On the recent managerial ongoings regarding the Mets, A's, Mariners and Devil Rays...
Regarding Lou Piniella ending up in Tampa Bay, Joel Sherman writes:

An NL GM said Piniella will find working for the hopeless combo of Tampa owner Vince Naimoli and GM Chuck LaMar is "baseball hell . . . I can't believe he wanted to go to Tampa Bay regardless of how much money was given to him. The guy who is the GM there has no idea what the [bleep] he is doing. If Chuckles [LaMar] is still really in charge, Piniella is [bleeped]." . . .

I think nicknaming a general manager of a major-league baseball team "Chuckles" qualifies as an insult.

On the Mets' hiring of Art Howe, Jon Heyman sums it up:

Beset by panic and poor taste, the Mets have settled on the worst possible man for an impossible task. Good luck to Art Howe, a nice man with a misleading resume, misguided confidence and almost no chance to succeed as Mets manager.
...To get away from a boss whom he believed disrespected and underpaid him, Howe dived right into a hornet's nest without insecticide. The only possible result is that he'll get stung. It is only a matter of time.
...For some reason, the Mets believed they had to have a manager with experience, so they took a manager who has managed 12 years, won a bunch of games and impressed almost no one. They didn't want to be left standing with no one, so they panicked and took Forrest Gump, an earnest man who lucked into the best team west of the Yankees.
A partial listing of men who would have made better Mets managers: Baker, Piniella, Ken Macha, Dave Righetti, Joe Maddon, Ron Wotus, Robby Thompson, Bud Black, Willie Randolph, Kevin Kennedy, Terry Francona, Bobby Valentine.
We'll produce the second installment of names after we give it another few minutes of thought.
The first clue that Howe isn't exactly Joe McCarthy should have been that his boss, esteemed A's general manager Billy Beane, spent the past few weeks begging someone to take him. Too bad for the Mets that Beane is a wonderful salesman, and Mets GM Steve Phillips is a bad shopper.

I don't agree with all the names on Heyman's list, but his overall points are accurate. As many have pointed out, the Chicago White Sox offered Jeff Torborg to the Mets in 1992 despite coming off two very good seasons. the Mets eagerly snapped up Torborg, to their regret. And Billy Beane's track record is even better than that of the White Sox in the early 1990s.

Senator Paul Wellstone has been killed in a plane crash along with his wife, daughter and some of his campaign workers.
Prof. Reynolds has some links on the possible repercussions for control of the Senate, but it seems obscene to spend too much time on the subject today, even with the election so close. I agreed with very few of Sen. Wellstone's positions, but all that pales before today's news. Condolences and prayers to his family and friends.
One other thing - notwithstanding what I just wrote, I hope that both sides in Minnesota handle whatever arrangements need to be made for the upcoming election with dignity and propriety, and folow the relevant statutes without protest (and I have no idea what the relevant statutes mandate). It would do no honor to Sen. Wellstone's memory to have a Bush-Gore-style fight over the ballot, despite the stakes.

Check out this piece from the Bellingham Herald regarding the suspicions raised by John Allen Muhammad/Williams during his stay in Washington state:

The Rev. Al Archer, director of the Lighthouse Mission where Muhammad lived off and on for months, remembers him as a guy who made a good first impression - too good.
"On the surface he was squeaky clean," Archer said. "He was almost too good to believe. I kind of quit believing."
After he got to know Muhammad better, Archer grew so suspicious of his odd behavior that he suspected him of being part of a terrorist organization, and he called the FBI. But that was in October 2001, in the aftershock of the World Trade Center massacre, and Archer doesn't think he got the feds' attention.
...Muhammad's frequent flier status seemed odd to other people. One of them was Greg Grant, a real estate agent in Bellingham who owns and manages an apartment complex about two miles south of Sumas on Highway 9. Last year, Grant said, he would often drive residents of Lighthouse Mission - including Muhammad on several occasions - to the apartments to do yard work and other chores, then back to the mission once the work was done.
Once, Muhammad told Grant that he had to travel a long distance, possibly to Jamaica or the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean, to sign some papers on a land sale, Grant said. Grant said he wondered why Muhammad would fly to do that when the job could be handled by mail.
In the post 9-11 climate, Archer felt it was worth a call to the FBI.
"I felt like he was part of an organization. I felt like he had some connection with terrorists. ... I said he's got connections somewhere with somebody who's got money," Archer remembered telling the FBI.
He also contacted Bellingham police with his concerns.
"We both agreed there was something not right, but there was nothing they could nail him with," Archer said.

I hope the authorities follow up on where a man who spent months in and out of a homeless shelter got the money for his weapon, a car and several plane flights.

I mean it. You'll be sorry...

Toren Smith notices a report that alleged al-Qaeda terrorists arrested in rome this month were apparently planning an attack at a U.S. military cemetery:

Maybe they're going to practice killing dead people first, then work their way up? Or did they think this sort of thing would lead to a really impressive "body count"...? Or did they think that they could do the Mormon thing, and by re-killing people after the fact, this would count as deaths in some sort of holy war—sort of a retroactive killing?

Just click here. You'll be happy you did. (Via David Pinto.)

The current issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin has some interesting quotes from certain of Harvard Law School's alumni who went on to prominent political careers.
Here are some thoughts from Casper Weinberger:

"People keep saying, 'But what is enough and how much is enough [in the military budget]?' And the only answer to that is, 'If you don't have enough, you'll never know it until it's too late to do anything about it.'"
..."You have to recognize that there are just some things that you can't do. The trouble with Americans is, they simply can't believe anybody is evil. And there are evil people, and they have to be dealt with."
"When President Reagan talked about the Evil Empire, it was attacked by people who said he'd undone years of patient diplomatic effort. And he said he would like to see what years of patient diplomatic effort had secured for us--not much."

Now, here is a quote from Michael Dukakis:

"If I had become president? I think there'd be peace in the Middle East. I'd like to think we would have universal health care in this country. We'd certainly have a national rail passenger system that would knock your socks off."

(According to the profile, Dukakis is vice-chairman of Amtrak, whose performance does not exactly reflect well on his promises about a high-speed train system.)

Thanks to Dan McLaughlin for the link.

Andrew Sullivan has an outstanding article in the Sunday Times on the natural correlation of anti-Semitism with current leftist anti-war politics:

Summers' argument was a simple one: why has Israel been singled out alone as worthy of divestment? Supporters cite its continued occupation of the West Bank. There's no question that Israel's policies in that regard are ripe for criticism, and to equate criticism of that with anti-Semitism is absurd and despicable. Similarly, it's perfectly possible to argue against Israel's domestic policies without any hint of anti-Semitism. But to argue that Israel is more deserving of sanction than any other regime on earth right now is surely bizarre. Israel is a democracy; it is multi-racial; Arab citizens of Israel proper can vote and freely enter civil society; there is freedom of religion and a free press. An openly gay man just won election to the Knesset. In any other Middle Eastern country and the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, he'd be in jail, executed or crushed under a pile of rocks. There is simply no comparison with apartheid South Africa, where a tiny ethnic minority denied the majority any vote at all. Compared to China, a ruthless dictatorship which is now brutally occupying Tibet, Israel is a model for democratic governance. And, unlike China's occupation of Tibet, Israel's annexation of the West Bank was undertaken as a defensive action against an Arab military attack. Or compare it to any other country in the Middle East, from Syria's satrapy in Lebanon, to Mubarak's police state, to Iraq's barbaric autocracy or Iran's theocracy, and it's a beacon of light. To single Israel out for condemnation and divestment, while ignoring all these others, is so self-evidently bizarre that it begs an obvious question. What are these anti-Israel fanatics really obsessed about? Where are the divestment campaigns for China or Zimbabwe?
The answer, I think, lies in the nature of part of today's left. It is fueled above all by resentment - resentment of the West's success, resentment of the freedom to trade, resentment of any person or country, like Israel or Britain or the U.S., that has enriched itself by means of freedom and hard work. Just look at Israel's amazing achievements in comparison with its neighbors: its vibrant civil society, its economic growth, its technological skill, its agricultural miracle. When you think about all Israel has achieved, it is no surprise that the resentful left despises it. So, for obvious reasons, do Israel's neighbors. If they had wanted, the Arab states could have made peace with Israel decades ago, and enriched themselves through trade and interaction. Instead, rather than emulate the Jewish state, they spent decade after decade trying to destroy it. When they didn't succeed, rather than seek reasons for their own backwardness and failure, rather than engage in the difficult task of reform and renewal, the Arab dictators and their pliant propaganda machines simply resorted to the easy distractions of envy, hatred and obsession. Al Qaeda is the most dangerous and nihilist manifestation of this response. Hezbollah is a close second. But milder versions are everywhere. And what do people who most want to avoid examining their own failures do? They look for scapegoats. And the Jews are the perennial scapegoat. Now that the Jewish people actually have a country to themselves, the anger and hatred only intensifies.
This attitude isn't restricted to the Middle East. In the West, parts of the left, having capitulated to moral relativism and bouts of Western self-hatred, have seized on Israel as another emblem of what they hate. They're happy to have Saddam get re-elected with 100 percent of a terrified vote, happy to see him develop nerve gas and nuclear weapons to use against his own population and others. They're happy to watch Syria's rulers engage in regular massacres; or the Saudis subject women to inhuman subjugation. This they barely mention. After all, these countries form part of the "oppressed" developing world. But Israel's occasional crimes in self-defense? They march in the streets. Telling, isn't it?
Ask the average leftist today what he is for, and you will not get a particularly eloquent response. Ask him what he is against, and the rhetorical floodgates open. That tells you something. Similarly, ask the average anti-war activist what she is for with regard to Iraq, what exactly she thinks we should constructively do, and the stammering and stuttering begins. Do we just leave Saddam alone? Do we send Jimmy Carter to sign the kind of deal he made with North Korea eight years ago? Will pressuring the Israelis remove the nerve gas and potential nukes Saddam has in his possession? Will ceding the West Bank to people who cheered the destruction of the World Trade Center help defang al Qaeda? They don't say and don't know. But what they do know is what they are against: American power, Israeli human rights abuses, British neo-imperialism, the "racist" war on Afghanistan, and on and on. Get them started on their hatreds, and the words pour out. No wonder some have started selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Central Park.
This negativism matters. When you have a movement based on resentment, when you have a political style that is as bitter as it is angry, when your rhetoric focuses not on those who are murdering partiers in Bali or workers in Manhattan, but on those democratic powers trying to defend and protect them, then your fate is cast. A politics of resentment is a poisonous creature that slowly embitters itself. You should not be surprised if the most poisonous form of resentment that the world has ever known springs up, unbidden, in your midst.

For more on the subject, see David Brooks' great article on the anti-bourgeois attitudes driving resentment of the U.S. and Israel.

Welcome to the new site! Blogger was a wonderful tool for getting started with, but - as many of you know - it had serious long-term technical problems. Also, I wanted to have a site with more features, and figured it would be more efficient to have those incorporated by people who actually knew what they were doing. So here we are. Special thanks to the wonderful Robyn Pollmer and Stacy Tabb of Sekimori for the design. I hope the posts will live up to their work!