The Nobel Go(e)ring Of Science

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com This is what happens when science is "advanced" by polls, as opposed to...you know, science: But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous meta-analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in 2001 by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no significant effect on mortality. Does anyone see any parallels to current events--e.g., the supposed "scientific concensus" on global warming? Rand Simberg at Transterestrial Musings notes: Of course, it doesn't mean that all theories have this problem. But it does mean that we are entitled to a little skepticism when we are told that there is a scientific consensus. Particularly when we are bullied into believing it, and treated like heretics in our skepticism, and there are some other potential agendas at play. In general, it is probably always wise to be skeptical of science when it is promoted by politics--or polls.

On Being Stoned

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Ibn Warraq had the best quip of the evening: 'I don't want to live in a society where I get stoned for committing adultery. I want to live in a society where I get stoned. And then commit adultery.'

The Brutal Rule

clipped from www.nypost.com The rule is brutal, but ironclad. If you don't kill the killers, the killers will kill you. Musharraf, who should've known better, has learned that lesson the hard way. But the price has been radicalization and violence in Pakistan's major cities, hundreds of soldiers taken hostage, the torture and beheading of military prisoners, growing casualty lists - and frontier tribes more confident than ever that they can resist the central government. What's the worst thing that could happen now? That would be if Musharraf folded and, faced with mounting casualties, called off the current military offensive. But Musharraf is hardly alone in his dilemma. The worst thing that the United States could do would be to imagine that, if we quit the fight, we could find an accommodation with Islamist terrorists. Appeasement has never worked, and it never will. This is a war to the death.

Any Sport Except Hockey

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com I'm just running through the blogs before I head to the airport this morning, and my partner Mitch noticed something amiss at the University of Minnesota. The U recently adopted the policy that they would not allow their sports teams to compete against schools that used Native American references for team names or mascots, part of the political-correctness movement in Academia that continues to aim at the most pointless targets in the US. The U has followed dutifully along, to no one's great surprise. However, one has to wonder about the priorities of the administration when reading this: A University of Minnesota policy discouraging the school's athletic teams from competing against the University of North Dakota in any sport except hockey will stand. At least we can see the limits of political correctness at the U of M. It isn't bound by reason, but by cash.

Heh.

We Saw Nothing!

clipped from www.nytimes.com On Monday, journalists toured the agricultural center at the government’s invitation to prove, Mr. Mehdi said, that no nuclear weapons program or Israeli attacks occurred there. “The allegations are completely groundless, and I don’t really understand where all this W.M.D. talk came from,” Mr. Mehdi said, referring to weapons of mass destruction. “There was no raid here — we heard nothing,“ he added. An entourage of the center’s employees lined up with him to greet the journalists. In a seemingly choreographed display, they nodded in agreement and offered their guests recently picked dates as tokens of hospitality.

UmmHmm...

No End In Sight

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com MIchael Barone surveys the disgraceful state of our major colleges and universities. Barone elegantly summarizes the problems -- speech codes, racially discriminatory admissions policies, dishonest administrators, domination of humanities departments by leftist professors intent on portraying American society as evil -- and shows how these phenomena are inter-related. Thus, speech codes protect the feelings of students admitted with relatively poor credentials pursuant to racial quotas. Meanwhile, administrators must insist that they aren't using racial quotas in admissions, so that to be an administrator at one of these elite institutions "you have to be willing to lie about what you consider one of your most important duties." But it isn't really lying because, as the humanities department has explained, "truth" is merely a construct of our racist, sexist, homophobic, and imperialistic society. Thus, the rot continues to spread, with no end in sight.

The Lesser (Dead) Infidel(s)

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com If you were to sort the victims of radical Muslims by religious affiliation, fellow Muslims would be in first place. I haven't tried to do the math, but I'd guess that Hindus are probably second. If you're an atheist, take no comfort: they may come for the Hindus first, but they'll get to you before long. In the Middle East, Arab Christians have, sadly, generally sided with their fellow Arab Muslims against Israeli Jews. Not that this has done them any good. They are infidels: A prominent Palestinian Christian activist was found dead on a Gaza City street Sunday, sending a shudder of fear through a tiny Christian community feeling increasingly insecure since the Islamic Hamas seized control last summer. The body of Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, bore a visible gunshot wound to the head, and an official at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said he was also stabbed numerous times.

Rushdie On Hirsi: Tolerance Of Intolerance Is Cowardice

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Here via David Frum and the Los Angeles Times, is some of what Salman Rushdie has to say about the situation: Hirsi Ali may be the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. As such, she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice. The Dutch government should recognize a scandal in the making and rediscover its obligation to provide Hirsi Ali with the protection she was promised. There is not a person alive more deserving of the freedoms of speech and conscience we take for granted in the West, nor is there anyone making a more courageous effort to defend them.

My Checkbook Is Ready If Needed

clipped from www.slate.com The Dutch parliament debates this question later this week, and I hope that its embassies hear from people who don't regard this as an "internal affair" of the Netherlands. If a prominent elected politician of a Western country can be left undefended against highly credible threats from Islamist death squads, what price all of our easy babble about not "appeasing terrorists"? Especially disgraceful is the Dutch government's irresponsible decision to announce to these death squads, without even notifying Hirsi Ali, that after a given date she would be unprotected and easy game. (Lest I inadvertently strengthen this deplorable impression, let me swiftly add that at present she is under close guard in the United States.) Suppose the narrow and parochial view prevails in Holland, then I think that we in America should welcome the chance to accept the responsibility ourselves.

Why isn't yours also?

The Teat

clipped from instapundit.com "So executive vice-presidents' families are now the new new poor? I support lower taxes for the Frosts, increased child credits for the Frosts, an end to the 'death tax' and other encroachments on transgenerational wealth transfer, and even severe catastrophic medical-emergency aid of one form or other. But there is no reason to put more and more middle-class families on the government teat, and doing so is deeply corrosive of liberty."

The Choice

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk The families housed in the resort's 535 villas are all known to Hamid through tribal or family connections. His wife is a cousin of Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha, the influential leader of the Anbar Awakening movement who was killed last week after meeting President George W Bush. "What we are doing is like Sheikh Sattar," he said. "He prevented insurgents from his area and then sheikh by sheikh, step by step, he got other areas to rise up against al Qa'eda too. What choice did he have? His father, three brothers, four cousins were all killed. What choice do we all have?"

The Condition Of Neurosis

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The review describes "my" patriotism as: the habitual resort to the ideal of dissent "against the nation for the nation" [which] can easily become indistinguishable in practice from yet another manifestation of the Great Refusal, in which the second "nation" is a purely imaginary one to be "achieved"-and the "troops" one "supports" are entirely distinct from the actual causes for which they are risking their lives, and such "support" shows no respect for the series of conscious choices that made them into "troops" rather than civilians. The ultimate irony of this process is that the Left's countercultural definition of patriotism became instead one of perpetual alienation. Community, rather than becoming achievable, became impossible. The movement that was supposed to exalt the group rather than selfish individualism managed to outsmart itself. The result was a path that didn't lead to the Age of Aquarius but to the condition of neurosis.

He Tells The "Truth"

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com

Brain-Damaged

clipped from www.google.com Ever wonder how the socialists decide which of their special victims' groups will prevail when there is a conflict between them? We see a hint of how their food chain is constructed today in this article by Johann Hari (hat tip: Betsy): Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can't back both. You have to choose.... In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin.... Indeed, in the name of this warm, welcoming multiculturalism, the German courts have explicitly compared Muslim women to the brain-damaged.

Umm. Socialists that is.

Bloody, Just The Way I Like It

clipped from www.julescrittenden.com Interrogator: “How’s your steak?” Siegfried: “Bloody, just the way I like it. Reminds me of happier times, in the Warsaw ghetto …” The article is short on details about exactly what they were looking for, what they got, who their subjects were, so its hard to make any direct comparison to today’s scenarios.  I’d suggest interrogating German scientists, submariners and generals, many of whom recognized the war wasn’t going their way and many of whom had no great love for Hitler or the Nazis, might be somewhat different from interrogating suicidal Islamic terrorists.  However, I’d also suggest the apparently genteel program at Fort Hood doesn’t represent the totality of Allied practices re captured enemies in World War II, which though famously a “good war” also included summary executions of Japanese prisoners.  After they and/or their comrades were found to have tortured Americans to death.

Besides, It's Not The U.S. Doing The Opressing

clipped from www.rogerlsimon.com Burma has oil. China supports the military junta to keep the oil flowing to China. Russia's major source of income is the oil it sells. Keeping things unsettled in Burma makes the markets nervous and keeps the price of oil higher thsn it would otherwise be. Neither government has ever been democratic in more than appearance, and would treat their own populations the same as the monks, if the people challenged their authority. Tianamen Square ring any bells? Where are all the protestors in the streets of the West? I'm guessing that since it's obvious that the junta will ignore them, it's not worth their time. Besides, it's not the U.S. doing the oppressing.

The Freest Nation On Earth

clipped from www.clintonfoundation.org If you treat law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line for your safety every day like some kind of enemy army to be suspected, derided and, if they should enforce the law against you, to be shot, you are wrong. (Applause.) If you appropriate our sacred symbols for paranoid purposes and compare yourselves to colonial militias who fought for the democracy you now rail against, you are wrong. (Applause.) How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny. How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes. I say to you, all of you, the members of the Class of 1995, there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America, or ignoring your own responsibilities. If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others with whom you disagree. But you also must stand up for the rule of law.

This has since been retracted since it no longer fits the narrative of course.

Memory Holes Are Their Specialty

clipped from newsbusters.org Wow. Numbers shouldn't be reported because they're "tricky," "at the beginning of a trend," and there's "enormous dispute over how to count" them? No such moral conundrum existed last month when media predicted a looming recession after the Labor Department announced a surprising decline in non-farm payrolls that ended up being revised up four weeks later to show an increase. And, in the middle of a three and a half-year bull run in stocks, such "journalists" have no quandary predicting a bear market every time the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls a few hundred points. Yet, when good news regarding military casualties comes from the Defense Department, these same people show uncharacteristic restraint in not wanting to report what could end up being an a anomaly. Isn't that special?

Just The Facts, Madam

clipped from instapundit.com MORE FACT-CHECKING that the "news media" can't be bothered to do. As long as the narrative is right . . . . Question: If business owners with half-million-dollar-plus homes and kids in expensive private schools now count as "working families," does this mean they'll get tax cuts? UPDATE: Don Surber: "The Frosts found an 'affordable' business building and an 'affordable' 3,000-square foot house and an 'affordable' private school. Why couldn’t these yuppies afford to cover their own damned kids?"

"Neutral"

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com As one of my heroes, Horatio Nelson, once put it, with characteristic succinctness: “Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made.” This is a point long lost on the “liberal” intellectual, who, even after he has admitted the need for war in some material form (such as the incursion into Afghanistan after the events of 9/11), turns his mind to limiting the action. Mere words will easily persuade him that the battle stops at some artificial line, corresponding to a national border. The notion of “hot pursuit” is held under suspicion, or rather, denied. Any power that has not explicitly declared war against us, even if he is harbouring our enemy, must be taken as “neutral” if he gives his word. (Or, in the case of Saddam's Iraq, or Syria, or Iran, even if he doesn't give it.)

Making Vladimir's Bones

clipped from pajamasmedia.com When the history of Vladimir Putin’s first decade in national politics is written, it will read like pulp fiction. One moment in the spring of 1997 he’s an unknown KGB spy plagiarizing his thesis at an obscure institute; the next he’s deputy chief of staff to Boris Yeltsin, and soon after that boss of the entire KGB. Within months of reaching that pinnacle, Russia’s leading human rights activist, legislator Galina Starovoitova, is shot dead, and a prosecutorial investigation into Kremlin corruption has been squashed by the revelation of the prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, on secret sex tapes. No sooner has this happened than Putin has been named prime minister of the country. What do they call it in the mafia? Making your bones? Then the trouble really begins.

Name That Party...

clipped from instapundit.com JAMES LILEKS: Comparative Justice: you really can’t compare the two cases. But. Woman fined $222,000 for file sharing. School Bus driver fined $482 for drinking on the job. One offends a powerful interest group. The other just puts kids at risk.

...that tend's toward over-representation in the interest group...

Obamayhem

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com But what good would it have done to have had tens of thousands more U.S. troops in Afghanistan? From the perspective of “nation building” and other humanitarian concerns, Afghanistan after the removal of the Taliban was doing well—for Afghanistan. A thousand things were wrong, but that poor and undeveloped country was progressing better than at any other time in memory. And what of bin Laden? By all accounts, he is not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. There is still talk of U.S. forces attacking the tribal areas where he is believed to shelter, but this would be another nettlesome project. It would entail great military risk—Pakistan’s own army has done poorly in the region—and would possibly destabilize the world’s second largest Muslim country, a country that contains both a nuclear arsenal and large numbers of extremists. Obama’s hypothetical bombing attack would more likely result in mayhem than in the death of bin Laden.

I'm Keeping Mine Here

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Near the beginning of his talk, he expressed dismay that a Democratic Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, had made a political statement out of removing the American flag pin from his lapel, apparently out of some kind of shame. "The American people aren't going to buy it," he said. Rudy then told the story of how his father decided to leave Germany on the day when Adolf Hitler took power. It was a wise decision; by 1945, all of Rudy's relatives in Europe, save one, had been murdered by the Nazis. Boschwitz arrived in America at age three. He described how, as a young immigrant, he had a burning desire to make something of himself, to be a success. Hard work did bring him success, in the form of a booming small business. He entered politics, first with the Republican Party in Minnesota, then in the Senate, where he served two terms. Rudy's concluding words, as he put his hand over his own flag lapel pin, and his heart, were: "I'm keeping mine here."

Chutzpah Alert

clipped from hotair.com The country where this sign adorns a major highway in its holiest city: Is going to lecture others about religious freedom. The country that doesn’t allow Christians to build churches at all is going to lecture others about religious freedom. The country with the frickin Sword of Allah on its flag is going to make noise about European religious tolerance. The country that gave us Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers, who killed 3,000 of us in the name of Allah, is really going to complain about the freedom of Muslims in Europe. Seriously?

Department Of Redundancy Department

clipped from www.classicalvalues.com I'm sorry to be redundant about this, but I don't think people fully appreciate the logic. Meat eating is either the number one cause of GW or it is not. If it is the number one cause, then why are the GW people not talking about it? Even the skeptics are not focusing on meat as they should be. I think meat may be the Achilles Heel of GW, as it puts the lie to them. The skeptics should be pressing it. I think the logic is being blurred for several reasons. One is that lot of people think we should conserve (we should), and end our dependence on foreign oil (we should). This does not mean that CO2 is being released in sufficient quantities to cause climate change, though. People rationalize going along with the GW scare because we need to conserve, and they forget that conservation of oil is a different issue. Another reason is that even the believers have a natural resistence to giving up meat, and they fear it will damage their movement.

A Pulse Update From VDH

clipped from victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com Almost all the Marines and Army units I visited from Ramadi to Taji to various hot spots in Baghdad and Diyala believe there has been a sudden shift in the pulse of battlefield. Sometimes without much warning thousands of once disgruntled Sunni have turned on al Qaeda, ceased resistance, and are flocking to join government security forces and begging the Americans to stop both al Qaeda and Shiite militias. Commanders in the field are cautious. They know that if the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad stays vengeful for decades of past suffering at the hands of Sunni Baathists, the reconciliation will fail. So thousands of American officers are desperately pressuring ministries to start distributing the vast wealth of Iraq’s $80 a barrel oil revenues to Anbar and Diyala before the Sunni revert back to insurgency.

Loving Lichtenstein

clipped from www.americanthinker.com I'll come right out and admit that I understand Islamic terrorists far better than I do American liberals.  After all, once you realize that young Muslims are taught by their religious leaders that our nation is militarily powerful and technologically advanced because we cut a deal with Satan, you can see where they'd be upset with us.  But what is the deal with liberals?  How to explain their mushy heads?  Was it something weird in their baby formula?  Were they potty-trained when they were too young or, more likely, too old?  Or is it simply something in their DNA?  Are their chromosomes slightly out of whack? I'm serious.  Why else would Americans so resent the United States having more influence in the world than, say, Luxembourg or Lichtenstein? And why will the same saps who work themselves into a tizzy if some small town sets up a Christmas tree in the public square defend a church's right to provide a sanctuary for foreign nationals who have no business being in our country?

God Rebooted

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being the building block of life. Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said. He has further heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying for a patent for the synthetic bacterium. "Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up call - what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?" He said Mr Venter was creating a "chassis on which you could build almost anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons".

It's Not Hard For Me To Figure Out Who NYeT! Is Rooting For...

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com That's The New York Times special way of saying "I'm sorry" for condemning the Haditha Marines to hell for the "apparent" cold-blooded murder of innocents before their trial even started. And, isn't it interesting how The New York Times is still searching for an atrocity to define the War in Iraq? An Al-Qaeda atrocity like the Yazidi bombings, the murder of a brave young Sunni Sheik, torture chamber drawings, or dismembering and booby-trapping dead soldier's bodies just won't do. It must be an American atrocity. Sometimes it's hard to figure out just who they are rooting for.

More Bad Language

clipped from www.windsofchange.net It is fairly late in the game, but one hopes that there is still time to grasp the reality of American life for those of different racial and national backgrounds and to embrace the country’s professed ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. If that's what 'the country’s intellectual leaders' really think, we're well and truly f**ked. What's worse is that it reads almost word for word like a slam that I laid out against just that kind of thinking. I did a post on patriotism back in 2002 (yes, I obsess over the issue) and in it I said: I know two really bad parents. One is a couple that simply refuses to control their children; they love them totally, and so, they explain, they love everything they do. Unsurprisingly, they are raising two little monsters. The other is a single mother who explains that everything bad in her life is the fault of her child, and that everything he does is wrong. Unsurprisingly, her child is depressed, withdrawn and equally badly damaged.

Drink Soaked Trotskyite Observations

clipped from instapundit.com So a warning to Muslims who choose to criticize their religion or even extremist segments of it. Don’t expect to get away with the sort of thing white liberals get away with saying about Catholicism or the Church of England, because they won’t like you causing trouble. Don’t expect solidarity or support, you will be seen as the authors of your own misfortune. Most of all, don’t expect the snidely liberals to watch your backs. They are so very tired of you.

Midget Hitler Update

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com World Politics Review has the first interview in English with “Witness D,” who claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a member of a hit team that murdered three Iranian Kurds in Vienna in 1989: Ahmadinejad and a Murder in Vienna: An Interview with ‘Witness D’. Profil: Just a couple of more questions. The commando unit in Vienna consisted of how many people? D: There was a team of negotiators and a hit squad. Ahmadinejad was the link between the Iranian Embassy in Vienna and the hit squad. It was also his job to supply the weapons. He brought them from the Embassy to the house where the murders took place.

The Big Dampening

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Harry Reid may believe that we've lost the Iraq war, but the people we're fighting don't seem to have noticed. NEFA has a translation of an public communique by the Iraqi Jihad Union, a Sunni insurgent group that as recently as a couple of months ago was allied with al Qaeda in Iraq in Diyala province. But no longer. The communique says: Several individuals from the ISI [al Qaeda's "Islamic State of Iraq"] are responsible for killing commanders and fighters from our brigades in the Diyala province....They have killed them and mutilated their bodies. To make things worse, they dug up their bodies from the graves, further mutilated them, beheaded them, and showed them off from their vehicles while driving through the towns. [The ISI] even killed our men's wives and children. It is getting harder and harder for al Qaeda to obscure the fact that its ranks consist largely of homicidal psychopaths This tends to dampen popular support.

FDR Again

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com One thing is for certain. If today's New York Times had been reporting during the time of PO Box 1142, it would not have stayed a secret for six decades. It would have been on its front pages in six months.

Cultural Anthropomorphism

clipped from pajamasmedia.com One of Nazi Germany’s most notorious excesses was the Lebensborn, a program that deliberately bred blond, blue eyed, ‘perfect’ Aryan babies. In Middle East today, there is a similar kind of project, designed to produce the ‘perfect Muslim’ — another kind of Superman. Educational programs, media and religious institutions are all engaged in teaching young Muslims that by virtue of their existence, they are superior. We widely acknowledge the power of mere 30-second television commercials change behavior, yet seem to think regimes that extensively use media, schools and religious instruction to teach racism, hate and bigotry to a population from an early age will have no effect. Culture can affect behavior. Parisian Muslims answered the call and thousands of lives were saved. Can we expect a similar kind of behavior today from the Parisian youths who kidnapped and murdered Ilan Halimi because he was a Jew?

Condi's Not Looking So Good Right Now...

clipped from abcnews.go.com The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States. In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea. One U.S. official told ABC's Martha Raddatz the material was "jaw dropping" because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility. Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years. Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to "confront Syria before attacking."

Jimmah v Jeremiah

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Translation: "We are being subjected to atrocities but they don't meet the legal standard for genocide. The reason we are using sign language and cryptic notes to communicate this point is not only to avoid being overheard by your minders but also to prevent being 'unhelpful' to the solution that is going to be cooked up by the ever-wise United Nations." For some reason I think Jeremiah Denton would understand the dumb show perfectly. Navy Cross Citation "The Navy Cross is presented to Jeremiah A. Denton, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy, for extraordinary heroism while serving as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam from February 1966 to February 1973. Forced to attend a press conference for propaganda with a Japanese correspondent, Denton blinked the word "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" in Morse Code at the television camera which was immediately understood by United States Naval Intelligence.

RTWT.

You've Noticed, Right?

clipped from www.opinionjournal.com That to me gets to the heart of the problem and the heart of The Trance. Mrs. Clinton is so far ahead so early on for the same reason Mr. Bush was so far ahead so early on in 2000, and after only six years as governor, with no previous offices behind him. It is the nature of modern politics. A political family gains allies--retainers, supporters, hangers-on, admirers, associates, in-house Machiavellis. The bigger the government, the more ways allies can be awarded, which binds them more closely. Your destiny is theirs. Members of the court recruit others. The most important part is the money lines. Power is expensive. Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability? Or is it something we want to break out of, like a trance? It would be understandable if they were families of a most extraordinary natural distinction and self-sacrifice. But these are not the Adamses of Massachusetts we're talking about. You've noticed, right?