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Thomas Friedman has an insightful column showing what the new Bush Palestinian policy is supposed to accomplish:

The only hope for Israel is to get out of the territories — any orderly way it can — and minimize its friction with the Arab world as the Arabs go through a wrenching internal adjustment to modernization. I applaud President Bush’s call for Mr. Arafat to be replaced, in what amounts to Mr. Bush’s last-ditch attempt to “re-accredit” the Palestinians as a partner for a two-state solution with Israel. But it is a travesty that Mr. Bush did not act to “re-accredit” Israel, too, as a peace partner for a two-state solution with the Palestinians by insisting that Israel begin pulling back from some of its far-flung settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. It would help the Palestinians undertake their reforms, and it would put Israel in a better position to withdraw unilaterally, if it has to.

Mr. Bush blinked because he didn’t want to alienate Jewish voters. Sad. Because George Bush may be on Israel’s side, but history, technology and demographics are all against it.

Two more useful pieces on the pledge of allegiance: Why we’re not one nation “under God” in Slate and Eugene Volokh’s blog entry.

There’s a special resonance to Michael Kinsley’s arguments questioning the American with Disability Act, given that Kinsley has Parkinson’s, and that Si Newhouse probably rescinded the just-offered editorship of the New Yorker when he found out. This was almost certainly a violation of the ADA. The article, subtitled “Must we pay to hear bad pianists?”, also brings to mind the brilliant 1995 Economist article on heightism, which starts out with a multitude of facts about how much worse off short people are and then generalizes into a deep insight on bias and affirmative action:

Is there, then, no good news for short men? No: there is none. And if, having read this far, you do not believe that height discrimination is serious, you are no doubt a tall person in the late stages of denial. Or, perhaps, you cringe at the thought of yet another victim group lining up to demand redress. Surely the notion of SHRIMPs (Severely Height-Restricted Individuals of the Male Persuasion) as an oppressed social group is silly, and the idea of special protections or compensatory benefits for short men preposterous? Actually, no–unless all such group benefits are equally dubious.

In general, the kinds of discrimination worth worrying about should have two characteristics. First, bias must be pervasive and systematic. Random discrimination is mere diversity of preference, and comes out in the wash. But if a large majority of employers prefers whites, for instance, then non-whites’ options in life are sharply limited. And second, bias must be irrational: unrelated to the task at hand. If university mathematics faculties discriminate against the stupid, that may not seem fair (not everyone can master set theory); but it is sensible.

In politically correct terms, people who share an unusual characteristic that triggers pervasive and irrational aversion have a strong claim to be viewed as a vulnerable minority group. Is the discrimination against SHRIMPs, then, pervasive? Plainly so. Is it irrational? Except in a few rare cases in which height might affect job performance, obviously. Is it hurtful? Just ask any of the parents who clamor to put their little boys on growth hormones. Will it disappear of its own accord, as people become more enlightened? Be serious. Try to imagine that a century hence, when genetic engineering allows designer children, parents will queue up for shorter boys.

If affirmative action can’t be rationally applied across the continuum of attributes that might be discriminated against, the whole moral basis for using it to redress discrimination comes into question.

The National Archives presents a superb essay on Magna Carta and Its American Legacy:

Just as Magna Carta stood as a bulwark against tyranny in England, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights today serve similar roles, protecting the individual freedoms of all Americans against arbitrary and capricious rule.

I wish John Ashcroft would read this. Also, FindLaw features an annotated Constitution, showing the major cases that defined each article and amendment. And, the National Archives has essays on the creation of the Constitution and the stylistic artistry of the Declaration of Independence.

Do you use sesquipedalian words like sesquipedalian? Then check out this word list. Lucubriation of galimatias and other omphaloskepsis can result in ultracrepidation.

ZDNet reports on a $40 K futuristic 3D display from startup Actuality Systems (good name). Star Wars style holograms are still a long way off.

A small website for people with very good eyes. Don’t miss pong (choose flash).

I am probably one of the few observers who is highly supportive of government money supporting school vouchers for parochial school while opposing “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. The common thread for both is my belief in the establishment clause of the Constitution, keeping government and religion separate.

It’s government’s responsibility is to ensure that all children are educated to a high standard, and that means providing funding when parents cannot do so. That also means no madrassas in the US teaching only the Koran (or the Bible or the Torah) and no science or math. But, in what other aspect of American life do we believe that the only way a product of sufficient quality can be delivered is by the government doing so itself? Healthcare, food, and automobiles are all essential to modern life, and so we expect the government to regulate aspects of their production. But we certainly do not think they need to be provided by the government. Public schools remain the last bastion of socialism in the US, and the results are comparable to socialist production failures throughout the last century.

So, why religious schools? Because parents deserve the right to send their children for the education they think is best. As long as the religious schools meet a high educational standard (and the vast majority exceed the education at public schools), they should be eligible for vouchers. Of course, if the religious schools become madrassa-like and don’t meet educational standards, then children should not be allowed to attend at all. As for those who worry about religious indoctrination, the best solution is to drastically increase the value of the vouchers so that parents have a real choice of non-religious private schools, which tend to cost much more. I believe that the vast majority of parents are choosing religious (generally Catholic) schools because they want a better education for their children, not because they want kids taught about transubstantiation and immaculate conception. Until we as a society move past the wishful thinking (and union pandering) associated with public school support and realize that education is important enough to drastically increase the funding for it, we should expect the same old pathetic results.

The WSJ has a nice critique of some of the biased reporting on the issue.

The only political issue more important to me than campaign finance reform is free trade (and specifically Trade Promotion Authority for the president), which it appears my representative, Silicon Valley’s Anna Eshoo, is about to help kill. Although there are obvious economic benefits to high-tech companies like those funded by my venture firm, my real reason for backing free trade is a moral one.

Reason has the definitive editorial on the pledge of allegiance:

Turns out that the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a Christian socialist, Francis Bellamy — first cousin of Edward Looking Backward Bellamy — a hater of capitalism whose sermons about “Jesus the Socialist” got him fired from his Boston church. Turns out that before World War II, many school children recited the Pledge not with their hands over their hearts, but with their right arms outstretched toward the flag in a pose we now associate with fascist storm troopers. Turns out that until the 20^th century, the flag was rarely displayed in classrooms at all, and that the Pledge was part of a campaign by the ostensibly anti-capitalist owners of the magazine Youth’s Companion — where the Pledge first appeared — to sell a whole lot of flags to schools.

It goes on to note that a godless Pledge was “good enough for, say, the generation that fought World War II”.