As a result of the global economic downturn, foreign aid has begun to dry up . . . from Venezuela:

Venezuela’s national oil company is suspending a program that provides discounted heating oil to poor communities in the United States, as officials here struggle to find ways of preserving hard currency reserves amid a plunge in oil revenues.

The move, announced on Monday, halts one of President Hugo Chávez’s most ambitious foreign aid projects — and one that allowed him to poke at the Bush administration, which had proposed a cut in funds for heating assistance to the poor.

It looks like this whole international socialism thing might be harder than Chávez expected. And come to think of it, couldn’t North Koreans use that heating oil more than any Americans?

Cutting off its foreign aid to America is not the only international economic change Venezuela has made:

The suspension of the heating oil program follows a decision to tighten currency controls in an attempt to stanch the flow of dollars leaving the country. On New Year’s Eve, officials cut in half the amount that Venezuelans can spend abroad on their credit cards, to $2,500 a year.

Curious as to whether Chávez also put limits on traveler’s checks and other loopholes, I discovered this Bloomberg.com new story:

Along with cutting the travel purchase allowance, Cadivi [the Venezuelan Foreign Exchange Administration Commission] also reduced to $250 a month, from $500, the amount of cash at the fixed exchange rate that Venezuelans can withdraw from foreign banks. The agency cut the amount of travelers checks Venezuelans can buy to 400 euros or $500, from 500 euros or $600.

The new rules also require that travelers have a plane, ship or bus ticket abroad, eliminating the option for them to get currency for trips by car.

Starting tomorrow, new cardholders can’t get Cadivi dollars until they’ve had their cards for six months, the rules say.

The amount of dollars Venezuelans can use for internet purchases remained at $400 after an 87 percent cut last year from $3,000.

One expects that Venezuelan travelers will increasingly accoutre themselves with hidden wads of cash and jewels.

How embarrassing and depressing is “Proof,” the New York Times’ new blog devoted to drinking? Nearly all of its posts have taken a killjoy approach to alcohol. Focusing on katzenjammers and addiction, the writers sound like a bunch of Puritans—except without even their virtues.  Whatever happened to continence, the ability to enjoy drink temperately, or at least without complaint? The Times’ blog might as well be called “Mondo Whine-o.”

Still worse, the writing itself is atrocious. It includes such ungrammatical stream-of-consciousness droppings as:

We’d just attended the New York City premier of our pal’s movie, “The Alphabet Killer” in lower Manhattan and hopped my girlfriend’s car to meet at a Mexican restaurant near my old Soho digs for grub and nostalgia. A perfect gang of geeks and nerds cum zeitgeist progenitors of N.Y.C. pop culture . . . .

Hunter S. Thompson the author is not.

But that’s nothing compared to the blog’s most recent post, courtesy of Iain Gately:

A few years ago, I was bringing a racing boat back to England after Antigua Sailing week and we made a pit stop in Horta, in the Azores Islands, after 12 dry days at sea. There was a gale building behind, a full moon overhead, the deck and rigging were streaked with phosphorescence, and I turned off the instrument lights and drove by feel, with dolphins as outriders making luminous trails through the swells. You can smell land long before you see it. It smells like newly-mown hay, makes you think of all the things you’ve missed at sea — high on that list, for me, was sex and hooch — and Horta has one of the best bars in the world, Peter’s Cafe Sport.

Reading that purple prose makes me feel like I just chugged six purple Jesuses—while seasick.

As an antidote to that acidulous taste, here is some sound and elegant advice on drink from G. K. Chesterton:

The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other sound rules—a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

Actor Jeremy Piven has suddenly pulled out of the cast of the hit Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Speed the Plow. He explained that he had an extremely high level of mercury in his blood—perhaps from eating too much sushi. How did the tough-guy playwright respond to this fishy excuse? Mamet told Daily Variety, “my understanding is that [Piven] is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

In a disturbing and apparently unprecedented move, the federal government has claimed that simply being Jewish adds to the flight risk of a defendant facing criminal charges. The prosecutors made the claim—that every American Jew has “de facto dual citizenship”—in their case against Rabbi Sholom Rubashkin, the former head of Agriprocessors, Inc., who has been charged with bank fraud concerning the Iowa kosher slaughterhouse. The Jewish Week reported the news last week, but, deplorably, it has received little attention so far.  According to the newspaper:

a federal prosecutor has argued that Israel’s Law of Return makes American Jews a flight risk and therefore ineligible for bail. . . .

And the federal judge in the case, Magistrate Jon Stuart Scoles, cited the Law of Return in his Nov. 20 decision denying Rubashkin bail.

“Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew and members of his family who have expressed their desire to settle in Israel will be granted citizenship,” the judge wrote, adding that the government had claimed that at least one other Agriprocessors’ defendant had already fled to Israel.

I’ve since read the judge’s decision, and it turns out that that the other defendant who allegedly fled to Israel is a Muslim who already held Israeli citizenship. Analogous? I think not.

In their recently filed appeal, Rubashkin’s lawyers made the point that, even in the unlikely event that the defendant were to flee to Israel, Israel has a long-standing extradition treaty with the U.S. that would require Rubashkin to be extradited back to the U.S. Yet the judge did not even mention that treaty in his detention decision. The defense lawyers also noted that “to accelerate the extradition procedure, some courts have required as a condition of bail that defendants with strong ties to Israel (including citizenship) execute irrevocable waivers of extradition. . . . Sholom Rubashkin would execute such a waiver in this case.”

They further argued that by invoking the Law of Return, the government violated Rubashkin’s right to equal protection since Jews, as members of either a race or religion, are a “protected class” under the relevant constitutional and statutory law. And to treat Jews differently than non-Jews in determining the risk of flight clearly fails to pass the test of strict scrutiny.

Rubashkin’s appeal also highlighted the reductio ad absurdum in the government’s claim:

In the prosecutors’ view, anyone subject to the Law of Return is an increased flight risk. Consequently, under that view, “every Jew” is to be viewed for bail purposes as a greater risk of flight than a non-Jew. That means that 5,300,000 Americans would be viewed as heightened bail risks simply because they are Jews. . . . It would also extend to the ultimate superior of the prosecutors pressing the Law-of Return argument, i.e., the current Attorney General of the United States Michael B. Mukasey; the ultimate superior of the Homeland Security agents who have investigated this case, i.e., Secretary Michael Chertoff; and two sitting Justices of the Supreme Court, Justices Steven Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is ironic that a law designed to provide refuge to persecuted Jews has now become the basis for detaining a Jew who might otherwise have been released pending trial.

Thankfully, it’s hard to imagine that the court’s reliance on the Law of Return will stand up on appeal.

Although I’m not in a position to judge, many believe that Morton Feldman was one of great American composers of the 20th century.  At the very least, the seemingly ordinary guy from Queens, who worked in the schmatte business until the age of 44, was a great talker. While Alex Ross has previously written in The New Yorker about Feldman’s gift with language, the music critic recently posted an audio excerpt from an interview of the composer, which originally aired on the radio in 1989.  Listen how Feldman’s Woody Allen-esque voice floats over the haunting music from his Rothko Chapel. If, however, your computer has no audio output, here’s a partial transcript, though really it deserves a phonetic transcription:

Remember that I’m a New Yorker and a New Yorker doesn’t think about Yiddishkeit [Jewishness]. You think about Yiddishkeit if you live with only 5,000 other Jews in Frankfurt. . . .  I don’t think of myself as Jewish in New York, but I do in a sense mourn something that has to do with, say, Schubert leaving me. Also, I really don’t feel that it’s all necessary anymore. . . .

The only thing that applies to me, as you talk about Yiddishkeit, is the fact that, because I’m Jewish, I do not identify with, say, Western Civilization music. In other words, when Bach gives us a diminished fourth—you see, I cannot respond—when a diminished fourth means “O God,” you see, I cannot respond to that diminished fourth as a symbol. . . .

But what my music is mourning, I just don’t know what to to say. . . . I must you say you did bring up something that I particularly don’t want to talk about publicly, but I do talk about privately. To some degree, I do believe with George Steiner that after Hitler, perhaps there should no longer be art. . . . because those values proved to me nothing. They have no longer any moral basis. And what are our morals in music? The morals of music are 19th-century German music, isn’t it? I do think about that.

And I do think about that fact that I want to be the first great composer that is Jewish.

Tomorrow night British television will air footage of a man committing suicide:

The chilling scenes show Craig Ewert, 59, who had motor neurone disease, setting a timer to switch off his ventilator before drinking lethal sedatives. . . .

Mr Ewert’s assisted suicide at the Swiss Dignitas clinic, was filmed for a documentary called Right To Die – The Suicide Tourist, to be shown on Sky Real Lives channel on Wednesday night.

It will be the first time an assisted suicide has been shown on British TV . . . .

Remember what the formidable moralist and sociologist Philip Rieff said in 1968: “A culture in which everything can be said and shown will produce, as night follows day, a society in which everything, no matter how terrible, can be done.”

According to the New York Post:

DISGRACED former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has a new gig: columnist for Slate.com, opining every other week about government regulation and finance – not sex. Yawn. “He’s going to be doing a regular thing,” Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg tells the Observer. “He was very receptive . . . I don’t portray this as something we had to coax him into. He’s got a lot to say and he was very receptive to writing on the subject.” It’s not as if he’s had a lot of other offers.

The former governor’s maiden column can be found here. I, for one, would much rather read an advice column from him, a man of hard-earned and hard-spent experience.  In fact, Slate’s original advice columnist, “Prudence,” was in reality Herbert Stein, the mega-brain who served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford (and who also could brag about fathering Ben Stein). If Herbert Stein could claim to offer advice on “morals, manners, and macroeconomic policy,” why can’t Spitzer?

Obviously, the former governor’s pen name would have to be something other than “Prudie.” Perhaps “Johnny C. Lately” might work.

Abe has discussed the difficulties Obama must face in choosing a Muslim capital for a possible foreign policy speech, but I wonder about the general efficacy of an address delivered to an audience that does not speak the same language as the orator. No matter how good a speech Obama might deliver, real-time translators simply cannot reproduce the nuance and style of his rhetoric. This is a shame since oratorical skill is one of the most essential tools of the statesman.

In fact, while President Reagan’s “evil empire” speech was strongly criticized as needlessly inflammatory by many in the English-speaking world, the phrase itself caused little stir in the Soviet Union, since the Russian translation lacked the potent alliteration. Likewise, the most celebrated part of President Kennedy’s 1963 speech in West Berlin occurred when he switched to German: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” It’s also worth remembering that just before uttering that immortal phrase JFK also quoted Latin, which would have been widely understood by educated Westerners around the world: “Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen].”

Were Obama to deliver his speech in Jakarta, might it be the perfect opportunity for him to demonstrate the language skills he allegedly picked up while living for four years as a child in Indonesia? After all, according to Time magazine, the Indonesian ambassador to the U.S. had this to say about Obama: “Back home people think of [Obama] as one of us, or at least one who understands us,’ he says, adding that they are delighted to find that Obama speaks passable Bahasa, the language spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia.” In contrast, Obama himself has claimed, “I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!” But recall that John Kerry also pretended not to be fluent in French while running for President. For American politicians, a lot of learning is a dangerous thing. As Adlai Stevenson lamented during a 1954 speech at Harvard, “Via ovicipitum dura est, or, for the benefit of the engineers among you: The way of the egghead is hard.”

Whether Obama can or wants publicly to speak Indonesian, his administration—and all future ones, for that matter—might consider having government “tribunes” (the higher ranking, the better) publicly deliver rhetorically accurate translations of the President’s most important speeches, with a focus on politically important languages, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu. At the very least, the administration should provide an eloquent pre-recorded voice-over for broadcast.

In Oslo today, some 100 countries began signing a treaty against cluster bombs. The Convention on Cluster Munitions bans all production, transfer, stockpiling, and use of cluster munitions, which operate by spreading numerous anti-personnel bomblets across an area. The argument for the ban is that the munitions cause too much collateral damage, since many bomblets do not detonate immediately, and thus pose a long-term threat to civilians who enter what was once a battlefield.

While it is undoubtedly true that that problem is a real one, signatories of the treaty fail to take into account the fact that cluster bombs are still the best weapon against enemy forces in trenches—the bomblets can bounce into them. And in fact, the munitions were used to great effect by the U.S. in Iraq against dug-in Republican Guard troops, as well as by Israel against entrenched Hezbollah soldiers in the 2006 Lebanon war. In the latter instance, Israel was severely attacked by international opinion since its military targets were supposedly too close to civilian areas, but when it comes to the treaty, the fundamental question is not whether cluster bombs were used ethically in any particular instance, but rather whether they can be used ethically at all. In an ideal world, all cluster bomblets would defuse quickly, and thus pose less of a humanitarian threat, but until that technology is available, it seems reasonable for countries to be permitted to use them responsibly. This is why the U.S.—along with China, Russia, India, Israel, Pakistan, and Brazil—oppose a total ban. Unlike most of these countries, few of the 100 countries signing the treaty anticipate having to fight trench warfare anytime soon.

A similar logic undercuts the Ottawa Treaty, much loved by Western Europeans, which completely bans all anti-personnel landmines. Does anyone think that South Korea would be safer were it not protected from its northern neighbor by a belt of one million landmines?

From a Politico interview of Bill Clinton:

Q: How involved do you think you will get in the decisions that your wife will have to make as far as foreign policy?

BILL CLINTON: Very little. I think my involvement will be what our involvement with each other’s work has always been, which is [sic] all the years that I was governor and president, I talked to her about everything.

So for the former president, “very little” means “all the time.”

Less than two weeks ago, I came across this AP report about Libya’s latest overtures to the U.S., which offers grounds for cautious optimism:

Libya would like to open a new chapter in relations with the United States by tapping into a major government fund to invest in American corporations and by sending thousands of students to study in the United States, a son of Libya’s leader said Friday.

In an interview, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, also outlined plans for Libya to move from the one-man rule of his father to a constitutional democracy as part of the country’s modernization process. . . .

Seif Qaddafi, who was a central figure in normalizing Libya’s relations with the United States, is on a private visit to the United States. But his trip included meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, other administration officials and many members of Congress.

But I just noticed that the New York Post ran this piece of gossip a few days after that story:

IF only folks could get along as well in the Mideast as they do in Greenwich Village, where a party was thrown Saturday night for Seif al-Islam Khadafy, son of Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy. The host was Nat Rothschild — son of British Lord Rothschild, a major donor to Jewish causes and Israel — at Nat’s townhouse on St. Luke’s Place.

Seif Qaddafi really is making the rounds.  Nat Rothschild seems to affiliate more with upper-crust playboys than Jews (he was, after all, a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club at Oxford), but that he can party-hard with the dictator’s son is an additional sign that Libya truly intends to modernize, for better or worse.

Slate’s William Saletan provocatively comments on a recent report that parents are having their young children genetically tested to determine their innate athletic ability, so as to know what sports to steer them toward:

Eugenics was crude and brutal. It regulated survival and procreation. If the government decided you were unfit to breed, it could sterilize or kill you. The notion was that some families were better than others—and that these hereditary differences, not subsequent environmental factors, determined a child’s prospects.

The new mentality assumes the opposite: Good heredity isn’t enough. Without proper nurture, nature’s gifts will be wasted. We have to find the kids with the best genes and focus our resources on developing their talents. This isn’t regulation of heredity. It’s regulation of environments. I’d call it environmental eugenics, or envireugenics.

First of all, “environmental eugenics,” not to mention the ugly Greco-Latin hodgepodge “envireugenics,” is a misnomer, since eugenics (from the Greek for “well born”) involves selection for genes, not just selection of genes. The phenomenon Saletan is calling attention to is a form of “human husbandry” without selective breeding. Thus, a better term for the practice might be “genetic eupaideia” (from the Greek paideia, meaning “child-rearing”). Of course, the practice could in fact lead to selective breeding, whether or not as part of a government policy. Although Saletan doesn’t mention it, some have speculated that Chinese basketball star Yao Ming was the product of a eugenics experiment.

In any case, is this really a new mentality, as Saletan claims? Arguably, all societies have long been practicing genetic eupaideia—at least at the group level—without the need for genetic testing: perceiving innate average differences in ability between the sexes, they have simply encouraged males and females to go into different pursuits, and have provided different nurturing environments as a result. And, in some cases, they could do so with certainty approaching that of genetic testing. For example, if a tribe or nation had wanted to find and develop its best warrior talent for single combat, it would have been a waste of time for it to search among its female children.

Nonetheless, genetic eupaideia has so far tended to be far more probabilistic: males and females have long been seen as having different comparative advantages on average—that is, even if a woman can do everything a man can, in some cases a woman cannot do it as efficiently (whether in terms of physical, cognitive, or emotional energy). Think of the job of shoveling coal, for instance. Of course, the reverse is true as well: women can on average do all sorts of tasks more efficiently than men, such as reading emotions via facial expressions. The point is that, historically, taking biological sex into account has been used to reduce “search costs” for finding talent, at the expense of some talent never being discovered.

The looming challenge we face is a world in which genetic testing increasingly reduces such search costs enormously.

Rush Limbaugh, of all people, has praised Obama’s nominating Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. According to CNN:

[Limbaugh] said the move was a political master stroke, effectively ruling out a primary challenge in four years. “You know the old phrase, ‘You keep your friends close and your enemies closer?’ How can she run for president in 2012?” he asks. “She’d have to run against the incumbent and be critical of him — the one who made her Secretary of State.”

Well, there are all sorts of ways Hillary could have a serious chance at becoming president in 2012. There is no necessary reason Hillary would have to go down with the ship if Obama turns out to be a captain Ahab or merely a skipper asleep at the helm. Obama might be a disaster in domestic policy (by, for instance, plunging America into a depression comparable to that of the 1930’s) but a success in foreign policy, which would allow Hillary to get untainted glory. More prosaically, Obama could get caught up in a huge scandal in office. While the probabilities of these scenarios are low, Hillary, keeping her eye on the immense prize of the presidency, might still be holding out hope that her time will come. Thus my concern that her continuing political ambitions will cloud her judgment as Secretary of State. I hope I’m wrong, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if a Congressman would ask her during her confirmation hearings, “Do you ever intend to run for political office again?”

To be clear, I am not saying that Hillary is guaranteed to make a poor Secretary of State. Rather, my point is that Obama has taken an unwise, unnecessary risk in choosing her. A man who plays Russian roulette is a fool even if he wins.

The New York Times today ran a heart-wrenching photo of human pain in Mumbai.

Taken at a memorial service for Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, the Lubavitch emissaries who were murdered by Islamic terrorists, the photograph shows their orphaned son Moshe being comforted by a (presumably non-Jewish) Indian.  I cannot but see a cherubic child crying out to the heavens, a “globe” in his hand.

As delectable a mash-up as a black-and-white cookie, gangster rapper and sometime porn director Snoop Dogg recently appeared on Martha Stewart’s TV show to whip some potatoes. While the pairing might seem bizarre—Snoop’s lyrics couldn’t be quoted in a family publication, even a Manson one—the rapper has actually spent less time behind bars than the genteel host. They even discuss some hip-hop patois, which Stewart might have picked up in the joint.

Toward the end of the segment, we discover that Snoop’s real purpose on the show is to plug his new cognac, which he adds to the potatoes. It turns out that the liquor he is promoting comes in a bottle shaped like a curvy woman, and even wears a dress and a hat. (Please, will some East Coast rapper start a feud by rhyming that “cognac” with “syrup of ipecac“?)

But the politically minded will be most interested to hear Snoop say that he hopes to perform at Obama’s inauguration, so long as the president-elect will let him. Fat chance, given that Obama would surely choose a hip-hop star from his adopted home turf, Chicago, over one from California. And, in fact, back in 2006 Obama met privately with the Cook County-raised rapper Ludacris, which seems to have worked wonders. In Ludacris’s controversial recent song “Politics (Obama Is Here),” he actually dares to criticize Jesse Jackson: “Now Jesse talkin’ slick and apologizin’ for what? / If you said it then you meant it.” If that doesn’t add to the rapper’s street cred, I don’t know what will.

You just knew this was going to happen: “Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup.”

The end times are upon us. First, there was Sinbad the Sailor versus the Pirates of the Arabian. Now, the Telegraph is reporting that a convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist was among a number of British prisoners given lessons in stand-up comedy:

Zia Ul Haq, who was involved in the ‘Gas Limos Project’ to bomb London, was reportedly enrolled on an eight-day comedy workshop at HMP Whitemoor.

He was among 18 prisoners, including murderers, who were given lessons in stand-up, comic drama, improvisation and scriptwriting.

Having completed the £8,000 course they were to have received a certificate and staged a performance for fellow inmates and guards at the Category A prison in Cambridgeshire.

Given that Islamic terrorists are not exactly famous for their sense of humor, the instructor (unnamed, alas) surely deserved the money.

I’m delighted to report that an inside source gave me a copy of his prize student’s routine. His shtick included such one-liners as

I cheated on my wife. Now she calls me an infidel!

And among his setups was

It’s the night before their big martyrdom operation, so Ahmed and Abdul walk into a bar…

And, my personal favorite, punchlines like

…and so Allah says, “Congratulations, here are your 72 white raisins.”

Note that the instructor clearly failed in his task, given that the best comedy relies on surprise. A truly funny Islamic terrorist comic would have replaced “congratulations” with “mazel tov.”

Abe, in defense of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, perhaps that Che-looking statue is actually an homage to Woody Allen’s commanding performance in Bananas, important scenes of which take place in Manhattan (just as a bronze Rocky Balboa now stands near the steps the character triumphantly climbed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art).

Then again, maybe the Central Park statue was installed to please musical-theater aficionados, who cannot forget Mandy Patinkin’s star-making turn as Che in Evita.

Why is it that nice Jewish boys so often play Latino Marxist revolutionaries? Admittedly, Fidel Castro himself has speculated that his mother was of Jewish-Turkish descent. Oy vey.

Forget politics: what’s truly amazing about the “Che” statue, in this day and age, is that it glorifies smoking.

You know that the problem of sea piracy has blown completely out of control when even your mortal enemies are helping you out. According to this report from Somalia, pirates are now being fought by Islamist insurgents who are acting like vigilante privateers.

Dozens of Somali Islamist insurgents stormed a port on Friday hunting the pirates behind the seizure of a Saudi supertanker that was the world’s biggest hijack, a local elder said. . . .

The Sirius Star — a Saudi vessel with a $100 million oil cargo and 25-man crew from the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Croatia, Poland and Britain — is believed anchored offshore near Haradheere, about half-way up Somalia’s long coastline.

“Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country and hijacking its ship is a bigger crime than other ships,” Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow, an Islamist spokesman, told Reuters. “Haradheere is under our control and we shall do something about that ship.”

Maybe the world’s shipping companies should start registering their vessels with Saudi Arabia, or another Muslim state.

The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that obese airline passengers have a right to two seats for the price of one:

The high court declined to hear an appeal by Canadian airlines of a decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are “functionally disabled by obesity” deserve to have two seats for one fare.

Putting aside the important question of whether obesity should be a legal disability, it is ironic that this decision comes down at the same time that airlines are instituting stricter weight limits on baggage, with fees for excess weight. Maybe the ideal solution for clotheshorse travelers in Canada is to wear all of their apparel onto the plane, thereby saving them the excess fee, and at the same time getting then an extra free seat thanks to their apparent resemblance to the Michelin Man.

With piracy on the seas increasingly becoming a major problem for international trade, one that is particularly difficult to deal with because of highly restrictive rules of engagement of the world’s most powerful navies (as Gordon discussed), perhaps it is time to dust off a solution that was effective the last time piracy was a serious issue. I speak of the letter of marque and reprisal, which Wikipedia helpfully defines as

an official warrant or commission from a government authorizing the designated agent to search, seize, or destroy specified assets or personnel belonging to a foreign party which has committed some offense under the laws of nations against the assets or citizens of the issuing nation, and has usually been used to authorize private parties to raid and capture merchant shipping of an enemy nation.

Such warrants were particularly important for fighting piracy in the early days of the American colonies and Republic, and the right of Congress to grant them is enshrined in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The last time America extensively used letters of marque (against foreign enemies of war, not pirates) was in the War of 1812. Significantly, however, the U.S. was not a party to the 1856 Declaration of Paris, the treaty that abolished privateering for many countries, including Britain and France. And in an odd piece of trivia, the U.S. did in fact issue a letter of marque to Resolute, a privately-run airship that assisted with anti-submarine warfare during World War II.

Who could Congress set up as privateers today? Mercenary corporations such as Blackwater, despite the serious concerns about them, are one obvious choice. Blackwater, in fact, is already protecting merchant ships through its recently created subsidiary, Blackwater Maritime Security Solutions, which has the ability to deploy attack helicopters from its ships. (Admittedly, the company has a sinister-sounding name, reminiscent of the cover corporation James Bond worked for in Ian Fleming’s novels: Universal Exports, Ltd.)

Letters of marque would allow proactive measures against pirates, unlike than the current law, which merely permits merchant shippers to act defensively. Of course, there is the crucial question of whether non-state actors, even of the mercenary variety, would accept the legal risks that attend to capturing or attacking, on the high seas or in territorial waters, the citizens of other countries—even though pirates are “enemies of humanity” under international law. While privateers could not be prosecuted under the law of the country that commissioned them, other countries might attempt to seize them and/or their vessels as well as attempt extradition. (This was a problem even in the heyday of privateering.) And of course there are inherent risks to innocents whenever we allow preventive or retributive force to be used without prior adjudication.

I’m far from an expert in admiralty or international law, but I hope that the option of bringing back privateering is at least considered by individual states and, for still stronger reasons, the international community.

This Sunday, Comedy Central will be airing Stephen Colbert’s “A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All,” which should be as heart-warming as a hot toddy spiked with mescaline. From previews, the hour-long show looks to be following more in the tradition of Bing Crosby than the 1978 “Star Wars Holiday Special,” which was scarier than the Sarlacc.

But that is not to say that “A Colbert Christmas” is not hilariously off-kilter (eagle eyes will notice that Colbert wears a woman’s cardigan, making him into a sort of Mr. Rogers in drag). The special includes a country-western defense of Christmas against “atheists and judges who are trying to take it away” as well as a seductive R&B ballad dedicated to nutmeg (I hope it alludes to Malcolm X’s getting high on the spice in prison). All of the original songs were composed by Adam Schlesinger, which might end up adding to the long list of Christmas favorites scored by Jews. It will be interesting to see how Colbert, a practicing Catholic and former Sunday-school teacher, affectionately makes fun of Christmas—he said that he specifically wanted to avoid mocking the holiday. Will he put the χ back in Xmas?

Despite the incessant satire of The Colbert Report, the show has in fact taken religion seriously. Its guests have included the likes of Reverend Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, and William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League. And the regular segment “This Week in God” can be interpreted as mocking not religious belief but the news media’s treatment of religion as just another phenomenon to be reported, the equal to sports scores and the latest presidential press conference. If memory serves, it was the great Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton who said he’d rather be an eternalist than a journalist. (The latter derives from the word for “daily,” as in ephemeral.) And I imagine that the bibulous Chesterton would have liked “A Colbert Christmas,” especially since it appears to advocate good spirits of every kind.

From Page Six:

IF there was any question as to whether Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” portrays the Marxist revolutionary as a hero, the four-hour movie will be shown next month in Cuba at Havana’s New Latin American Film Festival. Event president Alfredo Guevara said in July that “Che” would not be shown if it included any “attacks” on Fidel Castro, who was Che’s comrade in arms. But the film, starring Benicio Del Toro as the T-shirt icon, evidently passed muster with the dictator’s regime. The stars and filmmakers will have to get US permission to attend the screenings, unless they sneak in like most tourists.

Did anyone expect Soderbergh’s movie to offend Castro? Far too many in the movie business have already cozied up to El Comandante. Oliver Stone made a fawning documentary about him, with the director explaining that “I admire him because he’s a fighter. He stood alone and in a sense he’s Don Quixote.” Likewise, at Gerard Depardieu’s chic Parisian restaurant L’Ecaille de la Fontain there is a photo of the actor and the dictator proudly hanging on the wall. And the noted political philosopher Chevy Chase once said, “Socialism works. I think Cuba can prove that.” Regnery Press had enough material to publish a whole book on the subject, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant.

While Hollywood has long been hoodwinked by Castro, will at least gays in the movie industry protest Soderbergh’s hagiographic portrayal of a vicious homophobe? In his National Book Award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, Carlos Eire writes about a still little-known aspect of Che’s machismo:

[Che] thinks about that cruel ritual he has witnessed so many times, when the guards strip all the prisoners naked and parade the most handsome in front of the newly arrived inmates to find out who among them is gay. He thinks about how anyone who gets aroused is taken away for a special mandatory “rehabilitation” program that includes the application of electrical currents to the genitals.

Having yesterday praised Intelligence Squared’s and the Federalist Society’s public debates for exposing the Left and Center to ideas from the Right, I was amused to read a Daily Kos post by Adam Siegel that unintentionally helps to prove my point. He draws our attention to an upcoming Iq2US debate on the motion “Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money,” in which climate-change skeptics Peter Huber, Bjørn Lomborg, and Philip Stott will face off against climate-change believers Daniel Kammen, Oliver Tickell, and Adam Werbach.

An anti-climate-change apostle, Siegel warns of the risks of publicly engaging with such unbelievers:

Unlike those in the scientific community, these three (and others of their ilk) have little to no interest in the search for truth and are not prepared to (ever) acknowledge errors and shift their views if confronted with evidence that proves their points wrong. To quote from a great modern philosopher, Stephen Colbert, they focus on “truthiness.”

The past record of such “debates” is not favorable to those focused on truth and honesty. The debates turn to the trivia as skeptics throw out some outlandish claim driving those seeking truth to can get caught up in minutia seeking to “prove” some seemingly arcane point, often enabling those selling snake oil answers to the challenges we face to set the discussion terms and, by doing so, in essence “win” the debate before the first verbal shots are fired.

One of the earlier debates he refers to was an Iq2US debate on a similar subject, “Global warming is not a crisis.” When he refers to the unfavorable record, he perhaps has in mind the results of that debate, though he doesn’t mention them. Before the two sides spoke, 30% of the New York audience voted in favor of the motion, 57% against, and 13% undecided. After the debate, the numbers were 46% in favor, 42% against, and 12% undecided—an impressive victory for the anti-alarmist side.

Now, of course, Siegel would interpret those results as showing that members of the audience—who, I should note, are the kind of people who chose to spend their evening at a policy debate—were duped by three “charlatans”: a professor of meteorology at MIT, an emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, and a medical doctor turned author.

To prevent any audience from being suckered by such snake-oil salesman, especially “suave and debonair” types such as Lomborg, Siegel advises his allies not to appear on stage with them at all. Second to that, he recommends that “all three [debaters] supporting the urgency of action on Global Warming should go into the debate with a series of statements and material that fundamentally call into question the very legitimacy of the three others.” In other words, he favors an ad hominem attack on their general trustworthiness over a direct attack on the validity of their claims. This speaks volumes as to Siegel’s lack of confidence in his side’s ability to win on the merits.

It is interesting that Siegel seems to assume that all prominent climate skeptics are charlatans knowingly peddling lies, as opposed to people who hold their (mistaken) opinions honestly. Perhaps it is because he finds climate change to be a simple and obvious issue, the variables so easy to disentangle. What intelligent, knowledgeable could possibly believe differently? But maybe I’m wrong about Siegel’s assumption. If so, I’d love for him to name some well-informed, articulate climate skeptics who are not charlatans. They could then be invited to take part in a future public debate that would meet his exacting standards. Let’s just organize that debate before hell freezes over.

Before, when warning about the possibility of an elected politician (especially Hillary Clinton) becoming Secretary of State, I limited my discussion to the period since World War II. However, as it is appears increasingly likely that Hillary will get the nomination, I’ve taken the time to survey all Secretaries of State who were chosen from the ranks of elected politicians to see if I could draw any conclusions. Here is a quick summary of what they did after stepping down as Secretary. I’ve listed them in reverse chronological order (with the dates of their time in office), since the more recent examples are likely to be more relevant to politics today.

Edmund Muskie (1980-1981)—never ran for office again, served on the Tower Commission, which investigated the Iran-Contra scandal

James F. Byrnes (1945-1947)—elected Governor of South Carolina in 1950

Cordell Hull (1933-1944)—never ran for office or served in government again

William Jennings Bryan (1913-1915)—never ran for office or served in government again; opposed liquor and Darwinism

Charles Evans Hughes (1921-1925)—served as an elder statesman (e.g., co-founded the National Conference on Christians and Jews) and then as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Philander Knox (1909-1923)—re-elected to the Senate in 1916

James G. Blaine (March 1881-December 1881, 1889-1892)—after his first term as Secretary, was his party’s unsuccessful nominee for President in 1884; he resigned during his second term on the eve of the meeting of the Republican National Convention, but when submitted for consideration by the delegates, his name drew little support; he didn’t serve in office after that

Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1881-1885)—never ran for office or served in government again

Hamilton Fish (1869-1877)—never ran for office or served in government again

William H. Seward (1861-1869)—never ran for office or served in government again

William L. Macy (1853-1857)—never ran for office or served in government again (died one month after leaving office)

John M. Clayton (1849-1850)—re-elected to the Senate in 1853

James Buchanan (1845-1849)—served as minister to the Court of St. James; elected President in 1856 (widely thought to be one of our worst Presidents)

John C. Calhoun (1844-1845)—returned to his Senate seat (without re-election, as far as I can tell) in 1845

Daniel Webster (1841-1843, 1850-1852)—after his first term was re-elected to the Senate in 1845 and tried unsuccessfully to get his party’s nomination for President in 1848; after his second term, again tried but failed to get his party’s nomination for President in 1852

Martin van Buren (1829-1831)—elected Vice President (1832) and later President (1836)

Henry Clay (1825-1829)—re-elected to the Senate in 1830; unsuccessfully ran for President five times

John Quincy Adams (1817-1825)—elected President in 1824; after failing to be re-elected in 1828 was later elected to the U.S. House

James Monroe (1811-1814, 1815-1817)—after first term, served as Secretary of War; after second, was elected President in 1816

James Madison (1801-1809)—elected President in 1808, and re-elected 1812

Thomas Jefferson (1789-1793)—elected Vice President in 1796, and then President (1800, 1804)

What to make of this? From 1849 onwards, there have been only twelve ex-politician Secretaries (of a total of 49 who held the job). Of that twelve, only four tried to re-enter politics—and only one ran for President (unsuccessfully).

I think it’s fair to say that the general trend during the last 150 years has been for politicians to end their political careers as Secretary of State, not to use it as a stepping board for high office, let alone still higher office (and there’s not much higher to go). While an actual historian with lots of free time could examine how a Secretary of State’s political ambitions affected his in-office performance, the subsequent careers (or lack thereof) of Secretaries at least suggests how they have perceived their role—i.e., whether as an end in itself or as a means to something else.

To anyone who would point to the noble examples of the early Secretaries of State who went on to become excellent Presidents, I would note that politics and government have changed enormously since that time, and, more importantly, “Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi” (What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to an ox). If you want favorably to compare Hillary—or any other elected politician currently up for the job—with Jefferson, Madison, or J. Q. Adams, be prepared to get laughed out of the room.

If Hillary does receive Obama’s nomination, she is almost a sure thing to be confirmed, especially since the Senate loves to support one of its own (and of course Republicans see the benefits of a Senate seat being opened up). Thus, we might end up witnessing something that hasn’t been seen since Daniel Webster: a Secretary of State who is at the same time a candidate for President. (Of course, Hillary’s case would be even more unusual; she would also be the first Secretary/presidential candidate married to an ex-President.) To those who know far more history than I do: When was the last time any member of the cabinet ran for President or Vice President? It is not a prospect I would like to see.