THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO. Peggy Noonan better look out. She wrote a column this week that's bound to get her noticed by the biggest heads in Washington. Here's a sample:

You see the similarities.

Rather delightfully, she gives much the same treatment to the senators who forged the "no filibuster, except..." deal (McCain, McCain, etc), as well as Silent Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Clintons, and Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader-Ginsberg and John Paul ("The Great") Stevens. In her coda she imagines the latter two retiring from the court to write their memoirs, which might go something like this:

She wants to know what is in the water in Washington, DC. We want to know what is going on with Peggy Noonan. Has she accomplished some kind of astral body soul swap with Ann Coulter? Ms. Noonan is often clever and perceptive, but she is never uproariously funny. Not like this. And our suspicions were heightened when we checked out Ms. Coulter's latest column, which is uncharacteristically grave and lacking in yucks:

Do you feel like chuckling? You see? And that's why we're worried about Peggy. Heaven knows, Ann Coulter's used to the abuse and assaults that flow from being a conservative with a wicked sense of humor. She's at the peak of training for dodging liberal brickbats, the slings and arrows of outrageous pundits, and the occasional cream pie that passes for reasoned argument in the halls of academe. But is Peggy up to this?

"HE IS HISTORY, AND I AM STILL TODAY'S HEADLINE..." Life is so unfair. Matt Lauer tries to branch out from his Today Show base and cash in just a little on his popularity as the smarmy girlie-man sidekick of NBC's perkiest dominatrix and what happens? He takes the mass-media equivalent of a shotgun blast to the face. He has to stand there and pretend to like it when the numbskull TV viewers of America choose Ronald Reagan as the "Greatest American." Who could have guessed? The nominees included Michael Jackson, Madonna, Tom Cruise, and Michael Moore, for God's sake. And Matt had really done  his usual homework on the presentation and production end. When it was time to discuss the relative candidacies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, for example, Matt was masterly in his subliminal communication with viewers:


It must have been disquieting when three Republicans made the list of ten finalists, but one of them was Abraham Lincoln, and both FDR and Bill Clinton made the cut too. Who could have foreseen the terrible turn things would take?


O Calamity! O Horrors! Oh, Mommy, what have they done to your poor little boy? Reagan? Reagan? REAGAN? REAGAN?

AND HE HAD TO PRETEND TO LIKE IT. O WEEPING AND WAILING AND GNASHING OF TEETH.

There really aren't any words that can take away the pain at a time like this, and we're reluctant to do more than gravely shake Matt's hand while a tear drips slowly down our cheek, but the desire to say something helpful is too strong to overcome. So, in addition to our condolences, we'd like to offer Matt an empty platitude or two to show that our heart is in the right place. Time is the great healer, Matt. Someday -- perhaps in a year, or two, or five -- you will awaken as a whole girlie-man once again. The sun will shine, the birds will sing, and Katie will nod briefly in your direction before storming into the producer's office for another knock-down-drag-out brawl. Trust us on this, Matt. You will recover, and maybe you'll even write a bestselling book about your heroic conquest of post-traumatic shock syndrome. Tom Cruise could play you in the movie.

Does any of this help at all? No? Okay. We'll just tiptoe out of the room now and leave you alone. Sorry.

THE SMART GUYS TAKE OVER. It's supposed to be safe. Here's the promotional material:

The new design for the 1,776-foot tower is meant to make it more resistant to truck bombs. The building will now be 90 feet _ instead of 25 feet _ from West Street, the major north-south thoroughfare along the Hudson River.

The tower's cubic base will be clad in luminous materials _ probably a combination of stainless steel and titanium _ that will be shimmering and light-reflective as well as blast-resistant, according to a description of the redesign posted online by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

As in the original design, the structure outlined in the latest plan exceeds city fire code requirements, and will have biological and chemical filters in its air supply system.

It also has the original design's extra-wide emergency stairs, a dedicated staircase just for firefighters, enhanced elevators and "areas of refuge" on each floor. Stairs, communications, sprinklers and elevators will be encased in 3-foot-thick walls.

But it isn't safe. Because the terrorists, er, foreign insurgents, still don't like us. Everyone knows that, which is why the really smart people are slowly taking over the Ground Zero redevelopment project. Debra Burlingame, a 9/11 widow, alerted us to the effort in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month.

She also revealed the identities of those who are helping to design the IFC:


Mrs. Burlingame seems to regard this team as sinister in some way, but if safety is the prime consideration -- as it seems to be for so many Americans -- then there is no alternative to soliciting the participation of people with these kinds of backgrounds. By the time they have completed reconfiguring the Ground Zero project's architecture and content, the place will be absolutely 100 percent safe. There will no longer be any doubt that however much foreign insurgents may hate America, it's nothing compared to how much elite and powerful Americans hate America. This has to be an enormously effective deterrent to further acts of violence in the city whose most powerful people lead the world in hatred of this country. That's why the over-engineered tower described in the piece referenced above will never be built. It just won't be needed. The whole idea of a single fake-me-out tower with 50 stories of panic room office bunkers and 50 stories of uninhabited, bomb-repellent gridwork can be tossed in the trash where it belongs. New Yorkers will be able to go all the way to the tippy top of the new twin towers design that will soon be unveiled by Soros and company. What do you think of it?

FUNDAMENTAL PRECEPTS. Here at InstaPunk we were pretty shocked to read Andrew Sullivan's little blog today about Karl Rove's remarks. Here's the part that raised our collective eyebrows:


Moronic extremism. From a Michelle Malkin. Ironically, Sullivan's piece was featured at RealClearPolitics alongside Michelle Malkin's blog entry on the same subject, as if the RCP boys are trying to start an all-out catfight.

Obviously, Ms. Malkin doesn't need any help from us to deal with a Sullivan, but we still thought that his was a performance worthy of comment. Why is he so itchy about this subject that he feels compelled to Sunday punch La Malkin?

I suspect that it's the stress of being bedfellows (no pun intended) with the considerable army of liberals who do merit Karl Rove's pejorative assessment, which was, for any who may have missed the screaming headlines in the MSM:


Andrew Sullivan lists those he considers exceptions to the mindset Rove specifically ascribed to Moveon.org, all of whom supported the Afghanistan invasion, but he is in denial about what has happened since. The initial near-unanimity about retaliating against the enemy no longer exists. Among liberals that first response can now be seen as a kind of hysterical moment in which they experienced a patriotism they generally loathe and from which they have been recovering at various rates ever since.

I'm sure a glib political switch-hitter like an Andrew Sullivan (no pun intended) would like to believe that his own crisis of conscience with respect to the Iraq War is mirrored by the understood targets of Rove's wrath -- Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Jimmy Carter, Al Franken, Nancy Pelosi, Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, the Hollywood traitor elite, Dick Durbin, John Dingel, Charles Rangel, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Mike Wallace, Andy Rooney, Aaron Brown, Paul Krugman, and the editorial staffs of the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and, yes, the Washington Post. But it isn't so. Rove was figuratively if not literally correct. Here's why.

The real foreign policy agreement that binds most liberals together -- from far left to moderate -- is their conviction that the use of military power against Islamofascism will only make more Islamofascists and that our safety depends, as Nancy Pelosi said just a few days ago, "on our reputation and how we are viewed, especially in the Muslim world." Their worldview cannot comprehend a circumstance in which it is better policy to hunt down and kill our enemies than to try to win them over by understanding them better. This is not a smart remark. It's simply a description that fits all the rhetoric and behaviors we have seen since liberals began backing away from every component of the War on Terror that resembled war.

They claim at conventions and on the floor of Congress that they are resolved to defend America from a threat they refuse to identify with its sponsoring religion, but they oppose each and every serious measure required to conduct that defense. They oppose wars that don't come with a perfect five-year plan for all contingencies. They oppose  tough talk to the craven and corrupt saboteurs of American foreign policy like France and Germany. They oppose treating terrorists as terrorists and wish to extend to them all the legal protections of the country those terrorists are sworn to destroy. What does all this add up to? They want the War on Terror to go away, as if it were only the fevered dream of George W.  Bush and (of course) Karl Rove.

These days, conservatives don't much care where liberals stood on the invasion of Afghanistan. We always knew that this was going to be a long haul, and most of us always expected that liberal support would evaporate through a series of semi-plausible objections derived from their uber-tolerant understanding of those who despise them, which is virtually infinite except in the case of American conservatives, for whom they have no tolerance at all.

But Andrew Sullivan has the nerve to get pissed off when Karl Rove allows himself a mild understatement about the behavior of a political party and ideology that have merely proclaimed their patriotism while committing act after act that is indistinguishable in any way from what a committed traitor would do to sabotage the prospects for success of his country.

Is it really moronic extremism to get tired of patronizing patriots who feel no shame about libeling their country's president and the military while legitimizing every tiny propaganda gambit essayed by the killers who are stalking us across the world? I don't think so. And I'd love to see the labyrinthine argument by which Mr. Sullivan would try to wriggle out from under this essential truth.

Of course, a divided soul like an Andrew Sullivan probably isn't as upset by Karl Rove as he is by all the impediments to his moronically jocular (since we can't risk the connotations of words like 'gay') social agenda. Which means he's insane. That's permitted in this country, and it's quite admired in some circles. But it does eliminate one's qualifications to pass judgment on Michelle Malkin's intelligence.

THE GITMO SHAM, PART II. When the Durbin affair started, I had the temerity to treat it as a topic for humor, but when I saw the fury of conservatives, I felt obliged to point out that there have always been idiot senators (about 100 in the current lineup) and that we'd be spending our time more wisely if we examined the press (non)reaction to his treason more closely than his staggering back-and-forth progress to an (un)apology. My reasoning was that the most sinister part of the story was the general indifference of the American public -- encouraged by the mass media -- to this kind of seditious behavior by a congressional leader. This drew some criticism from people who believed I was being elitist for regarding my fellow citizens as apathetic.

I know that we now have polls showing that only(!) 20 percent of Americans agree with Durbin's characterization of Guantanamo guards as Nazis, while the rest of those who have opinions think the Gitmo detainees are getting treated as they deserve -- if not too generously. But this does not rebut my point. A more important poll suggests that Americans are disapproving of Bush in increasing numbers because they no longer believe the war in Iraq was worth fighting in the first place. Why should they think that? Because the Democrats and their allies in the media have done nothing but harp on the bad or embarrassing news from Iraq since the war started.

One looks in vain for any acknowledgment by Democrat leaders and party spokesmen that  the Iraq War has generated huge and widening ripples of change throughout the middle east. There have been real elections in Iraq, and even the Sunni holdouts were so impressed by the turnout that they have decided to participate in the new government, along with their supposedly mortal enemies the Kurds and the Shi'ites. Isn't this coming together of bitterly opposed segments of the populace more positive than the barbarisms of a small band of 'insurgents' who can't even articulate a political agenda to justify their violence? Does any such comparison issue from the mouths of Democrats or their flacks at the New York Times? No.

In the wake of the overthrow of Saddam, Libya voluntarily abandoned its weapons of mass destruction programs -- does any word of this positive development get a mention in the Democrat routine about missing WMDs? No.

Frightened by presidential rhetoric (!?), Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon, leading to the first elections there in how many years? You won't find that number being trumpeted by Democrats or featured on the CBS Evening News, will you? No.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria are feeling enough of the heat from democracy's infancy in Iraq that their despots have felt obliged to speak of reform, baby steps toward freedom for their subjects. Does any Democrat or liberal pundit link this to Bush's foreign policy or his determination to stay the course in Iraq? No.

American troops are still dying, yes, but does the grim recitation of casualties ever include any summary of the gains their sacrifices have earned -- in terms of time to permit progress, to rebuild an Iraqi infrastructure savaged not by American bombs but Saddam's Baathist Reich, to demonstrate to Islamic fanatics that the enemy is not weak or afraid or vincible in combat, to let the message sink in throughout the middle east that the old days of double dealing and state-sponsored Islamic hatred of America may be sinking slowly in the west? No.

All we get are body counts, sniping about gaffes of planning and execution, extension of the left's theology of victimization to our most bloodthirsty and remorseless enemies, and a continual two-pronged assault on the President of the United States and the military which has heroically made his foreign policy shake the world.

It doesn't matter if some guy on an Illinois barstool thinks Durbin was out of line if he kind of sort of believes the slightly less-over-the-top rhetoric of Democrats and left-leaning pundits who tell him day after day that fighting our enemies is dangerous because it makes them hate us more. Or if he believes that we have failed in our national mission because ugly things happen to bad guys in wartime and it's never forgivable if some of the bad things that happen to them are us.

Durbin wasn't the problem. He was the tip of a huge iceberg which is stalking the American ship of state looking for any opportunity to punch a hole below the waterline. Now he's apologized, and we've knocked off the tip of the iceberg. Are we all feeling better now? Why, no. There's a new tip of the iceberg. Her name is Nancy Pelosi, and we are all obliged to run in mad circles around her, demanding retractions, apologies, etc for this:


Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there's no rationale for getting mad about the Durbins and Pelosis, but I do think it's a strategic error to take their various moronic remarks too seriously, to try to refute them each time they pop off. Isn't it time to start laughing at them outright instead of duelling with their dim and underhanded daggers?

If Nancy Pelosi has become the lead attack dog on the Guantanamo facility, it's time to lean back, put our feet up, and chuckle. There's a little game I play regarding politicians, just for my own amusement generally. Now I think maybe we should all start playing it in public, as loudly as possible. Maybe derision can break through the mass media wall to the American people. Here's how it goes. Other Occupations for Politicians: I think about what kind of job they'd have if they had to function in real life like the rest of us. For example, when I look at Harry Reid I see a third-rate auto mechanic, extorting a meager income from those who can't afford better by replacing parts that aren't broken, charging them for work never done, and fending off their complaints with insults, threats, and those burning beady eyes.


It's hard to look at him without imagining the filthy coveralls and dirty fingernails of a choleric loser and liar (!) who never cleans his shop and can't keep the help from quitting every six weeks. Should I really take him seriously? Okay. I will if I can.

I have a different impression of Nancy Pelosi. She has always reminded me of an actress, the kind that plays the same role in a soap opera for decades. You know, the dilute daytime version of Joan Collins, who lives in her stage makeup and throbs with melodrama as she overacts her way through seven on-screen marriages, two or three murder trials, endless acts of treachery and malevolence to members of her TV family, and offstage acts the grande dame who but for a turn of the cards would have given Joan Crawford a run for her money. It doesn't matter what she's talking about -- the plight of the homeless or the incompetent leadership of the president -- all I see is an aged also-ran starlet, checking the location of the lights and holding her head just so in hopes that the latest facelift scars don't show on camera.

Is that too personal, too mean-spirited for the illuminati of the left to handle? Just another example of low-class conservative abuse of a liberal icon? Perhaps they'd prefer it if I couched my criticisms in the form of high art, say, the kind of highbrow takedowns of our cultural icons that get subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts and defended to the death by liberals. They couldn't object to that kind of satire, could they?Then let's see what they think of this comparison:


They can take their pick. Either way, I intend to laugh, because the only other response a private citizen can make to systematic treason is illegal.