July 18, 2005
My second post on The Conglomerate, "Two Ways of Looking at 'Rational Basis'" went up earlier today. Sometime tomorrow morning I will post "Widows and Orphans".
UPDATE: "Widows and Orphans" is up.
2868
There's been some discussion on the web as to why Bush shouldn't appoint Gonzales to the Supreme Court. I thought I would chime in with a brief thought about why Bush should appoint McConnell, or someone else with equivalent intellectual qualifications.
Of course, David Brooks said something very like this a few days ago in the NY Times. But his argument was based on a purer motive than mine - the idea of picking a jurist who will be remembered by history. But picking an "intellectual powerhouse" is also important for getting a real conservative through the Senate. As I explained in one of my extremely long posts on the American conservative's plight in Europe, the right wing or libertarian American over there has to overcome two major hurdles - the presumptions of stupidity and evil.
To some extent, conservatives seeking national positions in the United States face the same trouble when up against nomination proceedings. The reason Bush needs to appoint a McConnell or a Luttig, therefore, is that people like those have such gold plated resumes that the stupidity presumption is automatically rebutted - the Democratic left simply cannot attack them on those grounds. But it's much harder to show that a well liked woman with years of experience is evil than to presume that she's stupid. And so Bush should be able to get such a man through Congress more easily.
Of course, no one thought Bork was stupid. But he said things that allowed the evil presumption to raise its ugly head. I suspect Bush's nominee will do no such thing. But we shall see.
[of course, none of what I say means that the right doesn't do similar things to the left. But I don't know what those are, nor do they matter at the moment].
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I work at an NGO established in large part to respond to the threat posed by rogue WMD scientists after the fall of the Soviet Union, and spend my days writing material that frequently invokes a nonproliferation hook. I don't spend much time thinking about it though. I spend a lot of time thinking about concise word choice and effective arguments, some time thinking about individual projects and programs that engage former weapons scientists, and little to no time thinking about the threat. I read Senator Lugar's survey (pdf) of nonproliferation experts that estimated the likelihood of a WMD somewhere in the world within the next 10 years as 70%, and felt nothing but a vague skepticism.
But today's RANSAC daily e-alert jolted me. It scared me and it angered me.
Al-Qaida's U.S. Nuclear Targets
Al-Qaida's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents.
As first revealed last week in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WND, Osama bin Laden is planning what he calls an "American Hiroshima," the ultimate terrorist attack on U.S. cities, using nuclear weapons already smuggled into the country across the Mexican border along with thousands of sleeper agents.
The series of attacks is designed to kill 4 million, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history.
At least two fully assembled and operational nuclear weapons are believed to be hidden in the United States already, according to G2 Bulletin intelligence sources and an upcoming book, "The al-Qaida Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse," by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams.
Another requirement dictated from the top at al-Qaida is that the attacks take place in daylight, so that the whole world will be able to see the images of a mushroom cloud over an American city.
UPDATE: This post got bloggered in the posting and included below the fold a few more quotes, a note that I'd originally heard about suitcase nukes from a friend but discounted the report because, though he is military, he is conservative; and the following disclaimer: I've been following the news reports and this story hasn't been picked up by any major paper, so if the reports are still clear in the morning, I'll breathe more easily.
My first guest-post, The Economics of Symbolism, is online.
I am pleased to say I'll be guest-blogging for the next 2-weeks at the Conglomerate, a very sharp group-blog. I'll link to those posts as they go up, but I won't reproduce them here; 50-book-challenge and most meandering food posts will remain at this site, however.
