Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Rick Santorum.

Here is a scene from today’s stage of Paris-Nice.

Americans are finally getting serious about enforcing the immigration laws, and the editorial board of the New York Times hates it. I love it! If you’re in this country illegally, you’d better skedaddle on home, because when we find you—and we will find you—we’re going to deport you.

The following blurb appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Is a ‘Dump Hillary’ Movement Starting to Crystallize?

Hillary Clinton doesn’t easily apologize. But she did last night, telling a group of more than 200 black newspaper editors that she was sorry about comments made by her supporters that have upset African-Americans.

“I am sorry if anyone was offended,” she said of remarks by her husband comparing Barack Obama’s victory in the South Carolina primary to that of Jesse Jackson in the 1980s. “We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama.”

She went on to “repudiate” remarks that Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and 1984 Democratic vice-presidential running-mate, made suggesting Mr. Obama would not have been so successful if he were white. Mrs. Clinton pointed out that Mrs. Ferraro had resigned her post with the Clinton finance committee.

Mrs. Clinton made her retreat on the same night that one of her most stalwart liberal supporters turned on her. In a blistering “special comment” tacked on to his MSNBC show, host Keith Olbermann accused Mrs. Clinton of “now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat, and you were the Republican.” Mr. Olbermann didn’t mince words—he accused Clinton advisers of sending “Senator Clinton’s campaign back into the vocabulary of David Duke.” He tagged Team Clinton with “slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president” with its divisive campaign tactics.

While Ms. Ferraro’s words were certainly inartful, no one in their right mind believes they should be compared with the rhetoric of David Duke. The fact that former Clinton allies such as Mr. Olbermann are becoming so apoplectic is a sure sign that Mrs. Clinton is wearing out her welcome on the primary stage in many quarters.

—John Fund

Is it preposterous to think that Hillary Clinton is trying to undermine Barack Obama’s candidacy? She may sense that she is defeated and want to see John McCain elected. Why? Because if McCain is elected, she can run for president again in four years. Obama will have lost, so he may choose not to run; and if he does run, he’ll be running as a loser.

To the Editor:

Re “The Myth of the Victimless Crime,” by Melissa Farley and Victor Malarek (Op-Ed, March 12):

In the various political roundtables this week, everyone seemed to agree, at least, on the “victimless crime” argument. I am shocked that the thoughtful, intelligent people (mostly men) on these shows are so comfortable with the idea that a woman would choose to have sex for money.

Do these people know any women? Can they really believe that this is a choice?

We have programs in place to reach out to people who “choose” to use drugs or “choose” to live on the streets, so why do we view prostitution, high-priced though it may be, as just another comfortable, middle-class career choice?

Yes, Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute probably drank fine wine. That doesn’t change the fact that she engaged in a psychologically damaging transaction every day.

I applaud Melissa Farley and Victor Malarek for calling our attention to the one neglected and yet terribly important issue of the Spitzer scandal.

Kathleen Reeves
New York, March 12, 2008

Note from KBJ: What would it take for the letter writer to believe that some women voluntarily “choose to have sex for money”? If she says “Nothing,” then she is merely dogmatic.

Here.

In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed some time in the house of M. Say, the eminent political economist, who was a friend and correspondent of my father, having become acquainted with him on a visit to England a year or two after the peace. He was a man of the later period of the French Revolution, a fine specimen of the best kind of French Republican, one of those who had never bent the knee to Bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened man. He lived a quiet and studious life, made happy by warm affections, public and private. He was acquainted with many of the chiefs of the Liberal party, and I saw various noteworthy persons while staying at his house; among whom I have pleasure in the recollection of having once seen Saint-Simon, not yet the founder either of a philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a clever original. The chief fruit which I carried away from the society I saw, was a strong and permanent interest in Continental Liberalism, of which I ever afterwards kept myself au courant, as much as of English politics: a thing not at all usual in those days with Englishmen, and which had a very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free from the error always prevalent in England, and from which even my father with all his superiority to prejudice was not exempt, of judging universal questions by a merely English standard. After passing a few weeks at Caen with an old friend of my father’s, I returned to England in July 1821; and my education resumed its ordinary course.

Note from KBJ: Ah yes, “a quiet and studious life.” Ain’t none better.

If this isn’t the best album ever made, then Bill Clinton was a great president.

Here is Mylan Engel’s latest post.