Morning Roundup 5/2/2005

Nota Bene: This post is an experiment. I thought I'd try providing a bunch of different links to different web posts, articles, stories etc. that I found interesting. The goal is to point to some articles that may be of general interest to conservative readers with enough of a summary to indicate whether or not it would be interesting. I'd appreciate any feedback as to whether this is a worthwhile endeavor.

• Glenn Reynolds has posted that he heard Bill Bennet complaining about the First Lady's tongue-in-cheek monologue (video can be found here) over the weekend and tells him to "lighten up." I caught the "show" over the weekend on C-SPAN and thought it was funny. There were references to the Chippendales and milking a male horse. Does being conservative mean having a prudish sense of humor? Does laughing at a "blue" joke indicate one is compromising their conservative ideals? Some think so. [UPDATE: The last one is a spoof according to NRO Corner].
• Kevin A Hasset at National Review wonders if President Bush's approach towards Social Security reform should be judged like the Patriot's draft: both have been pretty successful before, so should we question them based on first impressions?
• In today's Boston Globe, Cathy Young reports on "A left wing witch hunt on campus" against an admitted [gasp] libertarian conservative (and College of Liberal Arts Teacher of the Year) at Southern Illinois University.
• The Weekly Standard has a couple good columns up. First, Paul Mirengoff explains that the Left has gotten quite good at using metaphors to argue that the missteps made by the U.S. in the War on Terror are the ever-becoming rule. However, these attempts fail because the arguments rest on the flawed underlying assumption that such "atrocities" will remain unaddressed and become the norm when there is no evidence to support such a belief. The second article is by Steven G. Calabresi who explains how raw politics is behind the filibuster by Senate Democrats. In short, there could be nothing worse for them then non-white conservatives on the bench.
• In the spirit of scientific debate, some leading science journals are preventing publication of papers that call into question the theory of global warming.
• The Economist warns, "If environmental groups continue to reject pragmatic solutions and instead drift toward Utopian (or dystopian) visions of the future, they will lose the battle of ideas." Please step back John Muir, come on up. . . Adam Smith? But wait, putting the shoe (or sandal?) on the other foot, perhaps free-marketers can learn from "greens," too. (Pssst, John, come over here. . . let's make a deal). Meanwhile, Jared Diamond believes many great societies haved died because of "ecocide," though Tim Worstall believes that the "Yankee idea" of inventing something to solve ecological problems will prove fruitful.
• While the debate between evolution and intelligent design continues, Michael Ruse thinks that evolutionists have damaged their own cause because they insistently make no room for religious belief in their scientific world.