A Libertarian Party convention delegate on her way home from Atlanta claims she was ejected from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport for showing an antiwar poster consisting of a face of Bush made up of lots of faces of dead soldiers to fellow travelers, including some military recruits. An airport spokesman claims she left on her own. An Associated Press account as run in the Albuquerque Journal here.

[Link courtesy Rational Review.]

Commenter Jennifer's anecdote from the trenches of public school teaching in the thread for this post is worth repeating:

I taught "Merchant of Venice" to seniors one year; in it there's a line where one character is insulting another, by saying something along the lines of "He damns the ears of all who hear him, by calling him 'fool.'" One of the kids asked me what that meant, so I explained that one of the lesser-known verses of the Book of Matthew has Jesus saying that anyone who calls another a fool will be damned. (I recited chapter and verse, though I can't remember it now.) I went on to talk about the very funny use Voltaire made of that in his essay "The Jesuit Berthier" (an angel tells a priest to stop giving his stupid, boring sermons, because instead of winning souls for God he's endangering the souls of all who hear him, because they all call him a fool), and explained also that this is why cartoony villians in movies developed the habit of using "Fool!" as their default insult; for people familiar with the Bible, the fact that the villian always says "Fool!" is just one more proof that this is an evil, evil dude.

"So anyway," I said to the class, "back in Shakespeare's day, when people were far more familiar with the Bible than they are now, instead of insulting someone by saying 'You are a fool,' you'd say 'You are a--well, I can't SAY what you are because then I'd go to hell.' That's what he's doing in the play."

Next day I get called into the principal's office; some parents were FURIOUS that I had told their kids that Jesus said anyone who says 'fool,' will go to Hell.

"But he did," I pointed out.

"It doesn't matter, Jennifer. You can't insult kids' religions."

"Well, the kid asked me what that line from the play meant! What was I supposed to do?"

"Just tell him you don't know."

Probably not really a public/private thing—I can imagine this happening about as easily at a private school. Just an appalling illustration of the mindset that subordinates the pedagogical mission to the principle of never risking offense to anyone.

Featurewell founder David Wallis cites some disturbing examples of colleges offering "guidance" on what their student newspapers can and can't say:

In recent months, there have been several examples of college administrators sending young journalists the wrong message. Barton County Community College in Kansas fired its paper's media adviser after she resisted an order not to run a letter criticizing the school's basketball coach. La Roche College, a Catholic school in Pittsburgh, confiscated 900 copies of the La Roche Courier in which a columnist suggested that "condoms and other forms of contraception could eliminate unwanted babies out of wedlock."

And at its Brooklyn campus, Long Island University changed the locks on its student newspaper offices and suspended its editor for rigorous reporting—revealing the failing grades of a former student government president who had mysteriously resigned.

The showcase incident took place at the Baylor Lariat, where the president of Baylor denounced a pro-gay marriage editorial that came "dangerously close to violating University policy." As Wallis notes, this incident brought out less support for free expression than pedantic reminders that you only have freedom of the press if you own one. The most disturbing of these seen-it-all raspberries comes from New York Times reporter and Baylor alum Edward Wyatt:

"If there are newspapers out there that routinely defy their publishers' values on their editorial pages, I have yet to discover them."

Note Wyatt's disingenuous adverb: This wasn't something happening "routinely." It was a single event. Or maybe we should infer from this that Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "routinely" nixes content he doesn't agree with in the Times? If he's at all concerned about his paper's credibility, I'd doubt that's the case, but who knows?

Whole article.

Rich Lowry does a nice job summarizing the right-of-center complaint du jour: That the congressmen, journalists, and 9/11 commissioners who are criticizing the Bush Administration's conduct in the War on Terror (and over-obsessing about Abu Ghraib) are basically weak-kneed, publicity-hogging frivolity-peddlers who are "emasculating" America's ability to defend herself.

True or not (and I'd vote "not"), this critique amounts to a full-throated endorsement of the Executive Branch expanding its power at the expense of the legislative, judicial, and journalistic. When a "grandstanding" congressman calls Donald Rumsfeld onto the carpet and makes an ass of himself in the process, well, that's kind of how this messy checks-and-balances thing works, as far as I can tell. Thankfully for Lowry, this administration, made up of many figures who were scarred by the post-Watergate reform era, has been consciously (and effectively) scaling back many of those mid-1970s restrictions on Executive Branch power and secrecy. It will be interesting, and possibly amusing, to see if those who agree with Lowry's basic sentiment will be singing the same "stop yer bitchin'!" tune if and when a different political party takes charge of a considerably strengthened White House.

Drudge is red-inking a pre-transcript of a John Kerry interview with C-SPAN, where the Democrat nominee (in Drudge's paraphrase) "supports the current FCC crackdown on television indecency, but comes out against the greater scrutiny of pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime." Some direct quotes:

"I am not in favor of government interference and censorship and restriction of what an individual privately can decide to do in their home, in their own space, so to speak," Kerry said, but he did seem to be OK with indecency regulation "where you have children involved, where you have a broader cross-section of the public, where there is sort of a sense of family time or hour."

Heavy-metal makeovers for various celebrities and politicians, from the expert photoshoppers at Fark.com. My early favorites are Condoleeza Rice, Michael Moore, and the "Fiskal" twist on Twisted Sister.

For many people around my age, the end of The End of History began 15 years ago today, when the Chinese government opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, live on CNN. The first real hero in what would turn out to be a marvelous global season for anti-communist dissent was, of course, that guy who stopped the tanks (deservedly named last December as one of our 35 heroes of freedom). But who is he, and where is he now? The L.A. Times couldn't really find out, but the search is illuminating. Sample:

In 1999, on the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin was asked what had happened to the mystery man. He responded in English, "I think never killed." Jiang said government officials conducted their own search for the protester, checking morgues, prisons and computer registers, but could not find him.

But they could get no help from Chinese citizens themselves: No one in the country has ever seen the images. In fact, no ordinary Chinese beyond the protesters and soldiers involved even knows of the standoff. Even today, Chinese can't see the famous photograph, even on the Internet. Attempts to download the picture are blocked by the government.

The Pentagon is finally getting around to shifting troops from Germany and Korea to places where they might actually be of some use. It always galls me when people insist we need to bring back the draft (for military, rather than egalitarian, reasons), while ignoring all the soldiers we've got "defending" countries perfectly capable of defending themselves.

"For Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld," The New York Times explains, "the reasons for the reshuffling seem clear and compelling: that the purpose of military units is to fight and win the nation's wars, and they should be stationed in locations that enable the United States to use them most efficiently and with minimal political restrictions." But critics worry that the plan could "inadvertently lend support to the French contention that Europe must rely on itself for its security." Just to be clear: That's the downside.

A gallery owner in San Francisco's North Beach takes a beating, literally, for displaying an oil painting of Abu Ghraib. Capobianco Gallery owner Lori Haigh knuckles under to thugs and closes up shop. Artist Guy Colwell, whose painting "Abuse," displayed in Capobianco's window, attracted the controversy, fares somewhat better: San Francisco supes may put his work up at City Hall. Underdog paper the Examiner was faster and more extensive on this story, but the Chronicle has an interesting snapshot of the dispirited Haigh. Local blogger Fenimore Cooper has speculated and commented from the beginning of this issue, and his latest thoughts are worth a read.

Dave Kopel reviews Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Jacob Sullum finds an activity harder than mastering the third tone.

Over at MSNBC, Howard Mortman torpedoes the gas-guzzling-on-the-high-seas antics of the people's candidate, John F. Kerry, who has said, "When gas hits $2 a gallon, we just don't pay for it at the pump. We pay for it in our towns and our schools and our grocery stores." What's more, writes Mortman, Kerry "is a strong advocate of energy independence and raising the corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFÉ) for cars."

It's fun to learn, then, that Kerry runs around in a 42-foot speedboat called the "Scaramouche." The nautical mileage on that baby? Probably less than 1 mpg, which does little to reduce our "dangerous" dependency on foreign oil.

The Scaramouche story not only comes close to turning an Onion parody ("KERRY MAKES WHISTLE-STOP TOUR FROM DECK OF YACHT") into reality, it jibes almost perfectly with stories about George H.W. Bush from 14 years ago:

In August 1990, during America’s other major deployment to the Persian Gulf, then-President Bush asked Americans to conserve energy. Midway through his 25-day vacation in Maine, a reporter asked President Bush if conserving energy included Fidelity, his recreational speedboat. Bush answered by urging Americans to keep their vacation plans, saying, "I'm going to keep using my boat, and I hope the rest of America will prudently recreate. "

Whole thing here.

Brian Doherty has the lowdown on the Libertarian Party convention in Atlanta.

Anders Sandberg on Masamune Shirow's politech-bending story Ghost in the Shell.

Charles Paul Freund shows what happens when the government tries to lift us up with art.

MSNBC discovers "conservative punks," i.e., kids who like loud rock music but don't necessarily fall in line with the politics of, I don't know, Jackson "No Nukes" Browne or The Beastie Boys, who are in favor of a Free Tibet and an dethroned George W. Bush (side question for Dalai Lama boosters: From a Buddhist perspective shouldn't it be self-evident the DL and the Tibetans are getting exactly what they deserve for past sins in former lives?).

The MSNBC story, with mandatory Ramones pic and pro-American Johnny R quote, is here.

Without getting into too lengthy a bit, shouldn't it be self-evident that a person's aesthetic tastes don't necessarily translate into political ones, especially at the partisan level? David Weigel made that basic point in his Reason review of Danny Goldberg's crapola Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Brian Doherty and I made it in our obit for Joey Ramone (warning: both of these pieces include the mandatory Johnny R right-wing quote). And Doherty made it at length in his wonderful story about the "strange politics of millionaire rock stars" (this probably has a Johnny quote in it, too, but I can't remember off-hand).

And lest anyone forget, punk, in its earliest forms, was alternately anti-political or as likely to be right-wing as left (anyone else remember Stiv Bator's unabashed jingoism during the Iranian hostage crisis?). One of the reasons punk was liberating was precisely because it mocked hippie-ish social uplift and message music, replacing it with a pure nihilism that was fun, fun, fun until your daddy took the Carbona away.

The Rocky Mountain News' Linda Seebach writes up our June issue but, more interestingly, throws in a bunch of information about the aborted Matrix airline-passenger-profiling program. She writes:

The Associated Press reported May 20 that a data-sharing pilot project called Matrix (for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) had demonstrated for federal and state officials, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, a "high terrorist factor" scoring system.

Sorting through 4 billion records, it came up with the names of the 120,000 people with the highest scores and sent them to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI and other agencies.

The company developing the scoring system, Seisint Inc., claimed that a number of arrests were made as a result.

Creepy? Unconstitutional? Would you feel better about it if you knew the company also claimed that among the 80 people with the highest scores, five were among the 9/11 hijackers?

Whole thing here. The site for Matrix is here.

Canadian Tory leader Stephen Harper is singing my song:

If you want lower business taxes, you must be willing at the same time to stop receiving government subsidies. I won't lower one without lowering the other.

Taking a quick break from writing my new book, Liberation Biology, I just had to note the plethora of good news today. I should be back full time next month.

Pollution Down: Toxic chemicals released into the air in the United States are down by 20 percent between 1998 and 2001, according to the latest report of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation.

Cancer Down: The National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society released a report that finds “overall observed cancer incidence rates dropped 0.5 percent per year from 1991 to 2001, while death rates from all cancers combined dropped 1.1 percent per year from 1993 to 2001.”

The Kids Are All Right: And the Annie Casey Foundation just issued a study that shows that “fewer American babies are dying, kids are less likely to live in poverty and fewer youngsters are dropping out of school than in the mid-1990s.” Since 1996, infant mortality fell from 7.3 to 6.8 for every 1,000 live births; teen deaths due to accident, homicide and suicide fell from 60 to 50 per 100,000; and child poverty fell to an all time low of 16 percent in 2000.

Ryan Sager writes that the more the National Education Association tightens its grasp, the more Democratic pols slip through its fingers.

From the Boston Globe:

A majority of the US Senate has signed a letter asking President Bush to lift the government's funding restrictions on embryonic stem cells, increasing the pressure to change a policy critics say is holding back potentially lifesaving medical research.

The letter, which is still being circulated for signatures and has not yet been released, says the United States is falling behind in research into diseases "that affect more than 100 million Americans" and calls on the president to "expand" the current policy. It has been signed by 56 senators, including conservatives Trent Lott of Mississippi, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, and 10 other Republicans.
.....
The Senate letter, which mirrors one released by the House of Representatives two months ago, is a sign of how the political terrain has changed since Bush issued his policy in August 2001.

Since then, groups representing victims of diseases that might be helped by the research -- such as Parkinson's or juvenile diabetes -- have been aggressively lobbying Congress. This campaign has included pleading visits from children who have diabetes, as well as a powerful speech from former first lady Nancy Reagan. Though many legislators remain firmly opposed to embryonic stem cell research, the campaign has taken some of the partisan edge off the debate and given the president a measure of political cover should he decide to alter the policy.
......
Backers of the Senate letter want more signatures because they are still short of the 60 senators whose approval would be needed to force a vote on a controversial topic.

The letter raises the prospect that the ban could be lifted with new legislation, but even critics of Bush's policy consider that unlikely. It would be hard to find the two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress needed to overturn a presidential veto, Soler conceded. Instead, the senators offer to work with Bush to forge a new policy.

CIA Director George Tenet has resigned, reports USA Today, citing the standard "personal reasons."

Yesterday a federal judge in Washington blocked enforcement of a law that threatens to withhold funding from transit systems that accept ads criticizing drug prohibition. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that the ban was a clear example of viewpoint discrimination: It allows transit systems to accept ads supporting the war on drugs (such as those sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy) but demands that they reject messages expressing a contrary view. Friedman said the First Amendment means that Congress "cannot prohibit advertisements supporting legalization of a controlled substance while permitting those that support tougher drug sentences."

[Thanks to Pete Guither at DrugWarRant.com for the tip.]

Commentator Jon Utley, who offers this summary of the recent FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, recently pointed me to a very interesting May 4 Wash Post piece by political scientist Corey Robin. A contributor to the new anthology Cold War Triumphalism, Robin discusses how conservatives found in 9/11 a justification to return to a higher calling in politics: Empire building. In recounting conversations he had with William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol in 2000, he writes:

"The trouble with the emphasis in conservatism on the market," Buckley told me, "is that it becomes rather boring. You hear it once, you master the idea. The notion of devoting your life to it is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." Kristol confessed to a yearning for an American empire: "What's the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role?"

Robin continues:

For neoconservatives, who had thrilled to the crusade against communism, all that was left of Ronald Reagan's legacy after the Cold War was a sunny entrepreneurialism, which found a welcome home in Bill Clinton's America. While neocons favor capitalism, they do not believe it is the highest achievement of civilization. Like their predecessors -- from Edmund Burke, Samuel Coleridge and Henry Adams to T.S. Eliot, Martin Heidegger and Michael Oakeshott -- today's conservatives prize mystery and vitality over calculation and technology. Such romantic sensibilities are inspired by questions of politics and, especially, of war. It is only natural, then, that the neocons would take up the call of empire, seeking a world that is about something more than money and markets.

Immediately following 9/11, intellectuals, politicians and pundits seized upon the terrorist strikes as a deliverance from the miasma Buckley and Kristol had been criticizing. Even commentators on the left saw the attacks as stirring a sleeping nation; Frank Rich announced in the New York Times that "this week's nightmare, it's now clear, has awakened us from a frivolous if not decadent decade-long dream."

Whole thing here. While there are many things to disagree with, it's a very interesting piece, one that not only gets at post-Cold War tensions between libertarians and conservatives but, more important, the pan-ideological attraction of war, empire, and more.

Britney Spears may soon perform in China, but she'll have to dress according to the regime's dictates. China has approved a five-concert tour, but the China News Service reports that "relevant departments will carry out strict reviews of Britney Spears's performance clothing." So which departments are "relevant"? Maybe they have a Department to Combat the Triumph of Vulgarity.