT, the non-existent "polls" close and the first results pour forth on computer and TV screens. At that point, the candidates and parties start really bustling, calling "their" people who did not vote and urging them to do so.

In various close races, campaign callers offer to come to a person's home to pick up the ballot and, presumably, even put a stamp on it and deliver it to one of the post office outlets that stay open until midnight. (After all, if a person was too lazy to vote before the polls closed, you can't count on his rushing out later to a post office.) Only after midnight--four hours into the vote count--do ballots no longer qualify for the election day postmark that makes the ballot legal. Get it? Uniquely in Washington State you can legally go out and get more votes if your candidate is behind in the early returns.

One reason public employee unions spent so much money on the this year's campaigns was to prevent state legislators from looking to state and local pension systems as places to cut. Having failed to help their candidates win in a number of big states--Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, etc.--the union leaders probably will realize their fears come budgetary sessions in January.

Even in solid blue states like California, Illinois and Massachusetts, the prevailing Democrats themselves are going to face alternatives of cuts to services or cuts to the growth of pensions and salaries. In Illinois, where Gov. Quinn, a Democrat who won a narrow election to a full term advocating tax increases, the issue of pensions will prove daunting once the public sees their sacrifices increasing in order that state employees don't have to sacrifice.

Today the Christian Science Monitor editorialized in favor of pension cuts. "Few politicians, even Democrats backed by the public-worker unions," declares the Monitor, "could afford not to propose reforms for these retirement benefits that are often abused, underfunded, and usually far more generous than those in private business."

The Monitor is a kind of canary in mine shaft of media opinion, so watch for more public pressure on pension costs once the alternatives become clearer. You won't wait long.

(Photo courtesy of The Guardian)

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many, if not most, non-profit organizations--from colleges and universities to church run charities--are populated by political liberals who support tax increases for the well to do (often described as annual income of over $200,000). One wonders how many of them have considered the link between high taxes and philanthropy. A Merrill Lynch study just out suggests at least that a bad market means cuts in charitable giving.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the damage may be worse than is being reported. If the number of semi-desperate appeals I receive from non-profits in the mail and by email are an indication, the long economic slump is biting harder as time goes by.

Raising taxes at this point not only would hurt small businesses and entrepreneurs, but also, indirectly, non-profits. The added money that goes to the government, in many cases, would stop going to charities. Instead of toying with new taxes, officials would be better advised to urge all folks with good jobs to give more to favorite charities.

By Executive Director Steve Buri

It is sometimes difficult for think tanks to connect political decisions to the research of their scholars--thus demonstrating the effectiveness of their efforts. Occasionally, however, the influence on the thinking of policy makers is undeniable. Witness, for example, the impact on President George W. Bush of Discovery Institute Senior Wesley J. Smith's embryonic stem cell arguments. In his new book, Decision Points, Bush highlights Mr. Smith's work on page 111, quoting him from a 2001 article in National Review. Mr. Smith wrote there:

"Embryonic stem cell research takes us onto a path that would transform our perception of human life into a malleable, marketable natural resource- akin to a cattle herd or copper mine- to be exploited for the benefit of the born and breathing."

Given the President's decision just two months later to limit stem cell research only to existing stem cell lines, it is clear that Wesley J. Smith's arguments impacted his decision.

Wesley Smith co-directs Discovery's Center on Human Exceptionalism. If you'd like to support this vital, but underfunded program, click here.

It would be nice to consign Californians to their own selected (and elected) fate. But the numbers coming out of that state are so horrible that they threaten not only California, but also the rest of us. Here is the report from the California Legislative Analyst's Office that describes the $6 billion that the state will be short this year, and the $19.3 billion it will be short next year.

Where will they get the money?

If President Obama implied--and unnamed CIA operatives stated explicitly--that an American intelligence officer who defected to Russia would be hunted down inside Russia by the CIA and killed, how would Mr. Putin react? Would he like to welcome the CIA killers to Moscow?

Well, the reverse situation is at hand in the famous Anna Chapman (no relation!) spy ring saga. The Kremlin infiltrated several agents into the US in truly mundane, petty positions and they were caught. Well, that's spying for you. They all made it home in an exchange and were toasted by Mr. Putin as heroes. The fetching Ms. Chapman has followed her spy career with what appears to be a more, shall we say, exposed livelihood as eye candy for men's entertainment magazines. Well, I guess a girl's gotta work.

But now the Russian agent who exposed her and the rest of the team of Spies Who Couldn't Spy Right has defected successfully to the US. And Prime Minister Putin makes it clear he is a marked man. And an unnamed intelligence officer says a "Mercader" is being sent to eliminate him. "We know who he is and where he is," the Kremlin source said. "Have no doubt that a Mercader has been sent after him already."

Really? Ramon Mercader was the assassin that Stalin sent to Mexico to kill Trotsky. Are we supposed to be impressed that the current Russian government might be using Stalin as a model? Are Americans supposed to accept the necessity of the Kremlin's coming over here to break our laws and indulge itself in killing people? If so, the State Department should be asking for a "clarification". At the least.

Sorry, Mr. Putin, but you are not allowed to have people in the US killed. That would change this whole spy farce into something much more consequential.

Construction on the Erie Canal, 1817.

The outrageous abuse of earmarks in recent years has led to proposals to ban earmarks altogether. It was a promise on the lips of every Tea Party candidate and many others. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader in the Senate, today signed onto the idea, reversing his previous position.

There is a reason for earmarks and it is one you have not seen described much in the media or in campaign addresses. It is that when elected officials pass laws on subjects that affect their constituencies--say, Kentucky, Mitch McConnell's state--there is no assurance that the bureaucrats who manage the subsequent program or law will pay any attention to what the legislators intended. What counts later is the language of the legislation and the amount of money allocated to it.

Our Sr. Fellow George Gilder commands the "most read" space on the Wall Street Journal opinion page today with his article, "California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby". The information adds nails to the coffin that voters in the Golden State have fashioned for themselves. It has been a familiar theme for this space, Discovery News, for several weeks now.

You might think that the California calamity opens opportunities for other states, notably nearby Washington, where voters just turned down an income tax on the wealthy (e.g., entrepreneurs, small businesses, investors in new jobs) and where the next state legislative session is not about new taxes, but major surgery on spending. Washington has energy for power-hungry computer companies and it has an outstanding employee base. Texas is another state that would seem likely to benefit from the follies in California.

However, in the last analysis, we all are damaged by the bad judgement of California politicians, high tech leaders and, yes, voters. Gilder spells it out, but it's only "Chapter 1." There is more to come.

Romantics are in charge in the energy field in California now. They have equally romantic friends in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. They need a course in realism and they are going to have to take it. So are we all, unfortunately.

Getty Images

Ground was broken today for the George W. Bush Presidential Library that will grace Southern Methodist University, opening in 2013. People seemed to be in a good humor as the work began, except for publicity seeking protesters who don't want the library on their campus. George and Laura were there, so were Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and former President Uribe of Colombia (testifying to Bush's role in helping defeat the Marxist rebels in his country).

Writes the Wall Street Journal for Wednesday's edition, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who used a cane to climb to the dais, made a dig at the Obama administration, calling the presidential center 'the only shovel-ready project in America,' drawing laughs."

Was it only a year ago that this blog, among other and lustier Cassandras, was warning Britons against the efforts to expand the reach of the European Union? Lord Pearson of Rannoch was treated as a genial but irrelevant old grouch for turning on the Tories over the issue. British sovereignty, which happens to matter to the US, whether we acknowledge it or not, was in jeopardy.

Then came the British election and David Cameron was surprised by the UK Independence Party's strength in England's Southwest ridings that helped deny him an outright Conservative majority (granted, that wasn't his only problem). Soon after came the Greek collapse, featuring riots by pampered public employees, with creeping fiscal ruptures opening in Portugal and Spain--Italy wobbling close behind.

This morning (it is morning in London) Telegraph readers are enjoying a bit of schadenfreude at the expense of Germany and France for the simple reason that the Brits still at least have the pound sterling. Ireland, that had to be cuffed and shoved into a second vote on acceding to the expanded Europe, now stands ready to demand fiscal rescue by her new family.

You might wonder how the newly elected House majority members have time to read, but of course busy people often read the most. So it is that George Gilder's The Israel Test and Claire Berlinski's Why Margaret Thatcher Matters are named in an article today by Tevi Troy at National Review Online. (Hat tip to Alex Lykken.)

If you are going to someone's house for Thanksgiving you might want to bring them one of those books ("It's what they are reading now on The Hill") instead of a bottle of wine or flowers. Or consider God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards and just published by Discovery Institute Press, especially if you have a misguided relative who thinks Darwinism is compatible with orthodox Christian or Jewish faith. Guaranteed to keep the table talk lively.

Israelis are even bigger targets for terrorists than Americans, but they haven't had airplane bombings or hijacks in decades. Why not? Because they "profile" in the sense that they use all the information available from their intelligence agency, provide psychological training for airport screeners and actually interview each passenger. It doesn't take long; in fact, security lines move faster than in most US airports.

In the US we cannot tolerate any kind of profiling, at least, not officially. So we now are reduced to full body scans of an undignified kind that are not permitted anywhere else outside the privacy of a doctor's office. We have children in tears, old ladies confused, attractive young people humiliated. Why? For the sake of security or for the sake of political correctness?

The riot of jokes going around (this is a family blog, so I won't indulge) may be the new custom's undoing. Meanwhile, the process is not funny for most people and not really relished either by the TSA folk who have been ordered to perform it.

Fire Homeland Security. Hire the Israelis.

French cartoonist Frederick Deligne's take in the newspaper Nice-Matin

Older, frailer, Margaret Thatcher is still alive as her warnings about the Euro--the issue that brought her down twenty years ago--are being born out. The people in her own party, as well as on the left, who opposed her then are not much interested now in defending their reasons to the press, Peter Oborne says in tomorrow's Telegraph, "Margaret Thatcher Knew the Single Currency Would Devastate Europe."

Mrs. Thatcher lost office, but her position somehow prevailed.

Writes Oborne, "Baroness Thatcher has often been accused by her politically motivated enemies of callousness. But backers of the European project are today happy to countenance unlimited human suffering in their mission to enforce economic and monetary union. Mrs Thatcher knew this would be the result of their deranged plan, which is why she fought to stop it. Her last battle as prime minister could not have been fought in a greater or more compassionate cause."

In addition to the article by Oborne, read Claire Berlinski's Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. Claire, a Discovery fellow, turns out to have been very timely, too.

The SALT II Treaty arrives in the Senate with blessings from all the usual establishmentarians, but not with Sen. Kyl. Therefore it is in trouble. As things are going, it will not be ratified. We need to go beyond START to re-start.

At the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson sailed off to the Versailles peace talks without bothering to bring the leaders of the Republicans from the US Senate with him. He told the European allies what the US had to have, then came home and told the Senate what the Europeans had to have, which turned out in both cases to be what Wood Wilson had to have. Despite his health-destroying campaign across the country, Wilson's scheme for a League of Nations failed to gain Senate approval. The idea was flawed (it was too idealistic, as Theodore Roosevelt said), and it therefore contributed to the development of World War II.

Barack Obama, bearing Wilson's example in mind, might as well acknowledge that the Republicans, while not in charge in the Senate today, have the power to stop START. They have some good arguments, nicely described by our John Wohlstetter.

But, more than that, they have political logic on their side. We need a thorough new operating understanding with the Russians. It's not just limits on nukes. Accepting a missile shield in Europe (as the Kremlin seems more open to doing lately) could be part of that. But the array of issues is still bigger. Ultimately, treaties are expressions of mutual trust, not sources of such trust. Enlightened self-interest

Unlike many in the US, I think we can do business with the current Russian government. But here is a case where our government will have to proceed from a truly united American position. That doesn't exist now.

Unfunded pension commitments in the state of California are so big that even officials differ on what they represent. Is it $200 billion? 300? 500? Regardless, it is coming due and Calpers, the state pension system, is counting on what seem like unreasonable returns on its investments.

Much is based on Calpers' decision to invest heavily in "green technology" that requires federal subsidies.

A number of political observers think that the new Republican majority will ignore social issues because of the high priority everyone attaches to economic issues. That's misleading, however.

First, one of the easiest votes for conservatives next year will be to defund organizations like Planned Parenthood that conduct abortions in this country or overseas. That's one reason NARAL was so active in the political races this fall.

Says Iowa Congressman Steve King, ""I think that we're going to start this Congress out, it will be about debt, deficit, jobs and the economy, but part of that is un-funding Planned Parenthood through the appropriations process," he said. "I think that would satisfy a lot of social conservatives. If we ended public funding for abortion in America, that would be a huge step in the right direction."

This doesn't mean that the effort to defund NARAL will succeed, only that the effort will get pretty united Republican support, especially in the House.

Second, in a real sense, the financial issues facing America also are moral issues--social issues, if you will. That's much of the motivation behind the Tea Party movement. When a government debauches its own currency and runs deficits that cannot realistically be repaid short of confiscatory taxes, the morale of the public is assaulted. People are discouraged from thinking long term. Self-reliance withers. Trust in others erodes. Thrift is undermined.

All of this constitutes a moral issue, and a big one.

The excuses for huge federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol are running out. Now Al Gore has admitted that his original endorsement (and casting the key Senate vote in 1994 when he was Vice President) was a mistake. Not a political mistake; it benefitted him back then. Just a policy mistake.

In 2010, however, the environmental community is finding the ethanol program an embarrassment.

Corn ethanol cannot be supported by the market; it costs too much to produce. It doesn't help the environment. It doesn't really free us from overseas oil and has much less potential than other biomass products. Moreover, federal subsidies have driven up the cost of food, especially since corn is used in so many different food products.

Finally, the farmers whose votes are at stake (many of them Republicans) in key states like Iowa--where the presidential caucuses for 2012 will take place only 14 months from now--are getting good corn prices these days. They don't need the subsidy. If getting rid of corn ethanol subsidies is part of a broad range of budget cuts across the country and across varied occupations, it probably will be accepted in the farm belt.

So let's see: corn ethanol is not a wise source of alternative energy, it is hugely wasteful of taxpayer dollars at a time when the country is deeply in debt, it raises food costs and doesn't particularly help the farmer. All it has going for it is a lobby of fadied-green lobbyists who profit from the subsidies. Can we find a little courage in Congress to cut it?

Photo credit: planetware

It's sounds great: 250 coyotes with radio collars are on the prowl in downtown Chicago to catch mice and rats. The City says they are "shy" and "no danger". They will provide someone with a good research experiment, which is probably the most likely motivation for their being loose.

However, the coyotes may not know that they are limited to such kill as rodents. They have been known to catch pets, especially cats. In packs they can chase down and kill a big dog. One can forsee the news story when one or more take Fifi the toy poodle away from her Grand Dame owner on North Michigan Avenue. The Grand Dame will call Da Mayor--and her lawyer, and The Chicago Tribune.

So it should be an interesting human experiment, too.

Cartoon credit: Chuck Jones Enterprises

Excuse me if I seem cynical, but the new SEC scandal about hedge funds reminds me a bit of the legal festivities of ambitious former New York A.G., later Governor, then "Client No. 9", Eliot Spitzer. The Wall Street Journal news story today (subscription may be required) suggests that the purposes of the "insider trading" investigations may include breaking new prosecutorial ground to "shake up stock research" customs. Call it "reform by other means."

"They're going to have to grow a lot of medical marijuana out there," George Gilder says on Fox News Business today. At some point his warnings about California's suicidal state fiscal policies are going to have to be heeded.

by Jay Richards

In the last few days, The New York Times has participated in a misinformation campaign about Pope Benedict's comments from a recent book based on a reporter's interview with the Pontiff. I don't know if it's the result of ignorance or malice. In either case, it's misinformation.

The New York Times trope is that the Pope has changed longstanding "policy" on the morality of condom use--as if the Catholic Church had policies analogous to the platform of a political party. This is nonsense, as many commentators, from George Weigel to Jonah Goldberg, have explained. Weigel is a Catholic theologian who wrote the foreword for the book, so one would think that The New York Times could manage to fix the error, or at least stop perpetuating it.

But no. They're still at it. This morning (November 24), they have another installment, by Rachel Donadio and Laurie Goodstein. Now they're reporting on the controversy that ensued in large measure because of the perverse articles in The New York Times itself.

Anyone with a basic grasp of moral reasoning could understand Benedict's point: While condom use is wrong as a form of contraception, it could be less bad for a male prostitute with HIV to use a condom than not to use one, since he would at least be trying to avoid the spread of the virus. Apparently such distinctions are too fine for the Times.

I can't resist mentioning that the co-author of today's story, Laurie Goodstein, has also written on intelligent design, with a similar unwillingness to report a position as its proponent holds it. Hmm.

The City of San Francisco and its suburbs are considered unusually left wing when compared to the rest of California, let alone when compared to the rest of the country. Yet, as a result of the recent election the state electorate apparently decided to be governed in its top leadership almost exclusively by San Franciscans.

The newly recycled governor, Jerry Brown, is a former San Fran dweller who served a while recently as Mayor of Oakland. The Lt. Governor, Gavin Newsom, is stepping up from Mayor of San Francisco. Kamala Harris of San Francisco won a close race for Attorney General.

Retiring US House Speaker, soon to be Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, is San Francisco through and through. So is re-elected US Sen. Barbara Boxer and the senior senator, Diane Feinstein, another former Mayor.

In my childhood, Baghdad by the Bay, as the late columnist Herb Caen called it, actually had a Republican mayor, George Christopher (1956-64). Then the mayors started moving progressively left. Frank Jordan, a Democrat ex-Chief of Police, was elected in 1992, but he was replaced four years later by the more liberal Willie Brown, who was replaced by Gavin Newsom in 2004, who moved the ideology meter further seaward. Newsom's successor is likely to be the still further leeward State Assemblyman (from San Francisco) Tom Ammiano.

If San Francisco moves any more left, it will fall into the Pacific, pulling the state into the drink with it.

One of the most distinguished members of the National Academies Science, Dr. Philip Skell, died last Sunday. He is remembered with fond respect by his friends at Discovery Institute.

One of the realities of the Cold War is that the USSR often did know our secrets. Most damaging, they learned how to make atom bombs, and then hydrogen bombs. At the end, however, the Kremlin must have been very demoralized. Though "knowledge is power", as Disraeli said, it isn't everything. The Soviets could spy on us effectively but they still could not keep pace with our technical ingenuity and economic prowess.

Similar thoughts arise following the latest release of secret documents by "Wikileaks", publicized by The New York Times. (Apparently the Times is prepared to embarrass the United States government anytime, even when a Presidential Administration is led by someone they like, such as Barack Obama.)

Regardless, it seems there are few matters in the previously secret cables that will damage the United States very much. That is because we already are such an open society that few of our secrets are kept very long anyhow. More than many other countries, what you see with the US is what you get in these cables. I would be more worried about them if I were a foreign government--revealed as corrupt, for example--than I would be as someone at the State Department.

In fact, there probably is some perverse pride in Foggy Bottom as the public finds out what vivid writing sometimes is accomplished in secret cables. The Wikileaks haul is as much a trove of journalistic gems as it is of state secrets.

The damage down by the WikiLeaks publication of diplomatic cables (none top secret so far) was limited (as noted in the previous post), but it certainly will crimp diplomatic activity for months and maybe years ahead. The earlier publication included information that compromised security in the Middle East and endangered lives, so, in that sense it was more serious. Now comes word that WikiLeaks may soon publish bank data stolen from the head of a major bank. The consequences could be felt in your wallet.

However NPR termed it, this is not about "whistleblowing". It is about a peculiar cultural form of antagonism to the West and to existing institutions. It something new, cyber-anarchism.

Indignation is growing in Washington. We are all waiting to hear what they are going to do about it.

(Meanwhile, colleague John Wohlstetter has an excellent review of coverage at Letters from the Capital.)