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Week of January 1, 2001
[Note: Some now-dead links have been removed from archived items.]

TERRORISM UNCOVERED: Radical protestors are burning down houses on Long Island, trying to keep out newcomers. But if you live outside the metropolitan area, you won't read about it in The New York Times, which omitted its article from the national edition received by people like me. It would be front-page news if the terrorists were targeting blacks, Jews, gays, immigrants, or any other specific group. But it's dull metro coverage when they want to keep out these groups--and everyone else. The extremist Earth Liberation Front, best known for burning down a ski resort in 1998 and uprooting an experimental corn crop last summer, has added suburban sprawl (a.k.a. letting new folks into the neighborhood) to its list of crimes against the earth. Local environmental groups are not pleased by the association, according to Newsday, but they can be grateful for press coverage that is entirely on their side. Nobody but the victims is complaining about the mainstreamers' overheated rhetoric about the evils of new houses. And Newsday, which unlike the Times is giving the story serious coverage, cryptically blames the crimes on local planners. [Posted 1/3.]

LIGHTS ON: Observers are beginning to realize that California's electicity crisis isn't the product of "deregulation" after all, as USA Today reports. For proof that explaining the issues doesn't require eye-glazing wonk talk, see Michael Lynch's Reason Online column. The real deregulation is in Pennsylvania, where there's no power shortage in sight. [Posted 1/3.]

CLINTONOMICS REVIEWED: Bob Samuelson offers an excellent retrospective on the Clinton economic record. [Posted 1/3.]

AMERICAN HERO: We should adopt Frederick Douglass as our iconic American hero, argues Gregory Stephens of the University of Oklahoma in the Los Angeles Times. I agree. Douglass is a towering figure, ridulously assigned to a racial footnote. Stephens calls him an "integrative ancestor." That integration wasn't just racial. A rare combination of serious intellectual and inspiring activist, Douglass managed the difficult integration of the active and contemplative lives. And he rejected the false dichtomy between equality before the law and racial self-help and free enterprise. A classical liberal, Douglass rightly expected both. It's a scandal that most of his writings are out-of-print. [Posted 1/3.]

VIRTUE REWARDED: During the immigration wars of 1994-95, a few Republicans rejected the conventional wisdom that bashing immigrants was the way to win elections. In a low-key way, the governor of Texas was one of them. Unlike the opportunistic governor of California, Bush never rejected the Reaganite idea that immigrants strengthen and ratify America. But the action was in Washington. There, restrictionist bills enjoyed bipartisan support, including a nod from the White House. The two Republicans who made the biggest pro-immigration difference back then are now headed for Bush's cabinet. Spence Abraham, who was the pivotal figure on Capitol Hill, takes on the Energy Department, while Linda Chavez, whose Center for Equal Opportunity was the leading think tank voice early on, goes to Labor. In the coverage of their appointments, expect to hear more of the cluelessness exemplified by the Washington Post's Charles Babington, who writes that "Abraham breaks with GOP orthodoxy by supporting liberalized laws governing immigration." Wrong. There is no GOP orthodoxy on this issue. There are bipartisan alliances on both sides, though Latino activism and union strategy changes have made many Dems johnnies-come-lately to the pro-immigrant side. Back when it counted, icons Ted Kennedy and Barbara Jordan--not to mention the Clinton administration--were pushing for restrictions. [Posted 1/2.}

HILLARY'S REVENGE? Remember when the younger, rough-edged HRC scornfully declared that she "could have stayed home and baked cookies," instead of pursuing a career? The senator-elect will be pleased to learn that moms' cookie-baking is the latest casualty of the campaign to protect children from fun. As Rachel Wray reports for Salon, schools are telling parents they can send only store-bought cookies to share for kids' birthdays and other occasions. Respectable pundits may be lusting for the demise of Salon, but I don't see The New Republic breaking any interesting storeis, while this West Coast Webzine has two worth linking to. (See "More Stem-Cell Politics" below.) Just don't expect it to turn the financial corner. You can't make money in the think-magazine business, online or off, even if you lard your coverage with articles about sex and high-tech. [Posted 1/2.]

HACKER HYSTERIA: A teenage tagger pleads guilty. For his first offense, Dennis Moran Jr. will serve nine months to a year in jail, plus pay $15,000 in restitution. The severity of the sentence is due entirely to the medium he used for his graffiti--hacking Web sites rather than spray-painting walls. It probably didn't help that one of his victims was the anti-drug-propaganda organization, DARE, though doing the same thing on L.A. walls probably would have made him an anti-establishment hero. Background article on the arrest is here. [Posted 1/2.]

JUST FOR FUN: A mysterious monolith has appeared in Seattle. No, it's not Microsoft. [Posted 1/2.]