PAUL MCCARTNEY AMAZES FANS AT ELECTRIC PROMS

The former Beatle delves through musical career for the one-off show

From Uncut.co.uk:

Paul McCartney played an immense 90 minute set of classics at London's Roundhouse last night (October 25).

Addressing the crowd, and unveiling a eight-piece string orchestra, he announced: "Welcome to the Roundhouse. It's been a little while since I was here. We're gonna have a good night."

Playing the second night of the BBC Electric Proms week, the Beatles legend bantered throughout the night with the 3,000 capacity crowd - which included his daughters Stella and Mary, as well as members of the Kaiser Chiefs and The Office writer Stephen Merchant.

Backed by the orchestra, McCartney kicked off the night with the psychedelic hit 'Magical Mystery Tour'. The night's mammoth set saw McCartney play a mixture of Beatles classics, his solo hits and even Wings' 'Band On The Run'.

McCartney also covered the epic James Bond theme 'Live And Let Die' - which came with accompanying fireworks from both sides of the stage.

One of the most emotional moments at the intimate gig came when McCartney dedicated 'I'll Follow The Sun' to former bandmate John Lennon, explaining: "this is the conversation I never had."

He ended the show with a rocking version of 'Get Back'.

The show at the Roundhouse is only McCartney's second in the UK since headlining Glastonbury festival in 2004. He played a secret gig, also in Camden, just prior to his latest album 'Memory Almost Full's release in June. To read a review of that show, click here.

McCartney's full set list was:

'Magical Mystery Tour'
'Flaming Pie'
'Got To Get You Into My Life'
'Dance Tonight'
'Only Mama Knows'
'C'Moon'
'The Long And Winding Road'
'I'll Follow The Sun'
'That Was Me'
'Here Today'
'Blackbird'
'Calico Skies'
'Eleanor Rigby'
'Band On The Run'
'Back In The USSR'
'House Of Wax'
'I Got A Feeling'
'Live And Let Die'
'Hey Jude'
'Let It Be'
'Lady Madonna'
'I Saw Her Standing There'
'Get Back'

From The New York Times:
With a History, Growing Lighter With Age
By NATE CHINEN

October 14, 2007

Ryan Adams

The new songs aren’t really the draw on “Follow the Lights,” a seven-song Ryan Adams EP due out on Lost Highway next week. (Anyway there are only two of them: the title track and “My Love for You Is Real,” both of which will soon be featured on the ABC series “October Road.”) The draw for most fans will be a handful of Mr. Adams’s near-classics performed live in the studio with his stalwart band, the Cardinals. The mood is reflective and sober, especially on a slowed-down acoustic version of “If I Am a Stranger.” (“I will try to be there for you,” Mr. Adams sings quietly, “if I can.” Then, as if that promise isn’t already qualified enough: “What if I can’t?”) Finally there’s a lone cover, the Alice in Chains song “Down in a Hole,” which Mr. Adams has taken to playing in concert. (He is currently on tour; information: ryan-adams.com.) The lyrics sound as stark and self-pitying as ever, but they fit: Mr. Adams knows this terrain all too well, and he seems happy to show it.

From Bronx Banter:
Why Mattingly Matters

by Alex Belth

2007-10-25 09:58

Over the past several years, I've had more than a few skeptical out-of-towners ask me why Don Mattingly is such a big deal in New York. On a superficial level, it's like asking a Cubs fan why Ernie Banks, or Ryne Sandburg are popular in Chicago: they were all great players on losing teams. Okay, so Mattingly didn't have a great career, but from 1984-1989 he was a great player. It doesn't matter that he isn't a Hall of Famer. Hey, most fans just love guys who hit for a high average and drive in runs without striking out much.

As Joe Posnanski wrote in an e-mail:

He wore the pinstripes, and played Gehrig's position, and he was all throwback -- he wore that black under his eye, and he had that great swing, he came to the park to beat you ever day. I think he's one of those guys who, had he played in Boston, Cleveland, Texas, Philadelphia, Seattle, anywhere, would have still been everybody's favorite ballplayer. There really was nothing phony about him. He went up there to hit. He stood off the plate, he walked shockingly little, he drove in bleeping runs. Guy hit .314 with runners in scoring position.

I always got the feeling from friends that Mattingly was the coveted, "One Yankees player you really wish was on your team." Not because he was good, but because he was a player you liked despite yourself.

The second half of Mattingly's career was marked by injuries. He also played through some awful years in the Bronx, which helped increase his popularity, but the legend of Donnie Baseball started in his first full year (1984) when he won the batting crown on the last day of the season, and the following year when he walked away with the AL MVP. It is also rooted in the fact that Mattingly was an overachiever--he was a heady player with limited physical gifts, a grinder, just the kind of player fans love, especially white fans.

"By the time his career is over," said Ron Guidry in the spring of 1986, "he could be one of the best who ever played this game. He may not turn out to be quite what Lou Gehrig was, but he'll be closer than anybody else."

"His play, not his words, were the thing," says BP's Joe Sheehan. "He was a beacon of dignity in a time when the Yankees were largely undignified."

Mattingly arrived on the scene as the Yankees were spiraling into George's version of Groundhog's Day. The Yankees annually discarded young players for big-name, big-ticket free agents. You remember the names--Kemp, Collins, Clark. Through it all, Mattingly was driven, confident and without pretense--"100% ballplayer, 0% bullsh**," as Bill James later wrote.

Mattingly was the best young Yankee since Mickey Mantle, and like Mantle had the country-boy-in-the-big-city appeal. But he was no dope. He paid his dues on the infamous Columbus Shuttle. "It's good that it didn't all come so easy," Mattingly once told Sports Illustrated. "One thing I can say about the Yankees: They've never given me a thing."

After his MVP season, Steinbrenner haggled with Mattingly before avoiding arbitration and signing him to a one year, $1.375 million deal. Mattingly tweaked the owner one day by showing up wearing sunglasses and a headband that read, "Steinbrenner." (Mattingly was paying homage to Chicago Bears quarterback, Jim McMahon, who famously wore headbands with new slogans each week.)

Two years later, Mattingly said, "You come here and you play and you get no respect. They treat you like sh**. They belittle your performance and make you look bad in the media. After they give you the money, it doesn't matter. They can do whatever they want. They think money is respect."

It's not hard to tell who Mattingly was talking about and his willingness to stand-up to Steinbrenner only increased his reputation with the fans. (When The Boss gave Mattingly grief about the length of his hair, Mattingly grew it longer.)

Best of all, Mattingly loved to work.

"I love to watch him practice," Gene Mauch said when he was managing the Angels. "He's very serious during infield, never wastes a swing in the cage. From there on I don't want to look at him."

Just yesterday, Mike Gallego recalled a favorite Mattingly story to Joel Sherman. It was 8 a.m. The Yankees had played a game the night before and had another game that afternoon. Mattingly was alone in the batting cage with about 200 balls littered around the cage:

"Donnie had no idea I was there," said Gallego, now the Rockies' third base coach. "I watched for 20 minutes. He was sweating bullets and all he was doing was tracking the ball. No swings. None. He'd watch all 200, put the balls back in a bucket, feed the machine and start again. He had been having trouble seeing the ball and there he was, the most famous player in the game, hours before the game, alone, retrieving his own balls, looking for an edge. I tell that story to our players now when they think they are working hard enough and they aren't."

Gallego loves the story, in part, because he admires Mattingly so much and thinks it depicts the man. Not just the diligent work ethic. But the humility. The discipline. The grinder makeup. And something else that, Gallego asserts, you could only know if you were observant around Mattingly.

"He is one of the quietest, fiercest competitors that I have ever played with or against," Gallego said. "And he has great belief in himself. He thinks he will find a way to beat you. But he is not going to talk about it. He is not going to tell you how hard he is working or brag on his ability."

In the summer of 1990, Mattingly was struggling and the Yankees had just about hit rock bottom. Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield were gone. Mattingly was the last Yankee, according to an article by Paul Solotaroff in The National Sports Daily (the piece can be found in Glenn Stout's excellent collection, Top of the Heap):

"My place in Yankee history?" sniggers Donald Arthur Mattingly. "I'll tell you what my place in Yankee history is. It's hitting .260 on a struggling ballclub, and letting everyone down in here. At the moment, I don't exactly feel too much a part of Ruth or Gehrig or DiMaggio.

...It's pretty ugly, to tell you the truth. What they need to do is get rid of anyone who doesn't care. I take it home every night, and some guys just leave it. That ticks me off, to see a guy laughing and joking around when we lose...You don't want any of those kind of guys on your team."

So, what kind of manager will Mattingly be? I asked a bunch of friends and colleagues yesterday and the response were decidedly mixed. I have no idea how he'll do. I was not especially into the idea until a few days ago. I don't know what turned me around exactly. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic for the Mattingly of my youth, the one who mattered so much to us. Who knows? Point is, I won't be upset if he gets the nod. In fact, I'll be eager to see how he does.

Hey, think he can get Zimmer to be his bench coach?

HAVE YOU HUGGED AN ISLAMO-FASCIST TODAY?
Ann Coulter

October 24, 2007

College liberals are in a fit of pique because various speakers are coming to their campuses this week as part of David Horowitz's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week -- not to be confused with Islamo-Fascism Appreciation Week, which I believe is in April.

Apparently liberals support Islamo-fascism.

The Democratic leadership might want to have a powwow with their base because I believe their public position is to pretend to oppose Islamic fascism.

Elected Democrats at least make empty rhetorical gestures about opposing Islamic fascism. Of course, amidst their nonspecific condemnations of Islamic terrorism, they make very specific demands that we genuflect before Islam and perform exotic fetishes on the fascists.

Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents -- but God forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo.

College campuses across the nation are installing foot baths to accommodate Muslims' daily bathing ritual, while surgically removing the Ten Commandments from every public space in America. Maybe the Ten Commandments could be printed on towels and kept next to the foot baths.

The National Council for Social Studies recommended a lesson plan after 9/11 that included a story titled "My Name Is Osama" about a nasty little white boy, "Todd," who taunts a fine upstanding Iraqi immigrant named "Osama." Go ahead, laugh it up -- we'll see who's laughing when "My Name Is Osama" ends up on ABC's prime-time lineup next year.

This story was proposed in response to an event in which Muslims with names like "Osama" committed the most massive hate crime in U.S. history against 3,000 innocent civilians with names like "Todd."

Still and all, Democrats who seek the votes of their fellow Americans continue to claim in a vague, meaningless way to oppose Islamo-fascism.

And then when speakers like Cyrus Nowrasteh, the writer and producer of the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11," and Nonie Darwish, whose father founded the Fedayeen, show up on college campuses to criticize Islamic terrorism, the Democratic base threatens to riot. The only thing that makes the cut-and-run crowd mad enough to fight is the idea that someone, somewhere might be criticizing radical Islam.

Consequently, the speakers for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week require the sort of security phalanx one would expect for someone more like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Oh wait -- no. Ahmadinejad was cheered by college students a few weeks ago -- at least until he expressed reservations about sodomy. (On the basis of Ahmadinejad's claims, instead of looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, how about we start looking for gays in Iran?)

Even American intellectuals like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved who are speaking during Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week are denounced by liberals as if they were David Duke. One pro-Islamo-fascism Web site indicts Medved on the grounds that he "has claimed that Islam has a 'special violence problem.'" It doesn't get much more diplomatic than that.

Conservative speakers are constantly being physically attacked on college campuses -- including Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and me, among others. Fortunately the attackers are Democrats, so they throw like girls and generally end up with their noses bloodied by pretty college coeds. But that doesn't make it right.

Michael Moore can waddle anywhere he wants in America without fear of violence from Republicans. But we still have to hear about every testy e-mail Paul Krugman ever receives as if liberals are living in the black night of fascism. Any time Krugman wants to get into a "Most Vicious Hate Mail" contest, just say the word. You don't hear me sniffling.

Congressional Democrats are constantly calling for conservative private citizens to be silenced. Even Democratic candidates for president and their wives are getting in on the act.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of Senate Democrats' demand that Rush Limbaugh's microphone be silenced, Lizzie Edwards distracted herself from the latest National Enquirer by announcing on Air America that Limbaugh's draft deferment was phony.

I was pretty shocked. Who knew Air America was still on the air?

I know every time Democrats call for me to be silenced, I feel a delicious surge of martyrdom. For a brief moment, I understand the thrill the left gets by going around claiming to be victimized all the time.

I could almost imagine a poem:

First they came for Rush Limbaugh, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Rush Limbaugh;

And then they came for Ann Coulter, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Ann Coulter;

And then they came for David Horowitz, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't David Horowitz;

And then ... they came for me ... And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Liberals claim to be terrified that the Religious Right is going to take over the culture in a country where more than a million babies are exterminated every year, kindergarteners can be expelled from school for mentioning God, and Islamic fascists are welcomed on college campuses while speakers opposed to Islamic fascism are met with angry protests.

If liberals want to face real fascism, try showing up on a college campus and denouncing fascism.

From Sports Illustrated via NoMaas.org:
Before the sympathy tour continues...
Have a look at this:

Torre's so persuasive, in fact, that after his emotional hour-long press gathering the other day, he had half of New York believing that the Yankees insulted him with their $5 million guaranteed offer (with incentive clauses for another $3 million) and the other half believing that he was fired.

Torre can feel hurt if he wants by the take-it-or-leave-it stance of Yankees' decisionmakers. But for the record, it should be known now that their recent offer was actually better than the one discussed in spring, months before the team bowed out in the first round for a third straight postseason.

Back then, SI.com has learned, the Yankees and Torre were talking about a one-year $4.5 million extension with Steve Swindal, the son-in-law who signed Torre to his lucrative $6.4 million-a-year deal, and Torre was receptive to the offer. But that extension fell apart after Swindal was arrested for a DWI on Valentine's Day and Swindal's marriage to George Steinbrenner's daughter, Jennifer, subsequently disintegrated. The Yankees hierarchy decided it would be best to let all four of its major stars (including A-Rod, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada) play out the season under their current deals.

At the time, according to people familiar with those talks, Torre told his bosses that it was his great goal to be able to close out the old Yankee Stadium. Yet when his superiors gave him a chance to do just that last week -- at $500,000 more than what had been discussed in the spring -- Torre took it as an insult. An opportunity to close out the stadium was offered as a one-year extension, but he wanted a second year that would have guaranteed that he'd open new Yankee Stadium, as well. (Source)

And for those who are whining and spreading the idea that Cashman has lost power:

...the GM said he agreed that the one-year deal was the right offer. And I don't believe he's only saying that now to be a team player. Every Yankee exec -- Cashman, included -- started to wonder about Torre's strategies, especially the overuse of some relievers and the under-use of some young position players. (Source)

The Global-Warming Debate Isn't Over Until It's Over
By John Stossel

First he won the Oscar -- then the Nobel Peace Prize. He's being called a "prophet."

Impressive, considering that one of former Vice President Al Gore's chief contributions has been to call the debate over global warming "over" and to marginalize anyone who disagrees. Although he favors major government intervention to stop global warming, he says, "the climate crisis is not a political issue. It is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity".

Give me a break.

If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it's not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as "our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level," then it deserves some skeptical examination.

Everyone has heard that Earth's atmosphere is heating up, it's our fault, and it's a crisis. No wonder 86 percent of Americans think global warming is a serious problem and 70 percent want the government to do something now.

But is it a crisis? The globe is warming, but will it be catastrophic? Probably not.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore says that "sea levels worldwide would go up 20 feet."

But the group that shared last week's Nobel Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says in a hundred years, the oceans might rise 7 to 24 inches.

Gore also talks about drowning polar bears. He doesn't mention that the World Conservation Union and the U.S. Geological Survey say that today most populations of polar bears are stable or increasing.

And while man's greenhouse gasses may increase warming, it's not certain that man caused it. The most impressive demonstration in Gore's movie is the big graph of carbon-dioxide levels, which suggests that carbon levels control temperature. But the movie doesn't tell you that the carbon increases came after temperatures rose, hundreds of years later.

There's much more. A British court ruled that U.K. teachers could show Gore's documentary to students only if they also explain nine errors in the movie.

I wanted to ask Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't talk to me. Why should he? He says "the debate is over."

"It's absurd for people to say that sort of thing," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute.

John Christy and Roy Spencer, who won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites, agree that Earth has warmed. "The thing that we dispute is, is it because of mankind?" Spencer says.

Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun, or ocean currents, or changes in cloud cover, or other things we don't understand. If it's all man's fault, why did the Arctic go through a warm period early last century? Why did Greenland's temperatures rise 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they are rising now?

The media rarely ask such questions.

The media also treat the IPCC as impartial scientists, but Reiter and Christy, who were members of the IPCC, say it is not what the public thinks it is. Many of the people involved in writing its report "are not scientists at all," Reiter says. "They were essentially activists." Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. Skeptics were often ignored.

Christy says, "We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it."

Adds Reiter, "I resigned."

But the IPCC still listed him as part of the so-called consensus of scientists. He says he had to threaten to sue to get his name removed from the report, although the IPCC denies that.

Skeptics like Reiter, Christy, Spencer and Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change and heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, are often smeared as "deniers," lumped in with Holocaust deniers and accused of being "on the take" from energy businesses." Gore impugns skeptical scientists by saying "the illusion of a debate has been purchased."

But the scientists I interviewed don't get money from business.

Some get threatened. Ball received an e-mail that said: "You will not live long enough to see global warming!"

Is this what the global-warming debate has come to?

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

From The Christian Science Monitor:
Media myths about the Jena 6
A local journalist tells the story you haven't heard.
By Craig Franklin

Jena, La.

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.

There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.

The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side's statements – the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they'd read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.

The real story of Jena and the Jena 6 is quite different from what the national media presented. It's time to set the record straight.

Myth 1: The Whites-Only Tree. There has never been a "whites-only" tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present – blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class.

Myth 2: Nooses a Signal to Black Students. An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of "Lonesome Dove.") The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends. Another myth concerns their punishment, which was not a three-day suspension, but rather nine days at an alternative facility followed by two weeks of in-school suspension, Saturday detentions, attendance at Discipline Court, and evaluation by licensed mental-health professionals. The students who hung the nooses have not publicly come forward to give their version of events.

Myth 3: Nooses Were a Hate Crime. Although many believe the three white students should have been prosecuted for a hate crime for hanging the nooses, the incident did not meet the legal criteria for a federal hate crime. It also did not meet the standard for Louisiana's hate-crime statute, and though widely condemned by all officials, there was no crime to charge the youths with.

Myth 4: DA's Threat to Black Students. When District Attorney Reed Walters spoke to Jena High students at an assembly in September, he did not tell black students that he could make their life miserable with "the stroke of a pen." Instead, according to Walters, "two or three girls, white girls, were chit-chatting on their cellphones or playing with their cellphones right in the middle of my dissertation. I got a little irritated at them and said, 'Pay attention to me. I am right now having to deal with an aggravated rape case where I've got to decide whether the death penalty applies or not.' I said, 'Look, I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make your life miserable so I want you to call me before you do something stupid.'"

Mr. Walters had been called to the assembly by police, who had been at the school earlier that day dealing with some students who were causing disturbances. Teachers and students have confirmed Walters's version of events.

Myth 5: The Fair Barn Party Incident. On Dec. 1, 2006, a private party – not an all-white party as reported – was held at the local community center called the Fair Barn. Robert Bailey Jr., soon to be one of the Jena 6, came to the party with others seeking admittance.

When they were denied entrance by the renter of the facility, a white male named Justin Sloan (not a Jena High student) at the party attacked Bailey and hit him in the face with his fist. This is reported in witness statements to police, including the victim, Robert Bailey, Jr.

Months later, Bailey contended he was hit in the head with a beer bottle and required stitches. No medical records show this ever occurred. Mr. Sloan was prosecuted for simple battery, which according to Louisiana law, is the proper charge for hitting someone with a fist.

Myth 6: The "Gotta-Go" Grocery Incident. On Dec. 2, 2006, Bailey and two other black Jena High students were involved in an altercation at this local convenience store, stemming from the incident that occurred the night before. The three were accused by police of jumping a white man as he entered the store and stealing a shotgun from him. The two parties gave conflicting statements to police. However, two unrelated eye witnesses of the event gave statements that corresponded with that of the white male.

Myth 7: The Schoolyard Fight. The event on Dec. 4, 2006 was consistently labeled a "schoolyard fight." But witnesses described something much more horrific. Several black students, including those now known as the Jena 6, barricaded an exit to the school's gym as they lay in wait for Justin Barker to exit. (It remains unclear why Mr. Barker was specifically targeted.)

When Barker tried to leave through another exit, court testimony indicates, he was hit from behind by Mychal Bell. Multiple witnesses confirmed that Barker was immediately knocked unconscious and lay on the floor defenseless as several other black students joined together to kick and stomp him, with most of the blows striking his head. Police speculate that the motivation for the attack was related to the racially charged fights that had occurred during the previous weekend.

Myth 8: The Attack Is Linked to the Nooses. Nowhere in any of the evidence, including statements by witnesses and defendants, is there any reference to the noose incident that occurred three months prior. This was confirmed by the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, Donald Washington, on numerous occasions.

Myth 9: Mychal Bell's All-White Jury. While it is true that Mychal Bell was convicted as an adult by an all-white jury in June (a conviction that was later overturned with his case sent to juvenile court), the jury selection process was completely legal and withstood an investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Court officials insist that several black residents were summoned for jury duty, but did not appear.

Myth 10: Jena 6 as Model Youth. While some members were simply caught up in the moment, others had criminal records. Bell had at least four prior violent-crime arrests before the December attack, and was on probation during most of this year.

Myth 11: Jena Is One of the Most Racist Towns in America. Actually, Jena is a wonderful place to live for both whites and blacks. The media's distortion and outright lies concerning the case have given this rural Louisiana town a label it doesn't deserve.

Myth 12: Two Levels of Justice. Outside protesters were convinced that the prosecution of the Jena 6 was proof of a racially biased system of justice. But the US Justice Department's investigation found no evidence to support such a claim. In fact, the percentage of blacks and whites prosecuted matches the parish's population statistics.

These are just 12 of many myths that are portrayed as fact in the media concerning the Jena cases. (A more thorough review of all events can be found at www.thejenatimes.net – click on Chronological Order of Events.)

As with the Duke Lacrosse case, the truth about Jena will eventually be known. But the town of Jena isn't expecting any apologies from the media. They will probably never admit their error and have already moved on to the next "big" story. Meanwhile in Jena, residents are getting back to their regular routines, where friends are friends regardless of race. Just as it has been all along.

• Craig Franklin is assistant editor of The Jena Times.

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From Opinion Journal:
The War for the Constitution
The anniversary of Robert Bork's failed nomination reminds us
what's at stake in the coming election.

BY GARY L. MCDOWELL
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Twenty years ago today the United States Senate voted to reject President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. The senators may have had every reason to believe that was the end of the story. However ugly it had been, however much time it had taken, Mr. Bork's defeat was only one more routine sacrifice to partisan politics. But time would prove wrong anyone who actually thought that. The battle over Mr. Bork was politically transformative, its constitutional lessons enduring.

To many at the time (and still today) it was inconceivable that a man of Mr. Bork's professional accomplishments and personal character could be found unacceptable for a seat on the Court. Warren Burger summed it up for many when he described Mr. Bork as simply the best qualified nominee in the former chief justice's own professional lifetime--a span of years that included the appointments of such judicial luminaries as Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter. Such praise was no empty exaggeration.

A former Yale law professor and U.S. Solicitor General, Mr. Bork was, at the time of his nomination, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. When he was a circuit court judge, Mr. Bork's opinions not only were never overruled on appeal, but on several occasions his dissents were adopted by the Supreme Court as its majority view.

In an earlier day such an appointment would have been celebrated as adding breadth, depth and luster to the highest bench. Instead, the nominee faced a mauling by those who set out not only to destroy him personally but to discredit all that he stood for as a jurist.

It was immediately clear that the unprecedented vote of 58-42 against his confirmation reflected something far more historic and fundamental than an ordinary partisan standoff. The confrontation in fact had been one of the most cataclysmic and divisive events in American domestic politics during the second half of the 20th century. The reason was that Mr. Bork's opponents succeeded in making the fight over his nomination into a contest over the future of the Constitution.

The issue that united the judge's critics in their fiery, scorched-earth opposition was never his ability or reputation but rather his theory of judging. Mr. Bork's belief was that judges and justices in their interpretations of the Constitution must be bound to the original intentions of its framers. In his sober constitutional jurisprudence there was no room for any airy talk about a general right of privacy, allegedly unwritten constitutions, vague notions of unenumerated rights, or what the progressive Justice Black once derided as "any mysterious and uncertain natural law concept." For Mr. Bork, the framers said what they meant, and meant what they said.

Mr. Bork's approach had its roots in hundreds of years of common law history as well as in the political philosophy of those whose works serve as the foundation of American constitutionalism. Chief Justice John Marshall had summed up that received tradition when he proclaimed that recourse to a lawgiver's original intention is "the most sacred rule of interpretation." In Marshall's view, it is always "the great duty of a judge who construes an instrument . . . to find the intention of its makers." As with Marshall, so also with Mr. Bork.

At its deepest level, Mr. Bork's defeat was the result of the very public affirmation by the Senate of a dangerous theory of ideological judging that had been developing for quite some time. It was the idea of a so-called "living" Constitution, one that various scholars have said means there need be "no theoretical gulf between law and morality," and that ordinary judges are empowered to interpret the fundamental law in light of their own "fresh moral insight" in order to effect a judicially mandated "moral evolution" of the nation.

The aim of this new approach to judging that was used to pillory Mr. Bork was not a matter of mere metaphysical speculation. It was the concrete political reality of Roe v. Wade and its judicially created right to abortion--and behind that, Griswold v. Connecticut and its even more amorphous right to privacy. Mr. Bork's originalism denied the constitutional legitimacy of such contrived decisions and would have left such issues to be resolved by the people in their legislatures.

Thus, his nomination threatened not only all that had been gained by judicial fiat, such as abortion rights, but all that might be gained, such as constitutional protections for same-sex marriages. That was why, to his critics, he had to be stopped at all costs.

The price paid has proved high, indeed. The defeat heralded a fundamental transformation in the process surrounding judicial appointments and thereby radically politicized the public's view of the nature and extent of judicial power under the Constitution. Confirmation battles from Mr. Bork to Clarence Thomas to Samuel Alito have taken on the trappings of ordinary political campaigns, from instant polling to rallies and protests and attack ads. Sadly, the courts are no longer above the fray.

The Supreme Court has continued to give voice to the rhetoric of a morally evolving or living Constitution, along the way upholding Roe in 1992 and striking down state sodomy laws in 2003. Moreover, the Court has decreed that it is "invested with the authority to speak . . . before all others for [the people's] constitutional ideals."

And Judge Bork's replacement as a nominee, Justice Anthony Kennedy, has insisted that the concept of liberty has both "spatial" and "transcendent dimensions," the boundaries of which "are not susceptible of expression as a simple rule." Thus constitutional meaning, even for some Republican appointees, is no longer a matter of the framers' intention but only the judges' intuition.

Recalling Mr. Bork's experience serves to remind us of how precarious the judiciary's balance is at any given time, and how today's highly politicized process prevents even the most gifted and prominent jurists from expecting to be confirmed (or perhaps even desiring the chance to undergo the ordeal).

But more important, it is a reminder that presidents must be willing to undertake what they know will be a horrific fight in order to see the bench filled not with liberals or conservatives or partisans, but with constitutionalists.

In this sense, the Bork vote is not just a matter of quaint historical interest, but the first great battle in the contemporary war for the Constitution--a continuing war that must be won if true self-government is to prevail.

Time has shown that Mr. Bork's theory of constitutional interpretation remains very much alive; he was defeated but his central idea was never discredited. That theory of interpretation and its implicit belief in restrained judging should continue to guide anyone who believes that the inherent arbitrariness of government by judiciary is not the same thing as the rule of law.

Mr. McDowell, currently a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a professor at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond.

From blog Green Bay, Booze, and Broads:

Packer's Legend Max McGee passes away

While writing the last post about my Week 7 predictions, I noticed on the ESPN ticker that Max McGee had passed away. I usually don't post very serious subjects, but the death of Packers legend Max McGee is an exception. McGee died late Saturday afternoon after falling off the roof of his Deephaven home.
Max wasn't the typical Vince Lombardi player. He was known for his late night shenanigans, highlighted by a late night escapade the night before Super Bowl I, that Johnny "Blood" McNally would have been proud of. Below is an article written in by John Wiebusch (AOL Sports), which tells the tale. Max McGee is a shining example of everything this website stands for: "Green Bay, Booze, and Broads!" Here's to you, Max!

The morning sun was peeking its nose over the palm trees on Sunset Boulevard and the still-lit neon lights of the Whiskey-a-Go-Go were almost surreal in the early morning glow of Jan. 15, 1967.

Max McGee, wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers and man about town in every town he passed through, was saying good night and/or good morning - it all depended on your point of view - to three full-figured stewardesses, two in the fashion rage of the day - hot pants - and one in a mini-skirt.

"Ladies," McGee went on, "it’s been a festival, as always. You are all too beautiful for words. I only hope that I more than made up for the disappointment of Paul Hornung not being here."

"Oh, Max, you were just WON-derful," said the one in pink leather hot pants.

They hugged him and he squeezed back as three cabs arrived - one to take one of the stews to her day job in the friendly skies, another to take the other two home. McGee slipped $20 bills into the cabbies' hands.

The third cab would take Max McGee back to his day job, momentarily operating out of the Hilton Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, near downtown Los Angeles and a 10-minute ride from the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the pro football team for whom he played, the Green Bay Packers, would meet the Kansas City Chiefs that afternoon for bragging rights in pro football.

Forty-five minutes later, Max McGee was running a screen pattern through the lobby of the Hilton, using potted plants and pillars as his cover to avoid the one man he did not want to see - head coach Vince Lombardi.

Not that Lombardi would have been too shocked. He had caught McGee many times over the years, usually along with his running mate, Paul Hornung. This time - in a reverse shocker of equal proportions - Hornung had decided not to go out on game-day eve.

Los Angeles was Hornung’s favorite city in all the world - it had an endless buffet of females - but he was getting married on the Wednesday after the big game and, well, the famous Golden Boy wanted to save himself.

McGee made it to the elevators, unseen. He hit the eighth-floor button. Home free!

It was going on 8 o’clock and Hornung was stretching out of a sound sleep when McGee entered the room.

"Tell me all about it, Max," Hornung said. "Like I was there, m’man!"

He had not seen McGee since bed check at 11:30 p.m., when Max, fully dressed, was huddled under the covers, waiting for a Packers assistant coach to look inside the room.

As soon as the coach checked in, McGee checked out - and no amount of pleading by McGee could get Hornung to change his mind and join him.

Now, in the morning, they sat on the sides of their beds and McGee told Horning tales of the Sunset Strip and the three high flyers who knew both of them.

Hornung whistled. "We’d better get down to team breakfast," he said. "Get some coffee into you. Buses leave for the stadium in an hour." It was almost 8:30.

McGee, 34, had not slept a wink except in the cab ride back to the hotel, but then he figured he’d get plenty of rest on the bench during the game against the Chiefs.

	McGee by the Numbers
	7 Number of catches in Super Bowl I 138 yards Receiving yards in first Super Bowl 2 TD receptions in first Super Bowl 1 Number of catches in Super Bowl II 12 Seasons with the Packers 345 Career catches 50 Career TD receptions Photo: SI | Source: superbowl.com, www.pro-football-reference.com

From 1958-1964, McGee was one of the NFL’s best wide receivers, but injuries had limited him to 10 catches in 1965 and only four in 1966. Boyd Dowler had become quarterback Bart Starr’s favorite target.

Hornung was three years younger than McGee, but his career had followed a similar trajectory. He led the league in scoring in 1959-1961 - there are those who would tell you that Paul Hornung led the league in scoring every year - and he was, with the Giants’ Frank Gifford, a true Golden Boy of the game, but injuries savaged him and, in 1966, a pinched nerve in his neck had resulted in arm weakness that limited him to 200 rush yards. He had not been the Packers' kicker for years.

No, Hornung and McGee figured to have plenty of time to themselves on the Green Bay bench, plenty of time to check out the action in the always attractive Coliseum crowd, plenty of time to talk about Hornung’s wedding, which was three days away.

The Packers' breakfast room air was thick with tension. The prestige of the old-line NFL was threatened by the AFL’s new kids on the block. To lose to anyone, ever, was unthinkable to Lombardi. To think of losing to these punks was beyond comprehension.

Lombardi liked having Hornung and McGee around because they usually kept the team loose, but, on this morning, Hornung’s wisecracks were minimal and McGee avoided even eye contact lest the Visine had failed to do the job (much less the Listerine and the Folgers).

"My dad had the best spy network in the history of football spy networks," says Vince Lombardi, Jr., then a young law student on the scene. "But I know he never was wise to Max being out on the town all night. Max got away with a big one!"

In the pre-game warm-ups, McGee and Horning gave it a half-effort. "I don’t think I did any stretching," McGee says. "Why would I bother?"

On the third play of the game, as Hornung and McGee literally were planning the Monday night wedding rehearsal dinner, they heard the gravel voice of Lombardi yelling, "McGee, McGee, get your ass in there!"

Dowler had separated a shoulder, and McGee, a man who had anything but football on his brain barely six hours earlier, suddenly was thrust into the primary spotlight of the biggest game of his career - one that later would be christened Super Bowl I.

But when McGee got up to go into the game, he couldn't find his helmet. He didn't remember seeing it the pre-game - and he didn’t worry about it because of course he wasn’t going to play anyway, was he? Now he grabbed a helmet that belonged to a reserve defensive lineman... and, with no potted plants or pillars in his way, got his ass into the game.

A couple minutes later, he scored on a spectacular 37-yard pass from Starr. The normally pinpoint quarterback threw the ball short and behind McGee, who reached behind his body with his right hand to make a one-hand catch.

When McGee came back to the bench, he said to Hornung, "Hey, if Bart throws me the ball, I know I can win the damned car!" Sport magazine was offering a 1967 Corvette to the game’s most valuable player.

McGee was unconscious - literally and figuratively - and he made one crucial catch after another all day, including a 13-yard collaboration with Starr in the third quarter that gave Green Bay a 28-10 advantage,

McGee's second touchdown catch was nearly as amazing as his first. He was hit hard before catching a strike from Starr, which he juggled before securing it against his body,

In the end, the Packers were supreme 35-10, and the man about town had seven catches for 138 yards and two touchdowns. Starr, the family man about his house, had nine other completions for 108 additional yards, and no more touchdowns.

The Corvette went to the quarterback.

"They should have given two, m’man," Hornung said to McGee.

The Golden Boy joined in the wild celebration - and he would get a full-share winner’s check of $15,000 - but he never saw any action because of his arm and neck injuries.

Late in the game, Lombardi had come to Hornung and asked him if he wanted to go in so he could say he had played in the first Super Bowl. Hornung had declined.

The former Heisman Trophy winner, Notre Dame All-America, overall No. 1 draft choice, and two-time NFL MVP had too much pride to simply make a cursory appearance.

McGee got a winner’s share, too, and it was a major dividend to his non-marquee income. He laughed about it with the press in the Packers' locker room.

With impish tongue in cheek he said of Starr’s first touchdown pass, "You pay a quarterback a hundred thousand a year, you expect him to throw it a little better to a twenty-five thousand dollar end. I thought the ball was going to be intercepted. I was trying to knock it down... and it stuck to my hand."

"And were you trying to make the second score look tough, too?" asked a man with a notepad.

McGee laughed. "Make it look tough? I’d just got my bell rung. Lucky I held onto it."

"Your best day ever?" someone shouted from the back of the pack.

"I’ve had better days," McGee said. "But I never timed one better."

Lombardi had hugged him on the field when it was over, but the coach made another stop by McGee and Hornung’s adjoining cubicles later. The coach was returning to Green Bay on the team charter.

"Thanks again, Max," Lombardi said. "And Paulie" He hugged both men together, awkwardly, his eyes misty.

They all knew an era that had begun in 1959 when Lombardi came to Green Bay was in decline.

Lombardi would last one more season, win one more Super Bowl, and then step aside as Packers' coach. McGee would play that 1967 season with Green Bay and would leave the bench long enough to catch a total of only three passes, with no touchdowns. Hornung would go to New Orleans in the 1967 expansion draft but he never would play for the Saints - or for anyone else - because his arm and neck injuries would not get better.

In the Coliseum locker room, an emotional Lombardi offered his jack-o-lantern smile and added, "Max, you get this no-good to the church on time Wednesday. And the two of you -try to get some goddamn sleep between now and then, okay?”

Did he really know about last night, McGee wondered to himself. No matter!

The wedding rehearsal dinner Monday night was at Chasen’s, then one of the top restaurants in Los Angeles. McGee, who would be the best man Wednesday, picked up the $3,000 tab.

And, sleep deprived again, McGee managed to get Hornung to the Beverly Hills church on time on Wednesday.

The marriage that took place that day "had failure written all over it from the start," Hornung writes in 'Golden Boy'.

The marriage survived 12 years - on paper - but a 1979 marriage that came when he was 43 has lasted almost 26 years. McGee, 72, has been married twice and has two sons.

And in case you’re wondering whether Max McGee could afford to pick up that $3,000 wedding rehearsal dinner check 38 years ago... be assured that, even though it was a lot of money at the time... he could.

He always has been a man with a Midas investment touch, and his later forays into the restaurant business made him a mega-millionaire.

Hornung has his share of high finance success stories, but the penultimate day of his post-Packer life came on August 3, 1986, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

His presenter that summer afternoon was - no surprise - one Max McGee, who said, "I lived with this guy for 10 years and I have been a best buddy for 30 years... this is the easiest chore I ever have had in my life."

And did the two of them, uh, break curfew the night before the ceremony? Did either of them have to sneak through the hotel lobby at dawn?

Hornung laughs. "Vince would have been proud," he says, "These two 50-some guys were in their rooms by 12:30.

"Of course there were a few toasts throughout the evening... and more than a few of them were to him."

From CFO.com: More evidence that the Yankees' offer to Torre was entirely reasonable.
Torre's Pay Offer Is a Hit with CFOs

The pay-for-performance deal the New York Yankees offered to Joe Torre
lines up with executive-compensation trends in Corporate America.
Marie Leone, CFO.com

October 19, 2007

The New York Yankees struck out with Joe Torre, the manager who led the baseball club for the past 12 years until Thursday, when he nixed a new contract offer. There is a raging debate about Torre's fate in New York, but whichever side fans and critics come down on, one thing is clear: the pay package offered by the Yankees is in line with those being offered by many American corporations.

The Yankees offered Torre a one-year contract comprising a base salary of $5 million and $1 million bonuses for each level of postseason play the team reached in 2008, according to reports from MLB.com, the Website of major league baseball.

The incentive component of the deal promised that if the Yankees win it all next year, capturing the World Series crown, Torre could take home $8 million in total compensation. But that won't happen — and it has nothing to do with the Boston Red Sox.

Torre balked at the deal and called it quits. Essentially, the Yankees skipper was being asked to cut 30 percent off his current $7.5 million salary and replace the missing cash with performance-based pay. At a press conference Friday, Torre said he was "insulted" by the offer and "I had been there for 12 years and I felt the motivation wasn't needed."

Not only do the Yankees disagree, though, much of Corporate America does as well. "The Yankees's offer is entirely appropriate and consistent with current executive-compensation trends in which more money is being put at risk," chief financial officer Michael Mardy tells CFO.com. Mardy is CFO of privately held Tumi Luggage and sits on the compensation committee of two publicly held companies.

The Yankees offer, which Mardy describes as "$5 million and a lot of upside," is a package that "heads exactly in the right direction." He contends that if performance parameters are clearly defined and developed with rigor to reflect the proper business goals, then top executives should expect to be paid less if they don't perform. Conversely, the board should not hesitate to pay out more money if performance objectives are met.

"It's likely that a new Securities and Exchange Commission direction is pushing boards to develop more shareholder-friendly, performance-based packages," adds Mardy. That push from the SEC is spelled out in a new rule issued one year ago that requires public-company proxy statements to include a compensation discussion and analysis report. The report must disclose how much a company's highest-earning executives are paid and explain how the package is calculated.

Opening the kimono on executive compensation has the SEC, investors, and board members paying closer attention to the link between performance and pay. "Compensation-committee issues are probably a bigger exposure than audit-committee issues these days," opines Mardy. "The SEC has honed in like a laser on compensation issues."

To be sure, the SEC wants more analysis of how and why companies pay their top executives what they do, but it also wants the information presented in a tighter, more concise way, according to a 10-page evaluation the regulator released earlier this month. The document was released after SEC staffers reviewed 350 company CD&A disclosures they collected during the past year.

Even a cursory look at corporate proxy filings illustrates the rise in incentive-based pay arrangements, says Greg Adams, CFO of Edgar Online Inc. He attributes that rise to the new CD&A filings, and says incentive-based pay arrangements have spread beyond the CEO level and are permeating the entire C-suite.

According to Adams, the Yankees's deal is typical, and he suggests that if Torre has not delivered a world championship — clearly a corporate goal coveted by principal owner George Steinbrenner — he needs to be held accountable to the board, investors, and fans. "I also think the players should receive the same pay-for-performance [arrangements], but free agency appears to be their incentive program," adds Adams.

The idea that a portion of Torre's pay would be forfeited in lieu of performance bonuses is not at odds with current trends, either. Witness Ford Motor's Bill Ford, who reduced his salary to $1 a year and tied the rest of his compensation to the prospects that he could help turn around the financially distressed carmaker. A recent report in BusinessWeek listed other "$1 CEOs," including Steve Jobs of Apple, Google's Eric Schmidt, and Richard Kinder of energy transportation company Kinder Morgan. These chief executives also own stock and stock options in their respective companies, but Torre may also own a piece of the privately held Yankees.

Money is not the prime motivator with many senior executives at top companies, notes I.H. "Chip" Clothier, managing partner at HFC Executive Search. "Facing business challenges is an intellectual issue for top executives. These managers are emotionally invested in the company — if they aren't, they shouldn't be in their position," adds Clothier.

Still, "you have to have a pretty healthy ego" to accept a deal that replaces all or some of your salary with performance pay, emphasizes Clothier. Embracing such a package depends on the executive's personal risk profile — whether the manager is comfortable with putting that much skin in the game — and whether the executive's ego is driven by the performance challenge.

Interestingly, a new survey seems to indicate that top executives would welcome more performance-based pay. The survey, which polled 791 board members, including 70 CEOs or presidents, revealed that two-thirds of the respondents believe CEOs are being paid too much relative to their performance. The study, conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors, noted that only 2.2 percent of the respondents think compensation is too low, while a third claims CEO pay is "just right."

PLAYING WITH THE E STREET BAND.
'I didn't think I was very good...
But maybe I did have my own thing.'

THE JERUSALEM POST:
Bruce Springsteen's kibbutz violinist
DAVID HOROVITZ

Oct. 22, 2007

Listening to the new Bruce Springsteen album, Magic - which is topping the US charts and rightly being hailed as something of a return to form - I started thinking about the days when Bruce really did make magical music.

Early Springsteen, and we're talking more than 30 years ago here, was sheer exuberance - unpredictable, romantic, adventurous and life-affirming.

The songs on his first three albums were peopled by preachers and circus acts, bikers, bus-drivers and fortune-tellers, hesitant girlfriends and unattainable beauties, losers resigned to the working life and heroes busting to break free of poverty and convention.

He'd polished those songs in small New Jersey clubs before fans who knew he was special, unveiling them with rambling, purportedly autobiographical introductions, the background rhythms throbbing louder as some improbable saga of frustrated romance or domestic rebellion culminated and the urgently whispered narrative gave way to musical liberation.

His stage shows were rightly legendary - three hours and more of free-flowing, sweat-dripping rock'n'roll theater.

And the music...the music drew on every influence - classical fragility and black soul passion and pounding rock discipline and much more besides, brought forth by a band of musicians who so plainly revelled, like no other band before or since, in the sheer joy of being up on stage together, their harmony exemplified by the partnership at their core: Working class white boy Bruce on guitar and vocals and big black Clarence Clemons alongside him on the saxophone.

But for a few months, between late 1974 and early 1975, there was also a violin, in the darkness on the edge, adding heartrending poignancy to ballads like the debut album's sparse "Lost in the Flood," the sprawling "Incident on 57th Street," the gangland drama "Jungleland," and the ever-mutating take-a-chance-on-me saga that became "Thunder Road."

It was a violin played by Suki Lahav, a young girl in a flowing white dress from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar in the Upper Galilee, barely out of the army, barely married.

"Yes, I went from kibbutz harvest music to rocking with Bruce," Suki Tzruya-Lahav reflects wryly now, from a 32-year distance, from the Germany Colony in Jerusalem, where she's since raised her two sons, written several acclaimed books, taught creative writing and penned lyrics for much of Israel's musical big league - Rita and Yehuda Poliker and Gidi Gov and Rami Kleinstein and Ricky Gal and Yehudit Ravitz.

Though she's broken a tooth on the day we meet, and looks a little fragile, life after Springsteen has plainly been fulfilling for Lahav. She says it took her a long time to find out what she really wanted to do: the writing. And she loves it.

Springsteen has recently brought a violinist back into his band but Lahav, the original, never touches the instrument anymore. Never. "It's not like a piano, which sounds fine even if you really can't play. The violin played badly sounds awful. They were doing a show of my songs three years ago in Tel Aviv, and I thought 'wouldn't it be great if I picked up the violin again and played on a couple of them.' So I took it out at home, and it was awful. My husband pretended he was asleep. My older son, who's a musician" - a jazz guitarist - said, 'Go for it.' My younger son said, 'Stop, it's painful.'"

The Springsteen period was a brief, extraordinary interlude a long, long time ago. But she's happy to talk about it, feels incredibly fortunate to have been part of it, and is relieved, she says, to have been gone by the time Springsteen became "The Boss" and went global.

Her first husband, Louis, she recalls, switching sunglasses for spectacles with pretty floral frames, was the sound engineer at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York, favored by the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Melanie, Janis Ian and Springsteen's early '70s manager Mike Appel. So Bruce and the band recorded their first album there and were working on the second. "They worked nights; they were the main event in our musical lives. We were all young. He wasn't the big star. Not yet. Just a unique artist."

Springsteen had hired a church children's choir for a song called "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," but they didn't show. "And I was around. And I had this high, pure clear voice. So that was my first time," says Lahav - singing, uncredited, on the track that appears on the second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Then Springsteen decided he wanted a violinist on stage with him, to complement the guitars, the sax and the keyboards. "Louis sent me along to audition. There were others. Surprisingly, he took me." Surprisingly because, she says disarmingly, "I didn't think I was very good... You have to practice for hours a day. I was never a big practicer. But maybe," she allows, "maybe I did have my own thing..."

Others in the band were changing too. She auditioned with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan, drummer and pianist with Springsteen to this day. And there then unfolded seven glorious months on the road and in the studio with "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" as his career ascended from small clubs to stadia, en route to what would become, a few months after Lahav left, his grandiose heralding as "the future of rock and roll" with simultaneous cover stories in Time and Newsweek on October 27, 1975.

Maybe because we're speaking English, perhaps because it was all so long ago, or most probably because she was the classical musician at the edge of the rocking rapture, Lahav is not notably articulate in describing the rush it must have been to play with Springsteen in that headiest of times. "The music was incredible," she sighs. "The lyrics were so rich; some of the most beautiful lyrics didn't ever make it onto record." She says "everybody knew that he was going to be this big artist. But we were all poor. Bruce was poor. We were all just completely into this thing" - the music.

Then she asks me, "Did you see him live?"

I tell her that yes, but much later, in 1981, when the concerts were still extravagant, exhausting epics, but the clubs had long since given way to the arenas and the new music was structured and disciplined, verse-verse-chorus; freewheeling no more.

"But still," she says, "you saw him. So you understand how good he was."

Suki Lahav today. Happy to look back on a brief, extraordinary interlude.
Photo: Dan Porges

WHEN LAHAV, who speaks softly, somewhat hesitantly, and has a certain gentle grace, says she is glad she didn't stay with Springsteen into superstardom, it's easy to believe her. She remembers one of the bigger concerts - thousands in a stadium somewhere in New York (probably Westbury in February 1975) - and says the roar of the crowd as the band made its way to the stage was terrifying.

"Of course I hid behind Clarence; held onto him; he was always big enough to hide behind."

The stage at this auditorium actually revolved, she remembers in horror. "You know, the violin is this delicate instrument. I'm playing and all of a sudden, 'Whoa, the floor's moving!'"

The odyssey ended as the breakthrough album, Born to Run, was being recorded. Lahav played on "Jungleland," credited on the cover this time. But Springsteen and manager Appel were in the process of falling out, a new manager, Jon Landau, was taking over, and "we were really Mike's people," she says simply.

She came back to Israel soon after, began the rest of her life, and is more polite than effusive about most of the music Springsteen's made in more recent years. "He is a lovely man," she says of the former band leader she hasn't seen since 1976, "and he wanted to become The Boss, to conquer the world." Matter of fact, rather than critical, she adds, "You can't conquer the world with the poetry of that early music."

Well, Dylan did.

"Dylan was a phenomenon. The time was right, and he wouldn't change."

Springsteen simplified his music, she acknowledges. The songs became more formal, less adventurous, less vivid, less wild - and, lately, much more political. "Artists change," she says a touch wistfully.

What does she listen to now? "I've gone back to my classical music," she begins.

But does she ever listen to the early Springsteen albums she played on?

"Of course," she says with real joy in her voice. "It's not the main thing in my life, but it's a part of me that will never fade."

The real war on children
MARK STEYN

On Thursday, Congress attempted to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. SCHIP? Isn't that something to do with health care for children? Absolutely. And here is Bay Area Democratic Rep. Pete Stark addressing the issue with his customary forensic incisiveness:

"The Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war on children, but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people? If he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

I'm not sure I follow the argument here: President Bush wants to breed a generation of sickly uninsured children in order to send them to Iraq to stagger round the Sunni Triangle, weak and spindly and emaciated and rickets-stricken, to get their heads blown off? Is that the gist of it? No matter, Congressman Stark hit all the buzz words – "children," "illegal war," "$200 billion," "lies," etc. – and these days they're pretty much like modular furniture: You can say 'em in any order, and you'll still get a cheer from the crowd.

Congressman Stark is unlikely ever to be confused with Gen. Stark, who gave New Hampshire its stirring motto, "Live free or die!" In the congressman's case, the choice appears to be: "Live free on government health care or die in Bush's illegal war!" Nevertheless, in amongst the autopilot hooey the Stark raving madman did use an interesting expression: "the war on children."

One assumes he means some illegal Republican Party "war on children." Last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, as is the fashion, used the phrase "the children" like some twitchy verbal tic, a kind of Democrat Tourette's syndrome: "This is a discussion about America's children … We could establish ourselves as the children's Congress … Come forward on behalf of the children ... I tried to do that when I was sworn in as speaker surrounded by children. It was a spontaneous moment, but it was one that was clear in its message: we are gaveling this House to order on behalf of the children."

Etc. So what is the best thing America could do "for the children"? Well, it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a system of unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. Most of us understand, for example, that Social Security needs to be "fixed" – or we'll have to raise taxes, or the retirement age, or cut benefits, etc. But, just to get the entitlements debate in perspective, projected public pensions liabilities in the United States are expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of our gross domestic product. In Greece, the equivalent figure is 25 percent – that's not a matter of raising taxes or tweaking retirement age; that's total societal collapse.

So what? shrug the voters. Not my problem. I paid my taxes, I want my benefits.

In France, President Sarkozy is proposing a very modest step – that those who retire before the age of 65 should not receive free health care – and the French are up in arms about it. He's being angrily denounced by 53-year-old retirees, a demographic hitherto unknown to functioning societies. You spend your first 25 years being educated, you work for two or three decades, and then you spend a third of a century living off a lavish pension, with the state picking up every health care expense. No society can make that math add up.

And so, in a democratic system today's electors vote to keep the government gravy coming and leave it to tomorrow for "the children" to worry about. That's the real "war on children" – and every time you add a new entitlement to the budget you make it less and less likely they'll win it.

A couple of weeks ago, the Democrats put up a 12-year-old SCHIP beneficiary from Baltimore, Graeme Frost, to deliver their official response to the President's Saturday-morning radio address. And immediately afterwards Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and I jumped the sick kid in a dark alley and beat him to a pulp. Or so you'd have thought from the press coverage: The Washington Post called us "meanies." Well, no doubt it's true we hard-hearted conservatives can't muster the civilized level of discourse of Pete Stark. But we were trying to make a point – not about the kid, but about the family, and their relevance as a poster child for expanded government health care. Mr. and Mrs. Frost say their income's about $45,000 a year – she works "part-time" as a medical receptionist, and he works "intermittently" as a self-employed woodworker. They have a 3,000-square-foot home plus a second commercial property with a combined value of over $400,000, and three vehicles – a new Chevy Suburban, a Volvo SUV, and a Ford F-250 pickup.

How they make that arithmetic add up is between them and their accountant. But here's the point: The Frosts are not emblematic of the health care needs of America so much as they are of the delusion of the broader Western world. They expect to be able to work "part-time" and "intermittently" but own two properties and three premium vehicles and have the state pick up health care costs. Who do you stick with the bill? Four-car owners? Much of France already lives that way: A healthy, wealthy, well-educated populace works a mandatory maximum 35-hour week with six weeks of paid vacation and retirement at 55 and with the government funding all the core responsibilities of adult life.

I'm in favor of tax credits for child health care, and Health Savings Accounts for adults, and any other reform that emphasizes the citizen's responsibility to himself and his dependants. But middle-class entitlement creep would be wrong even if was affordable, even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover it every month: it turns free-born citizens into enervated wards of the Nanny State. As Gerald Ford likes to say when trying to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. As I point out in my book, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than socially equitable communitarianism: Once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of Euro-style entitlements, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; he's got his, and who cares if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence?

That's the real "war on children": in Europe, it's killing their future. Don't make the same mistake here.

Men gather near the bullet-riddled Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera that a private security convoy fired
on Tuesday, killing two women. The car's four occupants - who included a third woman and a boy
who was shot in the arm- knew one another from the Armenian Orthodox Church in Baghdad.
Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a police officer at the scene, said: "These were innocent people.
Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"
(Joao Silva | The New York Times)

From The Huffington Post:
Bush: The Destroyer of Christians
By Frank Schaeffer

Australian mercenaries working for Americans recently gunned down two innocent women who were members of the Christian minority in Iraq. The meaning of this fiasco should not be lost on us. The fact that the Christian women were shot is part of an underreported "small" tragedy within the gigantic tragedy of the destruction of Iraq. (Full disclosure; my son was a Marine from 1999 to 2004 and was deployed several times to the Middle East.)

Bush is an evangelical Christian. And without the evangelical vote he would not have become president. So it might seem ironic that Bush is personally responsible for the persecution, displacement and destruction of the one million, three hundred thousand-person Christian minority in Iraq. (They fared much better under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein and, along with a handful of Christians in Lebanon and Syria, represented one of the last ancient non-Islamic communities left in the Middle East. According to the Times the community has been almost completely displaced and driven from Iraq following the American invasion and the civil war we unleashed.) But actually Bush's destruction of his fellow Christians is not ironic, because to Bush the Iraqi Christians (including those killed women) weren't "real Christians." According to the theology that has shaped Bush they, like their Muslim counterparts, were part of the "other."

Theology matters. And the theology of the President matters when it comes to trying to understand his behavior. Perhaps you have to have been there, done that in order to understand.

I was raised by evangelical missionary parents (Francis and Edith Schaeffer) who also happened to have quite a bit of personal interaction with the Bush family and other Republican leaders. Mom and Dad often met with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr. and stayed in the White House several times in their capacity as evangelical gurus to the powerful.

Evangelical theology is inextricably linked to the Bush presidency. And evangelicals hold to a born-again world view. To Bush-the-evangelical those murdered Christian women and all the other non-evangelical Christians in Iraq (Armenian, Syrian Catholics, Orthodox and others), are not "saved" because they aren't born-again. Rather they belong to a tradition that sees salvation as a journey undertaken within a liturgical community of faith, not a one time magical individualistic experience.

In public Bush would never call all non-evangelicals lost, nor would many media-savvy evangelical leaders, but the outlook of evangelicals is one of dividing the world into "us" and "them." And non-evangelical Christians are "them" just as much as any other "lost." How could it be otherwise when the bedrock of evangelical theology is to regard anyone who has a different theology than you -- even within the competing historic Christian traditions -- as "unsaved"?

Pat Robertson expressed the evangelical Bush-type theology a few years ago when he dismissed Eastern Orthodox Christianity as just so much "mumbo-jumbo." To the born-again only a Billy Graham-type of one-time salvation experience counts. People who merely continue practicing the ancient traditions of the Church, people just like those Armenian women the mercenaries carelessly shot down, aren't like "us." That belief explains why evangelicals are busy trying to evangelize Greek and Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholics and "liberal" Christians with the same vigor they apply to proselytizing Hindus or Muslims. And that explains why there has not been a massive evangelical outcry against Bush's destruction of the Iraqi Christian community.

According to Bush's theology he has in fact not destroyed fellow Christians. To Bush and other evangelicals the word "Christian" refers only to evangelicals. In the common parlance within the evangelical subculture, "becoming a Christian" is just another way to say that someone has become an evangelical.

The "us" and "them" mentality is instilled in every born-again believer. To evangelicals there are actually two human races; the "sheep" and the "goats" in other words us and them. And the "them" includes all non-evangelical Christians.

Evangelicals may have given up most traditional formal sacraments in favor of a personalized faith but they have developed their own "sacraments." One bedrock sacrament is the aggressive evangelism of the "lost," including all non-evangelical Christians.

The fact that Bush has managed to complete the work of radical Islam, and smash one of the last bastions of Christianity in the Middle East, is just fine with evangelicals: the destroyed people weren't real Christians, just more of those mumbo-jumbo types. It isn't as if we hired those Australians to shoot our fellow believers at some Billy Graham crusade! The murdered women were on their way to see their priest and they wouldn't have needed all that "priest stuff" if they only had accepted Jesus into their hearts and become real Christians like us.

Frank Schaeffer's memoir, "CRAZY FOR GOD -- How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back," will be in bookstores on October 26 and was reviewed by Jane Smiley in The Nation (Oct 15, 2007)