Mike Krempasky and others met today in Washington with FEC Chairman Scott Thomas and others. He reports that Mark Glaze of the Campaign Legal Center was a no-show. Readers may recall that Glaze sent out his employer's press release smearing FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith after the latter's March 3 interview with CNET. Pro-reform forces, of course, had reason to be upset with Commissioner Smith, since his honesty has forced the FEC to reconsider many of its more draconian intentions.

Mike has an mp3 file of the panel.

Several of our readers who also blog at other sites have notified us that they're unable to ping us so that their posts will show up at our trackback link. We apologize for this, and we're looking into it. It appears that the problem may stem from our need to prohibit pings by the lowlifes who bring us (and, if you're a blogger, you) pings from various online poker sites, or worse.

We're working to remedy the situation and ask, in the mean time, that you please continue to link to any post you deem deserving. We hope to have this fixed soon.

The latest article to appear in the online edition of the Texas Education Review is James Windham's "Education Reform in Texas: The Next Phase."

The Review, a publication of Democracy Project, features articles, essays, and book reviews on a broad range of education in America, from Kindergarten to college. On Tuesday we posted Joseph Knippenberg's review of Anne Norton's new book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire.

Check out the TER's home site often for new material.

Following up on my earlier post today, NYU's Brennan Center's page on BCRA records the fruits of Pew's money, which it admits went to the Center's "Buying Time" studies series. On February 2, 2002, it issued a press release that, mirabile dictu, claimed to have discovered the need for additional campaign finance reform. BCRA was signed into law by President Bush on March 27 of that year, so this press release was part of the strategy described by Treglia to create the appearance of grassroots support for the measure, the better to increase pressure on the President to sign it into law. It's a case study of how "respectable" money from "respectable" folks was used to advance an anti-democratic agenda.

Here's one example of how Pew money was used to produce the kind of reports that Pew's bosses knew they could expect, complete with foregone conclusions on the issue at hand, in order to pass legislation sponsored by a man (McCain) they honored, who in turn benefits from loopholes that he wrote into the law:

Note in particular this point in the release: "* Spending by groups on sham issue ads in congressional races increased from $10 million to $32 million from 1998 to 2000."

Sham issue ads? Pew funds phony research to support a political agenda, all under the guise of responding to a grassroots campaign that it created, and opponents of this well-funded effort to ram through "reforms" that curtail our freedom of speech are called a "sham"?

Pew, by the way, is no longer a "private foundation." As of January 1, 2004, it became a "public charity." Here's how the Nonprofit Organization Practice Group at Reid and Riege, P.C., describes that move and its significance:

That's good advice, as the Journal pointed out. One could add that Pew's conversion story also means less, not more, scrutiny from the IRS. Foundations are required by law to be considerably more transparent than are nonprofits.

The forays into campaign finance reform, however, aren't the end of Pew's efforts to move the country leftward. ActivistCash.com, which tracks foundation grants, reports that, since 1990, Pew has poured more than $114 million to the radical Tides Foundation and Tides Center. Tides then donates money to a large variety of radical groups that, in effect, receive Pew (and Packard) money one step removed from the source, an act that keeps those "respectable" sources in the background and off the front pages. It's similar to the strategy that Pew employed in funding campaign finance reform.

Here's how Activist Cash describes some of what Pew does:

As to that last sentence, thanks to Sean Treglia, we know how true it is.

Among the projects that Tides funds is the Institute for Global Communications. Here's how Activist Cash sums up IGC:

IGC links to a newspaper called The Militant (no mention of funds), which describes itself as "A socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people." It is the news organ of the Socialist Workers Party, and the lead is a pro-Chavez story from Venezuela titled "Venezuela: Thousand March to Protest U.S. Intervention." Following the official line from Caracas, it charges that the Columbian government of Alvaro Uribe is an American "tool."

I've only scratched the surface here, and I advise anyone who wants to learn more to go to Activist Cash, which is run by the Center for Consumer Freedom, and do a bit of research. You'll be surprised at how many far-left and radical groups are funded, ultimately, by "respectable" folks.

Her "husband" denied her parents and sibblings the right to be at Terri's bedside when she died.

Are we supposed to rejoice now?

In this Easter Octave, her death and, we pray, her coming resurrection, force the story of the Passion into our cynical world. With the news that the Pope, too, is now receiving his nourishment through a feeding tube, no person with a mature conscience can fail to at least pause and ponder what we're witnessing.

R.I.P.

Update: This piece by James M. Kushiner is thoughtful and comforting. Michelle Malkin has posted an apt poem by Dylan Thomas.

Since Ryan Sager broke the news of Sean Treglia's candid comments about Pew's role in forming what John Fund has since dubbed an "Astroturf" campaign in favor of campaign finance "reform," no network news program has, to my knowledge, covered the story.

Yesterday evening, however, Fox News broke that silence with this report by William La Jeunesse. The video is available on their site, and if you haven't watched it, you'll want to so that you can see how the story's being played on TV. It's primarily a recitation of Sager's columns, and I found it a straightforward and useful story, as it will carry word of the actions of Pew and its sister foundations to a wide audience.

But there is a discrepancy in the FNC video and the transcript of their own story. The Fox transcript faithfully records the final two sentences spoken by La Jeunesse, but omits one key word that he spoke on the air: dirty.

The video shows that the final sentence should read:

Also, in the video, we're shown a brief shot of the headquarters of National Public Radio. I watched the show last night, and after the piece ended, host Brit Hume said, in effect, that NPR was shown by mistake, that it had nothing to do with the story, and that Fox regrets the error.

But the editors included the NPR clip for a reason: As Ryan Sager reported on March 16, there is a direct connection to this story and NPR.

It would appear that someone at Fox, both on air and in the transcription of the story, decided to tone things down a bit.

I would disagree, also, with Mr. La Jeunesse's characterization of Treglia's comments as "inadvertent." No one speaks that candidly about his former employer, and for two hours, inadvertently. No, Treglia was blowing the whistle on his old friends, and he knew it.

Also today, the Washington Square News (the area of Manhattan in which NYU is located) runs a column by Jonathan Cipriani titled "Speech, Lies and Videotape." Cipriani does a favor with this column, which will be read by residents of the area (the Village), many of whom could use a dose of political reality, as well as some in the NYU community.

He's interested in the latter angle because NYU Law School's Brennan Center received $1.6 million from Pew:

Go to the home page of the Brennan Center for Justice, and you'll find the usual array of liberal causes that they support. Click on "Campaign Finance Reform," and you'll find this:

Follow either link in that text, and you'll get a better idea of the Center's (and Pew's) strategies that Sager and others have written about. They fund studies purporting to show the horror of money in politics (except their money, which is of course clean and only given for the best of intentions), as well as publications on how to expand federal restrictions on political speech to your home state.

The soft underbelly of the reform movement is now visible for all to see, if only everyone read blogs or watched the Fox News Channel. This is an issue that we must continue to research, as it represents the most significant threat to our First Amendment rights in memory. I'll be posting more on this soon.

Update: The Brennan Center links to this page (pdf) of "National Organizations Offering Resources for Campaign Finance Reformers." The list is 12 pages long and includes such organizations as PIRG, the American University School of Communication, Brookings, the Campaign Legal Center (run by McCain former staffer Trevor Potter), the Center for Public Integrity, the Environmental Working Group (part of the Tides network), and many more. Again, we see that the many "watchdog" groups that are regularly trotted out by the MSM to comment on "issues of concern."

This story, from NBC News, ought to remind everyone that the war on terrorists is still on, both at home and abroad. It's easy to push these thoughts out of our minds, with spring coming on and, so we assume, better things to worry about. But there are still people in this country and abroad who seek to do us grave harm here in America.

I sit here trying to write a letter of condolence, for a friend who suddenly lost her son.

We both grew up in rough, urban places. I shall conceal her past to protect her privacy, but our stories were familiar to each other from the first.

I was born at Lawrence Hospital, in Bronxville, but grew up several continents away in south Yonkers, in a cold-water walkup where the ambient winter temp in my bedroom was about 50 degrees.

My mother, a bit of an odd duck, moved us three there in a fit of pique in 1959--she had the Irish gift for the quickly acquired, yet permanent grudge, of course never informing the party she was mad at that she was, well, mad at them. It was the kind of place where the tenants would leave a dead rat on the landlord's doorstep to convey displeasure and suggest that the consequences for any failure to address the grievances at hand would escalate significantly. (Well, you know how it is--it's 11 p.m., the living room thermometer is still reading 55 degrees, and one has run out of one's informals. And you don't have to reorder rats and wait 6 weeks for their delivery.)

So let’s just say that poverty holds no romance for me. If money is no guarantee of happiness, poverty is, I can assure you, a corrosive to the character, for it impedes the ability to do good, to feel useful, to feel valuable to the world.

So my friend and I, through different routes, left that grim world behind, yet, for all our education and all our knowledge (two very different things), we never quite eradicated the impress of its thumbprint on us. We each married, happily, and we each had a son—in each case, a child far more complex than either of us bargained for. My boy is autistic; hers wild and passionate, who was destroyed by drugs before these traits could be channeled into military valor or poetic ecstasy.

And so I sit here, trying to compose a note to her. She is, of course, inconsolable. And though I make my living with words written and words spoken, the page lies before me large, and blank, and hopeless. This is too sad, too terrible. She worked so hard, overcame so much, loved him so deeply, and he, so young, is dead. Nothing I can say will set things right, nothing I can do will help, and yet I must say something.

So I go to pray for her this afternoon, which I always do tucked into our most comfortable chair, in a glass-walled room at the back of the house, where I look out at Vermont, which I love so much, and at objects that uplift me: a Celtic cross, with a surplus of intricate knots in it; a crewel sampler I stitched just after we were married. And a lovely painting recently added to my retreat, a gift from my friend James.

James's mother reared this extraordinary man alone. Now in his thirties, he is movie-star handsome, a former Navy man, now a magazine editor, whose Aegean-blue eyes take in the world with unusual steadiness. When he and his lovely companion were over to dinner--their first time at our house--I brought him into Ned's room to see our little boy sleeping, lovely in his innocence and peace. He is a beautiful child, with the ethereal pallor often found among autistic children. Perhaps accompanying this disorder is some degree of anemia, a deficiency too slight to show up in his blood tests, yet sufficient for the faerie-like quality of his tribe.

A few days after James and Liz were here, out of the blue, a gift arrived unexpectedly from James. A fellow Catholic, he has sent us a gorgeous, framed print of a painting of St. Anne, the mother of Mary, with Mary standing in front her.

In this painting Mary is about Ned's age, 8 or 9. St. Anne is looking at the sweet little girl who is her daughter, while Mary looks placidly past her, a content child of a serious nature who, for the moment, has no worries. And although St. Anne has no idea what lies ahead—the abject misery her daughter will experience as her son is tortured and killed—she gazes on Mary with a complex expression suggesting both admiration and worry, as if she sees there's something special about her daughter, and that being special is not entirely a good thing. The entire scene is diffused with a golden light, so one thinks of sunset—of death—yet love and family and contentment, simultaneously.

James had this lovely painting framed with multiple mats that pick up flecks of color and set in a frame that is a work of art in itself. James is a property rights man, and that's what we always talk about--almost never about religion, nor about Ned, so this was entirely a surprise, and a lovely one--

So I sit in the pale afternoon sun, and I pray for another mother who has had not a lovely but a terrible surprise. And I pray for myself, that I'll find something to fill that awful page, something that isn’t stiff or formulaic, something that will be comforting.

And while praying to St. Anne and St. Anthony, whom I love for finding the lost, I suddenly remember my friend Diane from Shreveport. We met while singing in the choir in St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s, the church where, in my mid-40s, I converted to Catholicism from agnosticism. I’d slipped in beside the friendliest-looking person in the choir, which was Diane. It turned out she taught autistic children in middle school. A few months before we met, her son had been killed in a car accident at 17, running from the cops for a minor infraction. He’d been in & out of trouble, some fairly serious, and their sleepless nights had far outnumbered the restful ones.

I remembered Diane's telling me about her boy’s funeral, about how Father Pike had found the perfect thing to say at the funeral. Father Pike was a priest much beloved by the people of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s. He’d been married, very much a man of this world, before he found his calling. A fine tenor, his love for music and for fun were exceeded only by his love for Christ and for his congregation. So Diane drew comfort, knowing he’d find the right thing to say when nothing seemed right.

"I knew it would be hard for him to do this. Everyone knew our son, that he’d been in trouble that he’d died that way. I had no idea what Father Pike would say."

She told me how Father Pike got up to deliver the eulogy. He looked around the crowded church, full of friends of the much-beloved couple, among the best, most generous people among us.

Father Pike cleared his throat. He looked out across them and said the boy was "a work in progress—."

And then he paused, slowly scanned the congregation, and added, "as are we all."

That was my friend’s lost boy exactly — a work in progress.

And at the moment—all this took place in a second or two—at the very moment I recalled that story and that wonderful phrase, I noticed in the fading light that on the wall above the golden painting, about a foot above the haloed head of St. Anne, mother of the Mother of the perfect Son, was a small, smudgy handprint—my son's, pressed there while balancing on the narrow back of the sofa he knows he's not supposed to be climbing on.

A work in progress. As are we all.

Update: I made a few edits and changed the title.

A sad tale reflecting the current political environment in South Korea is found in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor. Despite being broadcast on Japanese TV three times, rare video footage of summary executions in North Korea – a practice considered routine there but never captured on film before – is being quashed in South Korea, because of heavy and indirect pressure by the ruling Uri Party. As the article in the Christian Science Monitor states:

While the MSM has covered the Japanese broadcast of these videos, the blogosphere has failed to widely disseminate them – a failure on our part, because their wide dissemination is bound to mean increased pressure by the State Department and Congress to force China and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to end the forced repatriation of thousands of North Koreans escaping into China to avoid starvation and the cruelty of Kim Jong-il. While not necessarily a surprise, this video is the first instance showing the summary execution of North Korean citizens – without trial, without an attorney, without any appeal. This is the regime that the United States is supposed to bargain with? The video of the executions can be downloaded here.

Less than two weeks after writing "Bloggers are the new Stasi," Tina Brown is about to become one herself. Not that consistency should be expected from someone with the talent for turning America's most famed literary magazine into a glossy-paged version of Page Six (with apologies to the Post).

Greg Lindsay writes that he's "been keeping an eye open for the announcement that would signal blogging's entry into the mainstream and the end of its subversive, outsider reputation. As a canary-in-the-coal-mine sign, Tina Brown is the perfect bird."

More interesting than Tina's decision to become a "smaller rat," as she also called bloggers, is the outfit she's joining in order to find an outlet for her pent-up thoughts. It seems that another woman known for changing her mind, Arianna Huffington, is launching the Huffington Report (will folks think this is an undertaking of her former husband of the same name?), an invitation-only cyber event at which beautiful people -- that's blue beautiful people, too -- will contribute to a group blog. The Huffingtonians are here.

The list of worthies is long. Very long.

But wait -- there's more!

Lindsay quotes part of an "eyes only" email sent by Huffington to the potentials. At the very least, she recognizes the key role blogs have assumed in forming opinion.

This is all very impressive, and it's a model that others will surely follow. But I wonder how well-read such a blog could be. It may face the same cultural limitations we've seen with liberal talk radio, which, although seemingly given a new life, is still miniscule when compared to its conservative counterpart. Perhaps it won't need the audience many of the big blogs enjoy.

But those blogs, and even smaller ones, are usually written by people whose qualifications goes beyond being merely "in the know," as that cliché used to be understood. Blogs have thrived precisely because people like Tina Brown, Norman Lear, and Arthur Schlessinger have had far too much to say about what is news, who is right, what makes America great (or not), and how we should conduct ourselves in a post-9/11 world. Will a group blog of such people bring their MSM and cultural dominance into the blogosphere? Somehow, I doubt it.

That's not because we shouldn't welcome the competition and added voices. Nor the increased population of rats looking over one another's shoulders. It's because I can't see them matching the bloggers in their determination to fact-check big media and politicians. That's because, day in and day out, the opinions and interests of the elites whom bloggers investigate are identical to those of the Huffington Report. GOP or no, MSM, Hollywood, academe, the biggest foundations -- all will agree with most of what the Huffingtonians will write.

One question, though, on an issue that could unite us: how will they react to McCain-Feingold as it applies to the Net? Stay tuned.

The fallout from McCain-Feingold continues apace, as special interest groups representing the entrenched political class continue to press their campaign to restrict political speech on the Internet and further weaken the real-world impact of the franchise. This orchestrated, high-end effort, which has seen the collusion of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, powerful liberal foundations, and big media, has not been deterred by this month's reporting on their actions by bloggers, online journals, and, finally, some elements of the mainstream press.

Granted, the second draft of the FEC's proposals for regulating Net-based political speech was less draconian than the March 10 draft -- a fact we know only thanks to Mike Krempasky at Red State, who obtained the earlier document. But this not only shows that bloggers can make a difference -- IF they pursue a story relentlessly; it reveals the true intentions of the three Democrats on the FEC. If allowed, they and their Beltway allies at outfits like Democracy 21, Common Cause, and the Campaign Legal Center would create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among bloggers and other Net writers that could reduce this remarkable new medium to little more than a memory.

If this sounds overwrought, or if earlier posts here and at other blogs caused you to shrug, you should read on. And you might want to do so keeping in mind the sheer number of lawyer-bloggers who take this threat very seriously. Hugh Hewitt, who initially dismissed the threat, now believes it demands our attention. Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh, John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff, Steve Bainbridge, Steve Dillard, our own Brent Tantillo, and many others have taken a stand against this power-grab. So have such media watchdogs as Mark Tapscott, Michelle Malkin, and Ed Morrissey. And the list goes on.

Ryan Sager, who revealed the role played by Pew and other liberal foundations (although Pew is now a nonprofit) in his reports on whistleblower Sean Treglia's remarkable speech a year ago at USC, has a new column this morning that not only recounts the story's development and summarizes what we now know, but adds new information.

Take a look at the Amicus Brief (pdf) filed by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC, run by Trevor Potter, John McCain's chief counsel in the 2000 primaries, and the source of this press release smearing FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith), and you'll find that they're joining cause against North Carolina Right to Life. Here's the CLC's March 15 press release. It's further proof that "reformers" are not content with current limits to campaign or political donations, and that, as Ryan Sager says, they intend to press forward with greater restrictions until incumbents are virtually assured of reelection. Again, it's a case of the political class running roughshod over the First Amendment.

In this case, they're attempting to extend federal limits on donations to political committees to the state level. That's called encroachment, or mission creep. Here's a bit of that CLC press release. Note the frequent usage of such words as "limit" and "regulate":

And:

They claim to fear money in politics, but their real fear is that money will go to the wrong sorts of people, namely challengers and organizations that are fed up with Beltway shenanigans. Add to that list, of course, bloggers who, until now, have created what many have correctly called the most democratic means of voicing one's opinions to a wide audience ever invented. Recall this story about John McCain's pet nonprofit, the Reform Institute, which specializes in blast faxing McCain's many achievements and is headed by his former advisor Rick Davis, who draws a cool 110k per year for keeping his boss in the news. Bully for the NYT for breaking that story -- would that they and their peers would maintain that level of vigilance throughout these debates over "reform."

When I was teaching, I used to tell my students to beware of the fallacies surrounding the "social science mentality." How many times have you heard, I'd ask, a news report that began: "Studies indicate . . . ." Finish the sentence any way you like: the sky is green, the moon's made of blue cheese, fish can't live underwater. Or, more likely, everyone hates America, all Republicans are evil, the left is morally superior, private property is evil, we're all doomed.

That was before the advent of the Net as a daily stop for informed citizens around the globe. There was no Fox News, no blogging, no means of instantaneously fact-checking what the mainstream put out. There was, thankfully, talk radio, which cleared the path for bloggers by getting people accustomed to questioning the validity of the worldview of the political class. Today, I sometimes think we bloggers underestimate the role talk radio has played, and continues to play, in this realm.

I thought of this on this sunny, glorious morning (one benefit of living in the East is the early sunrises, assuming you like mornings, and when I got up at 5:20, the horizon was already light), because Arthur Chrenkoff has Fisked Monday's article in USA Today trumpeting "Survey: Australians Say U.S. Policies as Threatening as Islamic Fundamentalism." And Arthur, who lives down under, asks, oh really?

Here's how the paper every business traveler in America finds outside their hotel door began its coverage:

And here's how Arthur responds:

Here's what Greg Sheridan wrote in yesterday's Australian:

It goes on to posit just what the poll might have reflected had the questions been asked more directly or, put bluntly, had they not been designed to produce desired results that prove just how smart and insightful (and moral -- mustn't forget the morality here) are Australia's intellectual foreign policy elite:

Of course not -- that's how we all live, right? I know I arise on these gorgeous days, look out at the sun rising over the Delaware River (some good things do come by way of New Jersey), and think to myself: how can I force events and actions I'll encounter today to conform to my prima facie conceptions, which are based on a rigid, deterministic theory of history that leaves no room for nuance and deviation from the mean?

Most readers of this blog probably have the same reaction I do, therefore, to any headline that begins, "Studies Show." The next step is to ensure that our skepticism spreads far and wide, not because social science itself is fatally flawed. Because, in the hands of our (and Australia's) self-proclaimed elite, more often than not it becomes an exercise in narcissism.

The Coalition for Darfur, of which Democracy Project is a member, is out with the latest post on that beseiged province of Sudan. When you go to the Coalition's web site, you'll see a link to Save the Children. Please consider a donation to their Sudan relief effort.

Update: That more relief is needed is clear from this story at Heard Here.

I have to say that it makes me queasy to write about an upcoming autopsy on a person who is not only still alive, but who was not dying when others decided she should die.

Go to Hyscience, a medical blog, and read what they have to say about autopsies, and in particular the autopsy to be performed on Terri Schiavo. Although CNN and others are using the concession to have an autopsy performed as proof of the good will of Michael Schiavo, Hyscience points out that, in order to actually answer the question, what is the state of Terri's brain, the procedure must be performed by someone who knows what he's doing:

He appeals for bloggers to once again do what the MSM won't, and get the story out. Read the rest of his entry and act accordingly.

That's Joe Knippenberg's advice to Anne Norton, author of Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. His review of her book appears at the web site of the Texas Education Review, a publication of Democracy Project.

Yesterday, commenting on James D. Miller's TCS article, I speculated on the possibility that Congress might seek to broaden libel laws in the US as a way of reigning in pesky bloggers. Today, also at TCS, the Englishman Tim Worstall goes much further, raising the possibility that American bloggers could be subjected to Britain's notorious libel laws for the content of their posts that are downloaded at read in the UK.

He cites a few examples, including an Australian suit against Dow Jones for an article about an Australian which was written in America but downloaded and read in Australia. DJ just settled on that suit. Worstall's point: although American bloggers may not worry about expanded libel laws at home -- not yet, anyway -- they might be forced to worry about them in the UK and Australia.

He concludes:

Let's hope this matter does receive some attention. Lawyer bloggers out there: any comments?

Yesterday, I noted a recent article by Smith College economist James Miller, in which he warns bloggers that an unholy alliance between big government and big business -- in this case the media -- may spell trouble for bloggers. Business, he says, often appeals to government use its strong regulatory arm to squelch competition.

This morning, we see that odious model extended to the realm of higher education. It seems that former NYU president John Brademas, who's now a member of the New York State Board of Regents, is using that regulatory body's power to destroy a small Christian college he doesn't like. Adding insult to injury are these facts: the school has been operating with Board approval for years; Brademas is only a first-year regent; and, despite having reams of information about the school in his possession, he has displayed a degree of ignorance that should cause his ejection from the Board for malfeasance in office.

All of this is explored in an excellent op-ed in this morning's New York Post by Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of God on the Quad, a book about the role of religious colleges and universities.

Naomi goes on to report that Brademus even questioned whether or not the school could use the name "King," given that Columbia University went by that name -- before the Revolution! And she reports a phone conversation she had with him in which he flippantly claimed that his upbringing in Indiana by a Greek Orthodox father and Disciples of Christ mother insulated him from criticism of being anti-Christian. He speculated that King's discriminates on the basis of religion, which it doesn't do (also in the report he hasn't bothered to read), but of course, as a religious college it can choose its students based on their religious beliefs. After all, an Orthodox Jewish seminary has no obligation to admit practicing Catholics.

Naomi also reports that Joseph Frey, the state Education Department's Assistant Commissioner of Quality Assurance, reiterated the evaluation team's assessment. "Let me be clear. Our judgment is that they meet the standards."

So, is John Brademus, who was much-heralded for helping transform NYU into a major institution, simply killing off the competition? Or is he genuinely a bigot who wants to stamp out small Christian colleges that he considers beneath contempt? Either way, the result of his actions is a reduction in the true diversity of higher education in New York City.

This effort is hardly new, of course, and I hope you'll forgive me if I say that the best description of it in practice I've read in some time appeared on this blog in late January. Written by Chuck Chalberg, "A Homogeneous Diversity" relates his experience of visiting colleges with his son. Chuck describes the pitiful results that occur when colleges with a long religious tradition decide that the characteristics that made them distinctive, and therefore worth considering, need to be abandoned. In the case of The King's College, it's an outside force that wants to destroy them because they didn't follow the secularization model. Brademas shouldn't be allowed to set this dangerous precedent.

With all the news about the FEC of late, I haven't been able to cover the Ward Churchill saga. No need to, though, when the Elephants are doing a great job. See their posts here and here for news that's timely and commentary that's insightful and witty. As in this:

Well, of course, we don't want those anarchists to go on the public dole, do we?

The fight to keep politicians, rich foundations, and the chattering classes from violating our First Amendment rights in an effort to make the world safe for incumbents and those who benefit from their rule continues. The best article I've read lately appeared Friday at Tech Central Station, where economist James D. Miller warned that bloggers face a cabal of big government and big industry. His point illustrates why big government is such a threat to liberty: not only can they restrict our freedoms when they feel threatened; they provide large corporations with the means to choke off competition by leveraging government to pass anti-competitive laws.

Prof. Miller goes on to warn that bloggers face threats in three main areas: campaign finance law (and don't we know it); libel law; and copyright law. Legislative changes in any of these areas that makes blogging riskier or more expensive could turn bloggers away from their posts. About the possibility of a broadened libel law, reader Bruce Kesler emails that "part of the answer that may allow this . . . is the reduced respect for the MSM, leading some who would otherwise rise against curtailments of 1st Amendment rights to stand aside." I find that argument insightful and scary.

As I've argued before, "reformers" don't need to kick our doors in at 3:00 am; computers don't have to be seized at gunpoint. All that needs to occur to scare many bloggers away, either entirely or from stories concerning powerful people and interests, is for Congress to raise the risks of blogging to the point that many no longer consider it a wise enterprise. A blogger with a family to support, kids to put through college, and mortgage payments to make can be forgiven if he'd rather not incur the wrath of a Fortune 100 company like, say, Viacom or GE. Or he may be loathe to carry on with the single most useful and revolutionary feature of blogs -- linking -- if he fears that somewhere in cyberspace, at the far end of his link, there rests a campaign site or a paid commercial for a candidate that could bring the FEC to his site.

News.com reporter Declan McCullagh writes today that the backers of McCain-Feingold "have found themselves in a politically uncomfortable position." While they all want to see further crackdowns on campaigning (my interpretation -- they want to see hostile political speech severely restricted), they know that bloggers and some editorialists have been loud and unambiguous in their objections to any regulation of the Net.

McCullagh provides a good chronological look at this month's battle over any future regulations, and he provides links to key primary sources. Among those is this letter (pdf) of August 23, 2002, from Sens. McCain, Feingold, Snow, and Jeffords, and Rep. Shays, that contains the infamous request that BCRA extend to the Net. It's preceded by a sentence that serves, unintentionally, to remind us of the degree to which these politicians intend to crack down on the Net while winking at traditional media (cutting and pasting is not possible from this document, so I've keyed this in):

For those who haven't seen it, McCullagh also links to the suit brought by Shays and Meehan against the FEC to force it to regulate Internet speech.

Doug Powers, writing for WorldNetDaily, echoes some of what James Smith said, but adds that we shouldn't forget that anything the government does also has as a goal the collection of money. In this case, that's money no one has tapped yet, Net money, and they want in on the action.

Shankar Gupta at Online Media Daily, from Media Post, has a nice assessment of last week's FEC proposal for regulating the Net. This asks (but offers no answer) to something I'd wondered about: how will the FEC regulations apply to Podcasting and RSS? Podcasting, in particular, is in its infancy, and since it includes the spoken as well as the written word, and can be carried away from the Net in an i-Pod, how will the FEC treat it? Of course, to ask the question is to revisit the ridiculous (and dangerous) world of speech regulation.

And the piece reflects some of what Brent wrote here last week -- an opinion that was echoed by Eugene Volokh. Here's how Shankar Gupta puts it:

In the blogosphere, Hugh Hewitt thinks that, in fact, the FEC threat to bloggers deserves our attention, and that's good for everyone involved in this fight. Mark Tapscott (and let me thank him for the link) thinks, as do I, that Mike Krempasky deserves the first Blogosphere Defender of the First Amendment Award; he also nominates FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith "to be the first inductee in the Blogosphere's First Amendment Hall of Fame." Amen again.

Finally, Ryan Sager lists the media organizations that were scheduled to send reporters to cover the USC Annenberg School's “Covering Philanthropy and Nonprofits Beyond 9/11” last March, at which Sean Treglia blew the whistle on his old employers at Pew. This list includes the Washington Post, LA Times, Business Week, Tampa Tribune, Orange County Register, Seattle Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. Even, as Ryan says, if we allow for the possibility that some reporters weren't sent to cover the story, or that it wasn't their beat, it's remarkable that not one of them chose to write about it. And to think that, among the things that Treglia said to their faces, was that he was stunned when no one covered the Pew grants in previous years.

We're happy to announce that Democracy Project has assumed control of the Texas Education Review, a quarterly journal that covers education issues from K--12 to academe. We're working to get a new issue out soon, and in the mean time have compiled some recent articles on our new web site.

We'll add a permanent link to the TER from this web site soon, and we also hope to begin education blogging (in addition to our ongoing blog efforts on, most recently, the FEC, plus foreign and domestic policy and the health of democracy worldwide).

We hope you'll revisit the TER's site in the coming weeks as we expand our capacity to bring you better information on a crucial issue.

Arthur Chrenkoff, in one of the longest blog posts I've ever seen, reports on the Good News from Iraq. You could spend the rest of the day reading it -- a fact that tells us much about just how much the MSM haven't reported over the past couple of weeks.

Today, Monday, March 28th True North Radio will feature one of the most distinguished guests with whom it has been our privilege to speak.

I’ll be discussing the Terri Schiavo case and the broader issue of assisted suicide with Robert P. George, a distinguished member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Professor George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Among his many books are Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (1993), In Defense of Natural Law (1999), and, most recently The Clash of Orthodoxies (ISI Books, 2002).

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore and a graduate of Harvard Law School, Professor George also earned a doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford University. From 1993-98, he served as a Presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He is also a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the 1990 Justice Tom C. Clark Award. He is the recipient of a Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association, the Paul Bator Award of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, as well as several honorary doctorates. Professor George is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves as Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee.

Don't miss the March 21st article at National Review Online interview with Professor George.

You can hear Professor George tomorrow, on TRUE NORTH, from 11:05 a.m. until noon, on WDEV 550 AM/96.1 FM (on 96.5 FM in Barre), or on WSYB 1380 in Rutland.

As the Vermont legislature moves rapidly towards single-payer ("universal") health care, among the many questions we need to ask the members are these:

What would Terri Schiavo's fate be, if her fate were in the hands of neither her parents nor her husband, but a committee of Vermont bureaucrats concerned about costs?

What's the dollar amount at which "universal" health care advocates would stop funding Terri's care and end her life? And if they can't name a dollar amount, then what are the factors they intend to use, when they ration our health care?

While ambassadors dither and the mullahs stall, plans are underway to remove the nuclear threat if diplomacy fails.

Contingency plans are one of the most useful tools available for civilian and military leaders. They are also one of the least understood components of the military staff process. It is an all-too-common perception that the very presence of a plan that calls for military action becomes in effect a self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if a plan exists to attack a country, then proponent naturally gather to implement that plan. In reality nothing can be further from the truth.

A good leader always demands options from his staff. He may be like Henry Kissinger who always insisted on three options varying from highly aggressive to passive. He invariably selected the one in between but insisted on seeing options nevertheless. The decision maker must have options. If the only proffered tool in his kit is a hammer, then the world begins to resemble a nail. But by having a plan for every contingency and the knowledge of resources necessary to carry out a particular plan allows a leader to make the ultimate decision based on solid information, not last-minute guesswork.

Every planner realizes that the work is hypothetical. There always will be many more unused plans than there are military operations. To turn a plan into an operation requires a rare confluence of contingencies that most military officers hope never occurs. So shelves in headquarters around the world are filled with plans that are unlikely ever to be implemented but whose very presence reassures leaders and operators alike. If the ‘go’ decision is ever made then the appropriate plan can be dusted off, updated, and activated. This is exactly what is taking place in the United States and Israel at the moment concerning Iran and its growing nuclear threat. All hope that diplomatic measures will succeed in achieving national objectives, but no rational leader is willing to place blind faith in them.

All are aware of the history of Iranian perfidy. Iran’s position in President Bush’s Axis of Evil is fully justified by Iranian actions. The aberrant mullah leadership is responsible for funneling untold millions of dollars – mostly derived from oil sales revenues – into the hands of international terrorists. The infamous Hezbollah organization, based in Lebanon with representatives in Damascus and Teheran, relies heavily on Iranian funding along with assistance in kind from Syria. Hezbollah has attacked Israel through conventional and terrorist activity unrelentingly for years. It has proven intransigent and unapologetic for attacks against innocent civilians that have accounted for thousands of Israeli deaths.

In past actions Hezbollah has shown itself willing to use any and all weapons available. This is an additional worry for those who fear a nuclear Iran, because such a weapon in the hands of ruthless terrorists could wreak inconceivable losses upon Israel and America. Hezbollah leaders have no compunction about identifying America as an enemy equal to or greater than Israel. This is in consonance with the philosophy of the Iranian mullah leaders who speak of America as the Great Satan and Israel as the Lesser Satan. Chants of ‘Death to America’ alternate with calls for ‘Death to Israel’ during organized demonstrations in Teheran and Beirut.

At a tactical level Israeli planners constantly keep their eyes on Hezbollah because they may be called on to repel an attack on a settlement, counter-attack rocket launching sites, or call in air strikes against threatening formations. There are also concerns, expressed by retired US Major General Paul Vallely returning from a recent trip to the Israeli side of the Lebanese border, that the terror group may possess poison gas in the form of munitions evacuated out of Iraq through Syria and into the Bekka Valley. Confirmation of the presence of such weapons would be an immediate call for action. Israeli planners are aware of the need to prepare plans against these contingencies. They also know that necessary as it is, such preparation is akin to placing a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. As long as Iran continues to support Hezbollah as it has done in the past, the Israeli army can only hold the line, never conquer the real threat.

Such a reality check adds to the reason America and Israel advanced strike planning is underway directed against both Iranian regime and nuclear manufacturing targets. A number of targets are selected, analyzed, and assigned strike ‘packages’ designed to eliminate them or degrade them as a threat. Targets such as intelligence headquarters, leadership offices, nuclear storage and research facilities, and missile facilities are a first priority. Weapons systems are assigned to attack each target. It might be cruise missiles, long-range stealth bombers, or tactical fighter-bombers. Some targets require a combination. Given the dug-in nature of many of the targets, specially designed munitions would be assigned to destroy the target if possible, and if not, to degrade it or set it back to the point that it no longer poses an immediate threat. The Iranians learned from the Israeli strike against Iraq’s nuclear facility at Ossirik in 1981, and, drawing on experience from their North Korean friends, are learning how to dig facilities deep into rock and camouflage them. There are no easy targets.

Little enthusiasm exists on either side of the Atlantic for actual implementation of these contingency plans directed against Iran. To strike Iran militarily risks failing to destroy or degrade the threat sufficiently thus provoking a successful retaliatory strike against friendly targets. Perhaps such strikes might generate a spike of internal nationalism even among those who favor regime change and democracy, thereby delaying what would be the most desirable outcome: an internal democratic revolt. Nevertheless, such decisions are above the pay grade of the military and are properly elevated to civilian leadership. In order to perform their mission and support that leadership, the planners in both Israel and America have almost completed preparation. They now wait for an order to execute that all hope will not be necessary.

An encouraging article about Iraq's new press freedoms in USA Today highlights the stark contrast between life under Saddam and the new life Iraq now enjoys.

This morning, the best blog entry I've found also addresses a subject we in the blogosphere battle daily: the dissemination of false information under the guise of clever truth. For Captain Ed, it's the book The Da Vinci Code, which appears to be little more than dumbed-down Gnosticism. In that, it's not unlike the works of so-called modern pagans and New Age types, none of whom hold a candle to the real thing (Plato, Marcus Aurelius, et al.), and all of whom prey upon cracks (or chasms) in people's learning to mislead, again, under the guise of heroically squeezing the truth from corrupt institutions and traditions. Dan Brown is little more than a popularized version of Elaine Pagels, whose "discovery" of texts known to every Bible scholar since antiquity was greeted as, again, a blow to corruption and stifling dogma.

We have obtained the following information, which is a useful compendium of sources concerning FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith's comments made during the March 24 meeting of the FEC concerning potential regulation of the Internet. There are many links to primary sources, and I think anyone interested in the story will find this most useful.

1. Smith noted prior to his C/Net interview, his colleagues Vice Chairman Michael Toner and Commissioner David Mason had both made similar public comments regarding regulatory risks to the Internet from this rulemaking. See Amy Keller, "Policing Internet politics?" Roll Call, Jan. 14, 2005, (subscription is required).

2. Commissioner Smith echoed similar views in an interview with C/Net after reading an article there which suggested that only "paid ads" would be at issue in the rulemaking. Commissioner Smith also pointed out that in the C/Net interview, he had said that he believed that the Commission was "sensitive" to the issues involved in internet regulation, and noted that all of the issues he had mentioned in C/Net were, in fact, addressed at some point in NPRM now before the Commission.

3. Judge Kollar-Kotelly's rejection of the FEC's internet exemption was not limited to "paid ads". Nor did the plaintiffs challenging the regulation certainly so limit their claim. Commissioner Smith noted that in another part of the suit the plaintiffs had specifically, and also successfully, challenged the FEC's decision to exempt certain unpaid advertisements from the law's provisions limiting broadcast ads within 60 days of an election, and thus questioned whether, under the reasoning applied by Judge Kollar-Kotelly in that portion of the case, a regulation limiting internet regulation to paid ads would be upheld by the court.

Contrary to Commissioner Weintraub's statement at the meeting that "for people concerned about the effects of money in politics, the internet can only be considered a good thing," Commissioner Smith noted that the brief of plaintiffs Representatives Shays and Meehan is replete with comments on the dangers of the internet. He read various quotes from the brief, among them a portion in which plaintiffs approvingly quoted comments made in Congress that efforts merely to minimize (not exempt) internet regulation in Congress were a "poison pill," a "loophole," "a step backward," and "anti-reform," and would "make the internet 'a favored conduit for special interests to fund soft money and stealth issue ads into federal campaigns.'" That section of the plaintiffs' brief concluded that a deregulated internet, "opens an avenue for rampant circumvention of all of FECA's and BCRA's central provisions."

- See Shays v. FEC, 337 F. Supp.2d 28 (D.D.C. 2004) Key portions are at pages 48-58 (striking down internet exemption), and 153-155 (striking down exclusion of unpaid ads from definition of "electioneering communications.") (Note: Some have trouble directly linking to this page. If so, try linking only tothis page, then looking for the document from this index page.)

- See Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment pp. 23-28, here.

4. After Commissioner Smith's C/Net interview, interest sharply increased in the rulemaking. Two Commissioners tried to assure the public that the rule would be reasonable. Chairman Thomas's comments to the Politics Online Conference at George Washington University, however, corroborated Commissioner Smith's C/Net interview about the scope of potential regulation.

- Commissioner Weintraub's comments are here.

- The transcript of Chairman Thomas's address to the Politics
Online Conference is here.

5. Representatives of the "reform" community also attempted to calm public opinion. The most vigorous effort came from the Campaign Legal Center and its President, Trevor Potter (who served as counsel to Senators McCain and Feingold in the Shays lawsuit that struck down the internet exemption). However, their claims that they only sought to regulate paid ads seem contrary to comments written by Mr. Potter just days earlier, in February, 2005, for the Campaign Finance Sourcebook published by the Brookings Institute. Nevertheless, Commissioner Smith noted that he was pleased that the Center was apparently moving off its earlier calls for broad internet regulation.

- Campaign Legal Center press release "Setting the Record Straight: There is No FEC Threat to the Internet."

- Copy of email sent to Election Law Listserv by Trevor Potter.

- The exchange among Listserv members is also accessible by the public and can be found here.

- Mr. Potter's specific posts may be found here and here.

- February 2005 version of Campaign Finance Sourcebook, also written by Mr. Potter, with a broader interpretation of how political activity on the Internet is regulated.

- Senators McCain and Feingold also sought to reassure the public that their only concern was paid ads.

6. As attention grew, it became obvious that the issue was not limited to "paid ads." Although the initial press release of Senators McCain and Feingold, linked above, indicated that only paid ads were at stake, their later public comments seemed to implicitly concede that the rulemaking had much broader implications. While BCRA's sponsors called generally for a careful approach to regulation, Commissioner Smith noted that their statements included many caveats and did not rule out any form of regulation, and so it remained unclear how broad or narrow they believed the Commission's regulations should be.

- See Senator Feingold's Blog entry here.

- Ex Parte communication on Notice of Proposed Internet Rule by senators McCain & Feingold; Congressmen Shays and Meehan.

-Commissioner Smith expressed his hope that during the comment period the lawmakers would comment on the specific proposals within the NPRM, and state clearly whether or not they supported those proposals.

7. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, as presented to the Commission and approved with only minor revisions, is found here.

After publication in the Federal Register, there will be a 60 day comment period. The hearing dates are Tues., Jun. 28 and Wed., Jun. 29.

I want to commend to your attention a brilliant article on the Schiavo case by Eric Cohen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who is among other things the editor of the outstanding journal The New Atlantis. It's the single best reflection on the subject that I've read. Cohen shows a mastery of the factual details, but goes beyond them, to a deeper set of considerations: the ways in which a false and ultimately unworkable and incoherent notion of personal autonomy undergirds so much of our culture's thinking about these end-of-life issues. A sampling:

The first question--what would Terri Schiavo have wanted?--is the central question of modern liberalism when it comes to caring for those who cannot speak for themselves. It is the autonomy question, the self-determination question, the right to privacy question....

This is what ideological liberalism now seems to believe--whether in regard to early human embryos, or late-stage dementia patients, or fetuses with Down syndrome. And in the end, the Schiavo case is just one more act in modern liberalism's betrayal of the vulnerable people it once claimed to speak for.

As they say, read the whole thing, and share it with others.

Rod Dreher reports that postmodern guru-to-the-boomers Deepak Chopra just appeared on CNN and assured us that Terri Schiavo is not suffering, and that her soul is now being broadcast throughout the universe.

If Chopra isn't a walking argument for sticking to the classical theological traditions, no one is.

Yesterday evening, CNET posted an excellent overview of the earlier draft for FEC rules on Internet political speech, which you'll find here. It reinforces Mike Krempasky's conclusion (see also below) that the earlier draft would have drastically curtailed speech on the Internet, and especially by bloggers. (A CNET article from yesterday morning, which is still informative, is here.)

And it agrees with many of us that the current set of proposals were scaled back after the blogswarm caused by Brad Smith's interview with CNET.

Another excellent summary of the FEC/Pew/Blogging story appears at FrontPage today. Richard Poe ties the two elements of the story together with numerous links (including one to this post on DP).

More to follow.

Mike Krempasky at Red State not only attended yesterday's FEC meeting (see below), but he has obtained a copy of a first draft of the proposed rules for regulating the Internet. This draft is different from the one we've been commenting on, and it's much worse.

Mike has posted that original, March 10, proposal here in pdf.

Here's just a taste of what Mike found:

In light of this newly exposed document, here's how Mike sums up the true intentions of the Democrats on the FEC and the "reform" proponents of both parties in Congress:

Indeed. The more we learn, the more obvious it is that Brad Smith has played a crucial role in helping reign in the federal regulatory bureaucracy that is the FEC. And we can see better, now, why "Chill Out" Ellen Weintraub and her anti-First Amendment friends have savaged Smith so -- he's an honest man among thieves.

Given this, I'd reiterate something I wrote on Wednesday, the day we obtained and posted a copy of the new proposal that was discussed yesterday: absent the blogstorm that followed Brad Smith's March 3 interview, we very likely would have been stuck with the March 10 proposal that Mike has unearthed. For all the weaknesses of the newer proposal, it's an improvement on the older one.

Mike is right, also, that this older proposal puts to rest the notion, circulated by both the left and by some bloggers who still maintain that we have nothing to worry about, reveals an intent to kill off much of the speech allowed on the Net. Absent vigilance on the part of bloggers, we really can find ourselves (especially those of us who participate in corporate blogs) facing a regulatory morass that would severely restrict our First Amendment rights.

Regulators and those who despise the power of the Net needn't forbid us from writing what we please, or from linking far and wide, to accomplish their goals. (Not that they wouldn't love to do that.) Rather, by increasing the regulatory burden on blogs sufficiently, they can effectively run most bloggers off the web. If bloggers must worry about every politically oriented post, or fret over the links on our site, many may decide that it simply isn't worth the trouble. Fines or fees, harassment by federal busybodies -- all might silence even those bloggers who operate within the new "improved" regulations.

That said, there are clearly many of us who have no intention of allowing our First Amendment rights to be trampled by the political class. As I've written before, the FEC matter we're discussing must be viewed in conjunction with the exposure that Pew and other liberal charities worked assiduously, and under cover, to get McCain-Feingold passed. Make no mistake: this is all part of the same effort, and it's funded by the same people. John McCain tried to block Bradley Smith from being seated on the FEC; McCain's allies have led the way to smear him in light of his efforts to warn bloggers. The real culprit here remains McCain-Feingold, and until something is done about it, no amount of benevolence from the FEC will make us safe from regulation.

Mark Tapscott attended part of the FEC's meeting on Internet regulation this morning, and he's filed a report that deserves to be read in its entirety. In brief, the FEC, which consists of three Republican and three Democratic members, is split down the middle. Brad Smith and Dave Mason, both Republicans, warned that attempts to regulate Internet speech may succeed:

Mark reports that Mike Krempesky of Red State, who was still at the meeting when Mark left, will file an update later today.

Update: Mike Krempesky has weighed in with his impressions of today's FEC meeting, which he attended. His comments are here and here. The latter post is more up-to-date.

In it, Mike asks five questions for the "chill out" crowd, a reference to FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub's advice, given in a CNET interview just after Bradley Smith raised the alarm to bloggers and others who value their First Amendment rights.

You'll want to read all of them, but I'll take the liberty of reproducing one that goes to the heart of some observations that Brent made yesterday (see updates III and IV):

This of course concerns us at Democracy Project, as it does Mike and his colleagues at Red State and countless others who contribute to group or, in our case, corporate blogs. We're a nonprofit organization, and, as Brent and Mike read the proposed rules, we could come under federal regulation (and scrutiny) because of that.

Needless to say, that provides plenty of incentive for us to continue our fight against any encroachment on our First Amendment rights. Of course, the underlying problem in all of the is McCain-Feingold itself, which exists primarily to restrict the ability of voters to change their government through the exercise of the franchise. And we know how it was passed, too.

The overarching problem, about which I'll have more to say later, is an ongoing attempt by the political class to deprive Americans of the ability to hold that class accountable for its actions. It involves liberal foundations, politicians, journalists, and intellectuals. It is insidious and un-American, and it must be stopped.

In today's Technology Daily from the National Journal (both subscription only, but here's the description page of Tech Daily), reporter Randy Barrett covers the FEC's proposed campaign disclosure draft that we commented on yesterday. What's notable in the coverage is that, in something of a first for Tech Daily, they linked directly to blogs, including Democracy Project and the Volokh Conspiracy. That is, they