DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, SEXY!

CONSERVATIVES CHORTLE as the Harvard Arts & Sciences faculty votes no confidence in Larry Summers. Stanley Kurtz:

I think the vote of no confidence in Lawrence Summers is a wonderful thing. Harvard continues to discredit itself with the American public. The faculty is trapped. If Summers resigns, this extraordinary example of political correctness will come back to haunt Harvard, and the entire academy, for years. But if Summers hangs on, the faculty itself will have been humiliated–checked by the very fact of public scrutiny. Either way, Harvard is tearing itself apart. So long as the public simply writes of the academy, the mice can play. But the intense public scrutiny in this case puts the captains of political correctness into a no-win situation. Like the closely watched Susan Estrich fiasco, this battle is doing lasting damage to the cultural left. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Summers is an awfully smart man. Could this have been his plan all along?

Meanwhile, Richard Bennett looks at one of Summers’ critics and asks: “What kind of a man supports the presidency of Babangida but not that of Summers?” A bit harsh, perhaps, but I do think that this will work out badly for the Harvard faculty.

James Joyner piles on.

UPDATE: Power Line: “The vote essentially represents the conviction of President Summers for not believing in the gods of the city.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Bray notes that the vote was close. I suppose that’s heartening, but for all I know, the legendary state legislative vote to make pi equal to three was close, too. . . . It’s not the vote count that people remember.

IPODDING ALONE: Thoughts in response to Andrew Sullivan.

A CULTURAL REVOLUTION in North Korea.

IT’S A TRANSPARENT TROLLING TWO-FER for John Dvorak, who launches rather weak slams at both bloggers and Mac fans.

BRIAN DUNN’S PREDICTION: “The Chinese will invade Taiwan.” I certainly hope not.

UPDATE: Many readers are skeptical of Dunn’s analysis, but reader Jim Satterfield isn’t:

Think on this possible scenario. The Chinese consider it a very minor possibility that we would do anything to defend Taiwan. But just to cover their bases they won’t move until we represent a small enough portion of their foreign trade to where they think they can take the hit by appealing to nationalism. First they will launch a massive distraction by nationalizing every American company in China and simultaneously flooding the world currency markets with their dollar reserves while stopping the acquisition of dollars. The resultant economic crash in the U.S. will pretty much guarantee that there won’t be any military action taken except if America was to be attacked directly. Tyrants full of themselves and desirous of retaking what they view as their wayward territory won’t necessarily stop long enough to think through the long term economic repercussions even to themselves.

Seems we could short-circuit the possibility by giving the Taiwanese nukes. And it would be payback for Iran . . . .

IRANIAN WOMEN: Two different looks. I think I know which one has more of a future.

MY EARLIER POST on why I like Charles Stross’s writing goes nicely with this post by Stephen Bainbridge. He says he’s pre-ordered The Hidden Family. And he offers a cogent explanation of why he likes Stross even though Stross’s politics differ sharply from his. (And he offers wine advice for Stross’s next work . . . .)

I’m probably in between the two, both politically and in terms of wine knowledge(I had actually noticed the same mistake Bainbridge points out), but I’m still enjoying this book, which is starting to remind me a bit of Tim Powers’ Declare. Which is a good thing.

IAIN MURRAY CALLS FOR LEON KASS’S RESIGNATION:

Recently, I wrote a column here calling on Dr. Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because he was using his position to push a political agenda. Sadly, I now must bring the same argument against a scientist I otherwise very much admire, Dr. Leon Kass, Chairman of The President’s Council on Bioethics. His recent decision to draft a political strategy aimed at achieving certain policy goals renders his position as an honest broker on the issue untenable. Yet there is a lesson to be learned from these unfortunate incidents: Science and politics cannot be separated as neatly as scientists and policy makers think.

According to The Washington Post, Dr. Kass has teamed up with Eric Cohen, editor of the excellent journal of science, politics and philosophy The New Atlantis, to devise “a bold and plausible ‘offensive’ bioethics agenda…[aimed at] tak[ing] advantage of this rare opportunity to enact significant bans on some of the most egregious biotechnological practices.”

The merits of Dr. Kass’s preferred policies are irrelevant here. The problem is that by hitching his star to a particular set of policies he has breached the trust set in him by the President, whose executive order creating the council asked it to “explore specific ethical and policy questions related to these developments; [and] to provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues.” At the very least, by sheer virtue of his position, his favored policies are more likely to get a hearing than those of other well-qualified bioethicists who do not have the authority of such an office (a point well made by Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado here). Such a prospect would seriously undermine in the principle of “procedural justice” — the right of all sides of a political argument to be heard without fear or favor.

You can read an earlier column of mine on Kass, here.

UPDATE: And read this post by Virginia Postrel, which suggests that Kass is just coming out of the closet, now.

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Q. Wilson, who serves on the Kass Council, emails to say that he thinks I, and other Kass critics, are being unfair, and that the Council, while not “objective,” is procedurally fair. So is Wilson a dupe, or am I an idiot? Faced with that choice, you’d be wise to bet on me being an idiot, of course. . . .

IN THE MAIL: Jerome Corsi’s new book, Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians. Looks pretty, um, explosive.

BIG MEDIA CRUSHES A BLOGGER: IN INDIA. I suspect that this will simply encourage a lot of anonymous gossip-blogs to form, and pay close attention to the goings-on at The Times of India and its corporate affiliates.

And it’ll serve ’em right if it does.

HOW TO SPOT A flourishing political movement.

JEFF JARVIS: “I’m white. I’m male. I blog. You got a problem with that? Tough. . . . Levy challenges the blogosphere to find 50 new voices to link to. I’ll turn it around, Steven: Let’s see you and Newsweek find and quote and listen to and link to 50 new voices never heard before in mainstream media every week.”

THE IMPRISONED BAHRAINI BLOGGERS have been released, as Bahrain makes some pro-democracy moves.

INSIDE HIGHER ED has more on the Horowitz story. The Gloria Reynolds in the story is no relation.

LOTS OF GOOD STUFF AT THE BELMONT CLUB: Just keep scrolling.

HEALTHCARE BLOGGING! This week’s Grand Rounds is up. And, just in case that’s not enough for you, here’s a blog entirely about colonoscopies!

CARNIVAL OF THE CANADIANS: This week’s Red Ensign Standard is up.

JULIA GORIN ASKS IF LIBERTARIANS HAVE MORE FUN: Some of us do!

GEORGE W. BUSH: Hero of the Arab Street?

A LEBANON ROUNDUP, over at GlennReynolds.com.

AUSTIN BAY: I told you so!

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF posts his regular roundup of good news from Iraq and observes:

Is the situation in Iraq getting better? It’s not really up to me to answer that question, but I can try to answer another one: is reporting from Iraq getting better? To find out, I decided to look back at the past installments of this series and do a little count. For the sake of simplicity I started with Part 6, which happened to be the first one to be also published by the “Opinion Journal”. When printed out, that July 19, 2004 edition of “Good news from Iraq” is 10 and a half pages long, and contains links to 71 “good news” stories. Since then, the length of each installment has fluctuated, but the overall trend has been up. So much so that the “Good news from Iraq” you’re reading now is 23 and a half pages long and contains 178 links to “good news stories.”

The same trend is evident in my “Good news from Afghanistan”. The first installment published by the “Opinion Journal” (and second overall in the series) of July 26, 2004, was 6 and a half pages long when printed out and contained 55 links. The latest one, number 10 of March 7, 2005, is 19 pages long and contains 124 links.

Either there is more and more good news coming out of both Iraq or Afghanistan, or the reporters are getting increasingly optimistic about the situation there, or both. Whatever’s the answer, it’s good news.

Read the whole thing . . . if you have time!

WHO KNEW? Apparently, I’m a shill for the Ward Churchill crowd. “Glenn Reynolds is a university professor with a vested interest in this issue.”

UPDATE: Or maybe not — see his response in the comments. And there’s no reason to be nasty to him, anyway.

CLAUDIA ROSETT POSTS a report from Beirut.