Great Speech

Last Thursday President Bush gave a major speech on Iraq. We'd didn't get around to posting on it then but we'd be remiss not to mention it. It was one of his finest.

...The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, "what is good for them and what is not." And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that his -- that this is the road to paradise -- though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, "I do not feel your pain -- because I believe you are an infidel." And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple -- the total rejection of justice and honor and morality and religion. These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity. (Applause.) We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields.
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party, representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves. Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, and to control every aspect of life, and to rule the soul, itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery. [emphasis added]

I don't know if it has ever been expressed more concisely and powerfully.

"Good Night & Good Luck" is Bad History

Over the weekend I saw a couple of reviews on the news that literally FAWNED over George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck which purports to detail the fabled Edward R. Murrow's crusade against Senator Joseph McCarthy. It's useful to note that while the consensus is that the movie is well made and well done, Clooney has taken some significant liberties with history.

[Note, by the way that Jack Shafer's review ran in Slate, which is well, hardly, the National Review.]

If Jesus Christ no longer satisfies your desire to worship a man as god, I suggest you buy a ticket for Good Night and Good Luck, the new movie about legendary CBS News broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. Good Night and Good Luck's Murrow burns cigarettes like altar incense.
...
Of course, Murrow was no god. Point of fact, he shouldn't be regarded as the patron saint of broadcast news his fans, among them Good Night and Good Luck director George Clooney, make him out to be. But the passage of time, the self-serving testimonials from the broadcasters he recruited to CBS ("Murrow's Boys"), and the usual nostalgia for newsrooms choking on their own cigarette smoke have puffed the considerable accomplishments of a mortal and flawed newsman into modern miracles. Good Night and Good Luck, a docudrama that pits Murrow against McCarthy, escalates the veneration to heavenly levels.
...
But it all goes wrong with the naive screenplay, written by Clooney and his collaborator, fellow actor/producer Grant Heslov. Plowing through the Murrow and McCarthy literature after viewing the film, I was impressed at how deeply Clooney and Heslov researched the topic yet dismayed at how they cherry-picked material to compose their sermon.
...
Good Night and Good Luck never comes out and credits Murrow with single-handedly slaying McCarthy on March 9, 1954, with his famous See It Now program, "A Report on Joseph R. McCarthy." But if you want to form that impression, the moviemakers won't mind.

In reality, McCarthy's takedown was much more complex. As the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson wrote in 1996, "McCarthy had been hanging himself quite efficiently in the several months before Murrow offered him more rope." Ferguson continues:
...
But don't take Ferguson's word for it. The McCarthy program "came very late in the day," said one of Murrow's brightest "boys," Eric Sevareid, in a January 1978 broadcast. "The youngsters read back and they think only one person in broadcasting and the press stood up to McCarthy," Sevareid said, "and this has made a lot of people feel very upset, including me, because that program came awfully late."

...Murrow confessed his tardiness in taking on McCarthy, according to an interview Gould gave to Edwin R. Bayley for his 1981 book, Joe McCarthy and the Press. "My God," he recalls Murrow saying. "I didn't do anything. [Times columnist] Scotty Reston and lot of guys have been writing like this, saying the same things, for months, for years. We're bringing up the rear."
...
Biographer A.M. Sperber writes that Murrow "was always uneasy about" the McCarthy attack, "almost anxious at times to disown it."...What bugged Murrow was that he had used a bludgeon, not a scalpel. The McCarthy See It Now episode...portrays the senator as the scumbag that he was. But it is a peculiar work of journalism—there's very little reporting in it, as the transcript shows. It gathers the available film on McCarthy and lets the man speak for himself...Andrew Ferguson describes the program's mise-en-scène as "a compendium of every burp, grunt, stutter, nose probe, brutish aside, and maniacal giggle the senator had ever allowed to be captured on film."

Give a skilled editor 15,000 feet of film of Barney the purple dinosaur and he could perform a similar demolition. Murrow makes no attempt to determine if there is any substance to McCarthy's charges. The program's manipulative and partisan techniques were enough to creep out two of McCarthy's dedicated foes in the press, liberals John Cogley and Gilbert Seldes, who shared their misgivings in Commonweal and Saturday Review, respectively. Murrow, who once said he favored "ringing a bell every time a newscaster is about to inject his own view," ended the program with a direct slam of McCarthy that could have set church bells pealing. [Remind anyone of Michael Moore? ed.]
...
Good Night, and Good Luck's heaviest Hollywood airbrushing comes in its treatment of the See It Now program about Annie Lee Moss. In committee hearings McCarthy accused Moss, a matronly Pentagon Signal Corps employee, of being a member of the Communist party based on the word of an FBI informant. Her job in a Pentagon code room, in McCarthy's mind, makes her a communist spy...How innocent was Moss? In Salon, Clooney says the issue for Murrow is Moss' right to face her accuser, which she was denied. For the record, however, McCarthy appears to have been more right than wrong about her membership.

In 1958, the federal Subversive Activities Control Board reported that "the Communist Party's own records, the authenticity of which the Party has at no time disputed … show that one Annie Lee Moss, 72 R Street SW, Washington DC, was a party member in the mid-1940s." Joseph E. Persico's 1988 biography, Edward R. Murrow: An American Original, reports this finding as does historian Arthur Herman's 1999 revisionist account, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator.
...
If I judge it correctly, Good Night, and Good Luck intends to serve as a parable for our times and not a history lesson.

This IS Hollywood and Hollywood peddles entertainment and, of course, the issue du jour but the public should know that this is more hagiography than biography. By and large they won't. If you do go out and see the movie you owe it to yourself to read Shafer's column in its entirety.

Oil Bubble?

A notable editorial from this weekend's Wall Street Journal argues that current high oil prices are unsustainable and a combination of new technologies, new discoveries (or willingness to use existing ones) will bring energy prices back to a virtuous cycle of long term decline. I am not an expert on energy markets but some of the WSJ themes bear some examination:

The cost of energy per unit has gotten cheaper and cheaper

First, the crisis begins with a spike in energy prices as a result of a short-term supply shock. Next, higher prices bring doomsday claims of energy shortages, which in turn prompts government to intervene ineffectually into the marketplace. In the end, the advent of new technologies and new energy discoveries--all inspired by the profit motive--brings the crisis to an abrupt end, enabling oil and electricity markets to resume their virtuous long-term downward price trend.

Chicken Little?

The limits-to-growth crowd has predicted the end of oil since the days when this black gold was first discovered as an energy source in the mid-19th century. In the 1860s the U.S. Geological Survey forecast that there was "little or no chance" that oil would be found in Texas or California. In 1914 the Interior Department forecast that there was only a 10-year supply of oil left; in 1939 it calculated there was only a 13-year supply left, and in 1951 Interior warned that by the mid-1960s the oil wells would certainly run dry. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter somberly told the nation that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."

Technological Progress

Fifty years ago people would have laughed out loud at the idea of drilling for oil at the bottom of the ocean or getting fuel from sand, both of which were technologically infeasible. The first deep-sea oil rig went on line in 1965 and drilled 500 feet down. Now these rigs drill two miles into the ground--and miraculously, the price of extracting oil from 10,000 feet deep in the sea bed today is approaching the cost of drilling 100 feet down from the richest fields in Texas or Saudi Arabia 40 years ago.

This spectacular pace of technological progress explains why over time the amount of recoverable reserves of oil has increased, not fallen. Between 1980 and 2002 the amount of known global oil reserves increased by 300 billion barrels, according to a survey by British Petroleum. Rather than the oil fields running dry, just the opposite has been happening. In 1970 Saudi Arabia had 88 billion barrels of known oil. Thirty-five years later, nearly 100 billion barrels have been extracted and yet the latest forecast is that there are still 264 billion barrels left--although the Saudis have never allowed independent auditors to verify these numbers.

Short on Supply? Perhaps not.

In this industry, alas, bad news tends to crowd out the good. When Shell announced earlier this year that its oil and gas reserves were down by 30%, there was a global outcry. But when Canada announced in 2004 that it has more recoverable oil from tar sands than there is oil in Saudi Arabia, the world yawned. There is estimated to be about as much oil recoverable from the shale rocks in Colorado and other western states as in all the oil fields of OPEC nations. Yes, the cost of getting that oil is still prohibitively expensive, but the combination of today's high fuel prices and improved extraction techniques means that the break-even point for exploiting it is getting ever closer.

The energy Malthusians counter that China, India and other nations will satisfy their growing appetite for oil by driving demand and prices ever higher. In the short term, yes. But over the longer term, as the Chinese become more prosperous through free markets, China will become vastly more fuel efficient and also help discover new sources of energy.

America produces twice as much output per unit of energy consumed as it did 50 years ago. Liberals who say we need government to intervene in the energy markets, to patch the alleged failings of the free market, fail to comprehend that the command-and-control economies of the last 50 years have been far and away the biggest wasters of energy (and the biggest polluters). South Korea produces about three times as much output per kilowatt of electricity as North Korea does.

How to get the environmentalists on-board

In the U.S., environmentalists have erected myriad barriers to drilling for new sources of oil. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that there are at least 100 billion barrels that are fairly easily recoverable in Alaska and offshore that oil companies are not permitted to exploit. Once, we could afford the luxury of not drilling there...now it's an economic and national security imperative that we do.

Here's one simple idea to increase the domestic supply of oil: Have Uncle Sam share its oil-drilling royalties with the California government. If Californians realized they could go a long way to solving their deficit and overtaxation problems by raising billions of these petro-dollars, the aversion on the left coast toward offshore drilling might well begin to subside.

Yankee thoughts

1. Hat tip to Joe Torre for bringing in Al Leiter. I've often criticized Torre for too much conventional thinking and sticking by veterans. I groaned when Leiter was announced. Leiter's paid off for Torre and not for the first time.

2. How did Jorge steal Pudge Rodriguez' arm? Jorge's defense has always been fair to middling and all over a sudden (last two weeks or so) he's gunning down speedsters left and right? (Help me with some stats here Monk?)

3. HT Mo.

One more time boys.

KUDOS

. . . to Matt Schaub, the Falcons' backup QB and a U.Va. grad like The Monk. He lit up the Patriots yesterday for 298 yards, 3 TD and a comeback from 28-13 down. Then the Falcs got Bradatieri'd -- Tom Brady leading a game-winning drive capped off by KingOfThePressureKickers Adam Viniatieri's game-winning field goal.

But it's always good to see a U.Va. player doing well in the NFL.

Pull down the Miers Nomination

John Fund delves into the background of Harriet Miers (to the extent anyone can) and notes the following statements by Republican Presidents in support of certain Supreme Court nominees who later disappointed:

Richard Nixon personally assured conservatives that Harry Blackmun would vote the same way as his childhood friend, Warren Burger. Within four years, Justice Blackmun had spun Roe v. Wade out of whole constitutional cloth. . .

Gerald Ford personally told members of his staff that John Paul Stevens was "a good Republican, and would vote like one." Justice Stevens has since become the leader of the court's liberal wing.

An upcoming biography of Sandra Day O'Connor by Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic includes correspondence from Ronald Reagan to conservative senators concerned about her scant paper trail. The message was, in effect: Trust me. She's a traditional conservative. From Roe v. Wade to racial preferences, she has proved not to be. Similarly, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation recalls the hard sell the Reagan White House made on behalf of Anthony Kennedy in 1987, after the Senate rejected Robert Bork. "They even put his priest on the phone with us to assure us he was solid on everything," Mr. Weyrich recalls. From term limits to abortion to the juvenile death penalty to the overturning of a state referendum on gay rights, Justice Kennedy has often disappointed conservatives.

Most famously, White House chief of staff John Sununu told Pat McGuigan, an aide to Mr. Weyrich, that the appointment of David Souter in 1990 would please conservatives. "This is a home run, and the ball is still ascending. In fact, it's just about to leave earth orbit," he told Mr. McGuigan. At the press conference announcing the appointment, the elder President Bush asserted five times that Justice Souter was "committed to interpreting, not making the law." The rest is history.

No to Miers.

The Great One Strikes Again

There's a reason The Monk likes Tom Verducci more than just about any other baseball writer in the country. His postgame column on the Yanks' win over the Angels in game 4 to send the ALDS to Game 5 is a fine example of Verducci at his best. Click the link.

Yankees stuck on stupid

Bottom 6, two hits against John Lackey in 5.2 IP on three days' rest. The Yanks' playoff history against starters going on three days' rest is horrid: '96 Smoltz, '98 Brown, '01 Schilling (twice), '03 Beckett = all had tremendous starts. Schilling gave up 3 runs in more than 14 innings in two starts on three days' rest; Beckett pitched a complete game shutout; Smoltz lost 1-0 on an unearned run; Brown lost 3-0 and didn't allow fly beyond short depth in the outfield until the seventh inning.

Out like suckas II

The expected happened last night when the Padres took a thumping from the Cardinals in San Diego. The ultimate ignominy, the Padres are not only the worst team ever to make the playoffs but the only one to end up under .500 after the playoffs: 82-83 after the sweep.

The other teams closest to the Padres in relative infamy, the '73 Mess (82-79) and the '84 Royals (84-78), put forth a fight. The Mess beat the Reds in five contentious games to win the NLCS (the Mess won three games by big scores, lost two close ones) and gave the defending WS champion A's all that team could handle in a seven-game World Series (the Mess had Seaver on the mound for game 6, up 3 games to 2, but Catfish Hunter outpitched him and Ken Holtzman won the finale).

The Royals were completely overmatched by the second-best team of The Monk's lifetime, the '84 Tigers (the first was the '98 Yankees -- deal with it Reds fans). The Tigers whacked the Royals in 3, but at least had to fight through games 2 and 3 (5-3 in 11, 1-0 with dueling three-hitters). The Pads went out without even a whimper -- their smallest deficit before putting a run on the board in any of the three games was 4-0. They got to the playoffs, they could have at least played a bit.

As for the Braves, I was ready to write Out Like Suckas III for them, but have to reserve that for a potential (probable?) Yankees honk. Tim Hudson did a fine job, the Braves took a huge lead . . . and Kyle Farnsworth collapsed. Pathetic job by him, but a fine job by the rest of the (fairly) maligned relievers for going zero-for-zero with the Astros' bullpen from innings 10-17. Credit the 'Stros (and light-hitting utilityman Chris Burke, the new Todd Pratt), don't debit the Braves.

Finally, as I write this about 35 minutes before the Yanks either take an attempt to resurrect their playoff hopes or watch the season go into the trash bucket, I have to note just how the four LDS have exposed the various teams' weaknesses. This is in contrast to last year, when the Yanks dodged the implications of their cruddy pitching and a wobbly Gordon and the Twins hit fairly well despite their reputation otherwise, the RedSawx masked a hit-and-miss rotation, while blasting the Angels' superior pitching, the Cards bonked the Dodgers despite looking lost against Jose Lima and the Astros beat the Braves' balanced rotation with good hitting and the strength of Clemens-Oswalt-Lidge.

In the '05 LDS, however, the Padres' substandard hitting and rotation were never offset; the RedSawx questionable rotation, poor fielding and lack of timely hitting in September led directly to a sweep loss; the Braves' up and down rotation, inexperience and terrible bullpen caused a four-game loss; and the Yanks' defense and middle relief have been horrid to date. None of those teams are overcoming their weaknesses nor their opponents' strengths. Indeed, the only team that has played above and beyond its usual capacity is the Astros . . . but The Monk previously noted that with Berkman (grand slam today), Lane and Ensberg (7 RBI in the NLDS), the 'Stros were healthier and their offense deadlier than it has been all year.

Captain Ed hits nail on the head

Ed Morrissey, writing in the Washington Post, sums up the Miers nomination problem in his first paragraph. Note how his statement seems remarkably similar to The Monk's comment in response to TKM's favorite Illinoisan Chris earlier this week:

Well, he's finally done it. By nominating White House lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, George Bush has managed to accomplish what Al Gore, John Kerry, Tom Daschle and any number of Democratic heavyweights have been unable to do: He has cracked the Republican monolith. Split his own party activists. And how.

Proof? Stalwart rightist activists went to the White House last week with four words: What was he thinking. From Morrissey:

Most conservatives feel betrayed after working so hard to get enough Republicans elected to confirm almost any nominee. That's why heavyhitters like Paul Weyrich, Grover Norquist and others confronted the president's men about the nomination at the White House last week.

Most notable to The Monk is that the primary supporters of Miers are evangelical Christians. Why is this important? The evangelicals are not anti-Big Government nor are they necessarily proponents of strict constructionism. Their primary voting issue is social mores and they despise the Roe decision, but one justice of nine on the Supreme Court will wield surprisingly little influence without a dedication to a coherent strict constructionist viewpoint, which Miers likely does not have.

Ultimately, this pick says more about Bush than Miers, and it bolsters these trenchant observations from Mark Steyn:

. . . what's left is the base's distress and the perception of weakness on the president's part. The first is real and may cause problems in 2006, though I can't see it costing the GOP its congressional majorities. As for Bush personally, he was the better of the alternatives in both 2000 and 2004, but come on, the "compassionate conservative" thing was, in its implications, far more insulting to the base than the steel tariffs or the proposed illegal immigrant amnesty or the judicial nominees. Bush, it seems ever more obvious, is the Third Wayer Clinton only pretended to be.

Out like suckas

Down go the RedSux 3-0! And one-two-three in the ninth.

The game-over moment: ChiSax up 4-3, bottom 6, RedSawx had scored one on Fatboy2's second homer and Damaso Marte had stank up the mound by loading the bases on a hit and two walks. In comes El Duque, three on, no out, Ratway in a tizzy.

Popout
popout
whiff.

Game over.

Bye bye RedSux.

More baseball facts

The Monk likes looking for trends, even if he doesn't like what he sees.

First, the importance of game two. In the history of 5-game playoff series in the AL (ALCS 1969-1984, ALDS 1981, 1995-present), there have been eight times that teams split games one and two and the series ended in four. SEVEN of the eight times, the game one winner swept the next three; only once (Yankees, 1978) did the teams split games one and two and the game one winner also won games three and four. More surprisingly, in six of the seven series where the ALDS/ALCS winner won three straight after losing game 1, it won games 3 and 4 on the road! The Yanks turned that trick three times (1996, 2003, 2004). The one exception: the '02 Angels over the Yanks.

The Mess won game one and lost game two on the road in both the '99 and '00 NLDS (D'Backs and Giants, respectively), then took games three and four at home.

Next, the swept outs -- a (slim) possibility raised by the BloSax (who are down just 2-1 just tied the game on back-to-back fatboy HRs in the 4th as I type this). Since divisional play began in 1969, only two defending WS champs had been swept out of the playoffs in their first series the next season: the 1975 A's (who were trying to become the second-ever franchise to win four-straight) and the '02 Diamondbacks (slaughtered by the Cards). Only two other defending pennant winners ('00 Braves, '81 Royals) were knocked out of the playoffs the next season without winning a game. There have been plenty of defending pennant winners or WS champs who made the playoffs the next year, so the universe of possibilities is actually fairly sizeable.

That's all for now.

Good enough for hand grenades and horseshoes

The Monk is 1 for 3 in his ALDS predictions so far: (1) HONKED the prediction that the White Sawx would be done by Saturday -- maybe with the RedSux, but not with the season; (2 and 3) claiming the Yanks would whack the Angels if the pinstripers pitched well -- two good or very good outings by the starters and a 1-1 tie thanks to the crappy defense.

Close, but not really.

More opposition to Miers

This pick is a colossal mistake by the President. In 2015, we'll note the 10-year anniversary of her confirmation with regret.

Mark Steyn notes the reaction of the base.

Peggy Noonan asks what the President was thinking.

Charles Krauthammer says that the nomination is a joke.

Richard Miniter reviews her resume and easily picks another conservative female lawyer out of thin air who is more qualified. He also discusses her inability to see the forest for the trees -- a HORRID trait for a Supreme Court justice.

By contrast, Dan Henninger thinks she's the anti-Souter and a reaction to the Borkings by the Left; he notes bigger issues in the squishy Senate.

Freeh on Clinton

Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, who was appointed by Clinton has just written what Drudge describes as a bombshell book on his tenure. The former POTUS apparently does not come through smelling too fresh.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh says publicly for the first time that his relationship with President Bill Clinton – the man who appointed him – was a terrible one because Clinton’s scandals made him a constant target of FBI investigations. Freeh discloses this and many other details of his dealings with the Clinton White House in a new bombshell book: 'My FBI : Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror' -- set for release next week.
...
In the book, “My FBI,” he writes, “The problem was with Bill Clinton -- the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”

The director sought to distance himself from Clinton because of Whitewater, refusing a White House pass that would have enabled him to enter the building without signing in. This irked Clinton. “I wanted all my visits to be official,” says Freeh. “When I sent the pass back with a note, I had no idea it would antagonize the president,” he tells Wallace.
...
In another revelation, Freeh says the former president let down the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody – the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh. Freeh writes in the book, “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.” Says Freeh, “That’s a fact that I am reporting.”

The most unsavory of those investigations was the one concerning Clinton and Lewinsky. The White House intern had kept a semen-stained dress as proof of her relationship and a Clinton blood sample was needed to match the DNA on the dress. “Well, it was like a bad movie and it was ridiculous that…Ken Starr and myself, the director of the FBI, find ourselves in that ridiculous position,” he tells Wallace. “But we did it…very carefully, very confidentially,” recalls Freeh. As he explains the plan in the book, Clinton was at a scheduled dinner and excused himself to go to the bathroom. Instead of the restroom, he entered another room where FBI medical technicians were waiting to take a blood sample.

Freeh says he was determined to stay on as FBI director until President Clinton left office so that Clinton could not appoint his successor. “I was concerned about who he would put in there as FBI director because he had expressed antipathy for the FBI, for the director,” he tells Wallace. “[So] I was going to stay there and make sure he couldn’t replace me,” Freeh tells Wallace.

Should be a fascinating view on the best politician the US has ever seen who was consumed by his vulgar nature and feckless venality. Not that these revelations will damage his stature with his many adoring fans.

Ronnie Earle Should Not Be a Prosecutor

according to Andrew McCarthy, a former long-serving prosecutor in US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Being a prosecutor is the world's greatest job because it is honest work for the highest cause — service to one's own community. And it is work that has precious little to do with politics.
...
In the four corners of a case, however, none of that mattered a wit. Within those four corners, there were rules and responsibilities. There was recognition that prosecutors have breathtaking power over the lives of those they investigate. Power inarguably vital to the rule of law. But power which, if used recklessly or maliciously, can leave lives in tatters. The lives not only of the innocent and the guilty, but of the justice system itself.

This was especially so in investigations of political corruption. We prosecuted Republicans and Democrats, in about equal measure. The cases were hard, but checking your politics at the door was never hard, for at least two reasons.

First, there tends to be nothing ideological about the crimes committed by politicians. They are a stew of pettiness, greed and above-it-all arrogance over which neither party has a monopoly, and the offensiveness of which cuts across philosophical divides.

Second, some wrongs are simply not intended to be crimes. Among them are political wrongs: sleazy abuses of power, cronyism, most acts of nepotism, half-truths or outright lies in campaigns, etc. In a free society, these get sorted out in our bumptious political system. Usually, absent shades of financial fraud, bribery, and extortion, prosecutors should stay their hands. There are too many real crimes to waste resources on that sort of thing. More significantly, the risk of criminalizing politics would only discourage honest citizens from participating in matters of public concern.

On Earle's egregious transgressions:

So there are certain things that are just flat-out verboten. Most basic are these: to resist public comment about non-public, investigative information; to abjure any personal stake in the litigation that could suggest decisions regarding the public interest are being made to suit the prosecutor's private interests; and — if all that is not Sesame Street simple enough — to remain above any financial or political entanglement that could render one's objectivity and judgment suspect.
...
As Byron York has been reporting on NRO (see here, here, and here), Earle has partnered up with producers making a movie, called The Big Buy, about his Ahab's pursuit of DeLay. A movie about a real investigation? Giving filmmakers access to investigative information while a secret grand-jury probe is underway? Allowing them to know who is being investigated and why? To view proposed indictments even before the grand jury does? Allowing them into the sanctuary of the grand jury room, and actually to film grand jurors themselves? Creating a powerful incentive — in conflict with the duty of evenhandedness — to bring charges on flimsy evidence? For a prosecutor, these aren't just major lapses. They are firing offenses. For prosecutors such as those I worked with over the years, from across the political spectrum, I daresay they'd be thought firing-squad offenses.

By the way for those wags who said "a grand jury indicted DeLay, not Ronnie Earle" they should be reminded that Earle had to go through three grand juries before returning a flimsy money-laundering indictment after his first indictment on conspiracy fell threw due to inapplicable law and a second grand jury refused to indict on money laundering.

Three observations

from the Monk who is out of pocket in lovely Houston today (*cough*dump*cough)

1) If the Yanks lose this ALDS, the first blame goes to Arod -- that muff of the easy grounder in the 6th set the stage for the LAAs comeback. Wang pitched very well, he deserved better.

2) Cano stretched from the wrong foot when Wang had the throwing error in the 7th. Jeter stretched from the wrong foot in game 7 of the '01 WS when Rivera's offline throw helped set up the Snakes' famous rally. Each time, the fielder could not reach the throw b/c his left foot was on the bag -- but you need to stretch from the opposite foot of your glove hand (left hand, right foot).

3) ESPN needs better stat-checkers. Yesterday Jon Miller said that the Angels beat the Twins in 6 in the '02 ALCS, but they won in 5. On Tuesday, a list of the biggest losses by a defending WS champ in its first playoff game defending the crown (in response to the Chisawx win) said only the '75 A's came back to win their series. The '75 Redsux swept the A's in the ALCS; the '73 A's (on same list) came back to win.

Race pimps ignore facts in New Orleans

Deroy Murdock at NRO unloads on race pimps Jesse Jackson, Congressman Charles Barron, Al Sharpton and Congressman Charles Rangel who compared President Bush to the infamous Bull Connor. It's a level of anger that one doesn't typically see with Murdock:

As levees crumbled in New Orleans after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, so, too, tumbled any sense of decorum among key black Democrats. Officials and activists alike are re-submerging the Crescent City in a fact-free torrent of vitriol.

After Rangel's outrageous comparison other black members of Congress did their level best to out-do him:

“This is worse than Bull Connor,” said Rep. Major Owens (D., N.Y.). “Bull Connor didn’t even pretend that he cared about African Americans,” Owens continued. “You have to give it to George Bush for being even more diabolical.” Owens believes that Bush’s faith-based initiatives “made it appear that he cared about black Americans. Katrina has exposed that as a big lie.”

and

Gotham City Councilman Charles Barron (D., Brooklyn), a former Black Panther, said “George Bush is worse” than Connor “because he has more power and he’s more destructive to our people than Bull Connor will ever be…A KKK without power is not as bad as a George Bush with power.” Barron added: “What he did in New Orleans — I mean, that’s worse than what Bull Connor did in his entire career as a racist in the South…Look at these neighborhoods before Katrina hit. Bush made that community what it is. Katrina did the rest, in partnership with Bush, to deliver the final blow.”

Murdock asked the Heritage Foundation to look at the neighborhoods affected. The Heritage Foundation found:
- Across all federal programs, Orleans Parish received $12,645 per capita in fiscal year 2003. At the same time, the national average was $7,089 per capita.
- Among 21 low-income-assistance programs, inflation-adjusted federal poverty spending in Orleans Parish equaled $5,899 per-poor-person in Bill Clinton’s final, full-fiscal-year 2000 budget. By fiscal 2003, such outlays soared to $10,222.
- In 1999, under Clinton, Orleans Parish had 135,429 poor people and a 27.9 percent poverty rate. In 2004, under Bush, 102,636 New Orleanians were poor, while the poverty rate eased to 23.2 percent.

The sad truth is that many of those pulled from rooftops and deposited at the Superdome and Convention Center were poor long before George W. Bush ran for president. They were poor throughout Bill Clinton’s eight years of Truth and Beauty, for which these crackpots probably pine. And they likely would be poor in 2012 had Katrina sputtered, and Hillary Clinton followed John Kerry into the Oval Office.

Largely under black, Democratic leadership, the Crescent City’s poor endured derelict schools (of which Baton Rouge has declared 70 among 127 “academically unacceptable”), fatherless homes, municipal corruption, and, at least until lately, a business-hostile economic climate. These and other factors hobbled low-income New Orleanians. In my 13 visits to one of America’s most seductive locales, I found that part of New Orleans’ enduring allure was its mysterious blend of fragile gentility, an atmosphere of elegant decay, and a sense of potentially imminent misfortune. The music-filled streets with ancient houses that tilted almost subliminally to one side masked far deeper troubles. Addressing them took hard work then, and will take even harder work now. Rather than pitch in, Rangel, Sharpton, Owen, Barron, and other friction-mongers plunge steak knives into old racial wounds and exhume the memory of a long-dead bigot to inflame Americans who hardly need their generosity diluted with venom.
While every American should row forward on behalf of Katrina’s and Rita’s victims, we now must paddle in circles while these race hustlers spill untreated sewage by the barrel. Who does this hurt? The same black New Orleanians whose plight they exploit.

I worry that some have heard these comparisons of Bush to Bull Connor, watched those German Shepherds snarl in black-and-white, shaken their heads in disgust, closed their checkbooks, and moved on. Rather than encourage compassion for those who still desperately need it, Rangel & Co. promote a meat-cleaver-like divisiveness that surely is slowing, not speeding, aid to the Katrina and Rita Zones.

For their counterproductive, hyper-partisan grandstanding, these so-called “black leaders” deserve merciless excoriation from coast to coast.

Amen.

Officially against Miers

I'm going to state this as plainly as possible: I am against Harriet Miers' appointment as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

I am against this appointment because she is not a conservative.

I am against this appointment because she is not a strict constructionist -- the "praise" I saw from one group that she would not take giant leaps beyond prior precedents and instead would have an incremental approach to judging is not reassuring because Justice O'Connor is the leading proponent of incrementalism who has sat on the Court since John Harlan III.

I am against this appointment because it is pure cronyism.

I am against this appointment because it is simple quota-filling as the President's statements in support of her indicate.

I am against this appointment because this President still must EARN his trust on constitutional issues -- of which the Supreme Court is merely the most important battleground.

I am against this appointment because the number of more qualified minorities and women that I can name off the top of my head is too long to ignore: Corrigan, Estrada, Wainwright (Tex.), Jefferson (Tex.), Brown, Owen, Jones, Batchelder, Williams, Blackwell (Ohio Sec'y State), Garza.

I am against this appointment because "real world experience" is a shibboleth devoid of real meaning. District and circuit court judges who have been practicing attorneys before being appointed to the bench all have real world experience too and the black robes do not leech that from their persons.

I am against this appointment because she is not even an appellate advocate, unlike Thurgood Marshall (who was nominated from LBJ's Solicitor General's office).

I am against this appointment because it makes the President seem weak.

I am against this appointment because it is a missed opportunity to change the ideological timbre of the Court -- Miers will not influence the Court's thought processes.

And I am against this appointment because I voted for the President for two reasons: win the terror war, win the judicial appointments that will ensure the Constitution is not weakened by the Court that is supposed to uphold it. I put aside many disagreements with Pres. Bush in my belief that he would get those things done. He's halfway to total failure.

Arizona State University: Brown v. Board of Ed. does not apply here

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education comes the notice below. For more details, click my link to The FIRE on the left side of the screen (just scroll down):

Racial Segregation Lives On at Arizona State University:
Freshman Comp Class ‘For Native Americans Only’

TEMPE, Ariz., October 5, 2005— State-sponsored racial segregation has found a home at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU’s ironically named “Rainbow Sections” of English 101 and 102 have been advertised on flyers and on the university’s website as being open to “Native Americans only.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has written to the university to demand that the classes be opened to all students. Shockingly, this marks the second time in less than four years that FIRE has been forced to protest a racially segregated course at ASU.

“It is appalling that ASU would resurrect segregated classes five decades after Brown v. Board of Education,” stated David French, president of FIRE. “The idea that a class can be ‘separate but equal’ was discredited long ago.”

The “Rainbow Sections” of English 101 and 102, ASU’s freshman composition courses, were advertised as “restricted to Native Americans only” on the faculty webpage of Professor G. Lynn Nelson, the course instructor. A flyer addressed to “Native American Students” states that they “are invited to enroll in special Native American sections of ENG 101 and 102.” It also discusses some of the differences between the special sections and the “standard First Year Composition classes,” making it clear that the special sections offer a different educational experience.

“These sections don’t allow non-Native American students to be part of the unique learning experience they provide,” remarked Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy. “If ASU believes that some Native Americans may benefit from a different kind of writing course, surely the same goes for students of other backgrounds.”

FIRE last wrote to ASU in April 2002 to protest a segregated Navajo history class that limited enrollment to Native American students. At that time, ASU simply dropped the racial restriction in response to FIRE’s letter. FIRE has yet to receive any response to its September 23, 2005, letter denouncing ASU’s latest effort to offer different classes to those of different races, although some mentions of the racial restrictions have silently vanished from ASU’s website.

“This is not a close call,” noted FIRE’s French. “ASU needs to remove these obviously immoral and unconstitutional racial restrictions on enrollment. Does anyone really think that the classes ASU students can take should depend on their ancestry?”

Born in 1987

I remember seeing the first of these lists - "Born in 1980". The most memorable item for me was this: For those born in 1980,

the Vietnam War is as ancient history to them as WWI and WWII or even the Civil War.

I just found out they originate from Beloit College in Wisconsin. Beloit says the list is a reminder that the world view of today's new college students is significantly different from the intellectual framework of those students who entered only a few years earlier. Here's the Born in 1987 list (this year's crop of freshmen). A few choice ones:

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
15. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.
16. Voice mail has always been available.
17. "Whatever" is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.
21. They have always had the right to burn the flag.
22. For daily caffeine emergencies, Starbucks has always been around the corner.
23. Ferdinand Marcos has never been in charge of the Philippines.
27. Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.
28. Michael Jackson has always been bad, and greed has always been good.
29. The Starship Enterprise has always looked dated.
32. Judicial appointments routinely have been "Borked."
37. They have grown up in a single superpower world.
39. American Motors has never existed.
46. British Airways has always been privately owned.
53. They do not remember "a kinder and gentler nation."
54. They never saw the shuttle Challenger fly.
57. Black Americans have always been known as African-Americans.
60. Salman Rushdie has always been watching over his shoulder.
62. Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys.
66. They never saw a Howard Johnson's with 28 ice cream flavors.
67. Reindeer at Christmas have always distinguished between secular and religious decorations.

It ain't Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I'm not thrilled with the Miers selection but dollars to doughnuts its probably a far better selection that anyone a President Gore or a President Kerry would have nominated.

I liked Jonah Goldberg's (NRO) point here - even though Miers may very well be a "reliable conservative vote" -

...Without casting aspersions on others, that's not good enough for me (and it may be grotesquely unfair to Miers). If all that's required is a reliable vote, National Review and the Heritage Foundation have plenty of interns who will do just fine...It says that arguments and due dilligence don't matter. What matters is that "our side" gets its voice on the Court, period.

This sounds to me a bit like the "results-oriented conservatism" some on the web are touting in Miers' defense...Conservatives, I thought, were supposed to believe ideas have consequences, that American institutions -- chief among them the Supreme Court and the Constitution -- have specific and organic roles to play in the culture which depend on intellectual honesty, opposition to cant, and a dispassionate rejection of the politicization of the law. The reliable vote argument -- absent other rationales -- runs counter to all of these.
...
This is not to say I am against reliable votes on the court, but the reason why they are reliable is to me vitally important.

I'm not as bothered as Jonah about results-oriented conservatism but there was an opportunity here to do both get a reliable vote and an exceptional jurist who would help transform the direction of the Court by being a champion of objective originalism. Absent that I WILL take a reliable vote - means we just have to keep winning elections.

Deacon at Powerline has a good point - we aren't the loony moonbat left - we've said our piece. Miers is the nominee. We should move on.

The only realistic scenario in which Miers isn't nominated I think is one where she voluntarily requests that her nomination be withdrawn. Why would she do that? If, contrary to Deacon's sentiments, the conservative outcry surges and she believes that her nomination will do significant damage to her President and the causes she believes in, it may be a possibility. SCOTUS would be the crowning achievement of any legal career and for a woman whose two primary pillars appear to be her work and her faith it would be a pretty big disappointment. So not likely.

However, I would not put it past her - a woman whom many have lauded for her humility and faith - to say my nomination isn't worth the cost of splintering the conservative right and withdraw. That would be I think the consummate act of loyalty and, ironically, probably prove to her critics on the right that we were wrong.

Wrong pick, wrong time

From a conservative perspective, George Will says the Miers nomination deserves NO deference and should be defeated. His latest column rips the President for nominating her and describes why his judgment should not have the trust of conservatives:

. . . the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked -- to insure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance he would be asked -- whether [he concurred that] McCain-Feingold's core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, ``I agree.'' Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, ``I do.''

The President has used his veto on ZERO occasions. More Will:

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Worst of all, the President: (1) validated the identity politics that underlie the execrable Gratz decision by the Supreme Court, and (2) legitimized the flawed notion that the Supreme Court should be some sort of representative institution despite its mission to ensure that the Constitution would NOT be trampled by unbridled majoritarianism. Will explains:

Under the rubric of "diversity" [snip] the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who "legislate from the bench."

* * *
[After noting former Amb. Robert Jordan's claim that Miers had been a victim due to her sex:] Her victimization was not so severe that it prevented her from becoming the first female [managing partner] of a Texas law firm as large as hers, president of the State Bar of Texas and a senior White House official. Still, playing the victim card clarified, as much as anything has so far done, her credentials, which are her chromosomes and their supposedly painful consequences. For this we need a conservative president?

Getting worse by the day.

Don't spend it all in one place

Don't go cuckoo, White Sawx fans, just because your PaleHos are up 12-2 in the 7th and Scott Posednik actually hit a HR -- just ask the Yanks what happened after they won game 3 of the ALCS 19-8 or the '98 Red Sawx after they won the ALDS opener in Cleveland 11-3 or the '96 Braves after they won the WS opener 12-1 at the Stadium or . . .

Strike the Union Jack

I'm not picking on the UK out of spite. But this is cultural suicide:

Race fears spark St. George ban

British prison officers who wore a St. George's Cross tie-pin have been ticked off by the jails watchdog over concerns about the symbol's racist connotations.

The pins showing the English flag -- which has often raised hackles due to its connection with the Crusades of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries -- could be "misconstrued," Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers said in a section on race in a report on a jail in the northern English city of Wakefield.

The banner of St. George, the red cross of a martyr on a white background, was adopted for the uniform of English soldiers during the military expeditions by European powers to recapture the Holy Land from Muslims, and later became the national flag of England.

A section on race relations in Owers' report said: "We were concerned to see a number of staff wearing a flag of St. George tie-pin."

"While we were told that these had been bought in support of a cancer charity there was clear scope for misinterpretation, and Prison Service Orders made clear that unauthorized badges and pins should not be worn."

As one of her formal recommendations Owers said: "Staff should not wear unauthorized badges or pins."

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.

"A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," he told CNN. "They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.

"Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral."

Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with."

HT: LGF

UK surrendering slowly

Blair's resolution to stand firm in Iraq notwithstanding the UK is sinking to new lows in its horribly misguided efforts to avoid offending the vocal Muslim community.

Mark Steyn rips the latest, pathetic act in the UK's slide into doom:

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Steyn helpfully includes a quick recitation of recent events in the UK's embrace of dhimmitude:

When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.

Speaking of bacon, shouldn't that be outlawed next since to Muslims the pig is unclean? As a matter of fact why don't we obliterate pigs altogether? (Wonder where PETA would stand on this one?) Ok perhaps we are just being silly and overreacting - I mean after all it's a trivial thing?

Horsesh*t and Steyn explains why:

Muslims complain about pigs and a design on Burger King ice cream (with a swirl that resembles the Arabic symbol for Allah) and we scramble to accommodate:

...but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight. The Church of England bishops would probably agree with that if, in their own misguided attempt at Islamic outreach, they weren't so busy apologising for toppling Saddam.

When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.

Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?
...
Britain's Islamic minority didn't have the numbers to ban Piglet and change the Burger King menu. Now they do. What will be deemed "unacceptable" in the interests of "tolerance" in 20 or even five years' time?

It has been clear since July 7 that the state has no real idea what to do to reconcile the more disaffected elements of its fastest-growing demographic. But at some point Britons have to ask themselves - while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely - how much of their country they're willing to lose. The Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.

L'Shanah Tovah 5766

Wishing our friends peace, health and prosperity.

Click here for a quick blurb on Rosh Hoshanah.

The Decline of the Church of England

Peter Mullen, the rector of St. Michael's, Cornhill and chaplain to the London Stock Exchange had a wonderful, hard-hitting piece (free registration required) on the decline of the COE in The New Criterion which is a superb monthly.
Mullen presents an excellent synopsis on what's gone wrong with the COE in exceptional prose. Excerpts: (bold = emphasis added)

As we prepare for our Harvest Festival Services, we see that what’s left of the English Church is indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum. Everywhere you peer inside this once refined and educated, lovely and lovable national institution, there is only a mania for self-destruction. How else can you account for church services that compete with pantomime for dramatized idiocy?

Oh my.

They have thrown out the Book of Common Prayer and The Authorized Version of the Bible and substituted dumbed-down, politically correct prayers which sound as if they were written by a committee made up of Tony Blair, Karl Marx, and Noddy.
...
When it comes to Christenings, Weddings, and Funerals, the Church has given up talking to grown-ups and instead produces the sort of touchy-feely guff used in adverts directed at moony adolescents. At the Wedding, for instance, the new official book for every parish, Common Worship, makes the priest pray, “Let them be tender with each other’s dreams.” I think there should be a rubric in the margin saying, “At this point the congregation shall throw up—bride’s family’s side first.” At Christenings they have dropped the renunciation of “the devil and all his works” and there is barely a mention of sin. So what is Holy Baptism for? Only a sentimental prelude to the booze-up and the cake.

Back in the day when I was at university I found a quote (from a Catholic) that I thought so outrageous yet elegantly constructed that I posted it on my door:

"Going to bed with the Episcopalians is like ecclesiastical necrophilia."

[The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion and the American version of the COE.] A bit rough? Not really when you see this:

And, where the traditional Prayer Book’s Holy Communion used to say those unbearably moving holy words “In the same night that he was betrayed,” the new book says, “He had supper with his friends.” I am not making this up. You couldn’t make it up. This is the official worship book of the Church of England.

And,

...[t]he Archbishop’s Council has produced an idiots’ Guide to Common Worship which enables us to dumb down even lower than Saturday evenings on BBC1. “Compline” becomes “Night Prayer.” In case we cannot understand, “O Lord, open thou our lips,” the Guide suggests we print at the start of the service, “We say hello!” And “Con- fession” is retitled, “Doing the dirt on ourselves.”

The description that sticks in my memory:

The whole institution is like a psychotic kindergarten. To this is added a myop- ic, self-righteous arrogance which allows modern clergy to mistake their failed parroting of 1960s corporatism—taxation, intervention, regulation—for prophecy.

How did it all go to hell in a handbasket?

In the early 1960s when I was a young man and a candidate for Ordination, the Church was enjoying something of a revival. The figures for Baptism and Confirmation were all rising steadily along with Sunday congregations. There were more men offering themselves for the priesthood than at any time since before the First World War. So how did the rot set in? There were three main causes: theological, liturgical, and social.
...
First, the 1960s saw the popularization of radical theology largely through the media of paperback books and television documentary programs.
...
The liturgy was next to suffer. W. H. Auden referred to the Book of Common Prayer as the “good luck” of the Church of England and, in the face of its sidelining, asked, “Why spit on our luck?” But spit the authorities did, introducing new rites and ceremonies wholesale...At a stroke this cornerstone of Anglican devotion was removed and usage in the Church came to resemble a new Babel. Suddenly there were four or five versions of the Lord’s Prayer. The result for Christian education, particularly of the young, was catastrophic.
...
Finally, the Church accepted wholesale the new social agenda of permissiveness. Bishops and other leading churchmen urged their congregations to give support to the proposed new Parliamentary Bills to liberalize abortion, divorce, and homosexuality...The old belief that certain actions were prohibited by God’s Commandments was simply passé—something that “modern man come of age” could safely leave behind.
...
Perhaps it is not altogether too late? The Church has been at death’s door before. And the Lord did say that the gates of hell would not prevail. The gates of hell are having a damned good try. But it will take a miracle to revive the Church now.

Always remembering that the enemies are within.

Ronnie Earle - Partisan AND Hack

Travis County Prosecutor Ronnie Earle proved not only that he was a partisan but also an incompetent hack Monday when his flimsy indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay fell apart because, well, there was no CRIME committed. Earle had finally cajoled the last of six grand juries after 34 months of investigations to return an indictment on conspiracy to violate the election code.

The indictment itself is absurd as no law was broken. DeLay and two others are accused of agreeing to send $190,000 of corporate money to the Republican National Committee, which, in turn, donated the same amount of noncorporate money to seven Texas candidates' campaigns. The analysis from former Department of Justice official Barbara Comstock is here. Excerpt:

However, Earle's office has sworn testimony and other exculpatory evidence showing that Congressman DeLay did not have knowledge of the transaction.

In addition:

No corporation or labor organization was indicted in this conspiracy. Neither Jim Ellis nor John Colyandro is a corporation or labor organization.

No corporation or labor organization made a contribution during 60 days of an election.
...

Neither the RNC nor RNSEC constitute a political party under Texas election law. They are considered PACs, just as the DNC is.

Corporations in Texas could have legally made contributions to the RNC or RNSEC during the period in question under Texas election law.

There was no violation of the Texas Election Code. There was no conspiracy. The underlying transaction was legal. Had corporations sent money directly to the RNC or RNSEC, the transaction would be legal. How could anyone conspire to do indirectly what could legally have been done directly?

The National Review in its editorial argued presciently that

These charges probably won’t survive first contact with DeLay’s attorney, who also defended Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in Earle’s crash-and-burn case against her in 1993. Hutchison, up for reelection, insisted on a jury trial. As soon as a jury was chosen, Earle refused to proceed. That judge threw out the case.

They didn't.

In a brief filed yesterday DeLay's attorney noted that the law that Earle cites didn't even apply to the election code until the year AFTER the alleged conspiracy took place.

That left Earle's office frantically scrambling to find new charges. Earle managed to then cajole a just-empaneled grand jury who had heard NOTHING about the charges to return an indictment on money-laundering. This is after he could NOT convince the other grand jury to do the same thing.

The excellent Powerline run-down on Earle's mal-feasance is here.

Nipsey Russell, RIP

A different type of comedian and pioneer, Nipsey Russell was the "poet laureate" of television and one of the first black entertainers to be a regular panelist on TV game shows and talk shows, most notably Match Game PM and To Tell The Truth. He served the US as a captain in the then-segregated Army during WWII (a heinous situation that Pres. Truman, to his credit, rectified after WWII).

Nipsey Russell died Sunday from cancer just 11 days short of his 81st birthday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Harlem.

RIP

Bruising confirmation fight?

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen predicts a bruising confirmation fight for Harriet Miers because

She has no judicial experience. She does not possess a world-class intellect like her would-be predecessor on the Court [Remember: O'Connor was #3 in her class at Stanford -- TKM]. She is a Bush crony at a time when there already is great criticism of the White House for placing into high office friends whose loyalty to the president overshadows their professional competence.

All good reasons. And she pales in comparison to the new Chief Justice:

Unlike Roberts, she wasn’t writing memos in her mid-20s to the attorney general of the United States. Unlike Roberts, she didn’t clerk for the Supreme Court. It is not an accident that Mr. Bush did not talk about Miers’ superior brainpower when he introduced her to the nation Monday morning.

Cohen is right on the details, but wrong on the larger picture. Because Miers is NOT Brown/Owen/Corrigan/Batchelder/Williams, I think the Democrats will look to the alternatives to not confirming her: (1) definite conservative who would be nominated instead of a potential Souter-lite; (2) filibuster fight that the Democrats WILL lose (the public is squarely behind the Republicans on this); (3) negatives from Democrat obstructionism that the Republicans could use in the 2006 mid-term elections. Each factor mitigates against playing hardball with Miers.

Roll Tide

It was a good sports weekend here for us at the Key Monk. In addition to the Yankees making the playoffs with the predicted 95 wins by the Monk

- The #15 Alabama Crimson Tide steamrolled the #5 Florida Gators 31-3 in Tuscaloosa. This was just a beating. The Tide is 5-0 in easily its biggest win since the SEC Championship in 1999. The only downer was speedy junior split end Tyrone Prothro broke his leg in the 4th quarter after landing awkwardly in the end zone and is done for the year.

- The Monk's Nittany Lions walloped #18 Minnesota 44-24 to also go 5-0. It's been a rough run for the Lions but even an old foe like me doesn't mind seeing Joe Pa go on one more good run - (unless, of course, they meet Alabama in a bowl). (This is probably the kiss of death - me rooting for the Lions.)

Stay tuned for more erudite commentary from the Monk.

Stumping for Mo

There should be no talk whatsoever of Bartolo Colon as the probable or possible Cy Young Award winner in the American League. Period.

The baseball media seems to think that just because Colon had the most wins (21-8, 3.48, 1.16 WHIP, .254 BAA, 6.35 K/9 IP) he should be the CYA winner. No dice.

First, there were too many starters who are just as good (or decent) as Colon, including Buerhle (16-8, 3.12), Lackey (14-5, 3.44) and Jon Garland (18-10, 3.50) -- and Garland's numbers are nearly identical in all categories to Colon except strikeouts.

Second, the best starter in the league is not Colon, it's Johan Santana once again (16-7, 2.87, 0.97 WHIP, .210 BAA, 9.25 K/9 IP) and the comparison between the two isn't particularly close.

Third, unlike when Clemens won his sixth CYA in 2001 over a slew of runners-up with similar numbers, there is someone who DID dominate the league on the mound in 2005: Mariano Rivera. From the second week of the season through mid-August, Rivera locked up more than 30-straight saves for the Yanks -- the longest streak in his excellent career. He finished with a career-best 1.38 ERA and allowed only 50 hits in 78.1 IP -- or just 5.74 H/9 IP. He had a career-best in whip (0.87) and second-best ever opponents' batting average (BAA) (.177). And after honking his first two appearances, he held the Yanks together by saving 43 of the next 45 chances he had. Unlike the three times he's finished third in CYA voting (1996 = Hentgen/Pettitte, 1999 = Clemens followed by Pedro, 2004 = Santana followed by Schilling) there are no starters unquestionably deserving of the award. Mo does deserve it, and the Colonification of the Award should cease.

Really, what is the argument FOR Colon other than the fact that he is a starter and Rivera is a closer? If that's all there is, then that is nothing at all considering the vast disparities of their performances. Colon is one of a bunch of good starters but essentially indistinguishable from Buerhle, Garland, and Lackey. He has the third-best ERA of the starters on the LosAnaheim staff and didn't exactly seize the Award by the throat with his 2-2, 6.14 July or his 4-2, 4.91 September. Mo is far and away the best reliever in the league this year (and arguably of his generation).

The vote here is for Mo.

Now, where's my ballot?

Miers on Faith

The Miers selection has many conservatives quite exercised and one can hardly fault them for it. There are a few on the right though who are cautiously optimistic:

Hugh Hewitt calls Miers a solid B+ pick and notes that compared with Souter, Bush 41's "stealth candidate". The difference he points out is that Bush pere took the word of Warren Rudman and John Sununu whereas W has worked closely with Miers for the past five years.

Beldar makes a similar probably more compelling case:

...from Dubya's perspective, Harriet Miers was the one prospective female nominee about whom he personally felt that he could be most certain in predicting what sort of Justice she will become.

One of the points I made on the same day that John Roberts was originally nominated for this same seat was that his past long service to two Republican administrations — mostly in the role of private counselor rather than public advocate, aside from his actual Supreme Court arguments as Deputy Solicitor General — was absolutely crucial to his selection. The same is true of Harriet Miers, only more so. When Dubya looks at her, he doesn't think "blank slate, might be a Souter." He thinks: "I know her, she's been my lawyer through thick and thin, and I know things about her judgment and character that nobody else knows about her, but that leave me entirely comfortable about how she'll turn out as a Justice."

Some interesting and relevant first hand observations from Marvin Olasky at WorldMag (HT: Bench Memos) who's spoken with Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, a close friend of Miers':

In the absence of a clear record, it's important to know who a SCOTUS nominee's friends are. Since Nathan Hecht is a good friend of Miers and also a good guy, that's significant.

Miers has been a member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas for 25 years, where Hecht has been an elder. He calls it a "conservative evangelical church... in the vernacular, fundamentalist, but the media have used that word to tar us." He says she was on the missions committee for ten years, taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: "Nothing she's asked to do in church is beneath her." On abortion, choosing his words carefully for an on-the-record statement, he says "her personal views are consistent with that of evangelical Christians... You can tell a lot about her from her decade of service in a conservative church."

Hecht says about Miers' judicial philosophy: "She's an orginalist -- that's the way she takes the Bible," and that's her approach to the Constitution as well -- "Originalist -- it means what it says." He notes that her legal practice involved writing contracts rather than tort law, so she was always looking at the plain meaning of the words: "Originalist." He also says she's not a social butterfly who will be swayed by Washington dinner table conversation: "She goes to the dinners she's supposed to go to. She's not on the social circuit."

I am going to take Stanley Kurtz' view on Miers for now:

This nomination is a done deal. Why not reap the benefits and hope for the best? The good news is that, if Harriet Miers is what Richard Garnett thinks she is, then we’ll have put her through without a huge confirmation battle. And the president stands to gain in popularity with the center for having avoided a bruising battle.

At this point, conservative perception becomes reality. If we go ballistic now, without any evidence that this was a mistake, then we get a drop in the president’s popularity, and make no difference in who gets onto the court anyway. I think there’s quite a decent chance that Garnett is right about Miers. This could turn into our ultimate stealth triumph. If it’s not–if Miers makes it clear, after a year of what Adler says will be highly revealing decisions, that she is not conservative, then nothing will save the president from the wrath of conservatives. So be it.

But why assume this sort of failure–and do our own side great harm in the process–when there is still every reason to hope–and even believe–that things will not turn out so badly? Don’t get me wrong. I can’t blame folks for grousing–at least for a while. But eventually I think it will become clear that the political logic of the situation calls for cautious optimism. Again, if that turns out to be unjustified, conservative wrath will rightly be unstoppable. But if Miers turns out well, we will have mistakenly shot ourselves in the foot by pulling down the president’s popularity at a critical moment. If it was my pick, I’d have made it differently. But at this point, it is both fair–and politically wise–to give the president the benefit of the doubt.

One of the primary reasons why supporters of Bush love him as much as the Left hates him is that he has a record of making an unpopular choice and sticking by his guns. Do we have faith in the President that presented with a number of extraordinary jurists and at a juncture critical to the future of the Republic that he chose Harriet Miers without due consideration? Does he see something in Miers that he saw in Dick Cheney. Kurtz is right though - as much as many of us would rather it were someone else - Garza in my case - it is now a fait accompli and for lack of a compelling reason I am unwilling to abandon and undercut the President. Call it faith.

The Instaprof: Dead Wrong

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds honked his Miers analysis today. He noted negative right-wing reaction to her nomination to the Supreme Court and said:

Democrats, seeing this sort of complaint from Bush's own supporters, are likely to smell blood. It's early to start the handicapping, but this is a nomination that -- unlike John Roberts' -- is starting out in trouble.

This is completely wrongheaded. If the Democrats are savvy (remember, the Republicans are the stupid party), they'll happily approve her nomination because if there's anything WORSE than a Bush nominee that the Right hates, it's a Bush nominee that the Right LOVES. The Kossacks (we do NOT link that nutter on this site) understand this principle.

Understand Prof. Reynolds? The best the Dems can hope for is a stealth nominee because each of the post-WWII stealth nominees have turned out to be traitors to the President's party (Warren, Brennan [who was a Democrat but nominated by Ike], White, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter). Their feeling is that conservative legal thought is the Troy that ends up sacked by the Trojan Horse candidates, and they've a long track record to rely upon.

Therefore, the Democrats would be smart to jump in line behind Harry Reid, confirm Miers and watch what happens. Only if the President has outsmarted them yet again will they be dismayed. From the strained choruses of Miers' defenders and supporters, it seems more likely that my dismay will continue for as long as Justice Miers is on the Court than any other outcome will happen.

Playoff factoids -- ALDS/NLDS version

In honor of the baseball playoffs, here are some interesting facts about the League Divisional Series since 1995:

The Yankees and Braves have each played in 10 divisional series to date. The Yanks are 7-3 (7-2 under Torre) and the Braves are 6-4. The Braves have lost their last three NLDS matchups and four of five. The most frequent clash has been Braves-Astros and the Braves are 3-1. They rematch last year's Astros win starting Wednesday. The Yanks' most frequent opponent is still the Texas Rangers (1996, 1998, 1999). The Yanks won all three series.

Under Torre, the Yanks are 4-5 in the first game of an ALDS. When they've won game 1, they're 2-2 in the series (swept Texas in '98, '99; lost to Cleveland in '97, Anaheim in '02). When the Yanks have lost game 1, they've won all five series (1996, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004).

The second most frequent participants in the ALDS are the RedSawx (3-2 entering this year), even though they've only won one division title since 1995, and the Indians (3-3). The Sawx have won the wild card berth five times, including this season. The NLDS' second-most frequent fliers are the Cardinals (4-1) and Astros (1-4), also with six appearances including this year.

The Oakland A's are the only team in baseball history to play a deciding game 5 four years in a row in the ALDS. The A's are 0-4. They are the only team to lose in five after winning games 1 and 2 on more than one occasion (2001, 2003). The RedSawx are the only team to win twice after falling down 0-2 (1999, 2003). The Yanks are the only team to be both victim and victor (1995, 2001). The Yanks and Sawx have been involved in all four comebacks from 0-2 down.

The NLDS has had only four series go the full five games, out of 20. All four have been since 2001. The ALDS has had eight of 20 go to the limit and of those eight, four have been comebacks from 0-2 deficits. The NLDS has had nine sweeps, the ALDS has had five.

The biggest upset (keep dreaming Padres fans) based on win-differential is Cubs (88-74) over Braves (101-61) in 2003. The largest difference in the AL is Orioles (88-74) over Indians (99-62) in 1996.

Most importantly for all the playoffs: of the 10 teams with the best record in baseball since 1995, only one (1998 Yankees) has won the World Series. This year's target is the Cardinals (100-62).

Too right by half: David Frum on Miers and Bush

David Frum hits the nail on the head this morning with his reaction to the Miers appointment by noting how it fits within a larger framework of Bush appointments:

[It is not] safe for the president's conservative supporters to defer to the president's judgment and say, "Well, he must know best." The record shows[,] I fear[,] that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.

Conservatives have expressed unhappiness with the nomination of Julie Myers for the top immigration-enforcement slot, but there are dozens and maybe hundreds of similarly troubling choices, from the Cabinet on down.

Again and again, George Bush has announced bold visionary policies--and again and again he has entrusted the execution of those policies to people who do not believe in them or even understand them. This is most conspicuously true in foreign policy, but it has been true in domestic policy as well. The result: the voice is the voice of Reagan, but too often the hands are the hands of George HW Bush.

Or worse. George H. W. Bush made his bad appointments in the name of replacing Reaganite "ideology" with moderate Republican "competence." He didn't live up to his own billing, but you can understand his intentions. But the younger Bush has based his personnel decisions upon a network of personal connections in which competence does not always play the largest part.

The real Republican quota: Supreme Court picks

It is official: President Bush has nominated Harriet Ellan Miers to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

This is an unmitigated disaster of a pick.

First, she's a Bush friend and that speaks badly of an administration constantly accused of excessive cronyism.

Second, she has no record as a conservative. At least a top legal mind off the bench with a track record of conservative legal thought would appease the base such that the Right would feel secure it is getting one of its own on the bench. People who know her (The Monk works with some of her former colleagues) say she is a moderate, at best. Her past political contributions include money to Al Gore and Lloyd Bentsen (both 1988). I'd discount her moderate contributions to Republicans in Texas in recent years because Dallas is a Republican county -- "Democrats" switch parties to get elected.

Third, she's a token not a representative of the excellent ranks of female jurists (Brown, Owen, Jones, Batchelder) or legal thinkers (e.g., Lillian BeVier) in this country. As Ramesh Ponnuru notes:

It's an inspiring testament to the diversity of the president's cronies. Wearing heels is not an impediment to being a presidential crony in this administration! I can only assume that the president felt that his support was slipping in this important bloc, and he had to do something to shore it up.

Fourth, she's a manager, not a top lawyer. Unlike Roberts, Miers has been outside the trenches for more than a decade. She was the managing partner of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in Dallas (which had begun its downslide before she took the reins) and arranged its merger with the smaller but more competitive Liddell Sapp Zivley Hill & LaBoon into the larger Texas firm Locke Liddell & Sapp, of which she became co-managing partner. LLS is now dominated by the Liddell Sapp side and has been ever since she left for Washington.

Finally, this is a missed opportunity: the chance to really put a conservative stamp on the Court, re-assert the primacy of the President in the nominations process and shift the Court to the right after its unseemly drift to the left in the past three or four years.

For some reason, each Republican President since World War II has had the uncanny ability to appoint a stealth liberal (or two) to the Supreme Court. That's the Republican Quota. Eisenhower appointed Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan, men whom he later called his two worst mistakes of his presidency (The Monk has great respect for Brennan despite innumerable disagreements). Nixon appointed Blackmun who became the embodiment of weepy liberalism. Ford appointed Stevens, who was not particularly conservative at any point, is hostile to free speech and has long since gone off the deep end. Reagan appointed Kennedy, who looks to foreign laws to justify supporting liberal policies as constitutional rights. Bush pere appointed Souter. Bush fils has now appointed Miers.

Michelle Malkin parallels Harriet Miers to the unqualified Julie Myers -- the Homeland Security nominee.

Mark Levin sums the nomination up very well:

The president and his advisors missed a truly historic opportunity to communicate with the American people about their government, the role of all three branches of the federal system, and the proper function of the judiciary. More importantly, they have failed to help the nation return to the equipoise of our constitutional system. And the current justices whose arrogance knows no bounds will be emboldened by this selection. They will see it as affirmation of their "extra-constitutionalism." The president flinched. Some have compared have compared profligate spending to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. But no one will accuse him of FDR's boldness when it comes to the Supreme Court.

If people are disappointed, they have every reason to be.

October Surprise - Harriet Miers for SCOTUS

President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers, 60, to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Monday morning nomination seems to have most back on their heels.

National Review is not happy about it.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is 'underwhelmed'.

John Hinderaker at Powerline doesn't like it either citing Republican's abysmal record with 'stealth nominees', e.g., Souter, Kennedy.

One of the great strengths of this President is he does absolutely what he thinks is right and to hell with the conventional wisdom. He also astounds friend and foe alike - John Roberts was a pretty big surprise and this is a bigger one. She's a highly regarded lawyer but has never been a judge and has virtually no paper trail. It will be hard for the Democrats to filibuster which probably had some bearing on the President's thinking but less so than most would assume I'd imagine.

Miers was Bush's point person in the SCOTUS selection process - as was Dick Cheney for VP - well that didn't work out too badly.

Here's a funny from Tim Graham at the Corner:

You know that you've been caught flat-footed in the White House press corps when you're left filling air like NBC's Kelly O'Donnell this morning, who guessed that Bush and Miers had formed a one-on-one "bond" over clearing brush at the ranch. Miers, she said was athletic, "very physical." In the last administration, you couldn't use the terms "one-on-one bond" and "very physical" in the same passage without giggles and lawyers.

Confusion of A Monk

OK, here's the issue: the MLB schedule for the playoffs is odd.

You see, usually the schedule rotates the League Championship Series schedule. League 1 goes Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Tuesday-Wednesday; League 2 goes Wednesday-Thursday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday-Wednesday-Thursday. Last year, the ALCS had the early schedule, the NLCS had the later. In 2003, the NLCS had the earlier start, and the ALCS had the later.

The problem? This year the ALCS is the early schedule for the second year in a row.

How can The Monk tell? Because of the ALDS schedule: it's the same as 2004 - Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday for both matchups.

Why does this matter? Because since baseball went to a three-round playoff in 1995, the team from the league whose championship series ended earlier has won 8 of the 9 World Series (in one year the LCS ended the same date). The NL seems to have a complaint.

For more confusion, here's The Monk's predictions for the first round:

First, the Yankees will win if they get decent starting pitching. Is Mike Mussina able to provide that? Jury is still out. The Angels are the second-worst matchup for the Yanks in any series, other than the Red Sox, but are worse in a three-of-five series because they have something the RedSawx lack -- an outstanding bullpen. This could be the best of the four divisional series.

In the battle of the Sawx there should be anticlimaxes only. Ozzie Guillen claimed that the Indians are better than the RedSawx or Yanks before he tried to tank game one of Chicago's three-game season-ending series against Cleveland by sitting seven of his nine regular starters. But Chicago's starters thwarted Guillen's plans and Cleveland's hitters. Nonetheless, the Palehose's manager should regret his statement real quickly -- in four games or less. The WhiteSawx have no hitting, a funky closer situation and starters who have had career years. None of which translates to playoff success (three words: 2001 Seattle Mariners). The BloSax have two of the most dangerous hitters in the playoffs and they can flat-out hit good pitching (BTW, does it detract from Ortiz's MVP candidacy when Manny gets nearly the same average-homers-RBI? The Monk says yes), especially in Fenway. Just ask the Angels how quickly the Blosax can make a tight game a foregone conclusion.

In the NL, the Cardinals should be peeved: the set-up of their series with the Padres (Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday) allows the Pads to set a three-man rotation and definitely get Jake Peavy two starts on full rest in games 1 and 4. Then again, the Cards will have Chris Carpenter doing the same and he's the likely NL Cy Young winner. Given the talent and ability disparity, there shouldn't be a game four and the Cards should be well-rested for an NLCS rematch with . . .

. . . the Astros. Why? The 'Stros are getting some hitting from Jason Lane, Lance Berkman is back and the Astros have four things that the Braves lack answers for: Clemens, Pettitte, Oswalt and Lidge. It shows how good a manager Bobby Cox is that these Braves won 90 games. Yeah, it's repetitive, but 'Stros in four.

Credit where it's due

In light of the Yanks' win yesterday that clinched their 8th-straight division title, the Yankees' brain trust deserves huge credit for its in-season adjustments that helped turn the season around.

At the beginning of the year, the Yanks seemed stocked as long as their starters stayed healthy. So much for that: Jared Wright had a three-month stint on the DL, Kevin Brown stank and then went on the DL for more than half the season, Carl Pavano struggled with gopher balls and lack of arm strength -- the latter landed him on the DL in June and he's resided there since. Even the usually impervious Mooooooooooose missed a stack of starts.

The beginning was putrid: the worst 30-game start (11-19) since the dark days of the mid-late 60s (1966). The shake-up smacked of desperation: promoting Chien-Ming Wang and Robinson Cano, demoting Bernie Williams to a part-timer and having Tony Womack wander around the outfield. But Wang responded (8-5, 4.02) and Cano (.295-14-62 and .381 in September) deserves the Rookie of the Year votes he'll get behind Huston Street and Tad Iguchi.

The genius of this team came from professionalism, desire and heart -- in other words, Torre. Giambi went from scrap-heap to a 32 HR, 87 RBI year through hard work with Don Mattingly. Johnson reconfigured his between-start workouts and saw his ERA go down and fewer HR off his pitches. Brian Cashman traded for Shawn Chacon (7-3, 2.76), and Chacon helped ignite the Yanks with his grit on the mound and those dipping and moving sinkers that didn't dip and move in Colorado. And Aaron Small (10-0, 3.20) of all people, who had previously aspired to journeyman status, became a reliable starter and solid reliever while doing something Yankees' pitchers had lost sight of before his arrival: just throwing strikes.

Yes, the hitting was always there with Jeter (.308, 122 R, 19 HR), Arod (.320-48-130-21), Sheff (.291-34-123) and G'Zilla (.304-23-116). And Gordon did well; Rivera was awesome (he should win the Cy Young Award). But no pitching to reach the end of the bullpen means no playoffs (two words: Texas Rangers).

So spread the credit: Torre, Stottlemyre, Mattingly, Cashman. As the Tampa braintrust's master plan unraveled, the field officers took over and guided the team to another playoff appearance under the most unlikely circumstances of the Torre Era.

That's why Torre should be Manager of the Year in the most difficult divisional race of his 10 years in pinstripes.