“Moldova Communists stay in power,” BBC News, 7 March 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4322617.stm.

“Russia Picking A Fight Over Kyrgystan,” by Tim Russo, Democracy Guy, 22 May 2005, http://democracyguy.typepad.com/democracy_guy_grassroots_/2005/03/russia_picking_.html.

There’s so many angles to this story: Putin’s alienation of Moldova, joint Opposition-Government patrols, Russia’s generation-old policy of trading power for money, the wave of democratic revolutions, Russia’s army being so incompetent that it can’t invade a country where it has military bases, etc.

Can the President Stand the Heat?

In the same month two new ex-Soviet states, Moldova and the unpronounceable Kyrgystan, look to be joining Georgia and Ukraine in cutting their ties to Moscow. But everything is swamped by this headline

To those who need a second look

“Surveys can be used to show Title XI Compliance,” by Kathy Kiely, USA Today, 22 March 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2005-03-22-title-ix-survey_x.htm (from K.J. Lopez at The Corner).

New federal guidelines for compliance with Title IX, the law that has helped get more women involved in sports, permit schools to avoid adding more athletic opportunities for students if an Internet survey indicates they are not interested.

This is another reason I am a Republican. Instead of massive federal social engineer at the college level.. let colleges offer opportunities that interest people. A pretty shocking development!

Critics say the guidelines, issued Friday with no public fanfare by the Department of Education, represent a significant weakening of the 33-year-old law banning sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.

“They’re finding a way to weaken Title IX,” said Neena Chaudhry, senior counsel of the National Women’s Law Center. “This allows schools the easy way out.”

And with the Iraq War, Bush found a way to “weaken” the Ba’athi Regime. I hereby create a “Neena Chaudhry Award for Obvious Statements.”

Not that that will prevent bureaucrats from denying any shift

Education Department officials adamantly denied the charge, termed “bogus” by spokesman Susan Aspey.

“This is simply an additional clarification. This is not a new way of doing business,” said James Manning of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. “We’re trying to help schools.”

And de-Ba’athification was simply an additional clarification on who is eligible for public sector jobs in Iraq.

At least he is right that the new rules help schools.

The heart of the matter…

The new guidelines say schools can show they’re offering adequate opportunities by periodically asking students to fill out an Internet survey designed to determine what sports interest them. The Education Department says schools may notify students of the survey via e-mail.

What makes this news very, very wonderful:

Even if many students don’t fill out the surveys, schools will be able to use them to argue they don’t need to create new sports teams for the underrepresented gender, usually women. The Education Department acknowledged “rates of non-response may be high with the e-mail procedure” but added it “will interpret such non-response as a lack of interest” by the underrepresented gender.

Wow! If I’m reading that right, as long as the response rate is less than the fraction of athletes who are female, Title IX is null. Wow!

The only sad news is that this was proposed years ago, but vetoed by a faint-heart

Two years ago, a presidential commission reviewing Title IX considered proposals to permit schools wider use of surveys to prove compliance. Then-Education Secretary Rod Paige rejected those proposals.

Update: Doug Petch adds some legal details, and then comments…

Once and for all, then, the OCR has confirmed that a school is not required to offer an equal competition opportunity to both men and women in a particular sport if a competent survey indicates the absence of “unmet interest sufficient to sustain a varsity team in the sport(s).”

Finally.

Update 2: Women’s Hoops wonders what real changes will be, but takes time to call tdaxp conservative and anti-feminist. Maybe he gets that idea because of this post? Off Wing Opinion likes WH’s view, and highlights…

The political story, on the other hand, is clear enough.

Act One: in an atmosphere of candor and open debate, conservatives push for a change but end up rebuffed by public pressure. Act Two: conservatives bide their time, wait till everyone has forgotten all about the issue, and then make the change quietly — without debate, without fanfare, without a press release. They successfully bury the story. Several days pass before anyone even knows that a change has been made.

Act Three has yet to be written.

It’s hard to argue with that last conclusion, as I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this story. Stay tuned.

“Fed officials scoff at US debt threat,” Taipei Times, 12 March 2005, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/archives/2005/03/12/2003245972.

Aaron’s comment forced me to do some research and pull up this article. The upshot is that, while we can do a lot better, we are doing great.

“The resolution of our current-account deficit and household debt burdens does not strike me as overly worrisome,” said Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, according to a transcript of a speech he gave to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Greenspan said the world was undergoing a “one-time shift in the degree of globalization and innovation that has temporarily altered the specific calibrations” for evaluating economic imbalances.

Although Greenspan acknowledged that globalization had its limits, he said it was impossible to know how long the trend could continue.

“The closing of our frontier at the end of the 19th century, for example, did not signal the onset of a new era of economic stagnation,” he remarked.

Federal Reserve Board Governor Bernanke is even more upbeat:

A member of the Fed board of governors, Ben Bernanke, went even further than Greenspan by attributing the US’ huge and rising foreign indebtedness to a “savings glut” in Asia and most other parts of the world, according to a transcript of his speech to the Virginia Association of Economists in Richmond.

“Over the past decade, a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving — a global saving glut,” Bernanke said.

Bernanke acknowledged that this shift could pose problems for the US at some point. The flood of foreign imports has led to a “shrinkage” of US manufacturing and its potential for exports, he said. But like the Fed chairman, Bernanke said the imbalances would gradually readjust on their own, and added, “I see no reason the process should not proceed smoothly.”

America is not saving enough. But this is largely relative — after rational adjustments, we are saving as much as we ever did. But others are doing even better.

“Free the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia,” by Max Singer, Hudson Institute, 16 May 2002, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=1659.

I’ve written before on Saudi persecution in East Arabia, and how that occupied land is a natural ally of Iraq. Here’s a classic article on the need to liberated the western shore of the Persian Gulf:

One essential measure will be to stop the flow of Wahhabi money from Saudi Arabia. The great vulnerability of the Saudi regime that could make it possible for the U.S. to stop this flow is that the Wahhabis are only a small minority of the population of the EP of Saudi Arabia, from where all their money comes.

It is well within the power of the U.S. to make it possible for the EP to become independent from the Wahhabis, a new Muslim Republic of East Arabia. Especially if the independence of the people of the EP were gained in part by a promise to give half of the oil revenue to non-political Muslim charities throughout the world, instead of to the al Saud family, there would be no objection among Muslims around the world to ending the al Saud family’s obscene wealth and to relieve themselves of the Wahhabi preaching to their children that all other Muslims are infidels. The U.S. would neither seek nor gain control of oil policy or any oil profits. Its help to Muslims in the EP, like its help to Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, would be a result of U.S. resistance to oppression and pursuit of a safer world.

“Federal Judge Denies Request to Reinsert Schiavo’s Feeding Tube,” by Abby Goodnough, New York Times, 22 March 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/national/22cnd-schiavo.html.

A federal judge here today refused to order the reinsertion of a feeding tube for the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, denying an emergency request from the woman’s parents and despite the intervention of Congress and President Bush in the case, The Associated Press reported.

Judge Dames D. Whittemore of Federal District Court said the 41-year-old woman’s parents had not established a “substantial likelihood of success” at trial on the merits of their arguments, the agency said.

I guess this makes him “legally blind” too. I mean, where does this “substantial likelihood” talk come from?

Judge Whittemore asked Mr. Gibbs to cite case law that would bolster the claim that Ms. Schiavo’s Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process had been violated, adding, “because we haven’t found any.” Without proof that the state court’s handling of the case violated precedent, Judge Whittemore said, “I think you would be hard pressed to convince me that you have substantial likelihood” of succeeding on the merits of the case.

To win a temporary restraining order, a plaintiff must prove such likelihood.

Oh. Something called “the law.”

The most interesting part of the case are dueling freedoms. Would Mrs. Shiavo have the freedom to refuse the treatment for herself, or does Mr. Shiavo have the freedom to refuse the same treatment on behalf of his wife?

Mr. Felos, representing Mr. Schiavo, sought to focus Judge Whittemore on the question of whether the Congressional act passed in the early morning hours was constitutional. He argued that Congress did not have the authority to allow a federal review of the case because the Constitution says it is up to a state to decide whether due process rights have been violated.

“Yes, life is sacred,” Mr. Felos said, “but so is liberty, your honor, especially in this country.”

A wrinkle I cannot comment on is Mrs. Shiavo’s Catholocism

The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo’s religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water.

(Aside: Why “Ms.” not “Mrs.”?)

It seems that David Gibbs is saying that, out of religious freedom, all non-responsive Catholics should be under Canon law, unless otherwise indicated in writing. Maybe this is what Juan Cole means by the Islamization of the Republican Party?

Let’s hope this tragedy is over soon.

“The complaint in the Schiavo case,” by Ann Althouse, Althouse, 21 March 2005, http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/03/complaint-in-schiavo-case.html.

“Shiavo,” by Jonathan H. Adler, The Corner, 22 March 2005, http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_03_20_corner-archive.asp#058891.

“Shiavo’s Case — One Doctor’s Opnion,” by John Derbyshire, The Corner, 22 March 2005, http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_03_20_corner-archive.asp#058922.

Many writers, including Stuart Berman and Red Side of Belew, have questioned the character of Mr. Shiavo. But what about the parents?

A man of controversial motivations (at best) has sought to see her dead since the settling several law suits of over $2 million…

and

Michael Shiavo should lose custody of Terri on the fact that he will not allow any kind of therapy to try to help Terri

…

When a man neglects his wife for 15 years, he shouldnt have any custody rights over her.

But conservative novelist John Derbyshire posts a reply to his earlier comments on Terri Shavio.

Let me say something else, and I admit up front that I don’t know all the details of this case: in my experience people who have had a financial interest in the life or death of a loved one have almost always been interested in keeping that person alive. They may be living in a home which is in the patients name, they may have control of that person’s bank accounts, his pension checks, his assets. If they have been given financial power of attorney, this is almost certainly so. I have seen this situation before, rarely thank God. A family member puts his completely demented octagenarian mother through a series of painful operations even though she is already completely non-communicative and dependent on tube feeds.

Althouse attacks Terri’s theoretical religious right to force others to force feed her

The religion-based claims against the judge and the hospice rely on the theory that the Catholic religion requires the continued feeding of a person in a persistent vegetative state and that, even though the defendants are not preventing Schiavo herself from taking an action required by her religion, that those caring for her are required to act pursuant to the requirements of her religion. That seems to be a difficult argument to make, even though, under state law, those caring for her are only able to withhold feeding because they attribute that desire to her.

Adler defends federalism for Terri-absolutists

While Congress clearly has the authority to regulate federal court jurisdiction, and to provide for such jurisdiction so as to ensure that state courts act within constitutional constraints, I feel the legislation is in appropriate on several grounds. First, state courts make these sorts of decisions all the time in life-or-death situations, including death penalty cases without equivalent federal interference

This case is a sad tragedy. Compared to the pain of the family it is base to discuss the real harm some conservatives are doing by forcing her alive. But the harm is real.

Update: Over at National Review’s The Corner, Rich Lowry lists the intensive therapy Mrs. Shiavo’s husband and parents sprung for

Theresa spent two and a half months as an inpatient at Humana Northside Hospital, eventually emerging from her coma state, but not recovering consciousness. On 12 May 1990, following extensive testing, therapy and observation, she was discharged to the College Park skilled care and rehabilitation facility. Forty-nine days later, she wastransferred again to Bayfront Hospital for additional, aggressive rehabilitation efforts. In September of 1990, she was brought home, but following only three weeks, she wasreturned to the College Park facility because the “family was overwhelmed by Terry’scare needs.”…

The clinical records within the massive case file indicate that Theresa was not responsiveto neurological and swallowing tests. She received regular and intense physical,occupational and speech therapies…

In late Autumn of 1990, following months of therapy and testing, formal diagnoses ofpersistent vegetative state with no evidence of improvement, Michael took Theresa toCalifornia, where she received an experimental thalamic stimulator implant in her brain. Michael remained in California caring for Theresa during a period of several months and returned to Florida with her in January of 1991. Theresa was transferred to the Mediplex Rehabilitation Center in Brandon, where she received 24 hour skilled care, physical, occupational, speech and recreational therapies.

Despite aggressive therapies, physician and other clinical assessments consistently revealed no functional abilities, only reflexive, rather than cognitive movements, random eye opening, no communication system and little change cognitively or functionally. On 19 July 1991 Theresa was transferred to the Sable Palms skilled care facility. Periodic neurological exams, regular and aggressive physical, occupational and speech therapy continued through 1994.

“A New Way to be Mad,” by Carl Elliott, Atlantic Monthly, December 2000, http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/393/393-New-way-mad.htm.

“At War With Their Bodies, They Seek to Sever Limbs,” by Robin Marantzhenig, New York Times, 22 March 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/health/psychology/22ampu.html (from Boing Boing).

Remember, they are not mental disorders.

That would be bigoted.

The phenomenon is not as rare as one might think: healthy people deliberately setting out to rid themselves of one or more of their limbs, with or without a surgeon’s help. Why do pathologies sometimes arise as if from nowhere? Can the mere description of a condition make it contagious?

In January of this year British newspapers began running articles about Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, in Scotland. Smith had amputated the legs of two patients at their request, and he was planning to carry out a third amputation when the trust that runs his hospital stopped him. These patients were not physically sick. Their legs did not need to be amputated for any medical reason. Nor were they incompetent, according to the psychiatrists who examined them. They simply wanted to have their legs cut off. In fact, both the men whose limbs Smith amputated have declared in public interviews how much happier they are, now that they have finally had their legs removed.

That was from the Atlantic Monthly, when it was called “apotemnophilia.” More recently, not a “Body Integrity Identity Disorder.”

When the legless man drove up on his own to meet Dr. Michael First for brunch in Brooklyn, it wasn’t just to show Dr. First how independent he could be despite his disability.

It was to show Dr. First that he had finally done it – had finally managed to get both his legs amputated, even though they had been perfectly healthy.

Dr. First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, had gotten to know this man through his investigations of a bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition that he is calling body integrity identity disorder, or B.I.I.D.

…

Dr. First is among a small group of psychologists and psychiatrists who are trying to define the disorder, understand its origins and decide whether to include it in the encyclopedic bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or D.S.M., as a full-fledged disease. At the same time, the disorder is turning up as a plot device or documentary subject in a handful of films, plays and television shows.

The idea of having extreme elective surgery, even when it involves mutilation or removal of healthy tissue, has met at least some acceptance in cases like sex reassignment, or cosmetic surgery for those who hate their noses or breasts even when those body parts are objectively fine.

…

In 1997, Dr. Richard Bruno of Englewood Hospital in New Jersey proposed the name factitious disability disorder, which he grouped into three types: people who are sexually aroused by amputees (“devotees”), those who use wheelchairs and crutches to make it seem as if they are amputees (“pretenders”) and those who want to get amputations themselves (“wannabes”). In Dr. Bruno’s taxonomy, those who manage to obtain amputations continue to be known as wannabes.

…

“When the first sex reassignment was done in the 1950′s, it generated the same kind of horror” that voluntary amputation does now, Dr. First said. “Surgeons asked themselves, ‘How can I do this thing to someone that’s normal?’ The dilemma of the surgeon being asked to amputate a healthy limb is similar.”

Remember: just because this is an ahistorical lifestyle that substantially lessons life expectancy does not mean it is a mental disorder. Because if that was true, then homosexualism would be one too.

“LNSG condemns modern society in school shooting,” by Steve Martinez, Nationalist News Network, 22 March 2005, http://www.nazi.org/nazi/policy/weise/.

The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, on whose messageboard Jeff Weise posted one year before shooting people at his Minnesota high school, today refused to wring hands over a “tragedy,” instead pointing out that such events are to be expected when thinking people are crammed into an unthinking, irrational modern society. According to the LNSG, the school shooting itself is not our failure; society is our failure, and the school shooting is a symptom.

“We knew [Weise] briefly through 34 posts he made on the forum,” said LNSGP forum administrator Atem. “He expressed himself well and was clearly highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young.” Weise participated in the forum in part because, unlike “white nationalist” or “white power” movements, the LNSG embraces all races as part of its vision of world nationalism. His statements on the site reflected a frustration with the populist politics and materialistic arrogance of modern society.

Weise most clearly expressed his philosophy in the following statement of frustration with the raceless, cultureless void of liberal industrial society: “The Natives you’ve known to be sympathetic to the cause are probably ones who’ve experienced firsthand what kind of problems cultural and race mixing can cause. As a result of cultural dominance and interracial mixing there are barely any full blooded Natives left. Where I live less than 1% of all the people on the Reservation can speak their own language, and among the youth wanting to be black has run rampant. Under a National Socialist government, things for us would improve vastly… That is, if we haven’t already become too soft from the way this materialistic life-style has made us, and that is why I am pro-Nazi. It’s hard though, being a Native American National Socialist; people are so misinformed, ignorant, and closed-minded it makes your life a living hell.”

Including the murderer, ten are dead.

“I’m Quite Left…,” by Aaron, tdaxp, 22 March 2005, http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/03/18/rounds_south_dakota_s_abraham_lincoln.html.

Aaron provides us with an airchair view of the world. He’s right on a lot of things, so as a true friend I will mention only those where he is misguided…

…I don’t support handouts to the rich, like a tax cut that’s done little to rejuvenate a slow economy…

I agree that Keynesian “stimulation” of the economy by providing tax cuts are unwise. Sadly, Keynes’s “something for nothing” philosophy has resounated with Americans ever since FDR, so politicians of all parties use it as an excuse to increase spending and/or cut taxes.

Taxes should be set to create a stable, high-growth economy, not manipulated as a short-term fix for a slowing one.

…or the OK to drill for oil where it won’t do anyone but the oil companies any good

ANWR has three main winners and two main losers

Winners

• Oil providers involved in it
  
• Oil consumers
  
• Oil-substitute consumers

Losers

• Oil providers not involved in it
  
• Oil-substitute providers

Oil providers involved in ANWR could only receive all of the social gains from it if they were a monopoly or perfect cartel.

Of course ANWR has the potential to change very-long-run calculations as well, but the future is too uncertain to dwell on those.

Even Mr. Savage will have a hard time refuting the fact that no oil will come from ANWR for many years, no matter how many resolutions are passed

Aaron knows my dim view of Mr. Savage. However, Aaron’s premise is incorrect. If not changing oil calculations until the long term is a problem, then green strategies would not make sense either. After all, it will take years for hybrid cars to cut into oil consumption!

Prayer in schools? Sure, why not. As long as you’d be fine going to a Hindu country and praying their prayers in their schools

I am not speaking for Mr. Belew, and I’m against force prayers, but…

Hinduism can be just as effective a horizontal control mechanism as Christianity. Therefore, let Hindu communities lead public Hindu prayers in America!

(Not that there aren’t much worse problems with the whole public education system in the first place…)

As a Christian, do you want their ideals forced on you just because you’re the minority?

I would guess a good part of Belew’s anti-liberal disposition comes from having government forcing liberal views on him for years. While Bush is slowly rolling those back, social engineering has been government policy for a long time.

The people who protested the Vietnam war weren’t wrong. It was the wrong war at the wrong time. The fight against communism was just yesterday’s religious jihad. There will always be war. Should women and children be murdered so we can raise our flag and be proud of our work? War is one thing. Rape and murder is another. Vietnam was the latter. Read a book

Vietnam was the right war at the right time. While it failed in its central goal, it was successful. The long-term consistent attack on Communist infrastructure robbed the movement of momentum elsewhere in South East Asia. At the same time, the obliteration of modern Vietnam showed all the the price of Communism was unacceptably high. Like the Cuban boycott, the Vietnam War was a success.

Communism was a system of mass slavery. There was no freedom of religion, no freedom of conscience, no freedom of speech, no freedom of work.

Saying there “will always be war” is either demonstrably wrong (it has been, well, ever since Pennsylvania and New York slugged it out) or a meaningless tautology (business as a form of war???).

The end years of the Global War on Communism coincided with the beginning of a Jihad. But there the similarities ended.

The Viet Cong used rape and murder to destroy South Vietnamese civil society. Fortunately, the VC were destroyed during the disasterous (for them) Tet Offensive.

When Warren Buffett, who should be giddy like a schoolgirl at Bush’s tax cuts writes a letter to the Washington Post questioning the utility of them, don’t you have to wonder?

Almost none of Mr. Buffet’s income is earned income. He was barely effected by the income tax cuts.

It is easy being generous with other people’s money.

Thanks for the comments.