In the New Yorker article cited below, the Hasidic political operative's style is described as follows:

He greeted many of them with bear hugs, unless they were women, in which case he spoke without touching them. ("They understand," he said. "It's my religion.")

Is that, by itself, sexist conduct? Randy Cohen certainly thinks so. Cohen, whose "Ethics" column in the New York Times Magazine was previously most noted for reserving its strongest criticisms for SUV owners, argues that a female real-estate owner whose agent declined to shake her hand for religious reasons should tear up the contract with that agent due to the sexism of the agent's practice.
Apparently I wasn't the only one who found Mr. Cohen's advice a bit overwrought:

Ironically, Orthodox feminists have found themselves in the unique position of defending a tradition that the Ethicist calls “sexist” and offensive.
...Needless to say, Cohen’s answer elicited waves of e-mails on the Times’ online Forum, and among Jews in private chat lists.
One reader posted: “Touch me or you’re fired — a perfect example of sexual harassment.” The TeaneckShulChat list on Yahoo posted Cohen’s response to his critics: “I understand that the prohibition against touching derives from sexual modesty, but so do most of the proscriptions in sexually segregated societies, from the chador to allowing only men to vote.”
Said Adena Berkowitz, a feminist activist and long-time member of the UJA-federation Medical Ethics Committee: “I continue to be amazed how too often tolerance only runs in one direction and in fact soon become intolerance. What would Mr. Cohen like next: to have the Justice Department bust up Orthodox synagogues because men and women sit separately?”
Blu Greenberg, president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, added, “tolerance to the right always seems to be in shorter supply. Pluralism means you sometimes have to stretch and understand the other person’s convictions.”

The punishment couldn't possibly be more fitting for someone who espouses the hard-edged PC "ethics" pushed by Cohen: a delegation from the Orthodox Union "was to meet this week with Cohen and Times editors “to sensitize the Times on this issue,” according to OU officials." Perhaps they will also give him sensitivity training regarding SUV owners.

If you were wondering about the identity of a powerful political operative in New York, you might speculate that he was a bureaucrat who wields immense power over the workings of government beneath the elected or senior appointed level. Or, you might speculate that she was a political reporter who knows everyone.
You probably wouldn't guess that he is a 55-year-old Hasidic (from the Satmar sect) Jew whose exact day job is a mystery. This is one of the most entertaining stories I've read in a long time.

Today's Washington Post has a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek story about the U.S. Civil Rights Commission:

It's safe to say that Thernstrom and Berry are not the best of buddies.
Several clues point to this conclusion. First, there was the 2001 "Nightline" show in which the two commissioners kept interrupting each other until you thought they might start biting each other's ears off. A few months later, they called each other liars at a Senate hearing. Then Thernstrom had these choice words to say about the chairwoman:
"Mary Frances Berry is a totalitarian. She's a book burner and she constantly lies."
Hey, Abigail, don't be bashful! Tell us what you really think.
But Berry and Thernstrom aren't the only commissioners who trade insults. At one meeting, Cruz Reynoso, the commission's vice chairman, berated Thernstrom for her "lack of veracity." Commissioner Jennifer Braceras once called Berry a "left-wing provocateur." Commissioner Christopher Edley once described one of Thernstrom's books as a "crime against humanity." And . . . well, you get the idea.
Obviously the civil rights commission, created by an act of Congress in the 1950s, is a hotbed of nasty feuds and personal attacks. But it's more than that. It's also a hotbed of petty squabbling and bickering.

For another nasty, partisan and fun account of the Commission and its chairwoman, Ms. Berry, check out this George Will column:

The commission has no serious function, other than to illustrate how far things have evolved. Its head is a black woman, Mary Frances Berry, who, like many antebellum plantation owners and today's civil rights lobby, believes blacks cannot cope with life in predominantly white America, that they are comprehensively victimized and must be perpetual wards of paternalistic government.

The author of today's piece, Peter Carlson, also points out the following:

Most of the commissioners -- part-timers paid $35,000 a year -- are college professors. Many are lawyers. Four -- Berry, Reynoso, Braceras and Edley -- are both college professors and lawyers. This cross-training enables the commission to combine the petty infighting of academia with the nitpicking and hair-splitting of the legal profession.

By that logic, the worst job in America should be that of a law professor. Are you going to take this insult lying down, Professors Reynolds and Volokh?

Mark Steyn is upset at the media coverage of the Washington-area sniper:

...CNN finds it easier to call Mr. Muhammad "Mr. Williams," a formulation likely to be encouraged by the guy's lawyers, once they're in place, just as, in the hands of the ever sensitive media, Abdul Hamid and Abdullah al-Muhajir were tactfully restored to their maiden names of John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla. (By the way, was that a picture of Cassius Clay on the front of the National Post last week?) My local radio news described Mr. Muhammad as "an ex-soldier" and "an African-American male." Anyone spot the missing category? You can discern the preferred narrative: an African-American male from a deprived background driven psycho by military culture. But he left the army years ago and his transformation into a killer seems to be more or less coincidental with his transformation into Mr. Muhammad.
But pay no attention to that. Even though the crime (the random murder of Americans of all types, ages, genders and races) and the accused (an anti-American Islamist) are a perfect match, the network criminologists continue to profess themselves perplexed by the apparent lack of motive, as if we'll shortly discover that Mr. Muhammad had been denied a promotion at Burger King or he'd been abused as a child. It doesn't really matter whether Muhammad al-Sniper was acting on orders or simply improvising. The jihad-inciters in the Middle East are happy with either. If anything, the freelance approach suits them better: you don't need complicated and traceable communications and wire transfers; the punks on the ground will act independently just to impress you.
The media lapsed into the same denial mode the last time a forty-year-old radical Muslim called Mohamed opened fire on U.S. soil. July the Fourth, LAX, the El Al counter, two dead. CNN and The Associated Press all but stampeded to report a "witness" who described the shooter as a fat white guy in a ponytail who kept yelling "Artie took my job." But, alas, it was -- surprise! -- a Muslim called Hesham Mohamed Modayet.

And regarding those who equate Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell et al with Islamic fundamentalists:

Unfortunately, for the old moral equivalence to hold up, the Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people. At the moment, the brilliantly versatile Muslim fundamentalists are gunning down Maryland schoolkids and bus drivers, hijacking Moscow musicals, self-detonating in Israeli pizza parlours, blowing up French oil tankers in Yemen, and slaughtering nightclubbers in Bali, while Christian fundamentalists are, er, sounding extremely strident in their calls for the return of prayer in school.

I missed this Wasington Post editorial over the weekend regarding facile comparisons between Iraq and North Korea. An outstanding piece which should be read in its entirety.

A few interesting items in the blogosphere today.
First, Mickey Kaus argues that the recent parity of the Democrats and Republicans is no coincidence, but instead results from the parties' moving towards a competitive equilibrium:

Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?

Jacob Levy expands on Kaus' theory. (Levy's specific link is broken; scroll down to the post that begins "Mickey Kaus argues".) He expands on the ramifications of the dead-locked country at great length.
It appears obvious that we're going to see more Floridas, with so many races being so close and control of Congress at stake.
I thought of one other ramification. In the wake of the substitution of Frank Lautenberg for Bob Torricelli in New Jersey, a number of commentators argued that the move was unlikely to have much precedential value. In the words of Josh Marshall:

Can anyone who makes this argument have ever spent any time around elected politicians? Not a chance. Especially these days with weak parties there's really no institutional force capable of knocking a candidate out of a race. And people who run for office just don't have egos that work that way. To put it mildly.

All true. But that argument doesn't fully account for two aspects of the "Kaus theorem" (not to be confused with the Coase theorem):
1) With the high stakes of each race, the parties now have added incentive to try harder than ever to force hopeless candidates out of the race. While it is true that such withdrawals have been historically rare, I'm not sure the numbers wouldn't rise if parties tried really hard.
While parties may have been stronger in the past, they may have been less willing to pressure candidates to withdraw, because...
2) Campaigning and predicting elections were much less scientific in the past. By contrast, today's polling & focus-grouping - maligned by many - actually does its job fairly well. Kaus' strongest point is his argument that the obsessive use of polling and focus groups are a major factor in creating today's political equilibrium.
In the past, a Bob Torricelli may have been able to convince himself and party leaders into thinking he could overcome the hole he'd dug for himself. (The name "Harry Truman" would probably come up - and as that example shows, it may even be true.) With present polling technology, that scenario seems less applicable. With the better information provided by today's polls, it is arguable that even an elected politician's confidence would be dented, and it seems likely that party leaders would be more confident in telling such a candidate that he was in an unwinnable position. Couple that with the added stakes of each race in an equilibrium, and I think you may see more Torricellis in the years to come. (God help us all.)

Check out this article by Dr. Jerome Groopman in the New Yorker for a doctor's perspective on discussing terminal conditions with patients.