Dr. Helen Smith (wife of the redoubtable Instapundit) is a criminal psychologist--she notes a recent journal article which landed in her mailbox:

Getting back to the current regurgitation article on the same topic, Jost finds in his research that liberals scored higher on openness than conservatives, what a surprise! "Results revealed that all six of the openness facets were associated with liberalism rather than conservatism: openness values (r=-.48), aesthetics (r=-.32), actions (r=-.27), ideas (r=-.24), feelings (r=-.24) and fantasy (r=-.19)" (American Psychologist, October 2006, pg. 663). So liberals are more open to ideas, feelings, and actions than conservatives. Dr.Jost, why not try this hypothesis out in the real world beyond the ivory tower? If you want to find out if liberals are open to new ideas, actions, and feelings, I challenge you to do the following:

1) Post comments around on various lefty blogs such as FireDogLake, The Daily Kos or Alicublog. These comments should disagree with the view of the host or view of the blog or diary; for example, state that you support Israel at the Daily Kos, wonder if feminists who are against sexual harrassment should support Bill Clinton at FireDogLake, and/or politely stand up for colleagues at Alicublog who you feel have been treated unfairly just because they disagree with the views of the host. Now, check back to evaluate scores for these paragons of openness for their ideas, actions and feelings. If your comments have been troll-scored by the Kossacks, deleted by Jane Hamsher, or ridiculed by whoever runs the Alicublog, give an openness score of zero. Negative bonus points if you are called a douche, told to stay in your place so as not to "assail your betters," or have a racial slur thrown your way.

Yes, the tolerance of the left is truly legendary.  Look no further than Columbia University, for instance.

Fox News is all over another attack by a stingray, slapping a barb into an innocent peace-loving human.

When will the carnage stop?  President Bush, do something about the stingray menace! 

Where is the U.N.?  Where are the diplomats?  Kofi, we need you now more than ever!

If you're in Missouri, you know that the Democrats have a nice political machine going on over there in St. Louis. One of the big cogs in that machine is a group called ACORN. This group represents on its donation page as being a "charitable organization" but is in actuality a partisan political action organization. (OK, the national ACORN is a partisan outfit, but state ACORN chapters are technically non-partisan--and if you believe that's how it really works, you'll believe almost anything as long as it has "Bush Lied" attached to it. Which, sadly, seems to describe a large, vocal, and influential segment of Americans today.)

St. Louis' Gateway Pundit links to a Democratic-leaning St. Louis blog, Pub Def, which is tearing the cover back on ACORN's shady dealings. The deal: hire lower-income people to go out and shake the trees for Claire McCaskill votes.

Note to Democrats: This works a lot better if you actually pay those folks you hire to do your dubious Get-Out-The-Vote effort.

One big question: What are the links between ACORN, the Missouri Democratic Party, and the Claire McCaskill U.S. Senate campaign? Click on this link to see the Pub Def video, showing the unpaid ACORN workers saying that their get-out-the-vote campaign was called Project Victory 2006. As both Pub Def and Gateway Pundit note, this is (oddly enough) the same name under which the Missouri Democratic Party is running it's "coordinated campaign effort:"

We are pleased to introduce Project Victory 2006, the Missouri Democratic Party's coordinated campaign effort for this election year! We are excited about this year's campaign and expect that our field effort will be incredibly strong and well-received. We are proud that more than 75 percent of the Project Victory's staff members either are from Missouri or attended college in Missouri, and we expect this to be a tremendous asset.

There's coordination, and then there's Democratic coordination, which apparently includes not paying poor people that you've hired (by a "non-partisan" front group for a radically partisan national organization) to pound on doors campaigning for your candidates.

You can pick what part of this scandal offends you more--non-partisan groups engaged in blatant partisan political behavior, or the spectacle of Democrats telling poor people to get out the Democrat vote for money, and then stiffing them.

Oh, right, Mark Foley was a gay pedophile-wanna-be. Never mind. Meanwhile, how are those sweetheart real estate deals going, Senator Reid?

If you're bound and determined to vote against the Republicans, you really should open your eyes to who you'll be voting FOR.

From Reason Hit and Run:

Thanks in part to gerrymandering, the political map is clogged with safe districts that get filled by the nitwits who breath fire the hottest and stamp their feet the loudest.

Emphasis mine, just because I admire the truth and sheer artistry inherent in the sentence. It also associates the term 'nitwits' with politicians, which is always appropriate.

Update:  I'm pretty sure Reason H&R meant "stamp their feet" not "stamp their feed."  I've thoughtfully edited the above quote to reflect this.

Lynne Stewart was convicted today:

Prosecutors said messages Stewart passed on for Abdel-Rahman could have ignited violence in Egypt. The sheikh was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to attack U.S. targets in a plot prosecutors said included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Stewart, long a defender of the poor and unpopular, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan federal court. Her supporters rallied outside the courthouse chanting and carrying banners.

The civil rights lawyer has defended her actions, saying she was only zealously representing her client.

Tagged as both heroine and radical leftist, Stewart is the only U.S. lawyer to be indicted on terrorism charges. Some observers said the case stemmed from Bush administration efforts to discourage the defense of accused terrorists.

The two years and four months she was sentenced to by a Federal Judge sort of argues against "efforts to discourage the defense of accused terrorists."  What she was convicted of was smuggling messages to and from Shiek Omar and his radical terrorists supporters.  Nothing political about that, except exhibiting an extreme hatred and contempt of Western civilization.

U.S. confirms radiation was detected after North Korean test:

"Analysis of air samples collected on October 11, 2006 detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of Punggye on October 9, 2006," the office of the Director of National Intelligence said Monday.

"The explosion yield was less than a kiloton," the statement said.

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal, noting (once more) the intellectual intolerance of the Left:

What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace--of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn't had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died. What also seems missing is the courage to ask a question. Conservatives these days are asking themselves very many questions, but I wonder if the left could tolerate asking itself even a few. Such as: Why are we producing so many adherents who defy the old liberal virtues of free and open inquiry, free and open speech? Why are we producing so many bullies? And dim dullard ones, at that.

Most reasonable folks on the center/right of the political agenda (and I'd hope to be included in that number) are desperate for a level of intellectual discourse with those on the left that rises above mindless angry sloganeering and outright suppression of speech, as happened recently at Columbia University. 

Is there intelligent life on the Left?

Remember this?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, think about this:

MINNEAPOLIS - Cabdriver Muhamed Mursal doesn't wear his Muslim beliefs on his sleeve, but he may soon broadcast them from a light on top of his cab.

Mursal and hundreds of other Muslim cabdrivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport refuse to take fares they know are carrying alcohol. No one is searching bags, but a Napa Valley wine box or a see-through bag from the duty-free store can be enough to leave a fare waiting for the next cab. Airport officials estimate that happens at least three times a day.

Now, the airport and cab drivers have worked out a proposal that calls for cabdrivers who won't carry alcohol to have a cab light that's a different color. That way, the airport workers who hook up travelers with taxis can steer alcohol-carrying fares to cabs that will take them. Airport officials hope to have the new lights ready by the end of the year.

Wouldn't putting special Muslim-lights on taxi cabs be kinda the definition of "respecting the establishment of a religion?"  Remember please that the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport is a government agency.

I have no problem with Muslim taxi drivers refusing fares because the fare is carrying alcohol.  I'd also have no problem with the cab company firing the driver's sorry asses for refusing to do their job.  Everybody wins--the cab drivers stay true to their beliefs, cab companies get more reliable drivers, and Martha Minnesotan back from her wine weekend in Napa Valley gets home OK.

The banners of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" have been held high for decades as goals to be assiduously striven for by right-thinking people everywhere. From the painfully ham-handed diversity of Star Trek: The Next Generation to the chirpy happiness of Sesame Street, we are fed a daily diet of messages saying diversity is in and of itself a good thing, with the implicit and unquestioned belief that those who question the relentless march of diversity are the worst kind of bigots.

Now comes this Belmont Club article, highlighting a Financial Times article discussing a new study by Harvard professor Robert Putnam, author of the popular book Bowling Alone. His new work casts doubt on the social desirability of diversity and multiculturalism.

From the Financial Times article:

The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic".

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. "They don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," said Prof Putnam. "The only thing there's more of is protest marches and TV watching."

Richard Fernandez (Wretchard) of the Belmont Club then comments:

But if Putnam is correct, then one of the central tenets of multiculturalism — that it brings people together if they simply "respect" each others differences — immediately requires qualification. In fact, it becomes entirely conceivable that the multiculti program is actually the driver behind many of the tensions which are now rising in places like France, the Netherlands and the UK.

Tribalism is programmed deep into the human animal. That's why it's World Problem #1.

Different political systems deal with this tribal urge in different ways. One reason why totalitarian governments keep springing up is that they are brutally effective in suppressing the tribal urge internally, in large part by directing the tribal urge outward toward external enemies.

This is also why pure democracies almost always collapse. Democracy is fundamentally unable to manage the tribal urge. The biggest tribe always winds up in power and then begins to impose its tribal customs and mores on the minorities. If the Majority decides it is undesirable for the minorities to ever regain power, a pure democracy can quickly devolve into a totalitarian state--we see it over and over and over again throughout history, from the Romans to the Third Reich.

We can try to pretend that humans don't have this tribal urge, or recognize the wisdom of the American Founding Fathers in promoting a federal republicanism and a careful separation of powers between a central government and soverign State governments. This provided a structure within which different self-selected "tribes" can interact. This I think is what Benjamin Franklin meant when he famously replied to the question "what have you given us?" with "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

Let's remember together the words of the Worst American President, Jimmy Carter, June 22, 1994:

CARTER: What the North Koreans were waiting for was some treatment of their exalted leader with respect and a direct communication. I didn't have to argue with him. When I outlined the specific points that were the Clinton administration's position, I presented them to him. And with very little equivocation, he agreed. I think it's all roses now. I've known that there were people in Washington who were sceptical about any direct dealing with the North Koreans. They were already condemned as outlaws. Kim Il-sung was already condemned a criminal.

Question: Are you absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are going to honour this agreement, that while talks are going on that it's not just a matter of buying time on the part of the North Koreans, that they will not secretly pursue the nuclear program they were pushing earlier?

Carter: I'm convinced. But I said this when I got back from North Korea, and people said that I was naive or gullible and so forth. I don't think I was. In my opinion, this was one of those perfect agreements where both sides won. We should not ever avoid direct talks, direct conversations, direct discussions and negotiations with the main person in a despised or misunderstood or condemned society who can actually resolve the issue.

From a 1994 interview with CNN, as reported by The Australian, via FreeRepublic.