Letter From The Capitol

Index 4/25/08

One post: Travel: Teddy Can Relax--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

Travel: Teddy Can Relax

The Washington Times updates the air travel scene.  The Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) has begun a program to continually review all names on its watch list.  The Terrorist Encounter Review Process (TERP--someone was clever enough not to include watch as the second word, which would have yielded the acronym TWERP) will scrub the 450,000-name watch list regularly.  A full 5 percent of the names are of people believed to live in the United States.  The TSC gets 24,000 requests for removal annually, about 70 per day.  Records are updated daily and widely shared.

TERP is a vital program.  Anger due to being wrongly kept on a watch list can, if enough people are mad, undermine support for aggressive terrorist screening programs.  A biometric ID card would further aid this program.  There is another aid: a sign-up traveler program, now underway at many airports. Fly Clear is now available at 16 airport areas nationwide (some areas have multiple airports with the program activated), including major New York City and Washington, DC airports.

I have signed up.  The procedure has two stages: (1) an online registration; (2) take your registration number to a sign-up location, where you will be photographed and fingerprinted, plus iris identification used when feasible.  You will need two forms of official identification.  The procedure for the second part can run at least 10 minutes, depending upon how easily you fingerprint and scan (I proved a hard case).  then, at the airports, you go to a much shorter security line.

I recently flew from DC to NYC, Reagan to LaGuardia.  Fly Clear has a separate security lane, where after showign ID, you must have a fingerprint checked by optical scan.  If you pass, then you get to jump the regular line, and then get in front of the queue to push your bags through the scanners.  The security is exactly the same.  So if the regular line is short, it isn't worth it.  If it is long, you will save time.

Fly Clear is not a true trusted traveler program.  For that, you would need to give more security info, to get a pass through security, or a more limited check.  This is just a line-jumping program.  It can prove convenient if you fly at rush times, or on a day with delays that stack up the regular queue.

Index 4/24/08

One post: Pennsylvania Auguries--The Home Front.

Pennsylvania Auguries

Here is more on Tuesday's PA primary result, and what it augurs for future primaries.  Jay Cost details the key voter group results, comparing PA with Ohio, and finds that Hill matched her Ohio win.  Fred Barnes sees PA giving vigor to Hill's argument that she is more electable come the fall.   Dick Morris dismisses Hill's surge as too little, too late; he says that Hill invested too much in an early knockout, leaving her unable to go the full distance.

For the May 6 Democratic primaries, Real Clear Politics polls show Obama +15.5 (range +9 - +25) in North Carolina, and Hill + 2.2 (range Hill + 16 - Obama +5) in Indiana.  Obama leads in 2 of the 5 Indiana polls, and Hill's +16 seems an outlier, so consider the state dead even.  NC's heavy black vote (only 10 percent in PA) pretty much guarantees an Obama win, so Hill must win solidly in Indiana to keep momentum.

My bottom line: Hill's final adjusted PA margin of just over 9 points was good enough to stave off a super-delegate stampede to Obama, but not good enough to be likely to change the dynamic of the race; a PA margin in the low teens would have changed the race.  She will need to make further inroads into Obama's standing with swing voters and key groups, in order to win solidly in Indiana.  But at least she is still in the game.

Index 4/23/08

3 posts: (1) After Pennsylvania: How Hill Can Win!--The Home Front; (2) Islamist Terror: Muslims, and Rice, Speak--Weenie Watch; (3) "Expelled": Darwin Daze II--Class & Crass.

After Pennsylvania: How Hill Can Win!

As I went to bed last night, Hill led 55 - 45 with 99 percent of the vote in.  It keeps her in the race, but is not the blowout margin she could have used.  More on Pennsylvania tomorrow, after I review analyses.  Now, enjoy this 88-second YouTube video on how Hillary can defy the odds and prevail!

Islamist Terror: Muslims, and Rice, Speak

Terror Free Tomorrow conducted a poll in late 2007, surveying Saudi attitudes on many subjects, including views of terror and the U.S.  Some of the results are startling: 69 percent support strong & close relations with the US; 85 percent would approve more of the US if we left Iraq, 75 percent if visa quotas were increased, or if the US signed a free trade agreement with Saudi Arabia; 40 percent of Saudis held a favorable opinion of the US, up from 11 percent in May 2006; 63 percent oppose Saudi fighting Shia in Iraq, 66 percent oppose Saudis fighting Sunni, and a plurality oppose fighting coalition forces; less than 10 percent have a favorable view of al-Qaeda, and 88 percent support Saudi military action against AL-Q; 15 percent hold a favorable view of Osama; 89 percent have unfavorable opinions of Jews, and less than 1/3 favor a two-state peace treaty between Israel & the Palestinians; 57 percent oppose Iran's nuclear quest.  Domestically, 93 percent rank reducing unemployment & inflation first, then 88 percent for fighting terror, 81 percent for subsidizing foreign mosques, 80 percent for a free press & free elections 61 percent for fighting jihadists and 43 percent for allowing women to drive.

TFT also polled Iranian citizens before the March 14 election.  76 percent support normal relations & trade with the US, 71 percent favor working with the US to settle Iraq, 60 percent back unconditional negotiations with the US; more than 75 percent support US investment; 84 percent support US investment in medical, humanitarian and educational assistance from the US; more than 60 percent of Iranians would improve their view of the US if we withdrew from Iraq, or increased visas quotas or entered into a free trade treaty with Iran; Domestically, 86 percent support free elections for the Supreme Leader, versus 9 percent who oppose this; after the economy, Iranians are strongest in favor of free elections and a free press; 70 percent favor Iran accepting full inspection of its nuclear program, in return for aid & investment; 53 percent favor the program.  But 73 percent of Iranians oppose a peace treaty with Israel and support its demise; over 60 percent support aiding Palestinian war efforts against Israel; 45 percent would recognize Israel as part of a deal with the US.  Om the brighter side, the Shia Iranians do not hate other religions: 5 percent dislike Sunni Muslims & 10 percent dislike Christians.

Common to both: (1) dislike of American policy; (2) desire to more constructively engage America; (3) growing detestation of Al-Qaeda and rejection of Islamist terrorism; (4) hatred of Jews and rejection of the existence of the State of Israel--even as part of a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state.

Compare these numbers to views re the US elsewhere in the Islamic world: Pakistan, 72 percent dislike, 19 percent like; Turkey 83-9 against; Egypt, 78-21 against (despite more than $50 billion sent to these ingrates over the past three decades).  Only two Muslim countries had higher favorable ratings of the US than did the Saudis: Bangladesh and...Iraq.  yes, IRAQ.  (Nancy, Harry, Barack, Hillary, are you listening?)

Another compilation of polls, taken by Gallup from 2001 - 2007, is Who Speaks for Islam?, one of whose two co-authors is Georgetown professor John Esposito, who was adviser to Karen Hughes during her feckless tenure representing America with Islam's votaries and governments.  The book asserts that Muslims want basically the same thing Western peoples want: freedom, democracy, economic growth, equality for women, with an added emphasis on the role of Islam in societal life.  U.S. policy is the chief culprit for animosity towards America.  Some 7 percent of Muslims are radicalized--9 million out of 1.3 billion worldwide.  In the past generation, Muslims have moved away from Western orientation.  Muslim women resent being depicted by Westerners (like Karen Hughes) as backward in status.  The book's sunny portrait is hard to credit.  T o be sure, this does not counsel despair, only to suggest that matters appear more precarious than the book's picture suggests.

Condi Rice continues to believe that most Palestinians want peace, citing polls purportedly showing 70 percent of Palestinians favoring settlement; she discounts exhortations for suicide bombing and other TV propaganda, stating that leaders are not volunteering.  But the April 21 Jerusalem Post cites polls showing that more than half of Palestinians oppose a settlement, a number that is growing.  Thanks to Andy McCarthy of NRO for these citations.

"Expelled": Darwin Daze II

Ben Stein's new film, "Expelled," about how a ferocious academic orthodoxy is stifling debate about evolution and intelligent design, opened 8th among all new films this past weekend, grossing $3.2 million box office at 1,052 screens.  At issue is not whether one believes in evolution, as many intelligent design advocates acknowledge that evolution explains many things.  Rather, it is the imposition by intimidation of academic orthodoxy that is the film's focus, as reputable scientists who dare to question whether Darwinian doctrine explains all its purport to explain, find their careers derailed.  As LFTC is sponsored by Discovery, I posted my thoughts on intelligent design on August 22, 2005, in LFTC's second month and after a two-part unfavorable New York Times story.

For the convenience of new LFTC readers, reproduced verbatim below is my August 22, 2005 posting, which, at the end, links to the related New York Times article (whose link is still live).

Letter From The Capitol, August 22, 2005: "Darwin Daze"

The New York Times ran a front-pager yesterday attacking Discovery Institute's advocacy of allowing schools discretion to include "Intelligent Design" in school curricula, and a follow-up piece this morning on questions about evolution.  But the Times misses the point. What matters is less what is taught than how it is taught.  When "creation science" was proposed as as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution, critics were right in saying that Creationism--which holds that the world was created by a Supreme Being in 4004 B.C.--is dogma, not science.  But they were wrong in asserting that Darwin's theory was beyond question.  Neither does Intelligent Design seem to me to be science.  Its advocates believe it is, but most scientists today do not agree.

What makes science "science" (from Latin for "knowledge") is, as the philosopher Karl Popper put it, that it is falsifiable.  It proceeds by deduction and empirical observation, with consequent repeated confirmation.  Science is always open to subsequent modification or refutation. Thus Isaac Newton's elegant, predictable, mechanical universe reigned supreme for over two centuries.  Along came Planck, Einstein and others and within a quarter-century (1900-1927) unveiled a new micro-world, one disorderly, probabilistic, affected by our observation of it and just plain weird.  Crossing the street we are best advised to observe Newton's Laws, as quantum effects in the macro-world are infinitesimal.  (Newton's Laws trump man-made traffic laws--if the light says cross but a truck is coming do you cross, or follow Sir Isaac and wait?)  A "unified field theory" of physics, Einstein's dream, remains unrealized.  (Einstein, who like many great scientists believed in God, once complained to Niels Bohr, in protesting against the quantum world he was central in discovering, that "God does not play with dice."  To which Bohr replied that he, Einstein, was not to tell God what to do.)

Which brings us back to Darwin.  Teaching his brainchild as irrefutable, as truth that cannot be questioned, is to teach science as dogma.  Teaching science as dogma is just as wrong as teaching dogma as science. Dogma is beyond question; science never is.  Scientific truth, by its very nature and unlike dogma, is open to subsequent refutation.  We even teach certain theories known now to be false as part of a good education.  Study the ancients and you will (one hopes) learn about the Ptolemaic view of the Heavens, the "phlogiston" theory of the chemical elements, and so on.  And learn what replaced them.  (Stand, as I have, at 80 degrees north and 80 degrees south, well within the polar circles, and in summer time see the sun revolve around the sky, always in sight, and Copernicus is not intuitive. albeit he is right.)

The Times today notes that ID cites things arguably not fully explained by Darwin's elegant theory (the Times cites ID's questions about complexity, pace of change, information theory); ID posits that science does not explain everything in our universe.  Which manifestly it cannot.  If the universe began with a Big Bang from a "singularity," how did the singularity get there?  Is ours the only universe?  ID points to many narrow ranges that must exist, else there would be no us, and says that design is the most likely explanation for their concatenation.  Is our world too improbable to happen by chance?  Or are we one of a quadrillion alternate universes?

To state such is not the same as agreeing with ID theories; because ID seems to me not to be falsifiable it does not appear to me to be science.  So long as some residual uncertainty exists it is possible to posit ID as an explanation, and thus one can never disprove ID for all possible cases.  Immunity to definitive refutation removes ID from the ambit of falsifiability.

Teaching science as revealed truth beyond all question is wrong and fearful.  Be not afraid to acknowledge science's inability to explain all.  At the same time, trust that builders of airplanes follow scientific principles in their work.  In a century, Darwin's universe may, like, Newton's, be overthrown or merely shoved aside to make room for a new one.  Or it may not.  Turning every attempt to question science into a replay of the 1925 Scopes Trial may be good political--and media--theater.  It is not helping education.  Science presumes that our minds are honest, open, modest in asserting what we know and that we accept that our knowledge is contingent at best, with certitude about all likely to elude us.  Whether to teach ID or not I leave to educators to debate.  But either way, they should teach science as science, not as dogma.
NY Times: The Evolution Debate

Index 4/22/08

2 posts: (1) Colombia: "Tia Nancy (Pelosi)"--Weenie Watch; (2) Obama's Philadelphia Story: PEnnsylvania 6-2008!--The Home Front.

Colombia: "Tia Nancy (Pelosi)"

Wall Street Journal South America maven Mary Anastasia O'Grady charts political currents in that continent, and shows how much damage Nancy Pelosi's obsession with satisfying militant unions here can damage America's interests down there.  Anther factor: Nancy loves Hugo Chavez, says the Weekly Standard.  The $62 billion trade deficit for 2000 - 2007 under NAFTA is cited as a factor by some, but a Wall Street Journal article explains that $58B of the $62B--94%--is due to energy imports from Canada & Mexico.

If you ask me, I prefer Tia Maria to Tia Nancy.