From The Wall Street Journal:
Without God, Gall Is Permitted
Modern atheists have no new arguments, and they lack their forebears' charm.

BY SAM SCHULMAN
Friday, January 5, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

When the very first population of atheists roamed the earth in the Victorian age--brought to life by Lyell's "Principles of Geology," Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other blows to religious certainty--it was the personal dimension of atheism that others found distressing. How could an atheist's oath of allegiance to the queen be trusted? It couldn't--so an atheist was not allowed to take a seat in Parliament. How could an atheist, unconstrained by a fear of eternal punishment, be held accountable to social norms of behavior? Worse than heretical, atheism was not respectable.

In the 21st century, this no longer seems to be the case. Few acquaintances of Dr. Richard Dawkins, the world's most voluble public atheist, wonder, as they might have a hundred years ago: Can I leave my wife unchaperoned in this man's company? Indeed, the atheists are now looking to turn the tables: They want to make belief itself not simply an object of intellectual derision but a cause for personal embarrassment. A new generation of publicists for atheism has emerged to tell Americans in particular that we should be ashamed to retain a majority of religious believers, that in this way we resemble the benighted, primitive peoples of the Middle East, Africa and South America instead of the enlightened citizens of Western Europe.

Thanks in part to the actions of a few jihadists in September 2001, it is believers who stand accused, not freethinkers. Among the prominent atheists who now sermonize to the believers in their midst are Dr. Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett ("Breaking the Spell") and Sam Harris ("The End of Faith" and, more recently, "Letter to a Christian Nation"). There are others, too, like Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Brooke Allen (whose "Moral Minority" was a celebration of the skeptical Founders) and a host of commentators appalled by the Intelligent Design movement. The transcript of a recent symposium on the perils of religious thought can be found at a science Web site called edge.org.

There are many themes to the atheist lament. A common worry is the political and social effect of religious belief. To a lot of atheists, the fate of civilization and of mankind depends on their ability to cool--or better, simply to ban--the fevered fancies of the God-intoxicated among us.

Naturally, the atheists focus their peevishness not on Muslim extremists (who advertise their hatred and violent intentions) but on the old-time Christian religion. ("Wisdom dwells with prudence," the Good Book teaches.) They can always haul out the abortion-clinic bomber if they need a boogeyman; and they can always argue as if all faiths are interchangeable: Persuade American Christians to give up their infantile attachment to God and maybe Muslims will too. In any case, they conclude: God is not necessary, God is impossible and God is not permissible if our society--or even our species--is to survive.

What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote--both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.

For them, belief in God is beyond childish, it is unsuitable for children. Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people--which Dr. Dawkins calls "a form of child abuse." He even floats the idea that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs.

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins's volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.

The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton and Spinoza--let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein. But to pass over this deeper faith--the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history--is to diminish the loss of faith too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness.

To read the accounts of the first generation of atheists is profoundly moving. Matthew Arnold wrote of the "eternal note of sadness" sounded when the "Sea of Faith" receded from human life. In one testament after another--George Eliot, Carlyle, Hardy, Darwin himself--the Victorians described the sense of grief they felt when religion goes--and the keen, often pathetic attempts to replace it by love, by art, by good works, by risk-seeking and--fatally--by politics.

God did not exist, they concluded, but there was no denying that this supposed truth was accompanied by a painful sense of being cut off from human fellowship as well as divine love. To counter it, religious figures developed a new kind of mission--like that of the former unbeliever C.S. Lewis: They could speak to the feeling of longing that unbelief engenders because they understood it--and sympathized not only with atheism's pain but with the many sensible arguments in its favor.

There is no such sympathy among the new apostles of atheism--to find it, one has to look to believers. Anyone who has actually taught young people and listened to them knows that it is often the students who come from a trained sectarian background--Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, Mormon--who are best at grasping different systems of belief and unbelief. Such students know, at least, what it feels like to have such a system, and can understand those who have very different ones. The new atheists remind me of other students from more "open-minded" homes--rigid, indifferent, puzzled by thought and incapable of sympathy.

The new atheists fail too often simply for want of charm or skill. Twenty-first century atheism hasn't found its H.G. Wells or its George Bernard Shaw, men who flattered their audiences, excited them and persuaded them by making them feel intelligent. Here is Sam Harris, for instance, addressing those who wonder if destroying human embryos in the process of stem cell research might be morally dicey: "Your qualms . . . are obscene."

The atheists say that they are addressing believers. Rationalists all, can they believe that believers would be swayed by such contumely and condescension? They seem instead to be preaching to people exactly like themselves--a remarkably incurious elite.

Mr. Schulman is publishing director of the American, a magazine of ideas for business leaders.

From The Washington Post:

The Hanging: Beyond Travesty
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Of the 6 billion people on this earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed, but tortured and mutilated -- doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the pre-eminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein.

For the Iraqi government to have botched both his trial and execution, therefore, and turned monster into victim, is not just a tragedy, but a crime -- against the new Iraq that Americans are dying for, and against justice itself.

In late 2005, I wrote about the incompetence of the Saddam trial and how it was an opportunity missed. Instead of exposing, elucidating and irrefutably making the case for the crimes of the accused -- as was done at Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial -- the Iraqi government lost control and inadvertently turned it into a stage for Saddam. The trial managed to repair the image of the man the world had last seen as a bedraggled nobody pulled cowering from a filthy hole. Now coiffed and cleaned, he acted the imperious president of Iraq, drowning out in the coverage seen around the world the testimony of his victims.

That was bad enough. Then comes the execution, a rushed, botched, unholy mess that exposed the hopelessly sectarian nature of the Maliki government.

Consider the timing. It was carried out on a religious holiday. We would not ordinarily care about this, except for the fact that it is in contravention of Iraqi law. It was done on the first day of Eid al-Adha as celebrated by Sunnis. The Shiite Eid began the next day, which tells you in whose name the execution was performed.

It was also carried out extra-constitutionally. The constitution requires a death sentence to have the signature of the president and two vice presidents, each representing the three major ethnic groups in the country (Sunni, Shiite and Kurd). That provision is meant to prevent sectarian killings. The president did not sign. Maliki contrived some work-around.

True, Saddam's hanging was just and, in principle, nonsectarian. But the next hanging might not be. Breaking precedent completely undermines the death penalty provision, opening the way to future revenge and otherwise lawless hangings.

Moreover, Maliki's rush to execute short-circuited the judicial process that was at the time considering Saddam's crimes against the Kurds. He was hanged for the killing of 148 men and boys in the Shiite village of Dujail. This was a perfectly good starting point -- a specific incident as a prelude to an inquiry into the larger canvas of his crimes. The trial for his genocidal campaign against the Kurds was just beginning.

That larger canvas will never be painted. The starting point became the endpoint. The only charge for which Saddam was executed was that 1982 killing of Shiites -- interestingly, his response to a failed assassination attempt by Maliki's own Dawa Party.

Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later. However, Saddam will now never be tried for the Kurdish genocide, the decimation of the Marsh Arabs, the multiple war crimes and all the rest.

Finally, there was the motley crew -- handpicked by the government -- that constituted the hanging party. They turned what was an act of national justice into a scene of sectarian vengeance. The world has now seen the smuggled video of the shouting and taunting that turned Saddam into the most dignified figure in the room -- another remarkable achievement in burnishing the image of the most evil man of his time.

Worse was the content of the taunts: "Moqtada, Moqtada,'' the name of the radical and murderous Shiite extremist whose goons were obviously in the chamber. The world saw Saddam falling through the trap door, executed not in the name of a new and democratic Iraq, but in the name of Sadr, whose death squads have learned much from Saddam.

The whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but the ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.

We should not be surging American troops in defense of such a government. This governing coalition -- Maliki's Dawa, Hakim's SCIRI and Sadr's Mahdi Army -- seems intent on crushing the Sunnis at all costs. Maliki should be made to know that if he insists on having this sectarian war, he can well have it without us.

Frasor rejoined the Tar Heel rotation on Wednesday.

From Tar Heel Blue.com:

Going On Instinct
By Adam Lucas

Jan. 4, 2007

Quentin Thomas had no good explanation for his most exciting play of the night.

Forget for just a moment that it was exciting merely to have him on the court. If you're scoring at home, Carolina has gone from three point guards to one point guard to one potentially injured point guard back to three point guards...all in the span of about one month.

Neither Thomas nor Bobby Frasor was content to make a quiet return to the lineup. That's how these things are supposed to happen. Work them in, steal a few quiet minutes, get the feel of the game again, and maybe look fully operational in a couple of weeks.

Neither player followed that script. Most of the suspense regarding Frasor's status was removed when he trotted out for warm-ups wearing the ankle braces he hadn't been wearing when he was dressing out with no thought of playing. He still received a thunderous round of applause when he checked into the game for the first time with 14:35 left in the first half.

Maybe that was when he was truly back. Or maybe it was when he gunned in a 3-pointer two minutes later. Or maybe, as his buddy Tyler Hansbrough said, it was one possession later.

"I knew he was back when he hit that high arching shot off the dribble," Hansbrough said. "That put an exclamation point on him being back."

Frasor last played on Dec. 2. Wednesday night, he somehow appeared to have missed over a month of action without missing a step. Everything was how it was supposed to be in Carolina's 102-64 romp over Penn--from his jumper to his no-look pass to Hansbrough for a dunk to his lob pass to the big man earlier in the second half.

The lob pass wasn't perfect. But that's typical for Frasor.

"I've never been the best lob passer," the Illinois native said with a smile.

The pass, which gave Frasor his first assist of the game, almost sailed out of bounds before Hansbrough reeled it in and deposited it for a basket. By that point, Carolina had built a 62-43 lead, so there was time for a little bit of fun.

"Hey, I'm not Brandan (Wright)," Hansbrough told Frasor on his way back up the court.

Frasor just tapped his chest, acknowledging his error with a big smile.

In many ways, Frasor was the ringleader of last year's freshman class and was assuming that role with the entire 2007 team when the injury dropped him in December. So maybe it wasn't a jumper or a pass, but a moment on the sidelines when he truly returned. With Carolina sitting on 98 points and needing another pair for the magical 100 mark, Frasor was in the middle of a delighted Tar Heel bench as the reserves searched for the century mark.

Dewey Burke had already made one 3-pointer. When he passed up another on the next possession, Frasor crashed his foot against the hardwood, expressing mock frustration at Burke's hesitation. There was no apparent concern for his foot, but there was an apparent release of a significant buildup of emotion.

"These last few weeks have been really tough on him," Marcus Ginyard said. "He's done a great job of putting a smile on and looking at it as positively as possible. If he could do something in practice, he was doing it. He did everything he could possibly do even though he wasn't playing in games."

In most cases, Frasor joined Thomas on the sideline during practice, the duo pedaling a stationary bike while their teammates sprinted.

The California junior, as seems to be his habit, snuck into the game without many fans noticing with 7:15 left in the first half. He quickly proved to have been studying the team intently from the sideline, as his first two passes found the red-hot Wayne Ellington for a pair of assists.

"My main issue was getting back out there and feeling comfortable," Thomas said. "After an injury a lot of people are very timid, and I can honestly say when I first stepped out there I was kind of timid because I was hoping there was no pain."

By the second half, when the Tar Heels were turning deflections into points fast enough to earn cheap biscuits, the timidity was gone. And with two minutes left, Thomas added a bit of dazzle, dribbling between his legs at the top of the key, drawing a pair of Penn defenders, and then whipping a pass to Ginyard for an easy dunk.

"Had you been standing there a long time?" Thomas asked Ginyard during the next timeout.

"Nah, I just got there," the sophomore said.

Thomas smiled when recalling the play.

"I couldn't tell you how I saw him," he said. "I really don't know. Instinct, I guess. My guys know I love to pass.

"Instincts stay with you. I don't think you lose that instinct even when you miss some time."

From The Wall Street Journal:

Rediscovering America

Often-Maligned '70s Band
Gets Hip Stars' Support;
'Sister Golden Hair' Shirt

By ETHAN SMITH
December 29, 2006

In the music business, making famous friends can be the ticket out of seemingly permanent residence in history's cutout bin. Just ask Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, the 54-year-old soft-rock troubadours known to the world as America.

In the 30-odd years since America topped the pop charts with songs including "A Horse With No Name" and "Sister Golden Hair," the pair has stayed busy, if not especially cool, playing upward of 100 shows a year, many at state fairs and casinos. For much of that time, the band, with its airy harmonies and soothing acoustic guitars, has had a hard time being taken seriously by the mainstream music industry.

"It's been tough to get deals," says Mr. Bunnell, who lives with his family in Land O' Lakes, Wis. "We've had a repackage [of the old hits] every now and then where we can talk them into throwing a new song on."

LISTEN IN

Listen to "Indian Summer," a new song by America on their two-CD album, Here & Now.

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Listen to "Sister Golden Hair," a new, live version of their 1975 hit.

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But now, the band has teamed with an unlikely group of younger, hipper musicians for its first major-label studio album since 1984, part of a broader attempt to rehabilitate America to a level of credibility it hasn't enjoyed in decades -- if ever. Messrs. Bunnell and Beckley have joined forces with Ryan Adams, Ben Kweller and members or former members of Fountains of Wayne, Smashing Pumpkins, My Morning Jacket and others to create "Here & Now," a two-disc album set for release next month. (America's third original member, Dan Peek, left the group in 1977 to pursue a solo career as a Christian pop artist.)

On top of that, a Los Angeles clothing company has launched a line in which America-related items -- such as a $325 Horse With No Name belt and buckle -- are featured alongside gear based on songs by David Bowie and the Beatles.

The "famous friends" tactic has worked for artists such as Carlos Santana, who relaunched his career with a guest-star-laden album in 1999. The new America album was the brainchild of Mr. Beckley and Adam Schlesinger, a founder of Fountains of Wayne, a 1970s-obsessed outfit with a couple of hit songs ("Stacy's Mom") under its belt. But chief among Fountains of Wayne's fans is a small army of rock critics, whose support has made the band a leading arbiter of cultural cool. During its live shows, the group frequently breaks into medleys of arguably cheesy '70s rock riffs by the likes of Kansas and ZZ Top.

Now Mr. Schlesinger's catalog of classic rock vibes is being put to use in the name of America. He and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha own a recording studio in New York, where they co-produced "Here & Now" this past spring. The elder and younger pairs of musicians hooked up after Mr. Beckley emailed Mr. Schlesinger to say he was a fan of Fountains of Wayne. (During a recent America tour, Fountains of Wayne's third album, "Welcome Interstate Managers," was "in heavy rotation on our bus," Mr. Beckley says.)

America's Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek (left to right) in the 1970s.

Mr. Beckley says he was looking for songwriting partners when he contacted Mr. Schlesinger, but never envisioned the large-scale collaboration involved in "Here & Now." "It was never intended to be a here's-us-and-our-cool-friends kind of project," he says. The musicians recorded two songs together, which became the calling card that landed them a deal with Burgundy Records, a new, adult-leaning label owned by Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

When it came time to choose songs, Messrs. Schlesinger and Iha combed through 30 years' worth of demo recordings and song fragments by Messrs. Dewey and Bunnell. But the younger musicians also steered the duo to several songs by contemporary bands they felt might be well suited to America's sound. Mr. Schlesinger suggested a song called "Indian Summer," by a New York City band called Maplewood, whose members have said one of their goals is to emulate America's sun-kissed, Southern California sound.

"As I was playing this somewhat 'Ventura Highway'-esque lick, the world turned inside out a little bit," recalls Mr. Beckley with a chuckle. "Indian Summer" ended up on the new album.

Executives at Burgundy Records sensed a marketing opportunity in the parade of guest players on the disc, since their fans could represent a whole new set of potential buyers. America's music "influenced their idols," says Tony Ward, Burgundy's vice president for marketing. And to lure older fans of America, Burgundy is packaging the new songs with a second CD containing live performances of a dozen classic songs by the group.

Messrs. Bunnell and Beckley in 2000.

The restoration of America extends further. Los Angeles-based Lyric Jeans has incorporated the words from two America hits into T-shirts in its Lyric Culture line. Lyric President Hanna Rochelle Schmieder says that in test runs, the "Sister Golden Hair" shirt ranked among the company's top three sellers at boutiques nationwide. Lyric has obtained licenses to subtly incorporate in its clothing words from hits by acts ranging from the Beatles to Madonna.

The company last week sent the America shirts to several blonde celebrities, including Cameron Diaz and Pamela Anderson. Ms. Schmieder says that America's slightly hazy place in the awareness of young people actually could increase the appeal of the band. "All the young hot girls, they're not going to wear something that's currently being played on the radio," she says. Lyric recently hosted a Hollywood promotional event that featured both a short America concert and a fashion show in which models strutted in the T-shirts bearing titles of the band's songs.

Success in the clothing line would represent a different sort of vindication for America. Mr. Bunnell says he's always been puzzled by the sparse interest among advertisers in using his band's hits in commercials. "I always thought 'Sister Golden Hair' would be a Clairol ad," he says. "And maybe 'Ventura Highway' would be a car ad."

If the multipronged effort to make America hip succeeds it might be a first for the band. After all, Mr. Schlesinger notes that the group had "credibility issues" in its chart-topping early-1970s heyday, when many cognoscenti dismissed the group as poseurs riding on the coattails of supposedly more authentic Southern California rockers such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Legend has it that Neil Young, in particular, was irritated that Mr. Bunnell's Western imagery and almost-trembling, nasal delivery on "A Horse with No Name" led some listeners to believe the song was by Mr. Young.

Mr. Bunnell is not unfamiliar with the complaint, but adds that he thinks the story has been overblown. At the time, both acts were managed by David Geffen and his then-partner Elliot Roberts. "I never felt like Neil was walking around the office with a dark cloud over his head because we were there," Mr. Bunnell says.

The impending release of "Here & Now" has already opened one door for America. The group hadn't been able to find concert promoters to book them in Britain for decades, even though the band was formed in that country. They are now set for a short tour there, their first since 1975. "We just couldn't seem to get arrested over there," Mr. Bunnell says. "It's nice that somebody's taking a chance."

But even if America does become cool again -- or for the first time -- the group may want to retain some of its ways from the decades it spent as workmanlike players on the nostalgia circuit.

"We're mulling the concept of doing some kind of hip club tour," Mr. Bunnell says. But "frankly, we have to weigh economics. You can't just find the hot club and go in there and play for 200 people" since that wouldn't yield enough revenue to meet expenses. America's typical appearances in recent years have drawn 500 to 2,000 people at larger venues.

Being cool has a way of taking a backseat to more practical concerns, Mr. Bunnell notes, "when you're in your 50s and you've got mortgages and record sales aren't what they used to be."

From Billboard.com:

Police Reunion Rumors
Reaching Fever Pitch

By Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Rumors are swirling that the Police will reunite for 2007 dates in England and the United States, which would be the legendary trio's first since disbanding in 1986. Sources tell Billboard.com the reports are legitimate but would not publicly comment until final details are nearer to completion. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of "Roxanne," the single that broke the Police in the United States.

"Discussions have been underway as to how this will be commemorated," reads a post on Sting's Web site attributed to an A&M spokesperson. "While we can confirm that there will indeed be something special done to mark the occasion, the depth of the band's involvement still remains undetermined." Sources say in addition to DVD releases, A&M is planning another multi-disc collection in the vein of 1993's "Message in a Box," which featured the band's complete studio recordings and a handful of rarities.

A Police reunion has been the concert industry's dream for two decades, as it is believed the band could play stadiums internationally should it choose to reunite. But besides an impromptu set at Sting's 1992 wedding to Trudie Styler, the Police's only other post-breakup performance was in celebration of its 2003 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And while Sting has repeatedly expressed reluctance at reuniting, drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers have kept the flame alive.

This summer, Summers told Billboard he was certain the group could have continued on past its 1983 commercial peak with "Synchronicity." "The more rational approach would have been, 'OK, Sting, go make a solo record, and let's get back together in two or three years,'" he said. "I'm certain we could have done that. Of course we could have. We were definitely not in a creative dry space. We could have easily carried on, and we could probably still be there. That wasn't to be our fate. It went in another way. I regret we never paid it off with a last tour. We snuck out the back door, which is what we were told to do, until it just became too frustrating to lie about it."

"I'm very keen on it," Copeland told Billboard.com of a potential reunion, the day after the Rock Hall induction. "But I absolutely understand why it's not going to happen and I'm down with that. It was really great to be the Police for 15 minutes. If you can think of some other award we can go get or some other good reason, give me a call, and I'll try it out!"

In 2001, Copeland excitedly told Billboard about "one piece of unreleased Police product" which he hoped would eventually see the light of day. "One of the times when they were working on the box set or something like that, they convened the three of us on the phone. Sting and Andy were in Italy; Andy was visiting Sting at the time, and I was on a DSL line in L.A.," he recalled. "And we went down all the song titles from all of our albums. Song title: 'Can't Stand Losing You.' And we each just talked about the track and argued and shouted and screamed. There was laughter and tears. It was very cathartic. It was almost like a therapy session. It was hysterical. It was so much fun."

"We were really going at it with all the language, straight for the jugular, refighting the battles, laughing hysterically while we put the stiletto exactly where we stuck it last time," he continued. "The engineer said it was like watching a concert. They were in Italy and it's like after dinner, and I'm here in L.A. at 10 in the morning. I'm getting more and more caffeinated as they're getting drunker and drunker."

"It seems like we're in contact all the time, but actually, years go by," Copeland said of his ongoing relationship with Summers and Sting. "It's sort of like whenever we see each other, it's like we saw each other five minutes ago. We don't have any sensation of time going by. We don't pick up the phone every week, but when we do, we pick up from where we left off."

From The Washington Post:

Good Knight, Bad Knight
By John Feinstein

Friday, December 29, 2006

It is always the same whenever Bob Knight is in the news. It doesn't matter if he is making news by setting the all-time record for victories as a men's college coach (or failing to do so as he did last night) or snapping a player's chin or having a fight with a college chancellor at a salad bar.

The defenders line up on one side and recite chapter and verse on The Good Knight: brilliant coach; turns boys into men; graduates most of his players; has never come close to breaking an NCAA rule; a principled man in a business frequently lacking in principles.

Everything they say is accurate.

Then the detractors line up on the other side with their arguments about The Bad Knight: he's a bully; he emotionally abuses everyone around him, most notably his players; he's not nearly as loyal to friends as he claims to be; he's never admitted to being wrong about anything.

Everything they say is also accurate.

Which is why Knight has been such a galvanizing figure for most of 40 years. People want heroes to be heroes and villains to be villains. It is rarely that simple and it isn't even close to being true with Knight. He is, without question, in the first paragraph of any discussion of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time. John Wooden, Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski and Knight. That's the top five and you can put them in any order you want. He will retire having won more games than any of them with only Krzyzewski (115 behind as of today) having a chance to surpass him. Neither Knight nor anyone else will touch Wooden's record of 10 NCAA championships, but it doesn't really matter. Regardless of how you frame the conversation, Knight is right there.

Knight has insisted for years that breaking Smith's record means nothing to him. He has also insisted he doesn't care what people think of him while raging constantly at any and all criticism that is directed at him. In recent days though, he has seemed almost at peace with the notion that people see this milestone as important. He has credited others, while constantly playing down his own achievement. He's been gracious and almost thoughtful, reflecting on all the people who have helped him reach this milestone. He has, at least for the moment, been The Good Knight.

Most of his ex-players swear by him, say he was a huge positive force in their lives. There has never been a coach who has played more by the rules of the NCAA than Knight. Twenty years ago when Knight heard that a gas station owner in Bloomington, Ind., was giving his players free gas he drove to the station and told the man in no uncertain terms that if he ever heard that his players had been given anything for free again he would personally run him out of town.

Here though, as Shakespeare would say (and Knight has read Shakespeare), is the rub: Knight believes, as do his defenders, that life works this way: If you commit five good deeds on Monday, you are excused from any bad deed you might commit on Tuesday. Knight believes that because he plays by the rules, because most of his players graduate and because he's gone out of his way to help friends in need, it was okay to grab Neil Reed by the neck and okay to stuff an LSU fan into a garbage can and it wasn't wrong to toss a potted plant over the head of an elderly secretary and it wasn't such a big deal to send that chair spinning across the court -- not to mention all of the other misdeeds and missteps through the years.

Knight's philosophy of life basically comes down to this: If I help a little old lady across the street for 10 straight days, but then yell a profanity at her for walking too slowly on the 11th day when I'm running late, I should be excused because I was nice to her the first 10 days.

Real life doesn't work that way. Knight life does.

Years ago, Knight went to see a high school junior play and was un-impressed by him. He told his assistant coaches that recruiting him was a waste of time that he wasn't good enough to play for Indiana. They tried to convince him the kid had simply had a bad game but Knight didn't want to hear it. That summer, disappointed that Indiana wasn't recruiting him, the kid committed to another school, one coached at the time by a close friend of Knight's.

Soon after that, Knight was at a summer camp and noticed the kid dominate a game. "Why in the world," he asked his assistants, "aren't we recruiting that kid?" (This happens frequently with Knight. His vaunted memory is very selective, especially when it comes to his mistakes).

"Coach, you told us to back off him and he's verbally committed now."

Of course the kid was still interested in Indiana, and he eventually reneged on his commitment to the smaller school and signed with Indiana, where he became a very good player. When the coach who had lost the player confronted Knight, Knight responded by citing all the ways he had helped the coach's career.

That may very well have been true. It also didn't make Knight's actions less wrong. In fact, it can be argued that Knight would have publicly ripped another coach for not respecting a verbal commitment made to an opposing school. In this case, the wronged coach still doesn't talk publicly about what happened, not because he's afraid of Knight's wrath but because he knows Knight will never understand why he was wrong.

Like so many other hugely successful people, Knight is surrounded by people who tell him he's done nothing wrong; who listen while he explains why it was Krzyzewski's fault that the two men didn't talk for most of 10 years; Steve Alford's fault that they were estranged for just as long; Myles Brand's fault that he was fired at Indiana; all of Puerto Rico's fault that he had the confrontation with the cop in San Juan; and Jeremy Schaap's fault that he blew up during his Indiana exit interview six years ago.

The world is littered with people who have done misdeeds to Knight.

Of course, there also is an impressive list of people who have cared greatly about Knight: Pete Newell, Henry Iba, Joe Lapchick, Red Auerbach and Fred Taylor -- just to name five coaches who are in the Hall of Fame. All of them saw greatness in Knight. All of them worried about him because of his penchant for self-destruction.

The question that is asked most often about Knight is whether he will have an ending similar to Woody Hayes, another of his mentors.

The sad truth is this: He's already had it. Knight can talk all he wants about how happy he is in Lubbock cobbling together good teams at Texas Tech, a place where basketball will never be as important as spring football. He can talk about how much he likes the people there and how little he misses Indiana.

It simply isn't true. Knight belongs in Indiana. It is where he should have broken the record and finished his career. Imagine Wooden not finishing his career at UCLA; Smith not coaching at North Carolina; Rupp at Kentucky; Krzyzewski at Duke. How is it possible that a man who coached three national champions and an Olympic gold medal-winning team and did so without cheating while graduating his players and standing for all the right things about sports ends up fired?

It can't happen to an icon. Unless he slugs a player on national TV during a bowl game. Or refuses to believe that zero tolerance means zero tolerance for him. It can only happen to someone who simply refuses to understand that, even for icons, there are some rules. Knight never has understood that. Rules have always been for everyone else but not for him.

One day in practice 20 years ago, a frustrated Indiana player let loose with several profanities. Knight raced over to him, got in his face and said: "I don't want to hear that kind of [expletive] language in here. I here it again, you'll be running from now until [expletive] dawn."

He was completely serious. Profanity, for his players, was strictly off-limits.

Those were the rules. Knight's rules. He has always lived by them. They have served him well.

And not so well.

From The Indianapolis Star:

A General sense of uneasiness
By Bob Kravitz

January 2, 2007

Here is a lot of what I read now as Bob Knight surpasses Dean Smith on the all-time wins list in Division I basketball coaching: I read revisionist history.

I read how Knight really isn't such a lout after all, how he's just another misunderstood genius, that great men are allowed great flaws as they pursue greatness. It's as if the number -- now 880 after Texas Tech's victory Monday over New Mexico -- obviates all the behavioral lapses that make him one of the most polarizing, perplexing, frustrating figures in sports history.

First things first:

If he was going to break this record -- and hold it until his old player, Mike Krzyzewski, breaks it someday -- I'm glad it was anywhere but Indiana University. Whether it was Texas Tech or New Mexico or Minnesota hardly matters. For all the great things Knight did for my alma mater, by the end, he was an embarrassment whose continued presence revealed the president and trustees as invertebrates who could be intimidated like so many others through his near-three decades.

For those who say he should have broken the record in Bloomington, I would suggest they hearken back to the summer of 2000 and recall the ugliness that Knight engendered. Can you imagine if he'd been allowed to slide -- again -- after the whole Neil Reed mess? Or the Kent Harvey situation? If Knight had been enabled once again through those sets of circumstances, I can promise you, he would have ended up sadly, like football icon Woody Hayes at Ohio State, forced to retire in shame well short of the all-time wins mark.

He is where he should be.

At Texas Tech, where they were begging local Lubbock fans to fill their arena to celebrate Knight's great accomplishment.

In exile.

He had everything a college basketball coach could want in Bloomington: a supportive administration, a loving fan base, a mostly malleable media corps (with the exception of my predecessor, Bill Benner) and a run of the house. And he blew it. Blew it with his own arrogance. Blew it chance after chance after chance. He got the mother of all second chances after the Neil Reed fiasco, and blew that.

What was "zero tolerance"?

It was common sense.

Don't be a (bleep) to people.

He couldn't hold the line. Never could. That's what has always bothered me about Knight, why I can't separate the great coach from the great bully. I hear he graduates players, wins games, doesn't cheat, supports his university. Well, a lot of coaches do that, luminaries like Smith and Krzyzewski leading the way, and yet they've done it while maintaining their humanity and a semblance of humility, done it without leaving scorched earth behind them.

I cannot separate the guy who wins basketball games and the one who insists on leaving behind him such a trail of human destruction.

I cannot separate the guy who does good things for others and the guy who viciously tears down anybody who challenges his hegemony or black-and-white sensibility.

Of course, I didn't play for the man and, in most cases, if you played for the man, you loved him, appreciated or at least slowly came around to understanding the method to his madness.

"I love the man," Isiah Thomas said recently when the New York Knicks were in town to play the Indiana Pacers. "I've said time and again, I don't think I would be the person I am or the player I was if it hadn't been for him. Don't get me wrong; they weren't always good times. But I appreciate what he did for me. And I understand it better now than when I did when I was younger.

"Most of the time when he was on our tails about something, it never really was about basketball; it was always about helping you become a better person in your life. It wasn't, 'Isiah, you need to become a better passer or rebounder.' His thinking was, if you make the man, the player will come."

But there was always that dark side, which cannot be conveniently expunged from the catalogue simply because Knight has passed a milestone.

For me, the seminal Knight moment came after the Hoosiers lost to Missouri in the first round of the 1995 NCAA Tournament in Boise, Idaho. Moments before Knight was supposed to address the media, Rance Pugmire, the poor sap who was volunteering as a media liaison, told us that someone he believed to be with the IU basketball program told him Knight was not going to appear.

When The General ascended the podium minutes later, he verbally laid into the man, who was doing nothing more than his job and was guilty, at the very most, of a completely innocent mistake.

Typical.

More typical than the public really knows.

That was, and is, the odd duality of Knight: He demands discipline, but he has so little himself.

Make no mistake: He's one of the greatest basketball coaches who has ever lived. As has been mentioned thousands of times before, he wins, he graduates players, he plays by the rules and he usually stands for the right things. He didn't change as much as he needed to over the years. That probably explains why his later IU teams stumbled so badly. But like his old friend and idol, Ted Williams, who wished only to hear fans say, "There goes the best hitter who ever lived," Knight has earned similar acclaim.

"There goes the best college basketball coach who ever lived."

Though there will be some very good arguments from the Dean Smith faithful, who will note that Smith won his games in fewer years, and from the Krzyzewski camp, who will extrapolate the number and say that Coack K will turn the Knight record into a historical speed bump.

So now the big man in the big sweater gets his day and, like a lot of people, I am torn, faced with something of a conundrum: How do I applaud and hold my nose at the same time?

From National Review Online:
The Story of a Well-Lived Life
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, R.I.P.

By Robert P. George

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was a scholar as notable for her bravery as for her brilliance. After what she described as her “long apprenticeship” in the world of secular liberal intellectuals, it was careful reflection on the central moral questions of our time that led her first to doubt and then to abandon both liberalism and secularism. Needless to say, this did not endear her to her former allies.

At the heart of her doubts about secular liberalism (and what she described as “radical, upscale feminism”) was its embrace of abortion and its (continuing) dalliance with euthanasia. At first, she went along with abortion, albeit reluctantly, believing that women’s rights to develop their talents and control their destinies required its legal permission availability. But Betsey (as she was known by her friends) was not one who could avert her eyes from inconvenient facts. The central fact about abortion is that it is the deliberate killing of a developing child in the womb. For Betsey, euphemisms such as “products of conception,” “termination of pregnancy,” “privacy,” and “choice” ultimately could not hide that fact. She came to see that to countenance abortion is not to respect women’s “privacy” or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die. In a statement that she knew would enflame many on the Left and even cost her valued friendships, she declared that “no amount of past oppression can justify women’s oppression of the most vulnerable among us.”

Betsey knew that public pro-life advocacy would be regarded by many in the intellectual establishment as intolerable apostasy — especially from one of the founding mothers of “women’s studies.” She could have been forgiven for keeping mum on the issue and carrying on with her professional work on the history of the American south. But keeping mum about fundamental matters of right and wrong was not in her character. And though she valued her standing in the intellectual world, she cared for truth and justice more. And so she spoke out ever more passionately in defense of the unborn.

And the more she thought and wrote about abortion and other life issues, the more persuaded she became that the entire secular liberal project was misguided. Secular liberals were not deviating from their principles in endorsing killing whether by abortion or euthanasia in the name of individual “choice”; they were following them to their logical conclusions. But this revealed a profound contradiction at its heart, for the right of some individuals to kill others undermines any ground of principle on which an idea of individual rights or dignity could be founded.

Even in her early life as a secular liberal, she was never among those who disdained religious believers or held them in contempt. As an historian and social critic, she admired the cultural and moral achievements of Judaism and Christianity. As her doubts about secularism grew, she began to consider seriously whether religious claims might actually be true. Reason led her to the door of faith, and prayer enabled her to walk through it. As she herself described her conversion from secularism to Catholicism, it had a large intellectual component; yet it was, in the end, less her choice than God’s grace.

Betsey continued her scholarly labors, especially in collaboration with her husband Eugene Genovese, our nation’s most distinguished historian of American slavery. Not long ago, Cambridge University Press published their masterwork, The Mind of the Master Class. Soon after Betsey’s own religious conversion, Gene (who had long been an avowed Marxist, but who had gradually moved in the direction of cultural and political conservatism) returned to the Catholic faith of his boyhood under the influence of his beloved wife.

As if she had not already antagonized the intellectual establishment enough, Betsey soon began speaking out in defense of marriage and sexual morality. Her root-and-branch rejection of the ideology of the sexual revolution — an ideology that now enjoys the status of infallible dogma among many secular liberal intellectuals — was based on a profound appreciation of the centrality of marriage to the fulfillment of men and women as sexually complementary spouses; to the well-being of children for whom the love of mother and father for each other and for them is literally indispensable; and to society as a whole which depends on the marriage-based family for the rearing of responsible and upright citizens. If her pro-life advocacy angered many liberal intellectuals, her outspoken defense of marriage and traditional norms of sexual morality made them apoplectic.

Betsey’s marriage to Gene was one of the great love stories of our time. They were two very different personalities, perfectly united. He was the head of the family; she was in charge of everything. Their affection for each other created a kind of force field into which friends were drawn in love for both of them. Although unable to have children of their own, they lavished parental care and concern on their students and younger colleagues, who in turn worshipped them.

Betsey leaves us many fine works of historical scholarship and social criticism — works admired by honest scholars across the political spectrum. Even more importantly, her life provides an unsurpassed example of intellectual integrity and moral courage. Her fervent witness to the sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage and the family will continue to inspire. May the living God who drew her to Himself comfort her bereaved husband and grant her a share in His divine life.

— Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Bobby Murcer News

Bobby Murcer News

Dec. 29th, 2006

Statement from Kay Murcer on her husband

"Since Christmas Eve, when we first learned of Bobby's brain tumor, we have been thrown into a situation that has required as much total focus as we can muster.

Today, with the surgery over, we are now needing to expand all our energies on decisions that will benefit Bobby's full recovery.

Hundreds of people have asked, 'what can we do to help?', and we do have one request - please allow us, as a family, to have the time we need to face these new challenges, and time to love each other through this next week.

Bobby is gaining so much encouragement from all of his friends and loved ones. It has been an overwhelming outpouring of love, and we continue to appreciate your continued prayers and patience."

Steinbrenner statement on Bobby Murcer

"I am so pleased that Bobby Murcer came through the surgery so well.

He has been a valued member of the Yankee family for over 40 years. Bobby is a loyal friend of mine, was and is a terrific Yankee, is an eloquent broadcaster and an extremely charitable person.

I, and the entire Yankee organization, wish him a complete and rapid recovery - and our hearts go out to his wife, Kay, and their family. I look forward to hearing his voice, his wit and his wise observations very soon. Good luck, pal."

From USA Today:

Where's the outrage over black-on-black killings?

By DeWayne Wickham

BALTIMORE — A couple of days before Christmas, I phoned Patricia West, an old friend I hadn't spoken to in years. It was a call I didn't want to make — the kind of call no one should ever have to place.

It was a brief conversation, a few minutes of aimless chatter that quickly went from awkward laughter to muffled crying. I called her to say how devastated I was to hear that her son had been killed. His death was reported in the final paragraph of a short crime story in The (Baltimore) Sun that gave the bare facts of his demise.

(Illustration by Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY)

"The other homicide victim, Kevin West, 39, of the 9000 block of Meadow Heights Road in Randallstown, was found fatally shot shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday by officers investigating reported gunfire in the 2800 block of Virginia Ave., police said."

Kevin West's murder was the 260th homicide this year in Baltimore — a city in which virtually all of the murder victims and those arrested for murder are black. On the same day that he was gunned down, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched down Fifth Avenue in New York to protest the Nov. 25 killing of another black man. Sean Bell was felled by a hail of police gunfire moments after he and two friends left his bachelor party early on the morning of the day he was to have been married.

Just why the cops fired on the unarmed men is unclear. Bell's death drew the scorn of civil rights leaders and black activists, many of whom took part in the march. West's killing has generated no such attention.

And that makes me made as hell.

As troubling as it is that Bell's life might have been cut short by the unlawful actions of some rogue cops, it bothers me more that most of this nation's black murder victims are killed by other blacks. And despite this chilling fact, nowhere have tens of thousands of people taken to the streets recently to protest this carnage. Not in New York, or Baltimore, or Atlanta, or Detroit, or Chicago. Nowhere.

Of the country's 14,860 homicide victims in 2005, 7,125 were black, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. And of the 3,289 cases that year in which a single black was killed by a single assailant, the FBI says, 91% of the killers were black.

Let me put this another way: The number of blacks killed in 2005 in this one homicide category alone approaches the total of all the blacks lynched in this country from 1882 to 1968, according to records maintained by Tuskegee University.

So why aren't black leaders taking up this fight? Why do so many turn out to decry the death of one black man at the hands of some cops, but no mass rallies take on the deaths of thousands of blacks who are slaughtered by other blacks?

"I think it's because we know it's our fault, and we're constantly looking for someone else to blame," says Baltimore City Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, who, like me, grew up in Cherry Hill, a poor black neighborhood on the city's south side.

Hamm says most black leaders are afraid to address this issue, afraid to confront the apathy, fear and indifference that allow many poor black neighborhoods to become killing fields.

He could be right.

But whatever the reason, it's time for black leaders — activists, preachers, educators, politicians, business and community leaders — to say enough is enough.

It's time for them to be as aggressive, and as demanding, in combating the black murder rate as they are in fighting for an increase in minimum wage or an expansion in health care.

The ripple effects of black-on-black killings have turned many inner city neighborhoods into urban wastelands, chased businesses from those communities, fueled a growth in other crimes and sapped the resources of local governments.

As mad as black folks have a right to be over the killing of Sean Bell, we ought to be angry over the failure of black leaders to be equally outraged over the murder of Kevin West — and the thousands of blacks who are killed each year by other blacks.

DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.

From Huffington Post:

Oh, My Saddam

By Steve Martin

Oh, my Saddam, how I loved your funny little ways. The way you held your teacup; the way you enjoyed those who coaxed a smile from you. I love that you found a way to exist in this mixed up world, how you thought, "why be mean when you can be nice?" Saddam, I will miss the way you would point to someone and then they would be dead, the way your puppy Pluto became a rug.

Your loyalty to family is rare in our times. When your half-brother was assassinated, Oh how we wept for you, thinking, what a terrible accident this assassination is. My Saddam, I wish we had more time with you, to find out what makes you tick, tick, tick. How your golden toilet seat will miss you!

You loved to laugh! Not many people know how to do that anymore. Real laughter doesn't come from sit-coms and comedians, real laughter comes when someone bows before you, accidentally stumbles, and then is beheaded. Especially on a staircase. Heads will roll, ha ha! Oh Saddam, if I had you back for just one moment, I would ask, if you could shoot just one person in the back of the head, who would it be? I wish it were me!

Who can deny your gifts? Your novel, so romantic and sweet. I'm sorry it was only published in Arabic and read by your friends. What a waste. And your glorious gesture for peace, the symbolic lighting of the Kuwaiti oil fields!

And now you are in heaven. How the trumpets must be sounding. A life, perhaps imperfect, but pure in motive! The world might have lost one affable curmudgeon, but heaven has received him. Saddam, enjoy the hosts of souls waiting to see you on the other side!

End of a Year, End of an Era by Patrick J. Buchanan

January 2, 2006

If there was a defining moment in 2006, it was the public firing of Donald Rumsfeld, just hours after the Republican rout of Nov. 7.

George Bush was bowing to public repudiation of his war policy, his war minister and, indeed, his war presidency.

Yet one senses voters were doing more than rejecting Bush’s leadership on Iraq. They were rejecting the very idea of spilling blood and treasure in crusades for "global democracy," "ending tyranny on earth" or a "New World Order."

By saying, as most of us are saying now, "In the end, it’s the Iraqis’ problem," Americans seem to be bidding goodbye to all that. And as we turn our backs upon the world, that world — from Europe to the Mideast, to Russia, China and Latin America — seems to be turning its back on the United States.

The disposition to sacrifice for altruistic ends is waning. Like the Brits before us, the Yanks are coming home.

The 21st century was to be the Second American Century. But after we won the Cold War, freed the captive nations, and brought Russia and China into the international community, our victories turn to ashes in our mouths. The world America built now rejects the master builder.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson just led a delegation, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve and half a dozen Cabinet officers, to Beijing to convince the Chinese to help us reduce the $230 billion trade deficit we ran this year with the Mainland. Beijing sent the Americans home with a bag of stale fortune cookies.

China will continue to siphon off our technology, jobs and plants to make the Middle Kingdom the factory of the world and the first power in Asia, eventually on earth. They seek to displace us.

Why should they not? Why should China abandon a trade policy that has given her 9 percent growth for 20 years for a U.S. policy that has given us the largest trade deficits in history? Why should nations that are succeeding adopt the policies of nations that are failing, and wailing?

Japan, the European Union, Canada and Mexico are also piling up mammoth trade surpluses at our expense, by manipulating currencies and tax codes to subsidize exports and repel imports from the United States.

And we take it. What the election of 2006 demonstrated, in Ohio and Michigan and among the Reagan Democrats, is that Americans are fed up with being played for free-trade fools by the rest of the world.

Moscow is creating an OPEC-like natural gas cartel to squeeze the ex-Soviet republics and as a reminder to a gas-dependent Europe that Mother Russia is watching you. Partly because we planted NATO on her front porch and sought to subvert her in her "near abroad," Russia is reverting to an autarkic and authoritarian nationalism.

Which seems to sit well with the Russian people, as 81 percent support President Putin, more than twice the support President Bush enjoys.

In the Middle East, anti-Americanism is pandemic. So successful were Islamists in exploiting the elections Bush promoted in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, Bush has ceased to beat the democracy drum.

Latin America has turned sharply left, with Brazil, Argentina and Chile gone socialist, and Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua joining Hugo Chavez and Fidel in the radical-populist camp. Peru and Mexico barely escaped being converted to "Bolivarism."

South Korea, fearful of offending the North, has vetoed any tough U.S. policy. Anti-American demonstrations are common there. But why are the North’s nukes our problem, 7,000 miles away? Why are U.S. soldiers still on the DMZ, 53 years after the Korean War?

Andrew Roberts, the pro-American Tory historian, says he has never seen such anti-Americanism as in Britain today. Old Europe is reveling in our misfortunes. The French are pulling out of Afghanistan. The Germans want their troops kept out of the fighting. Yet, U.S. elites are pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which would require us to send our 82nd Airborne to defend Tiblisi. Though the U.S. Army, warns Colin Powell, is "almost broken," we are adding to our commitments to go to war against a nuclear-armed Russia.

We are living in a dream world. America may yet be the world’s strongest nation, but our dominance is detested, our leadership is no longer wanted and our people are weary of playing Atlas.

Events abroad and disillusionment at home are causing more and more to ask whether what we call the American Empire or Pax Americana is really worth the aggravation, the cost and the ingratitude.

Interventionism has failed us. Americans are groping toward a new foreign policy that puts America first and a trade policy that puts Americans first.

When we began as a nation, the republic was feared and loathed by many of the monarchs of Europe. Yet, under Washington, Adams and Jefferson, we went our separate way, and prospered as no other republic. We don’t have to run the world. Divestiture is an option

From The Fourth Rail:

The State of the Jihad

A look at the state of the major theaters, and some under the radar, in the Long War

The year of 2006 has seen some interesting developments in the fight against al-Qaeda and its allies across the globe. While the war against al-Qaeda is largely seen as a fight in Afghanistan supported by a police action in certain countries, there is a very hot war occurring in many countries. Al-Qaeda and its allies have initiated hot wars in lesser known countries such as the Philippines, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria. Thailand is fighting a serious insurgency against ill-defined groups of Muslim insurgents which haven't been definitively connected to al-Qaeda or the Southeast Asian powerhouse Jemaah Islamiyah, but we don't believe in coincidences.

Iraq, which is often dissociated from the war, is a major theater for al-Qaeda, as both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have stated in numerous communications. Afghanistan has seen its bloodiest year since the U.S. invasion in late 2001. The Taliban and al-Qaeda have fought the Pakistani government to a standstill and have taken over portions of the country. The countries of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Bangladesh simmer, and continue to serve as support bases for al-Qaeda's activities.

Below is a roundup of the major developments in the most active theaters across the globe in the Long War.

Continue reading "The State of the Jihad" »

No Depression Board Best Albums of 2006

Any album given a higher numeric rating on this list than titles with
the same number of points is due to that title receiving more votes.
(Point totals and number of votes are given after album titles.)
Otherwise, titles receiving the same number of points are shown
alphabetically by artist.

No Depression Board Best Albums of 2007, Version 4.0

1. Bob Dylan / Modern Times 144 14
2. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood 103 9
3. Bruce Springsteen / We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions 100 8
4. Pernice Brothers - Live A Little 85 8
5. Los Lobos -- The Town & the City 67 7
6. Drive-By Truckers / A Blessing And A Curse 65 7
7. Hold Steady: Boys and Girls in America 60 7
8. Josh Ritter – The Animal Years 60 5
9. Minus 5 - Minus 5 (The Gun Album) 59 6
10. M.Ward Post-War 59 5
11. Calexico - Garden Ruin 58 6
12. Rosanne Cash Black Cadillac 55 6
13. Bottle Rockets / Zoysia 53 5
14. Patty Hurst Shifter Too Crowded on the Losing End 52 5
Twilight Singers - Powder Burns 52 5
16. Decemberists—The Crane Wife 50 5
17. Dixie Chicks: Taking The Long Way 50 3
18. Belle & Sebastien - The Life Pursuit 49 5
19. Robyn Hitchcock and The Venus 3 - Ole! Tarantula 39 4
20. Drams - Jubilee Drive 38 5
21. Old Crow Medicine Show "Big Iron World" 36 3
22. Ben Kweller s/t 35 3
Howe Gelb-Sno Angel 35 3
Lucero - Rebels Rogues & Sworn Brothers 35 3
25. Todd Snider / The devil you know 34 3
26. Gob Iron - Death Songs For the Living 32 3
27. Whigs - Give 'Em All A Big Fat Lip 30 4
28. Cat Power, The Greatest 30 3
Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers 30 3
Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 -- …tick…tick…tick 30 3
Yo La Tengo / I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass 30 3
32. Beatles / Love 30 2
Killers / Sam’s Town 30 2
34. Black Rebel Motocycle Club-Howl-30 pts. 30 1
Elizabeth Mitchell, You Are My Little Bird 30 1
36. Bobby Bare, Jr.'s Young Criminals' Starvation League / The Longest Meow 29 3
Tom Petty – Highway Companion 29 3
38. Jeffrey Foucault -- Ghost Repeater 27 2
Tommy Keene - Crashing the Ether 27 2
40. Built to Spill - You In Reverse 25 3
Centro-matic: Fort Recovery 25 3
Pete Yorn – Nightcrawler 25 3
43. Alejandro Escovedo / The boxing mirror 25 2
Band of Horses—Everything All The Time 25 2
Candi Staton--His Hands 25 2
Honeydogs, Amygdala 25 2
Willie Nile--Streets of New York 25 2
48. Anders Parker - self-titled 24 3
Johnny Cash: American V - A Hundred Highways 24 3
Willie Nelson "You Don't Know Me- Songs of Cindy Walker" 24 3
51. Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang - DISLOCATION BLUES 23 2
52. Lemonheads - The Lemonheads 22 3
53. Portastatic - Be Still Please 22 2
Robert Pollard - From a Compound Eye 22 2
Beck, The Information 21 2
55. Jon Dee Graham / Full 20 3
Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs / Under the Covers, Vol. 1 20 3
57. Carrie Rodriguez - 7 Angels On A Bicycle 20 2
Deadstring Brothers: Starving Winter Report 20 2
Elf Power - Back to the Web 20 2
Freedy Johnston-Live At McCabe's Guitar Shop 20 2
Golden Smog, Another Fine Day 20 2
Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins Rabbit Fur Coat 20 2
Kris Kristofferson-This Old Road-10 pts. 20 2
Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, All The Roadrunning 20 2
Nellie McKay / Pretty Little Head 20 2
Tim Easton - Ammunition 20 2
Tony Gilkyson / Goodbye Guitar 20 2
Tres Chicas – Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl 20 2
Will Kimbrough / Americanitis 20 2
71. Rob Laufer - The Iron Age 20 1
72. Solomon Burke / Nashville 18 2
Tom Waits / Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards 18 2
74. Dion--Bronx in Blue 17 2
75. Andy Fairweather Low--Sweet Soulful Music 17 1
Brakes: The Beatific Visions 17 1
77. Guster – Ganging Up On The Sun 16 2
Radio Birdman – Zeno Beach 16 2
Shack - ON THE CORNER OF MILES AND GIL 16 2
80. J.B. Beverly and the Wayward Drifters "Dark Bar and A Juke Box" 16 1
Tim O'Reagan / Same 16 1
82. Chris Knight / Enough Rope 15 2
Cory Branan: 12 Songs 15 2
Dan Bern - Breathe 15 2
Donald Fagen – Morph the Cat 15 2
Imaad Wasif-same 15 2
Mastodon - Blood Mountain 15 2
Pearl Jam "Pearl Jam" 15 2
Ray Davies - Other People's Lives 15 2
Scott Miller and Commonwealth - Citation 15 2
91. Andra Suchy - Patchwork Stories 15 1
Darrell Scott- The invisible man 15 1
David Childers & the Modern Don Juans / Jailhouse Religion 15 1
East River Pipe - WHAT ARE YOU ON? 15 1
Finn's Motel - Escape Velocity 15 1
National Flower - Farewell Michael Meanwhile 15 1
Sonic Youth—"Rather Ripped" 15 1
Stills-Without Feathers-15 15 1
You Am I: Convicts 15 1
100. Graham Coxon - Love Travels at Illegal Speeds 14 2
101. Big Sandy and his Flyright Boys "Turntable Matinee" 14 1
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country 14 1
Keene Brothers - Blues and Boogie Shoes 14 1
104. Beth Orton - COMFORT OF STRANGERS 12 1
George Soule--Take A Ride 12 1
Wayne Hancock "Tulsa" 12 1
107. Jake Hooker & the Outsiders "Faded Lights" 11 1
Regina Spektor - BEGIN TO HOPE 11 1
109. Yayhoos -- Put the Hammer Down 10 2
110. Beirut / Gulag Orkestar 10 1
Black Keys - Magic Potion 10 1
Brandi Carlile, s/t 10 1
Bruce Robison, Eleven Stories (Sustain) 10 1
Cheap Trick / Rockford 10 1
Citizen Cope, Every Waking Moment 10 1
Cracker - Greenland 10 1
crooked jades-worlds on fire 10 1
Dale Watson, Whiskey Or God 10 1
Danielle Howle, Thank You, Mark 10 1
Danielson—Ships 10 1
David Mead-Tangerine 10 1
Eels: with strings Live at Town Hall 10 1
Eighteenth Day Of May-same 10 1
fernando-enter to exit 10 1
Fiery Furnaces / Bitter Tea 10 1
Gomez, How We Operate 10 1
Gourds "Heavy Ornamentals" 10 1
Guy Clark "Workbench Songs" 10 1
hammel on trial-songs for parents who enjoy drugs 10 1
Hank III Straight To Hell 10 1
J.D. Crowe & the New South / Lefty's Old Guitar 10 1
James Hunter, People Gonna Talk 10 1
Jessi Colter / Out Of The Ashes 10 1
Jim Lauderdale, "Bluegrass" 10 1
Joanna Newsom-Ys-10 pts. 10 1
John Legend, Once Again 10 1
Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, Adieu False Heart 10 1
Lloyd Cole / Anti-Depressant 10 1
Margot & The Nuclear So & So's - The Dust of Retreat 10 1
merrie amsterburg-clementine and other stories 10 1
Michael Cleveland - "Let 'er Go Boys!" 10 1
Michelle Anthony / Frozenstarpalace 10 1
Mudhoney - Under A Billion Suns 10 1
Nassau - Machines To Paradise 10 1
Neil Young Living With War 10 1
P.F. Sloan-Sailover 10 1
Paul Burch / East To West 10 1
Radney Foster - The World We Live In 10 1
Ray Wylie Hubbard / Snake Farm 10 1
Rough Shop – Far Past The Outskirts 10 1
Sadies - "Live Vol. 1" 10 1
Shawn Colvin-These Four Walls-10 pts. 10 1
Silversun Pickups – Carnavas 10 1
Startlight Mints Drowaton 10 1
Strokes—First Impressions of Earth 10 1
sun kil moon-tiny cities 10 1
T-Bone Burnett, "True False Identity" 10 1
Tom Russell: Love and Fear 10 1
Tom Yorke Eraser 10 1
Tripwires – demo songs on MySpace 10 1
Various Artists / Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys by Various Artists 10 1
various artists-harry smith project 10 1
Village Green-- Feeling The Fall (spinART) 10 1
Warren Zanes -- People That I'm Wrong For (Dualtone) 10 1
West Valley Highway - "Marysville" 10 1
Whipsaws: 10 Day Bender 10 1
Who-Endless Wire-10 pts. 10 1
Yeah Yeah Yeahs—Show Your Bones 10 1
169. Bernard Fanning – Tea & Sympathy 9 1
Damien Rice – 9 9 1
Damnwells – Air Stereo 9 1
Exploding Hearts - Shattered 9 1
James Hand "The Truth Will Set You Free" 9 1
Richard Buckner - MEADOW 9 1
175. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies 8 1
Figgs: Follow Jean Through The Sea 8 1
Handsome Family, Last Days of Wonder 8 1
Minders - A Bright Guilty World 8 1
Rhett Miller - The Believer 8 1
Weary Boys "Jumpin Jolie" 8 1
181. Dirty Truckers: Washed & Ready 7 1
Irving - Death in the Garden Blood on the Flowers 7 1
Ray Lamontagne – `Til The Sun Turns Black 7 1
184. Cornell Hurd Band "Texas By Night" 6 1
Dirty Pretty Things - Waterloo To Anywhere 6 1
Grant Lee Phillips - Nineteeneighties 6 1
James Luther Dickinson--Jungle Jim & The Voodoo Tiger 6 1
Jet – Shine On 6 1
189. Alison Moorer / Getting somewhere 5 1
Avett Brothers, The Gleam 5 1
Elvis Costello/Allen Toussaint The river in reverse 5 1
Frank Black Fast Man/Raider Man 5 1
Fred Eaglesmith-Milly's Cafe-5 5 1
Hacienda Brothers--What's Wrong With Right 5 1
Isis - In the Absence of Truth 5 1
Lindsay Buckingham / Under the Skin 5 1
Long Winters - Putting the Days to Bed 5 1
Malcolm Holcombe-Not Forgotten-5 pts. 5 1
Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood - Out Louder 5 1
Midlake—The Trials of Van Occupanther 5 1
Mogwai—Mr. Beast 5 1
My Morning Jacket / Okonokos 5 1
Randy Weeks / Sugarfinger 5 1
Sorta - Strange And Sad But True 5 1
Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreakers Hall Of Fame 5 1
Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine 5 1
TV on the Radio-Return to Cookie Mountain-5 pts 5 1
Vince Gill, These Days 5 1
209. Uncle Earl "She Waits For Night" 2 1

A late addition of four ballots gave the board 40 total ballots, one more than the last two years. The difference between number 1 and number 2 was more
this year (41 points) than last years 27 point margin of Son Volt over
New Pornographers, but less than 2004, where Drive By Truckers topped
Loretta Lynn by 57 points. Last year 203 albums received points, this
year 209 titles received points. There were 31 different albums
receiving first place votes (not counting the lists where all 10
albums received 10 points).

There was also a lot more consensus this year between our poll and the
ND critics list. Both lists had Bob Dylan and Neko Case at 1 and 2,
and both lists had Los Lobos and Springsteen in the top ten. Last
year's critics number one was Ry Cooder, which didn't receive any
votes here. The only top ten in common last year was Robbie Fulks.

More dog bites man news. Further evidence, if any is needed, of the fecklessness and stupidity of Bush's alleged immigration policy. Allowing this while sending troops to die in Iraq borders on the criminal.

From dailybulletin.com:

Links between illegal immigration, terrorism, drug trade worry U.S officials

By Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer

COLUMBUS, N.M. - On Sept. 5, a man calling himself Miguel Alfonso Salinas was apprehended off a deserted highway near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The tinted windows on Alfonso Salinas' vehicle aroused the suspicion of Border Patrol agents patrolling a dark and desolate stretch of Highway 9, which runs parallel to the border and is the site of large numbers of illegal crossings.

The agents discovered three Mexican migrants in the vehicle with Alfonso Salinas.

But what they discovered several days later made a far greater impression.

Alfonso Salinas was not who he seemed, according to U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security documents. He lied to the agents about who he was, where he came from and what he was doing.

It would take nearly a week of interviews with federal agents before Alfonso Salinas would give his real name: Ayman Sulmane Kamal, a Muslim born in Egypt - a country designated as "special-interest" by the United States for sponsoring terrorism.

Kamal's case is not an isolated one.

Evidence of "special-interest aliens" using the Mexican border to gain entry to the United States has been kept secret from the American public, according to federal law enforcement agents, terrorism experts and critics of U.S. foreign policy with Mexico.

In 2005, the Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. illegally. Of those, 165,000 were from countries other than Mexico, and roughly 650 were, like Kamal, from special-interest countries, according to the Border Patrol.

Those interviewed by the Daily Bulletin say agencies including the FBI and CIA are not using information from Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents to make connections between the drug trade, illegal immigration and terrorist organizations.

"For us to believe that Mexican smugglers will not assist, knowingly or unknowingly, foreign terrorists trying to enter the United States is incomprehensible," said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who, along with other congressional representatives, has pushed for stricter border security policies.

Whether Kamal had ties to a terrorist group is not known. No information about him, including his current whereabouts, is available aside from what is in Justice Department and Homeland Security documents.

But the links between illegal immigration, expanded trade, Mexican narcotics organizations and terrorist groups has already been assessed by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies, according to DEA documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin.

According to an intelligence report written by the DEA, "La Entrada al Pac fico (Gateway to the Pacific)" - also the name of a Texas-Mexico plan to expand border trade - Asian narcotics traffickers, in collusion with Mexican drug trafficking organizations and terrorist groups, could use expanded trade routes to bring contraband into the United States.

"The DEA has made a conscious effort to generate predictive intelligence so policy makers can be aware and plan ahead for significant changes in narcotics and smuggling operations," said a DEA official who asked to remain anonymous. "Any time you send in a predictive piece of intelligence that has merit and it's ignored, then the consequences of that can be devastating to national security."

According to DEA intelligence reports, the link between terrorism and narcotics has been well known since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

But federal agents say getting bureaucrats to understand the growing danger is difficult when most lawmakers won't even acknowledge many of the problems already happening along the U.S. border.

BORDER BATTLES

One of those problems was on full display in Texas earlier this year.

Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County - a border area 50 miles east of El Paso - and other Texas border sheriffs had complained for more than a year that Mexican military personnel were helping cartels smuggle humans and contraband across the Rio Grande and into the U.S.

The Daily Bulletin first published Department of Homeland Security documents and maps from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in January, showing 226 Mexican military incursions into the United States since 1996. That information led to a call for congressional investigations and hearings to determine the extent of the intrusions.

Shortly afterward, West was confronted with another incursion. This time, local law enforcement officials videotaped the event and went public with it.

"We had video and photographs," West said. "We went to Congress and testified before them with the evidence in hand. And we were told by Congressman (Silvestre) Reyes (D-El Paso) that we were either lying or mistaken."

Reyes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and U.S. and Mexican government officials tried to play down the documents and the incident in Hudspeth County. They stated publicly that the cartels were dressing like Mexican military to damage relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

Reyes, who recently was appointed chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

"The bureaucrats don't understand what a dangerous game they are playing with American lives if they don't do something to fix the situation at the border," said Michael Cutler, a former special agent with Immigration and Naturalization Services, who testified before the 9-11 Commission.

According to Border Patrol agents in Texas and Arizona, the Department of Homeland Security has stopped agents from filing full-disclosure incident reports if they see Mexican military involved in an alleged smuggling operation.

In some parts of Texas, if Mexican military personnel are suspected of assisting narcotics traffickers or smuggling humans, they are not processed, but instead are taken to a port of entry and released into Mexico.

An unnamed Border Patrol agent in Arizona said he witnessed a Mexican military helicopter shooting at a fellow agent in pursuit of a vehicle along the Arizona border with Mexico.

The supervisors would not let the agent put the Mexican military's involvement in the incident report, the agent said.

Michael Friel, a spokesman for the Border Patrol, said he had no knowledge of such an incident.

It's not just the cartels' connections to Mexican government officials and military that have U.S. intelligence officials and law enforcement worried. It's also the growing evidence that terrorist organizations have become increasingly dependent on narcotics and weapons sales to support their activities, and that they see the Southwest border as an incubator for their activities.

"Intelligence indicates that terrorist organizations are increasingly probing the U.S.-Mexico border," El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego told the House Judiciary Committee in August, during hearings about border security.

"The large international border creates tremendous smuggling opportunities for terrorists and is fertile ground for recruitment and development of support networks for terrorist organizations," Samaniego said. "The Mexican drug trafficking and human smuggling organizations use their knowledge of the border to assist terrorist cell members in their attempts to exploit the United States.

"The multicultural aspect of the border area also appeals to the terrorists. There are many nationalities, many of them transients, who live and interact in the border setting. This provides the terrorists the opportunity to blend into the community.

"The Southwest border may not be a priority target for a terrorist attack, but it is prime territory for the cultivation, recruitment, transportation and stashing of terrorist cell members," Samaniego concluded.

Samaniego and his colleagues aren't the only ones with such beliefs.

A DEA official said terrorist incidents such as the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 would be easy to duplicate in the United States, with the Southwest border as the best place to smuggle in those who would carry out such a plot.

In the train bombings, 10 synchronized explosions killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,700. An Islamic extremist group that funded the operation with narcotics sales was pinpointed as the perpetrator of the bombings.

"A former DEA director explained the problem best. During the cold war the threat was ABC: atomic, biological and chemical," said an intelligence official with the DEA, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If you apply that formula now to post 9/11 ... it becomes ABCD: atomic, biological, chemical and drugs. The drugs provide the funding for terrorism."

TERRORIST CULTURE

Additionally troubling to U.S. authorities are the growing cultural similarities between Mexican drug cartels and established terrorist groups.

Like Islamic extremists and other terrorist organizations that use suicide bombings or decapitations to strike fear into their enemies, drug-trafficking organizations have developed cultural associations with death over the past several years.

The Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaqu n "El Chapo" Guzm n, is now known by federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle." The long-running war between the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels for control of the Nuevo Laredo border forced Sinaloa to build alliances with numerous other drug trafficking organizations throughout Mexico, making the Sinaloa Cartel one of the most powerful in the country.

The Sinaloa Cartel, along with the help of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juarez Cartel, moves the majority of its narcotics through Ciudad Ju rez, which borders El Paso, Texas.

Along the streets of Ciudad Ju rez, Mexico, statues of La Santa Muerte - the saint of death - can be found at almost any local shop. The robed skeleton with a sickle clutched in its bony fingers is worshiped by many drug runners in Mexico and the United States.

The empty-eyed deity is particularly haunting in a city known for the brutal murders of nearly 500 women since 1995. Many Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials have attributed the murders to drug traffickers, some of whom have been arrested. But the murders continue, and women still live in fear.

"Women shouldn't be on the street after dark," said Lalo, 81, who sat with his wife at their empty shop in downtown Ciudad Ju rez.

Danger signs are everywhere. Billboards follow passers-by like shadows, warning women to be vigilant. Every man begins to look like a predator.

"There is so much death," Lalo sighed. "I'm beginning to think the saint is real."

The attitudes and actions represented by worship of La Santa Muerte culturally connect Mexico's drug cartels to terrorist groups, according to DEA officials.

Like Hezbollah and al-Qaida, which promise martyrs that their family members will be provided for after suicide bombings, Mexican drug trafficking organizations promise high-level members that if they die in the name of the cartel, their families will be provided for. Other similarities include the growing number of beheadings of Mexican police officials by the cartels to instill terror.

In cities all along the U.S.-Mexico border, the popularity of the death deity is growing. From Tijuana to Laredo's violent sister city Nuevo Laredo, La Santa Muerte is found in statues, stickers and trinkets.

"Widespread and unchecked violence creates a palpable sense of fear and tears at the social, cultural, and economic fabric of Nuevo Laredo," stated a June 2006 report, "State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico," written by the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit organization promoting human rights.

"As the war between cartels rages, no one - not police, not journalists, not ordinary citizens - knows whom they can trust, so they trust no one."

In Nuevo Laredo, the saint haunts cemeteries where worshippers have left offerings of food. The deity also is seen on the back of bulletproof SUVs driven by narco-traffickers who cruise through the city, and even in graffiti along the city's walls.

Now the saint is gaining popularity in Laredo. Eerie evidence of ritualistic ceremonies performed by illegal immigrants in stash houses was discovered by Webb County sheriff's deputies after one raid. Pictures of members of a Mexican military unit lay in a bowl of blood, sprinkled with herbs and roots.

"This really spooked us," said Webb County sheriff's spokesman Tom Sanchez as he sifted through the photographs taken by the deputies who conducted the raid. "I mean, there was an altar filled with everything you can imagine to this Santisima Muerte. It's a culture of death."

And it's something U.S lawmakers should pay attention to, DEA and Border Patrol field agents said: Drug traffickers accepting death as a glorious end to their violent lives.

"We pray for a good death," said Jose, 21, a young worshiper of La Santa Muerte in Tijuana. He stood stoic by his white-boned statue of the death saint, and pointed to his charm necklace, where a smaller version of the saint hung.

"I pray that I will die in a hail of bullets or fighting for my last breath against my enemy. I'm not afraid to die. I welcome death."