The Philadelphia City Council has voted to evict the Boy Scouts of America from the headquarters building they’ve occupied for 80 years, punishing them for not allowing openly gay scouts or scout masters. Even though Scouting’s Cradle of Liberty Council has invested millions in constructing, restoring and maintaining their historic building, it’s located on city land and politicians want to enforce their “non-discrimination” policy by terminating a time-honored relationship.  

Scouting currently serves 56,000 Philadelphia youngsters—many of them inner city kids with no fathers. Rather than destroying a cherished program because it doesn’t meet their standards, why don’t gay rights activists start a new program that does?  

If they launched their own scouting program—call it “Rainbow Scouts”—they could serve even more kids, including some who feel excluded by the Boy Scouts. By choosing to wreck an existing organization, rather than building a constructive alternative, the left exposes its underlying intolerance and negativity.

In 82 years of supremely active living, William F. Buckley transformed American conservatism profoundly and permanently. He established once and for all that the phrase “conservative intellectual” wasn’t a contradiction in terms. In the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, when the word “conservative” conjured  images of grumpy old men, the dashing Buckley showed that right wing activism could be fun, frisky, elegant and invigorating. He relished playing Bach on the harpsichord, sailing, writing spy novels, and hosting a long-running TV show on PBS—normally a bastion of establishment liberalism.

Like his friend Ronald Reagan, Buckley brought sunny, sparkling energy to the conservative moment, and shunned its bigoted, mean-spirited extremes. Ironically, his passing coincides with embarrassing controversy over an angry talk show host using Barack Obama’s middle name as a form of insult and attack. That’s the kind of cheap shot that happy warrior Bill Buckley would have characterized as beneath the dignity of his great cause.

 The audience for this year’s Oscar telecast set an all-time record for low ratings—with the lowest raw number of viewers in thirty years, and the smallest audience share since the broadcast began (at the very dawn of the TV era) in 1953. Conventional wisdom suggests that this shattering public rejection resulted from the dark, depressing and edgy nature of most of the nominated films, but the disillusionment with Hollywood goes deeper than that. It’s not just that the entertainment elite lives in its own world, far removed from every-day American realities; after all, even in its popular heyday 60 years ago, “Tinseltown” seemed like an artificial land of make-believe with larger-than-life stars completely detached from the ordinary. But in Hollywood’s Golden Age, we looked on celebrities with admiration and envy; today, we often see them with contempt and pity. The scandal-obsessed, non-stop, cable-and-internet Britney-Lindsay-Paris culture focuses on broken lives and self-destructive decadence. Like passing a car wreck, it’s sometimes hard to look away, but if we have other choices for entertainment and escape than dwelling in this dysfunctional world, we generally take them. No wonder that most Americans declined the chance to give more than three hours of their lives to visit a twisted, indulgent and increasingly weird sub-culture, inhabited by more and more deeply depressing people. .  

Is America’s “war on terror” in reality a war on Islam itself?

Most Muslim radicals insist that it is – as do many patriotic conservatives in this country who believe that any attempts to woo Islamic moderates, or to whitewash the violent and menacing essence of the Koran, distort the true nature of the current conflict.

Some of those who see Islam in all of its manifestations as our ultimate, implacable foe took me to task (in e-mail and phone calls to my radio show) for my recent support for U.S. recognition of the newly independent Muslim-majority state of Kosovo.

To these zealots, it hardly matters that the leading European powers (Britain, France, Germany) strongly support Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, or that the most outspoken opposition to Kosovar independence comes from the increasingly anti-American Putin regime in Russia. To some observers, it’s also irrelevant that ethnic Albanians (mostly non-religious, secularized Muslims) comprise more than 90% of Kosovo’s population and this overwhelming majority ardently desires its own democratic nation state. Though Orthodox Christian Serbs make up only 5% of the populace in Kosovo, critics of Bush administration Balkan policy insist that this embattled minority deserves U.S. protection and support. They discount fervent Kosovar promises that the new nation will guarantee the rights and security of its Christian residents; skeptics believe that such assurances mean nothing when provided by Muslim leaders, no matter how secular or pro-American.

“You of all people should recognize that there is no such thing as a ‘moderate Muslim,’” one correspondent scolded me. “Moderation and Islam contradict one another. Anyone who denies that contradiction is either a fool or a dupe. The tragedy in Kosovo represents just the latest example of state department mistakes based on the consistent denial that Islam, wherever it exists, is the eternal enemy of democratic values and Western Civilization.”

This increasingly popular absolutist position – whatever its historical, theological or anthropological basis – represents a threat to our short-term security and our long-term success in the very real battle against Islamism. If we accept, let alone embrace, the proposition that Islam itself is our enemy, then all of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims become enemies of the United States, and doom us to unending and un-winnable conflict.

It’s true that some serious scholars both inside and outside the Muslim world (or “Umma”) have pointed to Koranic passages and interpretations that seem to command perpetual jihad against non-believers, but other authorities (again, including Muslims and outsiders alike) emphasize more tolerant, less bloodthirsty strains in the teachings of Mohammed. The defenders of Islam point to a few peaceful and surprisingly diverse Muslim societies (Medieval Spain, or al-Andaluz, represents perhaps the most celebrated example) that contrast with the aggressive, convert-or-die approach that appears repeatedly in Islamic history. Islamic apologists point to similar contradictions in Christian history, with literally millions of heathens forcibly converted, enslaved or put to death, not to mention the appalling blood-letting between Catholics and Protestants who slaughtered one another for centuries despite their similar proclamations of loyalty to Jesus.

For Christianity, however, the worst excesses of violent fanaticism in the name of faith occurred four hundred years ago while for Islam they took place yesterday – with suicide bombings, riots, mutilations and tyrannical theocracies in every corner of the globe. No fair-minded person can look at the role played by Muslim faith in contemporary politics, economics, culture, or human rights without questioning the frequently dysfunctional nature of Islamic ideas.

Nevertheless, any public proclamation of overall enmity toward Islam would harm America’s cause in the world at large and undermine our security at home. This approach damages our interest in five ways--

1)      It confirms the anti-American propaganda of terrorist leaders. Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and their associates have argued for years that the United States, “the Great Satan,” is the leader of a global conspiracy to destroy Islam and oppress Muslims. Any statement of hostility to Muslim faith would confirm the claims of our most dangerous enemies, enhancing their prestige and credibility. We also harm ourselves greatly if we declare that the idea of a “moderate Muslim” is a contradiction in terms: this echoes the al-Qaeda line almost precisely, as we agree with our deadliest enemies that anyone who chooses to help us or to oppose terrorism is somehow inauthentic in his Koranic commitment.

2)      It alienates our allies. Most Islamic societies fall far short of democratic norms or even civilized standards, but several of them provide crucial assistance in the war against radicalism. Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations may be far from perfect as allies, but they would each be profoundly dangerous as adversaries. Our economic and military interests around the world depend to a great extent on some cooperation with Muslim nations and official condemnation of the faith they cherish would make such cooperation vastly more difficult if not altogether impossible. No one’s entirely comfortable with the idea of more than sixty nuclear warheads in the hands of President Musharraf of Pakistan, but imagine those nukes controlled by Islamist leaders of the future with reason to believe that the U.S. wanted to wipe out Muslim belief.

3)      It puts the societies of Western Europe at profound risk.  With growing and powerful Muslim populations in France, the United Kingdom, Germany and most other European powers, an American declaration of hostility to Islam would force those societies into an impossible choice: either disassociate yourself completely from your necessary American ally, or prepare to suppress the well-established Islamic communities in your midst. Of course, it would be better for our European friends if their Muslim millions simply packed up and went home, but since there’s no chance they will do so any attempt to officially disparage Islam, or even to force instantaneous assimilation and secularization, becomes dangerous and destabilizing.

4)      It destroys our tradition of religious pluralism. If we proclaim Islam (or any other religion) as an “enemy of the state,” then we’ve clearly abandoned our cherished First Amendment tradition of neutrality among religious faiths. Constitutional scholars may argue as to whether government may encourage a generalized sense of religiosity or reverence, but no student of the First Amendment suggests that government may select one specific faith for either promotion or persecution. Studies suggest that American Muslims represent a mostly prosperous and assimilated segment of the population, but public hostility to Islam would encourage a disturbing tend toward radicalization already apparent among some young Muslims. If Islam is our enemy, should Homeland Security start closing down mosques? The very idea represents an obvious violation of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause.

5)      It pushes us toward a never-ending war with no exit strategy. Even those of us who have always supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wish that the government had learned one of the key lessons of Vietnam which once comprised a key element of the “Powell Doctrine”: never go to war without a clear, practical plan for victory and a reliable exit strategy. If we define Islam as our enemy, then what, exactly, is our feasible strategy for wiping out a resilient religious faith that’s proven disturbingly durable for more than 1,400 years? Even if we succeed in reducing the numbers and influence of the world’s Muslims we’ll still face at the very least, say, ten-percent of the current population: or more than 130 million believers. If that formidable Islamic remnant sees America as responsible for the elimination (either physically or spiritually) of most of their brothers and sisters in faith, the terrorist threat we face may actually intensify, rather than recede.

In all areas of human conflict or competition, the divide-and-conquer strategy works. In warfare, politics, international relations, business or all other contests, you win by uniting those on your side of the battle lines and dividing your adversaries.

Pushing the idea that Islam is our enemy does exactly the opposite: dividing the United States from allied states, and dividing those states at home, while instantly uniting our enemies.

Recognizing that we simply can’t succeed in “a war against Islam” isn’t to say that the followers of Mohammed have built “a religion of peace,” or even that Islam deserves identical respect to other great religions. In truth, even fair-minded Muslims must recognize that Islam today inspires unique concern with its well-documented propensity toward violence, radicalism and authoritarianism. We should encourage any and all Muslim voices against such extremism, rather than insisting that they don’t exist or can’t exist.

The statement that “Islam itself is the enemy” may deliver thrills and satisfaction with its tough, uncompromising, provocative ring, but the advance of that that idea among American conservatives and others constitutes a far more dire threat to U.S. interests than to the power or influence of the terrorists.  

  For more than a hundred years, nomination struggles in presidential campaigns have followed a familiar pattern. Bitter rivals engage in ferocious competition, generally slamming and sliming their opponents wherever possible, then come together for the sake of “party unity,” praising the ultimate victor as a choice for leadership who was obvious and inevitable all along. In 2004, for instance, Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich eagerly rallied around John Kerry; John Edwards even joined the ticket as his running mate. This year, Republicans provide another typical example of party divisions healing more quickly than many skeptics expected: Rudy, Fred, Mitt and lesser candidates have all gotten on board the “Straight Talk Express” and Huckabee will follow their example within a few weeks or even days. After a frontrunner captures the nomination, his opponents and some grassroots activists may nurse lingering resentments but those wounds rarely handicap a campaign in November.

 

  The current battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may, however, prove one of those exceptions in which a donnybrook in primary season does permanent damage to a candidate’s chances. This happened in the recent past for Democrats, when ideological divisions became so intense and so obvious that pretenses of party unity looked hollow and phony: in 1968, much of the left refused to rally to Hubert Humphrey, and in 1972 the party’s center never fully embraced George McGovern. Among Republicans, Pat Buchanan’s primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush fell far short of winning the nomination for the insurgent, but badly dented the incumbent’s stature and aura of competence, setting him up for defeat in November.

 

   The Hillary-Barack spat (reaching ferocious intensity just a week away from decisive primaries in Ohio and Texas) may well resemble the Bush-Buchanan tiff more than the ideological struggles of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. As both candidates have noted, they harbor few substantive differences on issues, and the real fight between them involves personality and interest group politics rather than contrasting world views.

 

   Nevertheless, Hillary’s angry assaults on her rival (expected to reach a climax in their televised Ohio debate on Tuesday night) may harm Obama seriously for November even thought their rivalry involves a classic “personality primary” rather than the more serious “issues primary.”

 

   Barack Obama’s charismatic appeal depends on the image of a fresh face who’s above “politics as usual.” His messianic image suggests a healer and uniter who’s almost too good for the grubby realities of daily politics. His supporters, led by his wife Michelle, suggest that the Illinois Senator will not only reform our government, but repair the “hole in our souls.”

 

   In that context, the snarling back-and-forth with Hillary could damage the atmosphere of saintliness and uplift and pie-in-the-sky redemption on which Obamamania depends. The candidate is eminently defeatable in the fall if voters see him as a tarnished, manipulative, posing, Chicago political operator, impatiently ambitious and seizing his big chance with a minimum of preparation or programmatic commitment.

 

  If, on the other hand, his promoters continue to sell Barack as a cause rather than a candidate, a representative of idealism rather than ambition, he presents a tougher target for Republicans.

 

  For this reason, the GOP maintains a strong interest in seeing Hillary Clinton prevail in both the Ohio and Texas primaries, with the campaign rivalry continuing with its current heat. Every charge she’s making against St. Barack makes it easier to Republicans to level similar assaults in September and October. The next week will play an important part in this process, and further weeks of competition will help even more. With Hillary sounding increasingly exasperated (“Shame on you, Barack Obama!” declared the angry school marm) it will prove more difficult to blame Republicans for bursting the feel- good, flimsy, can’t-we-all-get-together-and-sing-Kum-Ba-Ya hot-air balloon of Obama-as-savior when the campaign gets serious in the fall.

 

  It looks all but certain that the Illinois Senator will nail down the Democratic nomination at some point, but conservatives have a real stake in encouraging Hillary to keep the battle going for a few weeks more.  

 

The best comment on Senator McCain and the New York Times actually came from uber pundit Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) who famously observed:

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."

The lesson applies to politics, as well as the rest of life.

1. Many observers have noted that the New York Times charges that McCain had an “inappropriate relationship” with lobbyist Vicki Iseman are based entirely on anonymous sources. The more important point is that even these anonymous sources never actually allege a scandalous relationship; they supposedly warned McCain about the appearance of such a relationship. In the article's most telling single sentence, the new York Times writes: “It is not clear what effect the warnings had; the associates said their concerns receded in the heat of the campaign.” (Referring to the campaign of 2000, eight years ago). The obvious point is if those concerns were substantive and serious they would have intensified “in the heat of the campaign” rather than receding. This odd sentence is an indication that even the unidentified “associates” who said they were worried about McCain’s relationship dropped those concerns as the campaign advanced—a strong indication that the “concerns” were less dire than they once assumed. In any event, the nature of these charges is so vacuous, insubstantial, vague and unspecific that it’s hard to imagine any such media attack on a prominent Democrat. Please note the far more gingerly media treatment on the much-beter-sourced rumors of a John Edwards affair – not eight years ago, but this year.

2. McCain is hardly the first Republican politician smeared by media reports of creating the appearance  of an inappropriate relationship. Dan Quayle was also attacked for appearing at a charitable golf tournament with “an attractive blonde lobbyist”; the story went nowhere after emphatic denials. Gary Bauer (of all people) suffered similar attacks during his presidential campaign in 2000. President George Herbert Walker Bush faced absurd charges of an affair with a pretty female aide; he and Barbara were forced to indignantly deny it, just as McCain and Cindy did today.

3. The New York Times piece features a photo of media mogul Lowell W. Paxson, identifying him by saying that Ms. Iseman “lobbied Mr. McCain on his behalf.” The paper never identifies Paxson, however, as one of the nation’s most prominent Christian conservatives: an outspoken Evangelical whose PAX TV network attempted to offer a family-and-faith-friendly alternative to mainstream TV. McCain should be proud of any association with Bud Paxson, not ashamed of it. He should also be proud of a detail the article notes in passing, that Mr. McCain “sought to break up cable subscription packages, which some of her clients opposed.” This is an important issue for social conservatives: allowing consumers to get packages that exclude the Playboy Channel, MTV and other racy fare.

All in all, this pathetic smear should remind people about McCain’s conservative commitment, over a quarter century in Congress. He’s specifically smeared for his association with a stalwart and outspoken Christian businessman—an association with should reflect credit, not disgrace, on the Arizona Senator.

. Senator Barack Obama inspires enthusiasm that borders on ecstasy for his growing legion of followers. Instead of focusing on specific policies, his rapturous supporters embrace the sacred word “hope.”  But amidst all the claims that Obama’s themes are fresh and unprecedented, it’s worth remembering that other politicians sought power by marketing hope. When John Kennedy ran for President—and very narrowly beat Nixon—he used “High Hopes” as his campaign song, with the refrain, “he has high/apple-pie/in the sky/.hopes!” Bill Clinton billed himself as “The Man from Hope” – making constant reference to his Arkansas home town – and wrote a book called “From Hope to History.” Even Jesse Jackson drove his enthusiastic campaigns with the slogan, “Keep Hope Alive!” Barack Obama may offer himself as “the Hope Pope” – in the phrase of David Brooks – but fuzzy invocations of change and hope can’t hide the truth about proposals that mean more taxes, bigger government and less freedom. I’m Michael Medved.

With his unexpectedly decisive landslide victory in Wisconsin, Barack Obama has solidified his status as the Democratic frontrunner. His success owes less to his own political strategy than it does to a fatal mistake by Hillary Clinton. At the beginning of her campaign, Clinton made a decision to avoid an ideological battle with her rival and decided to frame the race as a choice between “experience” and “charisma,” between “work” and “words.” In other words she decided to fight Obama on personality, rather than the issues, and in terms of a compelling, appealing personality, Obama obviously wins. Clinton could have won an issues election – mobilizing the broad middle of the Democratic Party and leaving Obama to run to her left. She could have criticized him for preaching surrender on the war, for minimizing the reality of the terrorist threat, for calling unequivocally for big government and higher taxes, for rejecting the free trade heritage of Clintonism. Instead, she insisted that she and her opponent hardly differed on the issues, and it was only a question of who is better “prepared to take over as commander-in-chief from day one.” By emphasizing my “thirty-five years of work fighting for change” Hillary not only made herself sound older, but high-lighted the meaningless, trivial nature of the change she sought and, allegedly, achieved: most Democrats don’t like the results of the last thirty-five years of government policy. 

Anyone who believes that the nomination struggle was actually centered on substantive issues should try to answer two fundamental questions: who’s more liberal, Hillary or Obama? And who’s more moderate, Hillary or Obama? It’s telling that in the Democratic Party both liberals and moderates seem to be breaking for Obama. In the absence of any clear distinction on policy prescriptions, they all feel free to vote for him as an expression of the fact that they just like the guy, or as an indication that they long (like nearly all Americans) to reject our terrible history of racism, or as a reflection about incurable unease about the alternative, Hillary. She does come across as robotic and phony much of the time. If she’s not preferable to Barack on issues that matter, and she’s no more electable in November (according to polls), then what’s the basis on which she asks for votes? 

John McCain needs to learn the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. If he tries to emphasize his obviously superior experience and preparation for the job, he’ll lose in a landslide. Obama can easily characterize him as “yesterday’s man” (as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday night) and emphasize his opponent’s advanced age by “graciously” saluting his “fifty years of service.” He thereby makes the point that he himself isn’t even fifty years old, confirming his vacuous declaration that “we are the change that we’ve been waiting for.” 

McCain and the GOP can win the election, but only if they draw crisp, unmistakable distinctions on the issues. Voters should face big questions: do you think America will be safer if we surrender to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere? Do you want to pay more in taxes to pay for a bigger government? Do you want to pay for your neighbor’s health insurance, or is the nation stronger when we emphasize individual responsibility? Do we want more freedom and opportunity or do we need more government supervision and regulation? 

On these issues, on these crucial choices, Republicans can win. If McCain explains those choices clearly and persuasive (and I believe he will) then his problems with movement conservatives will take care of themselves. 

If, on the other hand, he tries to run a campaign based on biography and personality, he’ll meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton. Unless McCain offers bold, positive, conservative vision for the future, and draws clear distinctions on the issues, then even this admirable war hero and maverick Naval aviator is, alas, likely to go down in flames.   

The explosive controversy surrounding the newly proclaimed independence of Kosovo ought to alert the world to the dangerous delusion that a similar declaration of Palestinian statehood could advance the cause of peace. 

The striking similarities and glaring differences in the two situations can provide much-needed perspective on the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East.  

First, the dramatic parallels between the Kosovars and the Palestinians: both represent a population of impoverished Muslims who’ve dreamed for decades of establishing an independent state. In both cases, the aggrieved nationalists want to separate from a more powerful neighbor that’s granted only limited autonomy. In both situations, the new state will have no economy capable of feeding its more than two million inhabitants (some 60% of whom –in both Kosovo and the Palestinian territories -- are unemployed) but leaders assume that the nations of the west and the UN will continue to provide needed aid to keep them alive. Both peoples also wink at the obvious fact that their new nations will be indistinguishable in language, religion, ethnicity, culture, history or political outlook from much larger neighboring states: in the case of Kosovo, that neighbor is Albania, and for the Palestinians there’s no clear difference between their national identity and that of most other Arab states in the region, such as Jordan, Syria and Egypt.  

The differences between the two aspiring nations, however, suggest that Palestinian dreams of statehood count as even more far-fetched than those of the Kosovars. In the case of Kosovo (4,300 square miles with 2.1 million people) the population is almost entirely Albanian—93%, according to internationally accepted figures, and only 5% who are hostile Serbs.. In the case of the Palestinians, however, a prospective state on the West Bank (the only area ruled by the Palestinian Authority since Hamas holds exclusive sway in Gaza) would comprise only 2,300 square miles and 2.5 million people – with less than 82% Palestinian, and fully 17% Jewish residents who have no desire to leave their homes. 

In return for the support of European powers (including Germany, France and Britain) and the United States, the Kosovar leaders have promised to respect the rights and security of their 5% Serb minority. The Palestinians have never made similar offers to their 17% Jewish minority on the West Bank and have, rather, insisted that these residents must be expelled or slaughtered as part of any new Palestinian state. The refusal to accept any presence of a non-Muslim population in their midst shows the Palestinians lagging far behind even the Kosovars. 

Moreover, in Kosovo, international human rights organizations agree that the Serbs massacred at least 10,000 ethnic Albanians in the brief, brutal conflict of ten years ago. Among Palestinians, 1,162 died in the first “Intifada” of 1987-to-91, and in the second Intifada (from 2000 to the present) 4,944 have died – with more than 10% butchered by their fellow Palestinians. In other words, despite their prominent and persistent claims of victim status, the Palestinians suffered far fewer casualties, and a much lower casualty rate in light of their larger population. 

Finally, the Kosovar declaration of statehood occurred nearly nine years after their militant arm (The Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA) renounced violence and local political institutions demonstrated their determination to live in peace with their Serb neighbors. Ibrahim Rugova, the late, non-violent nationalist leader who helped steer his people toward independence, has no counterpart whatever among the Palestinians. 

In fact, imagine if this weekend’s declaration of Kosovo independence occurred at a time when the Kosovars were launching daily rocket and mortar attacks into Serbia. Would any nation on earth support statehood for a nationality totally unable to control the terrorist crazies in its own midst? In Israel, more than 700 rocket and mortar attacks have been launched from Gaza since January 1^st – a total of more than 15 a day. 

To much of the world, the current bid to establish a new state of Kosovo (with Albanian language, culture and national symbols) looks shaky, questionable, and potentially misguided. 

But if Kosovar independence represents a destabilizing development, how much more so would the creation of a Palestinian state provoke more violence and political chaos? At least the Kosovars have expressed respect for the rule of law, and committed themselves to respecting the rights of their local minorities. 

And what, exactly, have the Palestinians done? 

The latest outrage, aimed at the tiny Christian minority in Gaza, involved the total destruction over the weekend of the 8,000 volume library in the beleaguered YMCA. 

If the Kosovars behaved as the Palestinians do, or identified with the same ferociously intolerant Islamic radicalism, the whole world would treat their bid for independence as a sick joke. 

The different approach to the two embattled Muslim populations highlights the double standard that always seems to apply to any conflict involving Israel and the Jews.

On the Presidents’ Day observance meant to celebrate our chief executives, it’s worth considering one striking trait that nearly all these men seem to have shared —an astonishing 38 of our 43 presidents had blue eyes.

 

My friend Mark Weinstein (a film and advertising composer) called to my attention the odd fact that nearly all presidents since 1900 had blue, grey, or hazel eyes --- since 1900, only Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had the brown eyes characteristic of a large majority of today’s Americans (less than 20% of current U.S. residents have blue, grey or green eyes). Mark suggested that with John McCain’s bright blue eyes, and Barack Obama’s brown peepers, the Arizona Senator boasted a previously unacknowledged advantage.

 

I became so interested in this assertion that I began looking into eye color and the occupants of the White House, going all the way back to George Washington (with his penetrating blue-gray gaze). It turns out that in all of U.S. history, only five presidents had brown eyes – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, LBJ and Nixon. All the rest were clearly described with blue, grey, or hazel eyes.

 

 The only president for whom I couldn’t find definitive information on eye color was William Henry Harrison, but since he served for only 30 days in 1841 before he inconveniently died in office (the first president to do so), he hardly counts. In any event, I suspect he also had blue or green or grey eyes, since contemporaries described his hair as light brown (before it went grey). If anyone can help with authoritative information on the ocular characteristics of Old Tippecanoe, I’d certainly appreciate it.

 

In any event, it’s not easy to make sense of the brute fact of the dominance of blue-eyes (which are, after all, a recessive, not a dominant genetic attribute) in the White House.

 

First, consider the brown-eyed exceptions and their troubled history in office: two of our three presidents who faced serious impeachment proceedings (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) were among our brown-eyed minority. The other three brownies (John Quincy Adams, Chester A. Arthur, and Lyndon Johnson) all hoped to win an additional term as president but failed to do, falling victim to bitter political critics and rivals.

 

All of our presidents who have been considered great, or near great by historians, had blue eyes. Anyone want to try an explanation?

 

The general incidence of blue eyes in the population is about 16% today. In 1950, it was estimated at 30%; in 1900, 50%. With increased immigration and intermarriage among ethnic groups, brown eyes (a dominant genetic trait) have become increasingly common while blue eyes have grown surprisingly rare. My family offers a case in point: my grandmother (my father’s mother) was a blue-eyed blonde, and all four of my very blonde wife’s grandparents were blue-eyed. But my own brown eyes have taken charge of the family inheritance, so all of our three kids have dark brown eyes.

Before the power of the dominant brown-eyed genes kicked in, the initial ethnic stock of the United States--- from England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany, primarily – may have possessed a blue-eyed majority.

 

Even so, our population almost certainly never featured the 89% blue-eyed incidence of all our presidents. And, as noted above, 108 years ago, blue-eyed people represented only 50% of the population, but since that time they’ve been 88% of the chief executives – any way you look at it, a highly disproportionate (and consistently disproportionate) number.

 

Does this mean anything? Do we find those with light eyes more commanding, more impressive, more attractive, more appealing? Would this reaction matter in by-gone eras when only a handful of citizens saw the presidents in person, and crude black-and-white images could hardly communicate eye color?

 

Nevertheless, this overwhelming pattern does suggest that when we give candidates the eye, we should look into their eyes.

 

And there’s no getting around one uncomfortable fact: Hillary Clinton most certainly does have blue-grey eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John McCain promises that if elected president, he’ll appoint strict-constructionist judges in the mold of Roberts and Alito. Some of his conservative critics say he actually might end up appointing moderates, but they don’t seem to recall that Ronald Reagan, the greatest of conservative presidents, himself appointed two famously moderate justices: Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, skeptics who distrust McCain need to recognize the difference between the chance that he could disappoint us by appointing moderates, and the certainty under Obama or Clinton that they will outrage us by appointing activist liberals. If Democrats add two or more such justices to the Supreme Court, it will end all chance of reversing Roe v. Wade, or making continued progress on the social and cultural issues that many conservatives care about most.

On judges, and a half dozen other crucial issues, this election will offer voters a potent and important choice.

David Tyree of the New York Giants became an NFL hero with an amazingly improbable catch (against his own helmet) that clinched his team’s upset victory in the Superbowl. But Tyree doesn’t see Superbowl Sunday as the greatest day of his life—he gives that distinction to the time of a drug arrest in 2004. Busted with a half-pound of marijuana and locked in a rough stone cell, Tyree says he hit bottom after more than a decade of drug and alcohol abuse. Making a decisive commitment to Christian faith, he married the mother of his two illegitimate boys and they’re now regular churchgoers who are expecting twin girls. They also created a charitable foundation to help youngsters make better choices than Tyree as an adolescent. David Tyree’s inspiring story also offers important perspective on drug laws. Legalization of drugs wouldn’t be a way to help people like him, but rather would be a way to give up on them. 

 For five hours today, baseball great Roger Clemens testified before Congress on allegations he used steroids to enhance his pitching career. These hearings, broadcast live on most cable networks, forced viewers to choose between believing Clemens, or trusting charges by his former trainer, Brian McNamee. But there’s a bigger question, and that’s why our representatives in Congress should waste their time and our money on this TV extravaganza? If either Clemens or McNamee broke the law and lied under oath, the criminal justice system should prosecute them – a process made  more difficult, not easier, due to the high profile hearings. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform may face daunting responsibilities, but supervising Major League Baseball isn’t one of them. For the sake of bloviating on TV with a famous athlete, Chairman Henry Waxman and colleagues have provided a sickening example of the political process intruding in an area where it doesn’t belong.

But then again, we did get the chance to hear Rep. Elijah Cummings tell Clemens "you're my hero" while Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton assured him "you will certainly get into heaven."

That, by the way, is another issue that even a veteran Congresswoman doesn't get to decide.

 

Among the many distortions, smears and outright lies concerning the conservative record of John McCain, I’ve been struck by a new effort to discount his solid lifetime voting record of 82.3% with the American Conservative Union.

According to those who desperately desire some reason to discredit the Senator’s conservative credentials, this figure is misleading because it includes his early years in Congress when he was, indeed, a “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” but doesn’t fully register the fact that he’s turned away from his rightist roots in recent years.

A caller to my radio show today accused me of misleading the audience because I cited Johnny Mac’s lifetime statistics without informing folks that in the last seven years he’s taken “a radical left turn.”

To respond to such nonsense, let us herewith set the record straight --- with a little “straight talk” in print.

Here are McCain’s ACU ratings, running from the last year of Clinton’s reign to the most recent available figures (2006)

2000 – 81%

2001—68%

2002---72

2003---80

2004---72

2005---80

2006---65

In other words, over the last seven years, McCain has come within two points of his lifetime average of 82% three times.  His average since the turn-of-the century:  a respectable ACU rating of 74%. 

This doesn’t make him one of the most reliable, ideologically pure of Republican Senators (but he’s never claimed that), but it also leaves him a world away not only from Barack and Hillary, but also from true “mushy moderates” in the GOP who, in 2006, earned vastly lower scores, including Olympia Snowe of Maine (36%), Susan Collins of Maine (48%),  George Voinovich of Ohio (56%), Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania (43%) and the recently defeated Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island (24%).

For the record, one of McCain’s biggest critics in the Senate, Thad Cochran of Mississippi (who supported Mitt Romney for President) earned a 2006 ACU rating of 67% -- virtually identical to that of his Arizona colleague – but maintains a lifetime record of 80% (that’s below McCain’s).

In other words, the idea of McCain’s “radical left turn” in recent years is nonsense, as his forthright, specific, substantive and proudly conservative speech at CPAC surely made clear.

Doesn’t it tell you something that Planned Parenthood is already out with a McCain-bashing ad decrying his “Zero lifetime rating – lowest in the Senate” for his “Planned Parenthood Voting Record”?

Anyone who’s earned that kind of hostility from the Abortion Industrial Complex ought to have earned some gratitude from conservatives.