The list of species that global warming zealots claim will be wiped out by climate change is long: Antarctic penguins; Arctic polar bears; Australia’s koalas; British dragonflies …  

But in what could be a case of Darwinian evolution in action, the BBC reports that “great tits cope well with warming.” Presumably, great tits won’t do as well – at least in the short term - when the pendulum shifts towards global cooling and there’s a pronounced nip in the air.

Or, maybe not. The Stiletto highly recommends Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled,” about how evolutionary biologists who worship at the altar of Darwinism have thuggishly barred all dissenting opinions – particularly, intelligent design – from the marketplace of ideas and expelled (fired, denied tenure, blacklisted) apostates from universities, scientific journals and research facilities. They include biologist Richard Sternberg, who was fired by the Smithsonian Institution after publishing a peer-reviewed article that mentioned intelligent design; astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University – despite having discovered several planets; and Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason University for showing students a PowerPoint presentation that mentioned intelligent design on two slides.

Dinesh D'Souza and other conservatives zero in on this scene:

Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.

So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, “How did life begin?” … One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.

In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in “The Way of the Cell” that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. …

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix … is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that

Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens.

Even Dawkins admits that his "X-Files" explanation just kicks the can down the street a ways, because it doesn’t answer the question of how these aliens came into being.

Aside from the sheer delight of seeing Dawkins – author of “The God Delusion” - hoist on his own petard, Stein also explores the association between Darwinism and atheism (you can’t have one without the other); explains how Darwinism was used to justify the eugenics movement in the U.S., during which tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized against their will because they were deemed too physically or mentally flawed to breed; and – most chilling – reminds us that Adolph Hitler combined Darwinism and eugenics to rid the Third Reich of "inferior" races and human specimens.

At its heart, “Expelled” is about scientific, academic and MSM censorship. Whatever your position on intelligent design, there is no denying that the stifling of scientific inquiry is spreading.

Global warming skeptics, for instance, are called “deniers” and the media gives their research short shift – or ignores evidence suggesting that global warming could be a cyclical phenomenon related to solar flare activity, for example – to create the false impression that the science is settled. It is not. And neither is the science settled on Darwinian evolution.

Scientific inquiry depends upon continually challenging hypotheses – no scientific finding is supposed to be considered “fact.” Stop people from asking the questions or dismiss research that doesn’t fit into the consensus, and you stop scientific progress and go down blind alleys.

The facts: Barack Obama won 38 percent of white Dems in NC, and didn’t do much better amongst whites in IN (35 percent). In exit polls of 1,881 IN Dems and 2,316 NC voters, two out of three Hillary Clinton supporters said they would be dissatisfied if he is their party’s nominee.

How much of Obama’s poor showing amongst whites is due to the lingering echo of the racist, anti-American comments Rev. Jeremiah Wright has repeatedly made from the pulpit and the podium, and how much is attributable to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”?

The Associated Press reports that Wright had little impact in either state because the electorate was already polarized along racial lines long before the revolutionary rev’s rhetoric came to light:

† Six in 10 white voters in both states supported Hillary Rodham Clinton … close to the average 57 percent of whites who had backed the New York senator in Democratic primaries since Super Tuesday, which was Feb. 5. It's also slightly below the 63 percent of whites who voted for her in Pennsylvania and 69 percent in Mississippi, the most recent contests before Tuesday's voting.

† Whites lacking college degrees favored Clinton over Obama by 31 percentage points in Indiana and 45 points in North Carolina. Since Super Tuesday, she has triumphed over Obama among this group by an average 30 points, including 41 points in Pennsylvania and 55 points in Mississippi. … Other than liberal Vermont, Wisconsin is the only state where Obama has won more than half of whites who have not graduated college.

† White men leaned toward Clinton on Tuesday, as she got 59 percent in Indiana and 55 percent in North Carolina. Clinton got 57 percent of their votes in Pennsylvania and 67 percent in Mississippi.

Wright’s influence would have been strongest amongst late deciders in both states, yet exit polls did not bear this out. Wright was cited as an important factor by the 25 percent of IN white voters who picked their candidate within the past month, and the 25 percent who knew which candidate would get their vote more than a month ago. Ditto NC, where 25 percent of whites also made up their minds late in the game and cited Wright as an important factor in their vote, along with the 30 percent of white voters who chose their candidate early.   

Hillary got 87 percent of these “Wright-thinking” IN late deciders and 92 percent in NC – compared to 86 percent of these IN early deciders and 91 percent in NC. In other words, in neither state did Wright affect the choice of early or late white voters.

Bottom line: Wright did not make white Dem voters any more likely to vote for Hillary.

Although Obama’s campaign is convinced that IN might have narrowly gone his way if crossover Republicans hadn’t skewed the outcome - Hillary won by just 14,000 votes - Rush’s effect on the outcome of the contest trickier to tease out. (The NC results are so lopsidedly in Obama’s favor because of the size of the black vote it’s not worth considering how much, if any, influence Operation Chaos had in that state).

The Washington Post reports:

As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and prolong the Democratic fight. …

In Indiana, 10 percent of Democratic primary voters described themselves as Republicans, a higher rate than in any state but Mississippi, and they went for Clinton by eight percentage points, according to exit polls. …

By contrast, Obama won Republican voters, often by very large margins, in seven of the eight states where exit polls were able to report the group before the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4, when Limbaugh first coaxed listeners to vote for Clinton. …

Also notable was that in Indiana, six in 10 Republicans who supported Clinton on Tuesday said they would vote for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain over Clinton in the fall, if that were the matchup. By contrast, most Republicans who voted for Obama said they would back him against McCain. …

But at least as much data suggested that many Republicans voted for Clinton because the Democratic primary was the more meaningful one and because they simply preferred her to Obama. In Indiana, about nine in 10 GOP Clinton voters said she would make a better commander in chief, and more than six in 10 said she would have a better shot at beating McCain.

And Clinton's edge among Indiana Republicans was relatively small, if set against the broader racial divisions in the contest. Her eight-point advantage among Republicans, nearly all of whom are white in the state, was much narrower than it was among white Democrats, whom she won by nearly 2 to 1 over Obama.

Which means Rush didn't make white voters any less likely to vote for Obama, again because even in IN the effect of racial polarization dwarfed the effect of Operation Chaos.

However, the size of the Republican crossover vote does have implications in the general election - and belies Hillary's contention that will fare better against John McCain than Obama will.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait notes that the exit poll results show “7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall’:

Now, this isn't a precise measure of the “Limbaugh effect” - no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it's a sizeable number.

How sizeable? The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein does the math:

Among the 17 percent of primary goers who said they would choose Sen. John McCain over Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up, 41 percent of that group came from Clinton’s own camp. … [s]even percent … (40 percent of 17 percent) said they would defect to the Republican should she end up the nominee. That would be a difficult punch to stomach in November. In 2004, nearly 1 million Indianans voted for John Kerry. A seven percent defection rate would have meant 70,000 less votes.

Tea leaf reading is, by definition, subjective. It’s one thing for a Dem to go into a voting booth and pull the lever for one candidate or the other – with the exception of a Bradley Effect, whatever criteria used to make the choice can be quantified in exit polling. It’s more difficult to measure the effect of Operation Chaos in exit polling, because in addition to determining why a crossover voter chose one candidate over the other, you need to consider how (s)he intends to vote in November.

One thing is clear: Republicans who voted for Hillary were really voting against Obama, and can be expected to abandon Hillary in favor of McCain in the general election. What about Republicans who voted for Obama? Some, no doubt, sincerely believe him to be the best candidate in the race. Others might just have been much quicker on the draw than Rush, who has called off Operation Chaos because “I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees.”

Mother’s Day Bonus

Liza Mundy, a staff writer for The Washington Post’s Sunday Magazine, writes about a ladies-only wine-and-cheese party she attended with some 20 mothers in her social circle, at which “a few of the women began reminiscing about their own youths, comparing the transgressions they'd committed in their teens and 20s and debating whose were the most egregious.” The shocker:

“I win, I win!” one mother exclaimed. “I was a stripper!”

This contribution came from a woman I have long admired. Smart and good-humored, she has always seemed a veritable supermother, remarkable for her ability to work a full day and come home to direct a range of extracurricular activities for her bright and engaging children. I see them sometimes out for a walk, and always imagine that they are discussing quadratic equations or figuring the velocity of the wind. And now it emerged that, in her salad days, this working mom with a security clearance had removed her clothing, onstage, to the accompaniment of “Pretty Woman.” …

Laughing, I asked if she would ever tell her children about her short-lived foray into the entertainment business, which ended when she came down with food poisoning the next day. “No, I don't think I'll be telling my kids about that one,” she said, although, she added, she would never want to lie.

She probably won't have to. Likely, few children would think to ask their mom if she appeared in her birthday suit, or portions of it, in public.

Mundy notes that “sooner or later many mothers of our generation will have some 'splainin' to do” and finds the silver lining behind this dark cloud:

Coming of age, as we did, in the 1970s … many of today's most responsible mothers (and fathers) once engaged in social experimentation that … they are glad wasn't photographed. Ironically, it is these very memories that have turned many of us into hyper-vigilant parents, intent on making sure our children don't get up to the very behaviors our cohort once engaged in with such glee.”

The rest of the article explores the question, “What do children need to know about their parents' pasts, and when do they need to know it?” and offers expert opinion.

Uninsured residents would have been identified from income tax forms, on which filers would have to say whether they had health coverage. At the hearing Friday, health-care advocates questioned penalizing low-income residents who do not have insurance because they cannot afford it. 

Catania’s proposal hit another bump in the road when private health-care provider CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which would have contracted with the District to provide coverage, “may pull its planned $5 million annual contribution and its doctors network out of the deal.”

† Hillary’s Many Makeovers: “Often ridiculed for adopting a Southern twang when south of the Mason-Dixon line, Mrs. Clinton hauled out her best local pronunciation in her [NC] campaign stops,” writes John Fund, in The Wall Street Journal’s “Political Diary” (E-mail subscription required):

“It's time to quit wringin' our hands and start rollin' up our sleeves,” she told a crowd at High Point this past weekend. The town's name rolled off her tongue sounding like "Hah Point.”

Pretty scary, especially for this “Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer” who, as Washington Post columnist George Will points out, “became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home.”

Columnist Kathleen Parker – who is wet-your-pants funny when she wants to be – notes, “All politicians adapt and mold themselves to fit their audience, but Hillary Clinton has elevated the art of identity politics to a science of morphology.” She explains:

She doesn't just show people what they want in order to convince them that she's their “man” - and we no longer use that word entirely metaphorically. She becomes the people she wants to sway. …

In James Cameron's "Terminator II: Judgment Day," the T-1000 android was made of liquid metal and could duplicate others. He “learned” a person by touching him and absorbing his data. …

She's shown that she can speak in gerunds with or without g's. She can summon an African-American pastor's cadence in church or produce tears in a coffee shop surrounded by working gals who are tired, too. …

Impressive, if appalling. But most impressive of all has been Clinton's metamorphosis into a man. She isn't only the alpha dog. She's Cujo.

If you just think of the number of hairdos Hillary has had over the years – heck, just during her presidential campaign – David Byrne’s line “I changed my hairstyle so many times now, don't know what I look like” takes on a whole new meaning. 

† Why We Need Gitmo (second item): Former Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainee Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, 29, accused by the U.S. military accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was amongst the three suicide bombers who murdered seven Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, reports The Washington Post. After Ajmi was released into the custody of the Kuwaiti government as part of a diplomatic arrangement inl late 2005, he made his way to Iraq via Syria. While this suicide bombing in Iraq is the first linked to a former Guantánamo  detainee, the Defense Intelligence Agency says up to three dozen others are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorist activities – a claim that international human rights groups and lawyers for Gitmo detainees dispute,  contending that “only a handful” have fought U.S. forces after their release. A Pentagon spokesman tells the WaPo, “Our reports indicate that a number of former Guantánamo detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantánamo.” To date, some 500 detainees have been released from Gitmo or transferred to other governments, and 65 of the 270 still incarcerated there will be cut loose as well.

† The Other Shoe Drops (“Well-Chosen Words,” second item): Attorney Joseph Ziccardi is asking U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno  to reconsider sanctions levied against him after his client HTFC CEO Aaron Wider used the “F-word” 73 times in a deposition, reports The Legal Intelligencer. Robreno ruled that Wider and Ziccardi are jointly and severally liable – the former for his “hostile, uncivil, and vulgar conduct, which persisted throughout the nearly 12 hours of deposition testimony,” and the latter for “chuckling at Wider's abusive behavior” – which he denies. In his motion, Ziccardi contends he was deprived of due process because the judge did not put him on notice that it was considering sanctions, thus his "opportunity to be heard was meaningless."

Raid on Sect in Texas Rattles Other Polygamists

- The New York Times, May 8, 2008

Good Shoes Can Prevent Falls

- HealthDay News, May 7, 2008

“[F]ive years after the notorious Jayson Blair scandal that ended his Times tenure and created a credibility nightmare for the paper,” Maureen Dowd’s ex-paramour and former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines tells trade publication Editor & Publisher, “I am proud of the fact that it set the standard for in-house inquiries. I feel proud of the fact that we had as close to a full investigation as any journalistic entity has done in my experience." Now imagine how much prouder he might have been if his former paper’s hiring practices were color-blind instead of quota-based, or if Blair’s editors had figured out what he was up to after the first or second fabricated or plagiarized article and fired his sorry ass.

The Clinton campaign sent out a mailing to IN voters attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s positions (plural) on gun control, accusing him of telling different audiences what they wanted to hear. The ad unintentionally revealed the campaign’s own discomfort with firearms: the image of the Mauser 66 hunting rifle is flopped; is a double-set trigger model (favored in Europe, but uncommon in the U.S.); and at $2,200, is beyond the means of the average blue collar hunter, who no doubt bitterly wishes (s)he could afford to own one of these fine German rifles.

When The Politico’s Ben Smith first posted the mailer on his blog, several hunting enthusiasts wrote to point out the error – of which he, too, was unaware, it should be noted – so he looked into the matter further.  A WV Mauser dealer informed Smith: “The gun in the photo does not exist. The bolt is facing to the left side of the receiver, making it a left-handed bolt action rifle.” He added “It’s like a picture of Babe Ruth hitting right-handed.”

† It’s A Topsy-Turvy Campaign: Columnist Rich Lowry muses: “When Hillary Rodham gave the commencement address at Wellesley College in 1969, extolling the virtues of ‘human liberation’ on behalf of a restless generation of left-wing youth, did she have any idea one day she'd be the champion of old white beer-drinking Democrats everywhere?” He adds:

Hillary Clinton - part of the McGovernite takeover of the Democratic party - is representing the Democrats' culturally conservative wing (such as it is). …

It's only as compared to [Barack] Obama, of course, that Clinton looks like a curmudgeonly traditionalist. Only he could have given her such wide openings to defend small-town mores and (gingerly) chastise a black nationalist preacher. It's not policy differences on cultural issues that divide Obama and Clinton, but differing sensibilities. …

Hillary Clinton's Sister Souljah moment has been running against Obama, pushing herself to the center in relation to him and forging a bond with voters Democrats need in a general election. Oddly, she may be a more electable candidate now when the odds are against her winning the nomination than when she seemed a lock.

Drinking Dulls the Brain's Response to Threats

- Reuters via OpinionJournal, April 30, 2008

Editorial Note: Hillary Clinton ought to consider this, as she’s been knocking back quite a few boilermakers these days.

Scientists Find Something Good About A Big Bottom

- Reuters, May 6, 2008

Without a doubt, the most preposterous article The Stiletto has read on Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s interpretation of the gospel, is this one from USA Today, headlined: “Wright’s Style Confuses Some Obervers.” Reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman educates readers on the finer points of Wright’s obscenity-laced, bellicose sermonizing:

[M]any who heard his recent addresses are puzzled by Wright's theological references and startled by his powerhouse delivery.

Wright appears to be casting himself as a prophet, shouting out a stern and unpopular message, emulating the biblical Jeremiah, sent by God to scold the wayward people of Israel and forecast God's wrath.

In his televised talks with Bill Moyers, his address to the NAACP in Detroit and the press club appearance in Washington, Wright used words and phrases such as “homiletics,” “hermeneutics,” “black liberation theology” and “prophetic tradition,” and he not only shouted his points, but he also sang, chanted, mocked and even danced a step or two. … [Explanatory links added by The Stiletto.]

"Someone reading the Exodus story who was a slave would read it differently than the white master on that same plantation," says J. Kameron Carter, associate professor of Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke University Divinity School. "Hermeneutics isn't whether you have the Scripture right or wrong, it's the sunglasses you're wearing when you read it and when you look out at the world."

Teresa Fry Brown, director of Emory University’s Black Church Studies program tells Grossman, “Wright touches on the yearning people have to be free, to be the full person they were meant to be outside of personal and societal bondage. But we can't have social change without pain, and we can't leave people wounded and bleeding on all sides. That's why Wright is calling for reconciliation, forgiveness and healing.”

Right-thinking Americans didn’t hear him calling for any of those things. We heard him damn America (AKA “U.S. of K.K.K. A.”); falsely claim our government infected blacks with HIV; accuse America of being “the Number One killer in the world”; and callously dismiss the deaths of 3,000 innocent workaday folks on September 11 as “the chickens coming home to roost.”

No confusion there.

Susan Mandel claimed to be allergic to her ex-husband Stanley's 18-month-old male tabby Indie, and was hospitalized in the summer of 2007 with a “severe attack” after their 13- and 16-year-old sons visited him in his apartment, reports New York Law Journal. She did not let them go to their father’s home after that. Her ex-contended that she had no objection to the children visiting him until he stopped paying the mortgage on the home they used to share. Extrapolating case law on second-hand smoke to this novel situation, Acting Supreme Court Justice Hope S. Zimmerman of Nassau County found no “legal or factual basis to exclude the children” from their father's apartment because of his ex-wife’s allergy, and that the problem can be avoided if the children’s mother provide fresh clothes for them in the garage so they can change before entering their home.

Jesus:  [M]en are so easily led astray. St. Peter was a rabbit. And a rabbit should be Pope.

Bill: Kill him!

Pope Benedict:  WHAT?!

Bill:  He goes against the Church. He must die!

Pope Benedict:  All right, that does it, Bill. I'm pretty sure that killing Jesus is not very Christian.

- “South Park,” Episode 1105, Fantastic Easter Special

Ryan Schallenberger, 18, under arrest for allegedly plotting to blow up Chesterfield High School in Florence, SC, told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, reports The Associated Press. Schallenberger “faces several state and federal charges, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.” If convicted he faces a life sentence on that last charge alone.

The Heel – an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm and an occasional contributor to this blog – quite correctly points out that even if Schallenberger had succeeded in blowing himself up to Kingdom Come, his plan to kill Jesus would have failed because St. Peter would not be bloody likely to allow him to pass through the Pearly Gates!

If you’re like The Stiletto, you’ve read more than a few articles bemoaning the fact that Americans save too little – unlike the thrifty Japanese, for instance - imperiling prosperity, not just on personal scale, but globally as well. It turns out that saving money – at least, not spending it as fast as it’s coming in – might actually be bad for our economy. The New York Times reports:

[T]he Commerce Department reported that the economy continued to stagnate during the first three months of the year, with a sharp pullback in consumer spending the primary factor at play. …

With the overall economy growing at a mere 0.6 percent annual rate for the second quarter in a row, consumer spending advanced by only 1 percent, the government estimated. That was down sharply from the 2.9 percent gain for all of 2007 and the 3.1 percent gain for 2006. …

Even more ominously, Americans cut back on a wide variety of discretionary purchases, conserving their cash for necessary spending. …

As real estate prices plunge, so does the ability of homeowners to borrow against the value of their homes, crimping a major artery of spending. As banks grow tighter with their dollars in a period of uncertainty, families are running up against credit limits, forcing many to live within their incomes. …

Consumer spending fell for a broad range of goods and services, including cars, auto parts, furniture, food and recreation, reflecting a growing inclination toward thrift. Areas in which spending rose were predominantly those not considered optional purchases, including health care, housing and utilities.

But that’s where that tax rebate from the federal government comes in, right? The Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh writes:

Tax rebates from Uncle Sam started arriving this week, and I say it's about damn time.

Now it's everyone's patriotic duty to go buy some new stuff to get our economy going again.

But for my money, this shouldn't happen just when the economy gets soft. It's the kind of thing we should expect every year. Who couldn't use an extra $600, particularly if it comes at no cost?

Not to us, anyway. As I understand it, we're borrowing the billions for the rebates from the Chinese, and we'll use a lot of it to buy their goods. So this is really a win for both sides. …

Yes, China and our other creditors may want to be paid back someday, but that's a burden the next generation is going to shoulder for us.

In an op-ed published by The Washington Post, Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, which preserves wartime letters of America’s veterans and active duty personnel, notes that “[s]avvy retailers have been promoting special ‘tax rebate’ sales, car discounts, summer trips … hoping to capitalize on the billions the U.S. Treasury is sending out” to more than 100 million of your fellow citizens. Instead of spending it – and getting in hock even deeper with the Chinese – he suggests that we “[d]onate it to charitable organizations supporting our troops and their families.” His pitch:

Let's remind our troops and their families, through a surge in giving, that we have not forgotten their sacrifice. If even a tiny percentage of Americans make donations, millions of dollars could be raised. Bumper stickers and lapel pins are not enough. We cannot merely tell these extraordinary men and women how much we owe them for their service. It is time to show them.

Here’s another worthy cause to which you might consider donating part or all of your rebate check – and one that The Stiletto personally finds appealing: Naturalizer is partnering with Dress for Success on a campaign to provide dress shoes to low-income women who are going on job interviews. If you visit a Naturalizer store from May 3^rd to May 11^th and drop off a “gently worn” pair of career shoes, the company will also donate a new pair on your behalf. Plus, you get a coupon that knocks 20 percent off new shoes or a handbag for yourself. So you can spend your rebate check on new shoes and help another woman get a leg up in the working world. Sounds like a win-win to The Stiletto.  

Why We Need Gitmo

The Washington Post reports that eight years after the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors, not only Yemen has failed to bring the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible to justice, they’ve actually been secretly freeing them from imprisonment:

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections. …

Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq. …

U.S. officials withheld $20 million in aid to Yemen and canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yemeni officials said they quickly put Badawi back behind bars. But reports persist that his incarceration remains a day-to-day affair. …

Diplomatic relations soured further in February, when the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa learned that Fahd al-Quso, another Cole conspirator, had been secretly freed nine months before. Like Badawi, Quso faces U.S. charges in the Cole case and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

al-Qaeda continues to hype the Cole attack “as one of its greatest military victories.”

Meanwhile, Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, formerly Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver and currently a detainee at Guantánamo Bay awaiting trial on terrorism charges, “has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day,” reports the International Herald Tribune.

Hamdan’s military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, has asked a military judge to suspend his case – now scheduled to begin May 28^th - until he is transferred to less isolating confinement, as he is unable to focus on his defense:

[T]three-quarters of the detainees have been held recently in two "camps" that look much like American prisons. Camp5 and Camp6, heavily guarded concrete buildings, hold men who have yet to face trial. Behind a heavy door, each cell has a handful of sanctioned items including a cup and a Koran. …

Mizer said Hamdan talked unendingly about his desire to be moved to Camp4, the only place at Guantánamo where detainees are permitted to live communally. Camp4 is believed to house 50 or fewer detainees whom officials classify as highly compliant.

Hamdan blames his lawyers for failing to get him out of Camp5, Mizer said, and will talk only about that. "He refuses to talk about his case," he said.

For their part, prosecutors dispute that Hamdan’s confinement is all that solitary - “detainees can communicate through the walls” – and add that Hamdan isn’t a model detainee, having spit at guards and thrown his urine at them.

Hamdan – who not only helped his boss bin Laden evade  capture after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, but also transported weapons for Al Qaeda  - and his fellow Gitmo detainees are not exactly Harold and Kumar.

So This Is What Passes For “Art” Nowadays

Kenyon Wilson, music professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, composed an antiphonal fanfare for the tuba and euphonium, titled "Kerfuffle," a word to which he was introduced by OpinionJournal’s James Taranto, who uses it somewhat frequently in his columns. Taranto explains how the piece was composed:

In developing the tune for “Kerfuffle,” Mr. Wilson derived a pair of musical motifs from my name, in the manner of BACH and DSCH (Dmitri Shostakovich). Rendering a name in musical notes is “far from an exact science,” Mr. Wilson explains. Some letters translate directly: A and C through G to the corresponding notes, and - in accord with German notation - B to B-flat, H to B-natural and S (Es) to E-flat.

But Mr. Wilson employed some creativity in putting JAMES to music. M usually translates as E (do-re-mi, C-D-E), but Mr. Wilson thought D - mi in the key of B-flat - sounded better. And there is no standard translation for J. Mr. Wilson used C, which is pronounced like our J in Azerbaijan, where he spent a semester as a Fulbright Scholar.

“Kerfuffle” also includes a TARANTO motif, though it recurs less frequently. “JAMES is quite melodious,” Mr. Wilson says. “TARANTO is not as much.”

To The Stiletto’s ear, the thing sounds like an extended bout of flatulence (mp3 file). A very fitting tribute, indeed.

Perhaps The Stiletto is being a tad harsh, but then again, she takes a dim view of what some consider “art”: a dog dying of starvation while the crowd looks on (video link); a dead baby hanging on a wall; and seven lice-infested German artists living free of charge in an Israeli museum for three weeks.  

† Sub-Par Solution For Sub-Prime Loans: Part II: After a series of laughable articles profiling “victims” of the subprime loan “crisis” that served only to make the case not to bail out irresponsible borrowers and greedy bankers, The Washington Post now takes a different tack: Focusing on “mortgage survivors” who are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps by working with their mortgage lenders to change the terms of their adjustable rate home loans. It’s time-consuming, frustrating and difficult – the WaPo cites a statistic from The State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group that 70 percent of “seriously delinquent borrowers aren't in a workout process” - but it’s a lot easier than losing one’s home to foreclosure. One group homeowners in dire straits can contact: Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America. (Hope Now, a consortium of mortgage lenders, loan servicers and investors appears to be conflicted over whether its mission is to help distressed homeowners or mortgagees, and is not likely to provide meaningful help to borrowers until it gets its own house in order.)

  

† It’s A Topsy-Turvy Campaign: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wonders, “Why does [Barack] Obama, the one with the bumpy background and mixed racial heritage, the one raised by a single mother who was on food stamps, seem so forced when he mingles with the common folk?,” whereas “[v]oters … don’t seem to mind Hillary, with her $109 million bank account, selling herself as the champion of the little people”  - especially considering that “as first lady, [she] was renowned for her … high-handed treatment of the little people in the travel office, on the switchboard and on the residence staff.” An added bonus: Dowd gives Bill Clinton points for not using the word “uppity” when referring to Obama.

† When Environmental Values Collide: Ever notice that environmentalists are always moving the goal posts in an effort to be perpetually holier-than-thou? No? Well, here's an example. Danny Westneat, a columnist for The Seattle Times thought he was “going green” when he wanted to replaced the family car – totaled in a non-fatal accident – with one that runs on vegetable oil. Turns out he was “committing a crime against humanity”:

It's all the eco-rage. The bumper stickers for biodiesel say "No war necessary." Pollute less, help cool the planet and marshal the renewable power of nature. …

But when we asked around about biodiesel, it didn't take long before the scolding started.

Biodiesel pollutes more than oil, said one e-mailer on a community site where my wife asked for advice. Another questioned our morality, saying it's wrong to use food for fuel when people are starving.

Then I heard there's a Seattle environmentalist who protests at local biodiesel stations. Above the green-painted pumps, he hangs this banner: BIOFUELS = CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

Now, I don't expect it to be easy being green. But this is ridiculous. What was hailed as our leading green alternative to petroleum is now an affront to humanity?

There’s only one solution: Westneat has to start taking the bus. But wait -  that won’t work, either, because the bus system also uses biodiesel. Noting that “environmentalists may end up picketing the bus system” Westneat asks: “Is it any wonder I'm paralyzed about which car to buy?” Then the compact fluorescent light bulb goes off: “Hmm. Paralysis. Can't get any greener than that.”

Editorial Note: The Stiletto has long been of the opinion that using food crops for fuel is immoral, and we are now reaping the bitter harvest of this unintended consequence of yet another not-fully-thought-out scheme do-gooder environmentalists keep foisting on gullible lawmakers and consumers.

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: The Wall Street Journal reports that “Across the country, college campuses have become hotbeds of support for Sen. Obama,” but observes:  “after classes - and after the occasional Obama rally - most black and white students on college campuses go their separate ways, living in separate dormitories, joining separate fraternities and sororities and attending separate parties.” “The racial divisions among college students are striking,” according to The Journal, “both because of the fervor for Obama and the increasing diversity on campus.”

The paper cites Duke University - where “initiatives to address race relations on campus … gained added impetus … two years ago when white lacrosse players hired a black stripper to perform at a party [who] falsely accused several … of raping her” – as a case in point:

About 10% of Duke students are African-American, compared to 4.5% two decades ago; they include many popular athletes as well as student leaders. The newly elected head of the graduate and professional student association is an African-American woman.

Black and white students live together in the same group of dorms during freshman year, though they can join fraternities and sororities and select their roommates starting in sophomore year. …

But working or voting for an African-American running for president doesn't necessarily bridge differences -- on campus or, later, in the workplace. Following a recent discussion in one of his classes about the campaign, in which most students expressed support for Sen. Obama, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke sociologist, asked his white students how many had a black friend on campus. All the white students raised their hands.

He then asked the black students how many of them had a white friend on campus. None of them raised their hands.

One Duke senior interviewed by the paper, Jazmyn Singleton, complained, “There is pressure to be black. The black community can be harsh. People will say there are 600 blacks on campus but only two-thirds are 'black' because you can't count blacks who hang out with white people.”

Think about that for a minute: None of the black students in Bonilla-Silva’s class would cop to having a white friend, because their black friends would no longer consider them black. How are we supposed to negotiate a “reconciliation” between the races that will bring about the post-racial nirvana that Barack Obama is promising to deliver if both sides aren’t acting in good faith?

The Stiletto can only hope that Singleton isn’t really a singleton – that there many more young black Ameri