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Assault on the Constitution

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a friend in Joe Biden, the Delaware senator who fancies himself a candidate for president made clear at a campaign appearance in Portsmouth, N.H., reports the Portsmouth Herald:

Biden stated unequivocally that he will move to impeach President Bush if he bombs Iran without first gaining congressional approval.

Biden spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 100 at a candidate forum held Thursday at Seacoast Media Group. The forum focused on the Iraq war and foreign policy. When an audience member expressed fear of a war with Iran, Biden said he does not typically engage in threats, but had no qualms about issuing a direct warning to the Oval Office.

"The president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach," said Biden, whose words were followed by a raucous applause from the local audience.

Biden said he is in the process of meeting with constitutional law experts to prepare a legal memorandum saying as much and intends to send it to the president.

Biden--who as chairman of the Judiciary Committee presided over the travesties that were the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings--apparently is either ignorant or contemptuous of the Constitution. Presumably one of those legal experts will inform him that as a senator, he has no authority to "move to impeach" anyone. That power rests solely with the House.

Murtha Betrays the Defeatists
Rep. John Murtha, the former Marine who became a poster boy for Iraq defeatism, has changed his tune, The Politico reports:

Murtha . . . is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the "surge is working." This could be a huge problem for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, who are blocking approval of the full $200 billion being sought by President Bush for combat operations in Iraq in 2008.

Murtha's latest comments are also a stark reversal from what he said earlier in the year. The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the powerful Defense Subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee, has previously stated that the surge "is not working" and the United States faced a military disaster in Iraq. . . .

Murtha even yelled at a reporter during a recent press conference, telling the reporter that the news coming out of the Pentagon regarding Iraq is not believable.

"They don't need to do the things--you're missing the point--because the Pentagon says it, you believe it?," Murtha yelled. "You believe what the Pentagon says? Huh? With all the things that they have told us, you believe what--I mean, go back and look--'mission accomplished,' Al Qaeda connection, weapons of mass destruction, on and on and on, and you believe the Pentagon?"

Murtha does make the obligatory complaint about lack of political progress in Iraq, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that he complains the White House is making invidious comparisons:

As a reminder of how contentious the war debate is in Washington, a White House spokeswoman yesterday chastised Congress for failing to provide billions of dollars in emergency spending for Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming year.

"They only have six legislative days left in the session. Their focus should be on funding the troops, making sure the intelligence gap remains firmly closed, and by passing a budget, which is something that our country, our democracy, should be able to do," Dana Perino said during a press briefing.

"They complain about Iraq; the Iraqis were able to pass a budget. It's almost completed. Ours is nowhere near completed."

Mr. Murtha said such language is "the kind of stuff that makes it very difficult to come to an agreement because it just alienates people in our party."

But the Seattle Times reports that Rep. Norm Dicks, a Democrat and fellow traveler of Murtha's, made the same point on his recent trip to Iraq:

In Baghdad's Green Zone, Dicks and his group, led by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, were briefed by U.S. military leaders about their concerns that the Iraqi government is squandering the breathing room given it by the escalation of American troops. When his group sat down with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Dicks said, "we were very disappointed about the lack of reconciliation, and the lack of urgency." Maliki just nodded, Dicks said.

He reminded Maliki and his ministers that they need to pass legislation on sharing oil revenues and power among Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis.

"But I felt kinda embarrassed telling the Iraqis they had to get their act together and pass legislation when we can't do it back here," he said.

America is the greatest country in the world, but one thing we do not have--for better as well as for worse--is an efficient national legislature. It seems odd to declare post-Saddam Iraq a failure merely because it has the same lack.

Journalism by Stereotype
An appalled reader calls our attention to the front page of yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shown nearby--specifically, to that headline in the middle of the page that reads "Should I Vote for OBAMA Because of My RACE? . . . or Vote for [MRS.] CLINTON Because of My GENDER?" The online version doesn't use that headline, but it makes clear that the AJC isn't the first to ask the question:

The dozen or so Spelman College women had come together in a basement classroom, after hours, to hash over a choice unimaginable just a few generations back.

Fliers posted across campus summed up the thrust of their conversation: "Should you vote for Barack Obama because of your race, or should you vote for Hillary Clinton because you are a woman?" . . .

Desiree Pedescleaux, associate professor of political science at Spelman, said the majority of black women in Atlanta will vote for Obama because of their strong identification with race.

She says some black women may support Clinton because of deep admiration or because they view her as the Democratic candidate most likely to succeed. But on an emotional level, Pedescleaux argues, race will trump gender.

"When an African-American woman walks into a room, what do most people see first?" she asked. "They see race. They see her as black before she is a woman."

This article perpetuates a stereotype of black women as prejudiced on the basis of race or sex, and as making political judgments based on these traits rather than on more important ones such as ability, character and policy positions.

Would someone care to explain to us why this stereotype is not an invidious one?

Clemons: Peace Is a Pipe Dream
The other day left-liberal commentator Steve Clemons, in a post at TPMCafe.com, trumpeted a comment by Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, made in advance of the Annapolis peace parley:

"Unless you bring Hamas in tune with what is happening on the peace side, you are really not fulfilling a basic requirement," Faisal said. "One man cannot make peace; not even half a people can make peace," he told a roundtable of U.S. journalists. "There has to be consensus about peace among the Palestinians for this to go smoothly."

Clemons then recites a long list of Democrats and liberal Republicans who agree with Faisal. And TPM denizen David Kurtz sums up Clemons's point thus: "Everyone in the reality-based world agrees that Hamas has to be a party to peace talks."

But what are the prospects for this? Somewhere between slim and none, and slim just dropped dead of malnutrition. As the Jerusalem Post reports:

Hamas on Thursday called on the UN to rescind the 1947 decision to partition Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs.

The group said in a statement, released on the 60th anniversary of the UN vote, that "Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem . . . there is no room in it for the Jews."

Faisal actually has a point: As long as Hamas is a major player in Palestinian politics, it is unrealistic to expect to achieve a durable peace without including it. Because Hamas--and its patron, Iran--is totally intransigent, this means that there is no prospect of Israel-Palestinian peace in the foreseeable future. The road to peace may have to go through Tehran.

Thirsty Muslims
The behavior the Associated Press describes in this report from Khartoum, Sudan, does not strike us as completely normal:

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said.

The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes. . . .

A Muslim cleric at Khartoum's main Martyrs Mosque denounced Gibbons during one sermon, saying she intentionally insulted Islam. He did not call for protests, however.

"Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion," the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers.

"This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad," he said.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have had the following to say about Gibbons's plight: .

It's a statement that is all the more powerful for its brevity.

The Sanity Gap
A new Gallup poll finds that Republicans are the sanest people in America, or at least think they are:

Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. . . .

While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.

What does this mean? "One could be quick to assume that these differences are based on the underlying demographic and socioeconomic patterns related to party identification in America today," Gallup says. But that doesn't fully explain the discrepancy:

An analysis of the relationship between party identification and self-reported excellent mental health within various categories of age, gender, church attendance, income, education, and other variables shows that the basic pattern persists regardless of these characteristics. In other words, party identification appears to have an independent effect on mental health even when each of these is controlled for.

Gallup provides a set of bar graphs breaking the data down by various factors, demonstrating this independent effect. For instance, people making over $50,000 are considerably likelier to describe their mental health as excellent--but so are Republicans when compared with non-Republicans in both income groups. The only major discrepancy we noted is that going to church seems to be correlated with better mental health only for Republicans.

Without longitudinal data, there is no way to know if the Republican-sanity correlation is enduring or a function of the present moment. It could be, for instance, that Democrats are in a fragile mental state after seven years out of power. Or it could be that people with mental difficulties are more vulnerable to peer pressure than healthier ones and thus have been more prone to leave the GOP because of the party's current unpopularity. In any case, the sanity gap is a fascinating phenomenon that merits further study.

More Art Than Science
"The vivid sunsets painted by J.M.W. Turner are revered for their use of color and light and for their influence on the Impressionists," the Associated Press reports from London. "But could they also help global warming experts track climate change?" Apparently this is no joke:

A group of scientists has studied the colors in more than 500 paintings of sunsets, including many of Turner's 19th-century watercolors and oils, in hopes of gaining insights into the cooling effects caused by major volcanic eruptions.

By better understanding past changes in climate, they hope to improve computer models for future climate change.

Christos Zerefos, who led the research at the National Observatory in Athens, said he believed it was the first scientific study of art for clues to climate variations.

Now that's what we call science!

And You Thought We Were Bad
Yesterday we noted that on Wednesday we misspelled our byline "Taratnto." A reader calls our attention to a photo of a professional baseball player called Joe Carter wearing a jersey in which the misspelling is even worse. Not only is the spurious T there, but both A's have been changed to O's. Apparently during the sixth inning he changed into a jersey that spelled "Taranto" correctly.

Supreme Court Shocker
"Roberts: God Told Me to Step Down"--headline, New York Sun, Nov. 29

Why Would They Need Gloves in Florida?
"Gloves Off in Giuliani-Romney Debate"--headline, Financial Times, Nov. 29

So We're Descended From Bill Clinton?
"Male Ancestor Was Slow to Grow Up"--headline, Reuters, Nov. 29

So Do Kids
"Program to Fight Obesity in Kids Expands"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 29

Ask Him to Bring Over Some Crumpets Too
"Thain Prepares to Bring Chai Over to Merrill"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 30

'Bartender, Gimme Another--or Else'
"Study: Canadian Beer Drinkers Threaten Planet"--headline, FoxNews.com, Nov. 30

Whatever You Do, Don't Tell Anyone!
"General Dynamics Scottsdale Gets OK on Super-Secret Phone"--headline, Phoenix Business Journal, Nov. 29

Breaking News From 1968
"Government Auditors Say NASA's Not Ready for Moon Launch"--headline, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 30

News of the Tautological
"Woman to Decorate Stump After Tree Axed"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 29

News You Can Use

• "Latest Idea That's for the Birds: Raising Snails"--headline, Orlando Sentinel, Nov. 29
  
  
• "Wanna Lose Weight? Just Stand Up, Study Says"--headline, FoxNews.com, Nov. 29
  
  
• "That 'Dentist' Was a Denturist"--headline, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Nov. 30
  
  
• "Report: 'Bisexual' MTV Star Tila Tequila Is Straight"--headline, FoxNews.com, Nov. 30

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "FBI Hasn't Contacted Miller on Land Deals"--headline, Pasadena (Calif.) Star-News, Nov. 28
  
  
• "Children Frolic at Water-Sports Event"--headline, Miami Herald, Nov. 29
  
  
• "Biden Won't Serve as Secretary of State"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 29
  
  
• "Protesters Walk Out of Ashcroft's Speech at Cornell"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 30

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln . . .
The Wall Street Journal is about to come under new, more aggressive control, and that means a harsher competitive environment for the New York Times. The old gray lady, struggling to adapt, is experimenting with new and innovative styles of journalism. Here's an example, from the Science section:

Other than the hellish heat, a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere and corrosive clouds of sulfuric acid, Venus is a lot like Earth, scientists said yesterday.

Of course, we can do that too. Just watch:

Other than his pallid skin, flabby body and complete lack of athletic ability, James Taranto is a lot like Michael Jordan, a veteran journalist said yesterday.

Eat our dust, New York Times!

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Eli Douardo, Edward Tannen, Christian Peck, Matt Beato, Don Stewart, Ethel Fenig, Dennis Giangreco, Jeff Dobbs, Shaun Jennings, Robert Koslover, Michael Segal, Doug Black, Nancy Zimmerman, Brendan Schulman, John Sanders, Charles Sykes, Billy Harvey, Jared Silverman, Chris Fehr, Don Hubschman, Tom Dziubek, john Williamson, Bruce Goldman, J.P. Green, John Nernoff, Paul Burns, Michael Throop, Paul Gross, Chuck Smith, William Clemons, Ed Jordan, Manny Klausner, Joe Perez, Michael Lucas, Michele Schiesser and Raymond Hull. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)