Cold Type

Cuddle Puddles

Jennifer Roback Morse on the "gay gene":

A recent New York magazine article on the Cuddle Puddle at Stuyvesant High School unwittingly undermines the legal strategy of the Gay Rights movement. Because the article chronicles the sexual adventures of a group of metero-exual students, you might think it would fall squarely in the pro-homosexual camp. Nonetheless, a close read of the piece completely dismantles one of the leading claims made by the gay rights legal strategists: the claim that sexual orientation is a fixed trait.

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Unearthing Redemption

Thomas S. Hibbs reviews Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada on National Review Online:

The film's implicit questions, which transcend politics, concern our treatment of the dead, where they rest and why we remember them. There are indeed three burials: the first is illegal but socially acceptable because the dead man is insignificant to the community; the second is legal but fails to fulfill what is due out of friendship; and the third fulfills what this debt, surpassing mere legality, in a quasi-sacramental way, the efficacy of which is intended not just for the dead man, but even more for those who must go on living.

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Is a War Going on in Texas?

Phyllis Schlafly on the border wars:

If you don't have access to Texas newspapers or the internet, you may not have heard the sensational news about the enormous cache of weapons just seized in Laredo, Texas. U.S. authorities grabbed two completed Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), materials for making 33 more, military-style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bullet-proof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics, and cash.

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Spineless European Politicians

Jennifer Roback Morse finds the needle in the haystack:

“Spineless European politician” is such a common image that an author can safely omit the first word if under a word-count crunch.  So it is definitely newsworthy when the Prime Minister of Denmark shows some serious spine, by standing up to the world of howling Muslim street thugs. His country deserves our support.

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Killing, Too, Is a Medical Matter

Hadley Arkes, Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College and a contributor to The Meaning of Marriage, among other Spence books, responds to the recent Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide in Oregon:

The aversion to self-killing or self-murder, the enduring concern about doctors using their powers to end life—all of that is simply diminished now as “one reasonable understanding of medical practice,” no more right or wrong than anything else. To incorporate that understanding at the top of the State, in the national government, is to do nothing less than to erode the conviction that has firmed up the laws for the protection of life at the center and the periphery in this country. If the assistance of suicide is regarded as just another “reasonable understanding of medical practice,” why should that view of things not begin to seep into parts of the federal establishment? Why should it not come to affect the understandings that prevail in military hospitals or in divisions of the National Institutes of Health?

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Superbowl XL

Robert H. Knight watched the Superbowl. It wasn't pretty:

Some people's idea of Hell consists of having to repeat a pattern for eternity, never to escape.

I thought about that while watching Mick Jagger dance around the giant lips and tongue cutout on the floor of Ford Field during the Super Bowl XL halftime.

I don't mean us, the audience, repeating the pattern. I mean Mick. He's boasted out loud of cutting deals with the Devil, and you have to wonder whether the Devil is starting to call in his chips, even before the Grim Reaper makes the scene.

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Obediphobia

Jennifer Roback Morse on the beginning of wisdom:

If offered a choice between being famous and being wise, most college kids would look at you like you’d lost your mind. No contest. Fame trumps wisdom, every time.

I submit there is a reason we lack wisdom. We are afraid of legitimate authority. In fact, many in our culture question whether any authority really is legitimate. Therefore, we have no concept that obedience can be a virtue. As a matter of fact, obeying your parents can be the simplest and most straightforward way of gaining wisdom.

Yes, you heard it here, on a conservative, semi-libertarian website: obedience can be a virtue. Obedi-phobia is a cultural and personal disaster. Don’t bother looking it up: I just invented it. Obedi-phobia means a pathological fear of obedience to legitimate authority.

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Lingering in Prison

Phyllis Schlafly on a questionable rape conviction:

William J. Hetherington has been incarcerated in Michigan prisons for more than 20 years for having sex with his wife Linda. In 1986, he became the first man in Genesee County convicted of the new Michigan crime called spousal rape.

Linda was not a battered wife; she testified at the trial that he had never beaten her in their 16 years of marriage. Hetherington was honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force, received a National Defense Service Medal, and had no police record of any sort.

The sentencing guideline for this new offense was 12 months to 10 years. But, without showing cause, the judge sentenced him to 15 to 30 years (twice the time served by the average convicted rapist in Michigan). Twenty years later, despite an exemplary prison record, the parole board routinely refuses to parole him, giving as its sole reason "prisoner denies the offense."

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Go Left, Young Man

Robert H. Knight on the Oscars:

All in all, with a few exceptions, including a Best Animated Feature nomination for "Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit," Hollywood continued its tradition of rewarding largely left-wing projects, actors and directors.

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A New FAMS?

Annie Jacobsen on the resignation of the lackluster director of the Federal Air Marshal Service, Thomas Quinn:

Director Quinn has been no stranger to bad press during his time at the helm of the agency, but this past November-January was a particularly rough season. To an agency that counts on remaining unseen, unheard and undercover, the public spotlight is not a welcome beacon. In November 2005, writing for WomensWallStreet.com, I revealed that Quinn maintained two corporations—both in forfeited franchise tax status—which could put him at odds with government conduct codes. (Quinn originally denied having these corporations but, according to FAMS spokesman Dave Adams, after reading my article, "his [Quinn's] memory was jarred.") In December 2005, the Christian Science Monitor reported on numbers that the FAMS had been working hard to conceal: possibly fewer than 3,000 air marshals cover some 25,000 daily flights. And Vanity Fair, in its February 2006 issue, published an unflattering portrait of the director, including the fact that "the man in charge of one of America's key countermeasures to attacks carried out largely by Saudi nationals worked for the Saudi Arabian royalty" before he became director. Rebellion in the ranks was taking hold, and information was making its way into the public eye.

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