Does Todd Zywicki believe in the efficient markets hypothesis?

via Howie Kurtz:

Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria breaks into the television game Friday with a new half-hour show, "Foreign Exchange," on 100 PBS stations. He interviews Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim, talks to the author of a book on Europe's social-welfare states, and runs a freelancer's piece about environmental protection in Russia. "I'm hoping to avoid the 'Crossfire'-type format," Zakaria says, but "I don't want the show to have the pacing of a French movie."

Of course, it's not must-see enough to break into the scintillating Friday lineup on Washington's PBS station.

It's been said before, but it's worth expressing again as we, along with such estimable elephants as Episcopal Minister, former Senator and UN Ambassador John Danforth, contemplate the last gasps of responsible conservatism. Kevin Drum, a braver man than I, has apparently been poking around the Heritage Foundation's website and finds that the Lysenkosphere continues to encroach upon the Laffosphere. Michael Lind tells in Up From Conservatism that his moment of departure from the "conservative movement" was when the rightist punditocracy refused to stand up to Pat Robertson and his paranoid ravings about the "New World Order," which borrowed if not plagiarized outright from a 19th century anti-Semitic tract. It was already clear to Lind at that point (the book was published in 1997) that principled conservatism was dead, consumed or subsumed by angry populism and low-church fervor. In Lind's mind, the Republicans had already become the party of William Jennings Bryan, where they had once been the party of Lincoln.

By the way, I hope Billy Kristol enjoys his new team. It looks like even David Brooks is hinting at his discomfort, but the once-readable Weekly Standard is headed in the opposite direction. A pity.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg, meanwhile, is not worried about Republicans, though as far as I can tell he doesn't make a convincing case that conservatism is intellectually healthy and coherent. See also Matt Y's comments.

Freedom is contagious. And it's not just Pittsburgh anymore, the Washington Post reports today.

Wow. Is this really the best they can scrounge up?

President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate one individual and designate one individual to serve in his Administration: The President intends to nominate Timothy D. Adams, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary of the Treasury (International Affairs). Mr. Adams recently served as Policy Advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. He previously served as Chief of Staff at the Department of the Treasury. Prior to joining the Administration, Mr. Adams served as Policy Director for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. Earlier in his career, he co-founded and served as Managing Director of The G7 Group, a Washington, D.C. based consulting firm. Mr. Adams also served as Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Policy Development at the White House during President George H. W. Bush's Administration. He received his bachelor's degree and two master's degrees from the University of Kentucky. The President intends to designate Arnold I Havens, of Virginia, to be the Acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.

At least John Taylor had a PhD.

What with the nominations of Bolton and Wolfowitz and the release of the National Defense Strategy and the new "blueprint" for UN reform, I've been thoroughly depressed the past couple of weeks about the possibility of an overall philosophical turn-for-the-worse of US foreign policy under the new Bush Administration. With a host of loosely connected ideas churning around in the brain, I've deliberately avoided a lot of the day-to-day debate and have returned to reading some of my old favorites, trying to get a better sense of balance and perspective.

To further divert myself from gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in extreme frustration, I've decided to take up two closely-related topics, recently raised by Matt Yglesias, that I think the Bush Administration has been handling a good deal better than in the past.

Matt is advocating the "declare victory and come home" approach to getting out of Iraq. Although presented as a rhetorical innovation, I'd argue that the Bush Administration is ahead of him on this one. Robert Novak was correct last fall -- this is the strategy the Bush Administration hoped to be able to execute, and with the relatively successful elections at the end of January, they've shifted all their weight to that approach. The triumphalist celebrations over the elections themselves were the equivalent, psychologically, of declaring the war "won."

For those who have generally opposed the overall thrust of the Bush Administration's foreign policies, I believe that framing the outcomes in Iraq in terms of the US "winning" or "losing" is counterproductive. Rather, we should put the question of "winning" or "losing" in Iraq aside rhetorically, and instead focus on measures for "success" for the Iraqis going forward. To that extent, I'm a supporter of the Bush Administration's current rhetoric on the subject, because I think it's far healthier for the body politic. As an aside, and meriting another discussion entirely, I find the Bush Administration's current focus on "success" in terms of political outcomes for the Iraqis, rather than in terms of US military "victory" over a constantly shifting motley crew of terrorists, insurgents, thugs and other ill-defined enemy, to be a belated and refreshing reintroduction of some Clausewitizian strategic wisdom to the whole Iraq adventure.

For those who opposed the original invasion, it's tempting to say "We can't let the Bush Administration declare victory. We have to get everyone to understand how terribly bad the invasion policies were so we won't make the same mistakes again." But a "looking forward" strategy doesn't mean that the bleak lessons of the Iraq adventure would be lost in the future on US intervention policies. The Bush Administration is not claiming a "victory" in the sense of a clean win, with the troops marching home in triumph, spoils of war in hand, bad guys finished off. The definition of "success" has been defined downward steadily, and will almost certainly continue to be so as it takes months and years to extract the US military presence from Iraq (and for that matter, Afghanistan), accompanied by the inevitable steady drip of casualty figures and the inevitable climb of defense budget estimates.   more »

The Moose is disturbed, as am I, by Congress and the President's flagrant abuse of power, logic, medical ethics, and federalism in the Terri Schiavo case. He declares conservatism dead as a result. But here's the thing: there is only a small minority of people in the United States who care about means rather than ends. Democrats generally want to find ways for them government to be used for ends that their interest groups support, and Republicans are the same way if not worse. That's theoretically why we have a government set up to limit abuses of power through checks and balances and so forth. This latest power play does, however, seem more destructive of because it implies that Congress can just come in and call a "do-over" to satisfy a determined interest group, even one that doesn't make any sense.

UPDATE: Alternatively, just read Sam's healthy rant.

From The Scotsman:

A major row has broken out between China and Russia over the location for joint military exercises.

According to the Kommersant daily newspaper, the Russian military had suggested the Xinjiang autonomous region of China, because of the area’s problem with Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, a focus for the international fight against terrorism.

However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal, and instead suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.

Exercises in this area, the newspaper noted in its report yesterday, “would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only in Taiwan, but in the US and Japan, which recently included the island in their zone of common strategic interests.”

“Beijing is trying to use Russia as an additional lever of pressure on the disobedient island,” it said.

Beijing is presumably also mindful of the history of Russian influence in Xinjiang prior to the assumption of full PRC control (the warlord Sheng Shicai who ruled the province prior to the arrival of KMT nationalists during the 1930s operated under heavy Soviet patronage, and the Soviets invested in the area during the period of the second East Turkestan Republic in the late 40s), which might explain why they would be leery about inviting the Russians into what remains a sensitive area.

There were articles on it inside the Times and the Post today so I assume most people have heard of it by now, but Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uyghur businesswoman, civic leader, and prominent political prisoner for the past five years, has been released from China in advance of Condoleeza Rice's visit to the region. No one has missed the fact that the White House has returned the gesture by dropping a resolution against China's human rights practices in the UN Human Rights Commission, something groups like Human Rights Watch have decried as rewarding China's tendency to release a small handful of high-profile prisoners at moments of greater public scrutiny in order to gain rights concessions from the US. While undoubtedly true, her release still comes as a relief to her family, human rights advocates, and the Uyghur community.

The "crimes" for which Kadeer was imprisoned, as has been widely reported, consisted of mailing Xinjiang newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi, an activist in the Uyghur expatriate community living in the United States and working for the US Radio Free Asia service. Dave reports from Under the Tenement Palm that the Han gossip mills in Xinjiang are suggesting much worse about her (without any supporting evidence to the effect, of course), and that no mention has been made of her release at all in Xinjiang itself, reinforcing the notion that this was intended primarily for foreign consumption rather than telegraphing any sort of shift in policies towards the Uyghurs (you can read more about those policies in my paper on the subject from last fall). He promises further updates as knowledge of Kadeer's release becomes more widespread in the community; upon her arrival in Chicago Kadeer was quoted speaking to Radio Free Asia sounding fairly upbeat for someone who's just suffered the past five years in a PRC prison:

"I can smile at my people. I can work for my people, and I can work for the entire Uyghur nation. I can shout out 'Greetings' to my people. For the rest of my life, I will create my own history.”

I'll be curious to know what kind of role Kadeer plays in Uyghur diaspora politics now that she's been freed, but for now it's worth some celebration.

In other Uyghur news, the US is having trouble finding somewhere willing to take captured Uyghur militants due to be released from Guantanamo, since Europe, looking to improve its ties to China, doesn't want to take them. Wu'er Kaixi, probably the second most famous individual Uyghur dissident after Ms. Kadeer (he was a student leader during the Tianenmen protests) takes the Europeans to task for their eagerness to conduct arms sales in the (unfortunately subscription-only) Asian Wall Street Journal.

"I was telling Mother in the limousine — I don't remember talking to her about 401(k)s when I was a little guy," Bush said. "I don't remember IRAs, defined contribution plans. This world has changed since I was raised. There's a lot of young kids who now understand what it means to invest, they're comfortable with watching their money grow."

Wonder why he doesn't remember talking about retirement plans with his parents? Are tax shelters considered retirement vehicles?