If You Want More of Something - Fund It!

It is only a matter of time before any pendulum begins to swing back. The cause? The law of physics always results in one extreme force begetting an opposite force.

Academia is being done in by its own prejudices.(See 1 below.)

This author writes why it is difficult to get in bed with liberal thinking.

I have often said some ideas are so stupid only liberals would embrace them.(See 2 below.)

Isi Leibler and I are on the same page. (See 3 below.)

Naomi Ragen see Thomas Friedman as an empty suit. Naomi where have you been all these years?

Friends,

For years I have said to anyone who would listen that Thomas Friedman is a consummate fake, at least when it comes to his "expertise" on the Middle East.

All those years of supporting the conventional wisdom - the narrative
as he now calls it--columns on Israeli intransigence, "the occupation" as
being the cause of the Intifada. Misery and poverty being the root of
"peaceful" Islamists blowing themselves up.etc. etc. He was the lauded
guru, despite the fact that he understood nothing and his "brilliant
analysis" never had an iota of truth. And now finally, when the gun is
pointing towards Americans, and not Jews in Israel for a change, he's had a change of mind.

The Muslim who gunned down Fort Hood soldiers, a man who had ties to terrorist organizations, who openly professed his hatred for the
military war on terror, might, just might, not be a peaceful Muslim
depressed by the awful way Americans treat jihadis. He might, gulp,
actually be a Jihadi. Ya think?


Such a brilliant deduction! Give that man another Pulitzer. Or,
alternatively, fire him and put his books in the same place where the "world is definitely flat" books are kept.
Naomi (See 4 below.)

James Carafano of The Heritage Foundation poses ten questions regarding Afghanistan. (See 5 below.)

If you want more of something fund it.

Money is the root of all evil it has been said. Now it is the root of climate fraud. Bret Stephens traces the money trail. (See 6 below.)

More about climate science. (See 6a below.)

John Kerry is an amazing Senator. He switches arguments at the drop of a hat and is never embarrassed by his duplicitous behaviour. (See 7 below.)

And just when you think we have too much lawyering in this nation, the likes of E Sptizer, along comes Sen. 'hapless' Spector. (See 8 and 8a below.)

Far too many of our problems are caused buy geniuses and their computer models being used to replace common sense. (See 9 below.)

I post a lot of articles that support my thinking and, sometimes post articles i both in opposition to my own views and articles with which I agree, in the interest of some balance.

I do not submit that my own thinking is always correct but it is amazing to me how bizarre some of the things I find objectionable have become commonplace.

When Navy Seals and their like are threatened by law suits from terrorists one has to conclude that Orwell's predictions in his great novel: "1984," has taken over and become standard protocol.

One of the biggest problems of all our law passing is that they result in unintended consequences which threaten our freedom and way of life. An open society carries risk and when legislation enhances the risk something is rotten in Denmark.
Dick


1)The State of the Revolution
By Mike Adams

Author’s Note: I would like to thank the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy for sponsoring my next speech, this Thursday, December 3rd. The speech will take place in the Talley Student Center Grand Ball Room at N.C. State University in Raleigh, NC. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be free and open to the public.

It’s hard to believe it has been over four years since I spoke at N.C. State. That night, back in August of 2005, I gave a speech calling for a conservative revolution on our college campuses. I suggested many things that could be done to launch such a revolution. My criticism of the UNC administration was very harsh. But my criticism of conservative apathy was harsher. So, before I return to N.C. State this week, it would make sense for me to dedicate a column giving an account of what we've been up to on the front lines of this campus revolution.

The first shot in the revolution was fired by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, North Carolina. They teamed up with the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to do an important study during the fall of 2005. The study focused on illegal speech codes in the UNC system. We all know these speech codes are used to censor conservative speech (and not The Vagina Monologues) because such speech is “offensive” and causes “discomfort.” Personally, I think the phrase “spread the wealth” is offensive. It causes me discomfort but (since I’m not a campus liberal) I won’t try to ban it.

After the Pope/FIRE study was published, I published my own veiled threat of litigation against the UNC-Wilmington speech code. A few weeks later, I called one of the lawyers working for the FIRE to let them know I would be actively seeking a plaintiff for a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning that policy.

While we were still on the phone, the FIRE attorney logged on to the UNC-Wilmington website and discovered they had already changed the speech code. In other words, the mere threat of litigation combined with the Pope/FIRE study had produced a victory. The speech code had been used to intimidate students, faculty, and staff for years. Now, we were turning the tables and intimidating the intimidators.

In January of 2006, I got a call from David French of the newly formed Center for Academic Freedom – a branch of my favorite public policy organization, the Alliance Defense Fund. David asked that I help him identify illegal speech codes and brave students willing to fight them. By the end of the year, we had worked together to bring down several speech codes through litigation or, in some cases, the mere threat of litigation.

Meanwhile, in January of 2006, the Libertarians at UNC-Greensboro were attacking a speech zone policy that banned free expression on 99% of their campus. The UNC-G Libertarians wrote an email to the administration telling them they would violate the policy the next day at noon - daring the police to arrest them for exercising their free speech rights. The university brought charges against the kids then dropped them. Then they brought more charges and dropped those, too. Finally, they gave up and removed the speech zone policy from the student handbook. But the Libertarians were not done with the UNC-G administration yet.

In early February, the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy sent me to Appalachian State University. While there, I found a plaintiff for a federal lawsuit aimed at bringing down their speech code, which was then considered the worst in the state. Before the AFD was done drafting a civil complaint, Appalachian State got rid of its speech code. There was even pressure from the local ACLU.

In mid-February, I went on to Pennsylvania State University where I met a young student who would become the plaintiff in an ADF suit against their speech code. That code would also fall – via federal court injunction - before the end of April.

Before the semester was over, the Pope Center sent me to Wake Forest University. After my speech, I was approached by the president of the UNC-G College Republicans. She held in her hand a joint resolution – co-signed by the UNC-G College Libertarians – threatening their school with litigation. The threat concerned a “non-discrimination” policy that prevented student groups from discriminating on the basis of beliefs. (For example, Christian student organization constitutions that said members must “believe in God” were considered “exclusive” and “intolerant.”).

But the UNC-G administration was forcing student organizations to sign the ridiculous policy even though a similar one had been struck down by a 2004 ADF lawsuit. I had recruited the plaintiffs for that lawsuit and was, therefore, in a position to assure the Republicans and Libertarians that they would win.

And they did win. The resolution/threat worked like a charm as the UNC-G administration abandoned its illegal policy in order to avoid another lawsuit. It was almost like winning the Cold War without firing a single shot.

And so those are some of the highlights of my first year of campus activism following my last N.C. State speech. Obviously, I have too much good news to fit in a single column thanks to a lot of really good friends – e.g., the Pope Center, the FIRE, the ADF, the Leadership Institute (LI), and the Young America’s Foundation.

So, I’ll fast forward to 2009 before this column turns into a short novel.

Last Monday, I ate my first of two Thanksgiving dinners with a faculty Christian group and about 100 international students. In the last year, members of that Christian group have helped bring Frank Turek, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Lane Craig to campus. Now, students are actually getting the opportunity to see debates between those defending traditional views of Christianity (with logic and evidence) and those who hold different views, including hardened atheists.

And the students are stepping up, too. On Wednesday, I walked into a studio to record a commercial for a new conservative radio show on our local Big Talker radio station. While I was waiting, I sat and read the new UNC-W conservative student newspaper. It was started by two of my students with the help and support of the kind folks at LI.

The new conservative paper recently accused my university of giving pay raises to dozens of employees in defiance of a state-mandated budget freeze. After they printed the accusation, they were invited on to a local radio station. During the segment, one of the chancellor’s assistants called in to essentially accuse the two students of lying.

So these students have decided to fight back by getting their own two hour night-time radio show, which will further challenge university polities, fiscal and otherwise. And they will have my full support. That’s why I went to the Big Talker studio to record the commercial.

On Thanksgiving morning, I took some students to the shooting range for our annual “Giving Thanks for the Second Amendment” field trip at the local law enforcement range. While there, I asked a former student whether he remembered the days when the university used to spend all of the Leadership Lecture Series money on liberal speakers – e.g., $12,000 on Arianna Huffington, $13,000 on Cornel West, $18,000 on Molly Ivins, $19,000 on Robert Kennedy, Jr., and so on.

My former student said he did remember those days and then acknowledged that they were long behind us. Indeed, the monopoly of liberal speakers at my university has come to an end. Today, students are beginning to hear ideas that do not have the endorsement of our remarkably un-diverse and narrow-minded administration.

I envision a day when the administration is forced to cut back on other indoctrination programs. I imagine a campus without the Women’s Center, the African American Center, and El Centro Hispano. In other words, I imagine a day when we decide that divisive identity politics have no place on a university campus.

Of course, many people say I’m just a dreamer. But, now, it is clear that I’m not the only one. I hope some day you'll join our revolution. And the whole academic world will live as one.


2)Obama: Transformational, Consequential And Catastrophic
By Bruce McQuain


I definitely lean toward defining his presidency as “catastrophic” in more than a general sense. I read a piece by Jacob Weisberg in Salon that managed to inadvertantly define the idelogocial rift between the right and left very well (not that it is any secret, but it is interesting to see it laid out so blatantly at times) and understand how catastrophic Obama could be to our existing way of life if not vigorously opposed.

In his article, Weisberg is essentially trying to explain away Obama’s lack of accomplishment in this first 10 months in office by saying that should he pass just one of his “transformational” agenda items before his first State of the Union address, he will be the most accomplished president in the last 70 years.

If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn’t an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It’s a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

Of course Weisberg’s “neutral assessment” isn’t at all neutral. His assertion that what Obama is trying to accomplish are “transformational” implies that they’re also positive. And that’s the difference between the right and the left as we consider these “things” Obama wants passed into law. The right, of course, wouldn’t consider passing Obama’s agenda to be an accomplishment at all. In fact, the right considers that agenda to be destructive, not transformational. If the right was to use the term “transformational”, it would do so describe the agenda as destructive to the traditions which made America’s great. Or, more succinctly, the right sees his agenda as an erosion of freedom and liberty and a huge step toward the collectivism of America.

But how does Weisberg – and the left – see them?

We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a “public option,” limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it’s easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government’s role since the New Deal.

Weisberg sees this huge expansion of government control as a feature, not a bug. This is a “good thing”, and he implies even more would be better. So there’s little doubt that he will consider such an “accomplishment” as wonderful and Obama as a “consequential” president in a most positive way. Meanwhile the right will also see him as a consequential president but in a catastrophic way – essentially changing forever the dynamic that has made America the exception in the world and instead turning it into another western European semi-socialist “paradise” destined for mediocrity and decline.

And guys like Jacob Weisberg will be standing on the sidelines applauding the whole way down. It is that applause, so to speak, that absolutely puzzles the right. We’ve yet to understand, given what this country has accomplished and done in its short history – its short exceptional history – why people like Weisberg want to so fundamentally change it and make it like the rest of the mediocre countries of the world. It’s simply unfathomable to most of us.

Interestingly, many of those who bought into the campaigning Obama’s promise to be “transformational” are finding his definition (and that of the liberal left) as put into practice to not at all be the transformation they were assuming when they supported him. They’re beginning to realize they were gulled. The problem, however, is now they’re stuck with him, can see the catastrophe on the horizon and can’t really do a whole heck of a lot about it. It’s like New Orleans with Katrina bearing down on it. Stuck in town without a bus ride and getting ready to see life become a whole lot worse than it is now.

Obama the political Katrina, about to lay waste to the exception that has been America and Weisberg and his ilk will tout the destruction as an “accomplishment” and be cheering it on the entire time.

That’s just wrong. It’s also why there can never be accommodation or compromise with the political left.

~McQ


3)Israel is Europe's blind spot. Many have been seduced by a false Islamic narrative. In fact, the more concessions Israel makes, the more it is attacked
By Isi Leibler

I recently met with a group of Australian journalists, including editors of some of the leading dailies. They impressed me as a fair and open-minded group. In the course of discussions, one elegantly phrased question, not intended to offend, was put to me, which I have been mulling over.

"Did I ever take into account that if virtually the entire world has concluded that Israel is the principal cause for the Middle East impasse, perhaps they are right?"

The question is particularly pertinent in relation to Europe, which has turned so dramatically against Israel. In these "enlightened", postmodernist secular societies, which shun all manifestations of nationalism, Israel is no longer considered a revival of Jewish nationhood, but as a colonial implant that many would be happy to see somehow disappearing as a national entity. And, of course, there is the "new antisemitism" in which demonisation of Israel has become the surrogate for traditional Jew hatred – just as Jews in the middle ages were blamed for all the ills of mankind, so today the Jewish state is increasingly held responsible for the principal woes facing humanity.

In this environment, the left and many liberals now focus their rage against Israel and have succeeded in hijacking human rights groups to serve as vehicles to undermine the Jewish state.

On the international arena, the automatic majority of Islamic and other radical states guarantees the passage of all anti-Israeli resolutions initiated at the UN, no matter how absurd. The so-called UN human rights council (UNHRC), which includes some of the worst tyrannies among its leading members, is just one example.

Simultaneously, the realpolitik imposed by oil-producing countries when securing energy has become the national priority for most nations, together with the growing empowerment of radical Islamic groups throughout Europe, has resulted in many countries siding against Israel, rather than confront the jihadists within their own borders.

It is in this context that Israel remains the only country in the world whose very right to exist is challenged.

It also highlights the dilemma facing Israel: the more concessions Israel has made over the last decade in order to reach an accommodation with its neighbours, the greater has been the terror unleashed against it and the more its international standing has eroded.

Yet, Israel remains the only democracy in the region; 20% of its inhabitants are Arab citizens, who enjoy equality of rights, freedom of expression and elect their representatives to the Israeli parliament. In contrast, Israel's despotic neighbours are autocracies or dictatorships, which deny freedom of religion and many other basic human rights. They also include the only countries in the world that deny Jews the right of domicile. But it is Israel that is depicted as a racist apartheid state.

Even under a rightwing government, a broad consensus in Israel supports a two-state solution and is desperate not to rule over the Palestinians. Two Israeli prime ministers offered to cede virtually all of the territories gained in wars initiated by Israel's enemies seeking to destroy it. The offers were rejected both by Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas.

The Sharon government unilaterally disengaged from Gaza and dismantled long-standing settlements. Yet the moment the settlements were evacuated, they were converted into launching pads for intensified missile attacks that culminated in the Gaza conflict.

Israel is confronted by two Palestinian entities. Hamas, ruling Gaza, unequivocally demands the total destruction of the Jewish state and unashamedly calls for the physical extermination of Jews. The other is the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, whom we are told represents a moderate partner for peace. Yet Abbas still honours suicide bombers as martyrs and provides their families with state pensions. The PA-controlled media, education system and mosques continue to promote rabid antisemitism and demand the rejection of the Jewish state.

Fully aware of these realities, most European states nevertheless apply double standards against the Jewish state. Many either applauded or stood by while the Arabs and their allies accused Israel of committing war crimes. This, despite the fact that the conflict against Hamas was only launched after thousands of missiles had been directed at Israeli civilians for years, and the submission to the UNHRC by the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, who stated that "the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any army in the history of warfare".

It is frequently alleged that Israel is responsible for the world turning against it. We are told that Israel's military superiority has created sympathy for the Arab underdog. There is no disputing Palestinian misery and suffering, but it is rarely pointed out that this is a consequence of the intransigent policies adopted by their leaders. Israel is admonished and told to negotiate with Hamas; would anyone seriously suggest that the United States negotiate with al-Qaida?

Any objective evaluation would morally validate Israel's broad efforts to achieve peace in the face of Palestinian intransigence. It would also demonstrate how the false Islamic narrative of the conflict and constant portrayal of Israel as a rogue state by the UN and other purportedly reputable international organisations controlled by Arabs and their supporters, became embedded in the public consciousness. This has been facilitated by the realpolitik, bias and cowardice of much of the "enlightened" world.

4)America vs. The Narrative
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13
innocent people at Fort Hood?


Here's my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced - I assume
anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his
support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a
public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled "Why the War on
Terror Is a War on Islam," and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a
Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against
America - the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist
spurred to action by "The Narrative."


What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in
America, The Narrative still got to him.


The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies
about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11.
Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals,
satellite news stations and books - and tacitly endorsed by some Arab
regimes - this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as
part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down.


Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely
dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny - in
Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake
Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan - a narrative that
says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.


Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist
suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you'd never
know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that
9/11 was a kind of fraud: America's unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the
real story, and the Muslims are the real victims - of U.S. perfidy.


Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11,
partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two
tyrannical regimes - the Taliban and the Baathists - and to work with
Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we
did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and
diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and
Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own
leaders.


The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that.


It's working. As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to
remain anonymous, said to me: "This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and
Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the
world. These communities are bombarded with this narrative in huge doses and
on a daily basis. [It says] the West, and right now mostly the U.S. and
Israel, is single-handedly and completely responsible for all the grievances
of the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Ironically, the vast majority of the
media outlets targeting these communities are Arab-government owned - mostly
from the Gulf."


This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto
America all of their people's grievances over why their countries are
falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn't need much organization
anymore - just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it
heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one
or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.


"Liberal Arabs like me are as angry as a terrorist and as determined to
change the status quo," said my Jordanian friend. The only difference "is
that while we choose education, knowledge and success to bring about change,
a terrorist, having bought into the narrative, has a sense of powerlessness
and helplessness, which are inculcated in us from childhood, that lead him
to believe that there is only one way, and that is violence."


What to do? Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more
than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking
honestly at themselves. But none of their leaders dare or care to open that
discussion. In his Cairo speech last June, President Obama effectively built
a connection with the Muslim mainstream. Maybe he could spark the debate by
asking that same audience this question:


"Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, 'This is not Islam.' I
believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn't. You need to tell us
what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted
in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a
million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the
Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim
suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image
of God? You need to explain that to us - and to yourselves."



5)Q&A on Afghanistan: Top Ten Questions and Answers on Obama’s Strategy in Afghanistan


President Barack Obama will announce his new Afghanistan policy tonight at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Some news organizations have reported that President Obama will send anywhere from 30,000 to 34,000 additional troops to the region. To get you prepared for tonight's announcement, The Heritage Foundation answers some of the most asked questions about President Obama's proposal.

1. If the President sends 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan, does that count as a “surge?”

Simply put, no, because the use of that term implies an Iraq-like strategy of ramping up forces to the maximum of what the generals are requesting. It has been widely reported that General McChrystal’s assessment for additional troops to achieve maximum chance of success was between 60,000 and 80,000 troops. While the President’s decision is better than no new troops at all, it falls short of that assessment. Additionally, the White House plans to add troops over time as it sees fit, and not necessarily “surge” forces for maximum affect. We hope that the President’s far riskier strategy succeeds. If it does not, we must remember the options he had available to him before this decision. He had the chance to turn this war around; if he does not, the result will be his responsibility alone.

2. Is tonight’s announcement of a strategy the result of a thoughtful, deliberative process?

The delay in making a decision is inexcusable. Given that President Obama has been in office over 10 months; was privy to extensive briefings on the Afghan situation before that; the many months General McChrystal has been on the job; and the critical situation on the ground, the delay has put the mission and American soldiers in graver jeopardy. If McChrystal originally asked for 40,000 troops, as the White House would like you to believe, it is incomprehensible to believe that it took many months to simply lower that number by 5,000.



3. Even some Republicans are starting to question whether we should be in Afghanistan at all, if we’re not prepared to win by all means necessary. Is that the alternative choice?

No, this is a false choice. We must win. This is not an “optional” war in which a pull out will be cost free. A pull out will be exceedingly dangerous to the nation, possibly leading not only to another 9/11 but also to the destabilization and the possible fall of Pakistan. We should never forget that Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

4. Isn’t any opposition to the President’s strategy simply partisan bickering, and more importantly, shouldn’t we rally around the Commander in Chief during this critical time?

We want President Obama and his strategy to succeed. There may be a natural impulse to argue to “give the President’s plan a chance.” While we respect our military and civilian leadership’s views, the ultimate test of strategy is success on the battlefield. There is absolutely no partisan element to the purely military calculation that success would be achieved with less risk if the President sent in the requested 60,000 to 80,000 new troops and fully committed to the strategy without engaging in a blueprint for defeat even if veiled as an “exit strategy.”


5. How long does the President have before his strategy can be viewed as a success or failure?

It takes months to transfer the military personnel and resources to the theatre before any measurement of success can be taken. That’s what makes the President’s delayed decision-making all the more inexcusable. In the meantime, al-Qaeda and the Tailban will likely do everything in their power to match the U.S. buildup, drive up U.S. military casualties, attack civilian aid, kill innocents in Pakistan and attack the Pakistan government and military to create the impression that the war cannot be won. In particular, they will aim their actions to inflame the “anti-war” movement in the United States. We should remember this when any increase in violence in the months ahead prompts knee-jerk calls to withdraw.

6. President Obama has been criticized for focusing on an “exit strategy” win or lose, but isn’t an open ended commitment simply nation-building? Don’t we have to leave at some point, and won’t that be announced regardless?

Telegraphing our exit to al-Qaeda will only lead to further questioning US resolve. The strategy of building capacity for Afghans to govern themselves is not open-ended or “nation-building,” which implies some fruitless undertaking, but intended to help the Afghans to build the capacity to defend themselves (and to keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda from establishing safe havens) so that we can bring U.S. troops home. This is an achievable goal; after all, it was achieved in Iraq. The ultimate purpose is to protect American lives and interests, not simply to do good for the Afghan people.

7. General McChrystal is likely to say he can achieve some necessary goals with the President’s announcement; will President Obama’s strategy give him the resources to make this reality?

It remains to be seen whether the troop request will be sufficient. We hope it will be. In the meantime, the basic concept of McChrystal’s strategy is sound. The U.S. must reduce the space in Afghanistan for the Taliban to operate; and it must also build the capacity of the Afghan government to serve and secure the safety of the people. All that requires additional boots on the ground, and the more the sooner, the better. While 35,000 troops is a start, we should remember McChrystal’s original assessment of 60,000-80,000.

8. Senior Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are saying that if we simply had captured Osama Bin Laden in 2001, this war could have been averted or successfully cut short – is this true?

Absolutely not, and the mere idea reflects a mindset that left us vulnerable to terrorism in the first place. Even if Osama Bin Laden had been captured or killed, there were thousands of al-Qaeda lieutenants willing to take his place. The U.S. has successfully killed or captured many of them in the past 8 years. Add to that a Taliban government in Afghanistan that was willing to safely harbor terrorist training camps and fund operations against the West. Even President Obama has called this a “war of necessity.”

Defeating the Taliban, destroying al-Qaeda and establishing an Afghanistan that can govern and look after its own people are in the vital interests of the United States. The alternative risks genocide in Afghanistan, a resurgent al-Qaeda, a return to pre-9/11 threat, and a destabilization of a region that could lead to war between India and Pakistan, both of whom have nuclear weapons.

9. Isn’t sending 35,000 troops to Afghanistan a continuation of the “small footprint” strategy that many criticized President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld for employing?

Yes. The same people who now support limiting our troop commitment to Afghanistan, or focusing on drone strikes were criticizing the last administration for not being forceful enough at the outset of the war, even before the war with Iraq had begun. Simply put, the small footprint strategy has been proven not to work, and does not lessen the view of terrorists that we are “occupying” their land. And it often leads to bad intelligence which makes surgical strikes not so surgical, adding to the propaganda efforts of the enemy.

10. Is cost an issue? Haven’t we spent enough on these wars, when people are losing jobs, the domestic economy is suffering and our debt is so high?

Preventing another 9-11 should be, by anyone’s definition, a top strategic objective of the United States, and thus should also be a top budgetary priority. How does one put a price on the lives lost on that tragic day? Winning the war in Afghanistan is part of the strategy of preventing a similar disaster from occurring again. It should categorically take precedence over new Cash for Clunkers programs, new stimulus bills, new global warming programs and new bailouts. Unlike these dubious programs, providing for the national defense is a constitutionally mandated function of the national government, its primary reason for being.

Yet, President Obama has spent his first year in office spending at an unprecedented rate while cutting major defense programs. With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates the annual interest to exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. An additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So in perspective, Afghanistan strategy sessions are not the meetings the OMB Director should be spending his time in.

6)Climategate: Follow the Money:Climate change researchers must believe in the reality of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.
By BRET STEPHENS

Last year, Exxon-Mobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change "consensus."

To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.00027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.

Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.
Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Supply, as we know, creates its own demand. So for every additional billion in government-funded grants (or the tens of millions supplied by foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts), universities, research institutes, advocacy groups and their various spin-offs and dependents have emerged from the woodwork to receive them.


Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own. They include not just old standbys like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but also Ozone Action, Clean Air Cool Planet, Americans for Equitable Climate Change Solutions, the Alternative Energy Resources Association, the California Climate Action Registry and so on and on. All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.

None of these outfits is per se corrupt, in the sense that the monies they get are spent on something other than their intended purposes. But they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science.

Which brings us back to the climategate scientists, the keepers of the keys to the global warming cathedral. In one of the more telling disclosures from last week, a computer programmer writes of the CRU's temperature database: "I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seems to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. . . . Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. . . . We can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"

This is not the sound of settled science, but of a cracking empirical foundation. And however many billion-dollar edifices may be built on it, sooner or later it is bound to crumble.

6a)The Climate Science Isn't Settled: Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted
By RICHARD S. LINDZEN

Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.

That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let's refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."

There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.


Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume—in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.


But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity—which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.

Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapor are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.

There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapor in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapor feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapor and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.

Mr. Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

7).John Kerry's Tora Bora Campaign: The Senator is now in favor of more troops after he was against them

President Obama unveils his new Afghanistan strategy today, and in the nick of time Senator John Kerry has arrived with a report claiming that none of this would be necessary if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops eight years ago. Yes, he really said more troops.

In a 43-page report issued yesterday by his Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry says bin Laden and deputy Ayman Zawahiri were poised for capture at the Tora Bora cave complex in late 2001. But because of the "unwillingness" of Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals "to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden," the al Qaeda leaders escaped.

This in turn "paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid—a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora."

The timing of the report's release suggests that Mr. Kerry intends this as political cover for Mr. Obama and Democrats, and some in the press corps have even taken it seriously. But coming from Mr. Kerry, of all people, this criticism is nothing short of astonishing.

In 2001, readers may recall, the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops. The New York Times made the "quagmire" point explicitly in a famous page-one analysis, and Seymour Hersh fed the cliche at The New Yorker.

On CNN with Larry King on Dec. 15, 2001, a viewer called in to say the U.S. should "smoke [bin Laden] out" of the Tora Bora caves. Mr. Kerry responded: "For the moment what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way." The Rumsfeld-General Tommy Franks troop strategy may have missed bin Laden, but it reflected domestic political doubts about an extended Afghan campaign.

Remarkably, Mr. Kerry is now repeating those same doubts about Mr. Obama's troop decision, saying that the "Afghans must do the heavy lifting" and that he supports additional troops only for "limited purposes" and wants the U.S. out within "four to five years." Adapting his legendary 2004 campaign locution, Mr. Kerry is now in favor of more troops after he was against them, but in any case not for very long.

8)Saying No to Spitzer, Four Years Later: AIG now asks the CEO it ousted for advice.

Taxpayers and AIG shareholders won a notable victory last week, when the insurer announced it will cease its legal warfare against former CEO Hank Greenberg and focus instead on business. What a long, strange, wasteful trip this has been.

In 2005, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer threatened to indict AIG if its board didn't fire Mr. Greenberg. The essence of the Spitzer charges, which the bullying prosecutor proclaimed on television but never proved in court, was that Mr. Greenberg had fraudulently created a reinsurance transaction to boost the company's loss reserves. AIG's board bowed to Mr. Spitzer's request and ousted the man who had spent decades building the firm. Thus began the destruction of a great American company.

AIG has now repudiated that decision. Last week the company agreed to drop all claims against Mr. Greenberg, pay his legal bills, return a favorite rug and photographs from his old office, and provide access to files for the production of his memoirs.

The settlement, in which Mr. Greenberg agreed to drop his counter suits, was not driven simply by the weakness of AIG's legal position. New CEO Robert Benmosche wants Mr. Greenberg, who remains a large shareholder, to help figure out how to repay the taxpayers who have provided $182.3 billion in assistance.

So after firing him in 2005, the company is now asking Mr. Greenberg for advice. This change is all the more ironic given that government pressure led to his ouster and the CEO welcoming him back was essentially hired by the federal government, which took ownership of almost 80% of AIG last year. If market concerns about the reserves in AIG's traditional insurance businesses are well founded, then the company could definitely use the help. AIG stock fell almost 15% yesterday after a negative report from analysts at Bernstein Research.

There remains one large legal distraction. Mr. Spitzer's successor as New York AG, Andrew Cuomo, is still pursuing some of the civil charges that Mr. Spitzer originally filed against Mr. Greenberg. The bulk of the case collapsed in 2006. Even if the state were to win, it likely cannot collect damages because the shareholders on whose behalf Mr. Spitzer claimed to be suing have already settled. If this litigation is about proving a point, here's one worth making: that just once the government can restrain itself from intervening in AIG to the detriment of taxpayers and shareholders.

The federal government can do its part by presenting a credible exit strategy as well. The government's serial "rescues" of AIG benefited the company's trading counterparties—including foreign banks like Societe Generale and Calyon—much more than AIG itself. The officials responsible now say that they weren't acting to protect the counterparties, abandoning the "systemic risk" claim that an AIG default on its derivatives contracts would have cratered the financial system. In any case, the panic has passed and AIG's derivatives book has shrunk. So why should the government continue to own this business?

Mr. Greenberg has argued since last year that the company's legitimate shareholders would have been better off filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. These shareholders were denied the vote to which they were entitled when the New York Federal Reserve gained control by giving AIG's directors a way to avoid the liability nightmare of bankruptcy.

The real shareholders of AIG deserve to have their company back. Taxpayers deserve relief from a $182.3 billion commitment on a company that increasingly seems small enough to fail. No less important, consumers and competitors in the insurance market deserve a free AIG.

8a)Terror by Trial Lawyer: Arlen Specter would make it easier for terrorists to sue.
By WILLIAM MCGURN

If you think it's outrageous that Navy SEALs who helped capture one of Iraq's most wanted terrorists now face court-martial on charges they roughed him up, just wait. It may get worse. Tomorrow morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on a bill introduced by Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) that would make it easier for terrorists to sue military and federal law-enforcement officials.

That's not Mr. Specter's intent, of course. It would, however, be the effect of a bill that only a trial lawyer could love: the Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009. If successful, it would undo a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave us this common sense standard: Before you can sue someone, you have to have a plausible claim they did something wrong.

Mr. Specter, a former trial lawyer, finds the plausibility standard onerous. The reason has to do with the discovery process. Rightly used, discovery allows lawyers from both sides to gain access to evidence—documents, email, depositions, etc.—that support their case. In practice it can be abused, as when lawyers use discovery to go fishing for a case they don't have. And because compliance alone can be expensive and time-consuming, many companies find it cheaper to settle.

Greg Garre, a former solicitor general for the Bush administration who will testify at tomorrow's hearing, puts it this way: "If passed and signed into law, the bill would drive a truck through the Supreme Court ruling and dramatically lower the standards for pleading lawsuits."

When Mr. Specter introduced his bill in July, he said that insisting on plausible evidence before a lawsuit can proceed will "deny many plaintiffs with meritorious claims access to the Federal courts." So he aims to reverse the standard: Unless the Court has absolute proof that a claim will not succeed, his bill would effectively waive it through. There may be another, less altruistic interest: At a time when Mr. Specter is in a tough primary fight in his new party, he needs all the generosity he can get from his supporters in the plaintiff's bar.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce naturally opposes the bill, saying it would impose a hefty "litigation tax" on American business and encourage frivolous lawsuits. But where do the terrorists come in?

The answer goes back to the original Supreme Court ruling this bill hopes to overturn. That case involved Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim who was arrested in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, designated a person of "high interest," and detained under restrictive conditions. After pleading guilty to criminal charges and serving time, he was released and sent back to Pakistan.

Once free, Mr. Iqbal filed a lawsuit against more than three dozen federal officials and corrections officers. That included everyone from the warden and the guards outside his cell to former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller. The complaint alleged that Messrs. Ashcroft and Mueller discriminated against him based on race, religion or national origin.

The Supreme Court limited itself to the charges against Messrs. Ashcroft and Mueller. The ruling came down to this: While Mr. Iqbal was free to sue those who he says abused him, he needed to show his allegations were plausible. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy defined a plausible claim as "factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."

That may not sound like much, but consider the alternative. We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to claim abuse when they are captured. If Mr. Specter's legislation succeeds, what is to prevent them from alleging all sorts of violations so they can go on discovery expeditions against, say, Gen. David Petraeus or Defense Secretary Robert Gates? And how would that affect the ability of these men to prosecute the war?

Justice Kennedy made this point when he wrote about the "heavy costs" imposed on government officials trying to do their jobs. These costs, he noted, "are only magnified when Government officials are charged with responding to, as Judge [Jose] Cabranes aptly put it, 'a national and international security emergency unprecedented in the history of the American Republic.'"

As bad as this bill is, it's an opportunity for Barack Obama. When he speaks at West Point this evening, he will ask for support for his new strategy for Afghanistan. With many Americans still reeling from the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal criminal court, coming out strongly against the Specter bill would burnish the president's war-fighting credentials—and limit al Qaeda's ability to manipulate the courts.

It wouldn't hurt that in so doing, the president would also be showing himself willing to stand up to a key Democratic constituency. Let's hope he recognizes this bill for the gift it is.

9)Systemic Risk and Fannie Mae: The education of Joe Stiglitz and Peter Orszag

As Congress lumbers toward creating a systemic-risk regulator, it's worth a look back—to 2002, when an economist named Stiglitz and a duo named Orszag wrote a paper with the droll title, "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard".

We won't keep you in suspense. The paper, written the year after Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for economics, concludes that "on the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero." Their analysis has recently been making the rounds on the Web to a chorus of chortles.

But the real lesson of the paper is not that Mr. Stiglitz, or Peter Orszag, the current White House budget director, and his brother Jonathan are dupes or rubes. The paper is notable because it represents the almost universally held view of the two government-sponsored mortgage giants at the time and for years afterward.

These pages began writing about the systemic risk posed by Fannie and Freddie at around the same time, but until the very end we were in the distinct minority. Fan and Fred's own regulator assured the world that they were well-capitalized almost until they were put into conservatorship in September 2008.

The Stiglitz-Orszag paper's method was to put the companies through "millions of potential future scenarios," and then to judge the likelihood of default. The assumptions in the test were said to be "severe." Even so, the probability of a default was found to be "so small that it is difficult to detect." Some $111 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts later, with perhaps hundreds of billions to go, the risks have been detected.

To be fair, the Orszags and Mr. Stiglitz acknowledged that "the extremely rare events located in the tail of a distribution are often quite difficult to analyze accurately." Even so, they noted that White House budget gnomes had tested Fan and Fred's capital against "the financial and economic conditions of the Great Depression." The result: "[G]iven 1990 levels of capital, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had sufficient capital to survive."

In reality, it took barely a year of financial distress for Fan and Fred to burn through their capital and wind up in taxpayer laps. Professor Stiglitz says of his paper today, "I'd like to think that if we'd done the same stress test in 2007 . . . we would have said, 'You ought to be worried.'" Taxpayers would like to think so too.

The crucial point is that assessing systemic risk is difficult to impossible—and the likelihood of coming to a reliable consensus about it is even lower. Both Orszags and Mr. Stiglitz were officials in the Clinton Administration and saw the debates about Fan and Fred that the Clinton Treasury began in the late 1990s, only to get clobbered by the companies' lobbying machine. Yet the three amigos still saw fit to put their names to a paper dismissing any risk of failure.

Why should anyone think that regulators—or economists—will predict the next systemic debacle any better? We only know better about the past. When the next problem erupts, as in 2002, smart people will be on both sides of the argument. And when large, systemically important companies are threatened with curbs on their business, they will pay Nobel laureates to write studies that explain away the dangers, and hire lobbyists to block any reform. A future Treasury secretary may also dismiss critics of a future Fannie Mae, or Goldman Sachs, as "ideologues," as Hank Paulson did in 2007-2008.

The very existence of a systemic risk regulator, or council of regulators, will assist the largest and riskiest firms by creating an illusion of stability in a world made less stable by the implicit guarantee that this regulator would convey. It would be an accident waiting to happen, and one made inevitable by the institution created to prevent it.

Look no further than the eminent Mr. Stiglitz or the brilliant Orszag brothers for how hard it is to detect systemic risk, much less to do anything about it.