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  • 22 Apr 2008
  • 6:11pm EDT
  • History, Politics
  • This post contains political opinions. Reader discretion is advised.

nope, at long last, he had no decency

No shortage of recent conservative writers—Ann Coulter, of course, comes to mind—have tried to give Sen. Joe McCarthy partial credit for his hunt for Communists in all corners of public society; it turned out that there were Communists in government, after all. Not so fast, says author Ronald Kessler:

The FBI agents who actually chased Soviet spies have a very different perspective.
…
[Former FBI agent Robert J.] Lamphere (who died in 2002), told me in an interview that agents who worked counterintelligence were appalled that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initially supported McCarthy. True enough, the Venona intercepts revealed that hundreds more Soviet spies had operated in the government than was believed at the time.

“The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures,” Lamphere said. “He made charges against people that weren’t true. McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused.”

It makes sense, then, that certain writers would defend Sen. McCarthy, despite the harm he did to his own side.

another step "backwards"

My dear friend Shruti Rajagopalan writes in the WSJ Asia about the Indian Supreme Court ruling on caste-based quotas in higher education. For those unfamiliar with the matter, it’s definitely worth a read.

The prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management were some of the last bastions of meritocracy left in India, but it seems that they, too, have now fallen to the decades-old “temporary” quotas that have calcified in the Indian polity.

  • 21 Apr 2008
  • 6:56pm EDT
  • Politics
  • This post contains political opinions. Reader discretion is advised.

shocking revelation: maoist thugs not in it for the proletariat

Sit down for this one. Are you ready? The Naxalites, the Maoist butchers of eastern India, are racking up substantial profits from their plunders:

According to a media report of April 9, 2008, the annual ‘extortion’ by the Maoists is a whopping Rs.1,000 crore (Rs. 10bil = $250m). A former official of the Intelligence Bureau and now a senior police officer in Chhattisgarh told this author in 2007 that the annual extortion totals Rs.1,500 crore (Rs. 15bil = $376m)!
. . .
The question that naturally arises is: how is this possible? The answer is not far to seek. The Naxalites extort money from those who they can reach, and those who have ill-gotten wealth. The fear of violent retribution makes people pay money.

My world is a-crashing down. I am shocked, dear reader, shocked, to find out that the adherents of one of the most murderous ideologies in history have not effectively created a peasants’ paradise.

about right

Probably why I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Jewish faith:

Happy Passover
“Summation of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

- Karol Sheinin

links for 2008-04-18

on elevators

An eight-page article at the New Yorker on elevators does not sound interesting, but it really is. Learn about how responsive those door close buttons are and about the latest in smart-elevator technology, and read of Nicholas White’s 41-hour elevator ride. Frightening video evidence of that ride is also available.

You can be assured I will be trying to immerse myself in the Captivate Network on the way to and from work tomorrow morning.

links for 2008-04-15

links for 2008-04-13

  • 13 Apr 2008
  • 12:41pm EDT
  • History, Politics
  • This post contains political opinions. Reader discretion is advised.

why The Movement makes me wildly uncomfortable

Will Wilkinson posts on why one ought to pick anyone but Thomas Jefferson in Radley Balko’s Founding Father poll, and the commenters let loose a flood of verbal diarrhea:

FatDrunkAndStupid
April 9th, 2008 06:27 11
I’d also take exception to the idea that Jefferson’s position on slavery was worse than Hamilton’s on the Central Bank. Slavery, though dreadful, was on its last legs. The centralization of power that the Bank represented was a new, dangerous, and rising threat. Centralization and the Leviathan state are scourge of modern liberty, and Hamilton was an ardent supporter of both.

Good God. If we’re going to excuse TJ–who not only has the slave-owning mark against him, but that of being an open supporter of the Jacobin bloodbath in France–because Cato uses his head in its logo, but demonize Alexander Hamilton for introducing centralized government that I contend actually improved the rule of law, then I’m out.

links for 2008-04-12

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