But what may be most troubling, perhaps, to a good number of our readers is a trend developing in Merry Olde England. There, Britons are counseled by the the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, David Kennedy, that they need to change their diets in order to effectively combat carbon emissions. This is not, as you might suspect, an exhortation to eliminate the eating of beans so much as it is an effort to eliminate the production of foods and agricultural products that are deemed to produce too many greenhouse gases. Sheep are one of the culprits (along with cows) . . . but beware. Beer and Whiskey are also in the mix. Ben wonders whether there will also be a coming Whiskey Rebellion . . . If so, I think Washington would support this one!

During the forty years from 1967 to 2007, there were only four individual quarters during which current dollar retail receipts fell at more than a 5 percent annualized rate. Each of these episodes was isolated--five to ten years apart. Through the first quarter of 2009, there have been three consecutive quarters when retail receipts fell at more than a 5 percent annual rate, and the April retail sales data suggest that we are on track for a fourth consecutive quarter of extraordinarily weak retail spending. This makes year-on-year changes in retail spending by far the worst on record. . .

During the first quarter of 2009, year-over-year nominal GDP growth, a measure of the total dollar value of U.S. output, turned negative for the first time since 1957. Without a substantial recovery in growth during the second half of the year, year-over-year nominal GDP growth will remain negative, at least for the next several quarters. In that environment, a realistic estimate for earnings of the S&P 500 companies (based on conventional methods employed by equity analysts) would be about $40 a share, which, at a normal fifteen to seventeen index-earnings multiple, would produce an S&P 500 Index range of 600 to 680, as opposed to the mid-May figure of about 900. . . U.S. capacity utilization dropped to 69.1 percent in April--the lowest reading in the fifty-year history of the series.

Batten down the hatches, folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

UPDATE: Here’s video from the 1961 movie. The Judge, like Obama, seems to be singing the boys’ parts, not Rita Moreno and the girls’ parts.

While I certainly sympathize with the problems "Men in Power" was created to address and while the group at least had the good sense to recruit some female members, I agree that there could be problems with a group like this. There would also be a problem with a "White Student Union" . . . but there is no problem with it (other than potential numbers) that is not also true of minority based groups. There are always problems and one ought to be suspicious of any group based on "identity" as a motivation and justification for seeking power. Enough of the victim card, already. If we're all victims, it doesn't mean anything anyway. Start a group called "Individuals Striving to be Worthy of Power" and you'll have me at GO.

Might it be wise to articulate and defend the conviction that the Senate ought, as a rule, to approve the President’s pick. Following up such comments, they could note the relatie confirmation numbers of Republican and Democratic nominees, and perhaps stress how terrible it was how Democrats treated Miguel Estrada, among others, and point to the extremism of Democratic tactics in recent years.

Beyond that, they could say, more in sorrow than anger, that they regret that President Obama seems to have nominated someone who will do nothing to overturn Kelo, or to protect the right of the people to make law on such important issues as marriage and abortion, etc. Kelo is not popular, even with liberals. Similarly, the vast majority of Americans would like to be able to regulate abortion much more than the Court now allows. There are many such cases that would be worth highlighting. In short, focus upon what the Court does, and how it should do it, rather than on the person involved.

Obama is certainly not the first modern president to be overly-impressed with himself and his "journey." Bill Clinton famously peppered his speeches with a plethora of "me"s and "I"s--but his stories about himself were so self-serving (and sometimes, clearly, invented) that people tended to be more amused than moved by him. He could work a room like nobody’s business if it were filled with folks inclined to be unreflective . . . but after awhile, even the dullest wit had to concede that his stories had begun to grow stale and to fill the air with the powerful odor of BS. He now stands as a kind of cartoon monument to himself. Clinton always had ready acolytes who would rush to his defense, of course. But the more intelligent among them always knew what they were about and, in their better moments, exhibited some shame in it. They were selling out for the sake of their favored policy prescriptions and they were willing to deal with a minor little devil like Clinton for the sake of something they regarded as higher than themselves. What were a few sacrificial little interns and "trailer park" women to that? What of it if the guy liked to talk about himself and, in so doing, sent a spark of thrill up the legs of TV talking heads? It was part of the game of selling their wares and, for awhile, it seemed to work.

But Barack Obama is a different sort of narcissist. He isn’t of that cheap "trailer park" variety--the kind who gets so swept up in trying to please an adoring public that he tries to become the guy he’s invented . . . Barack Obama is much more clever. He is the thinking man’s narcissist--and he would much rather have you become the kind of public that he thinks he deserves than to bend himself to suit you. Obama can weave a tale so lofty that a mere recounting of his mother waking him up early as a child seems the whispering of prophecy from an angel at dawn near the shoulder of a future American redeemer. The personal relationship he describes himself as having with the Constitution and American principles seems to speak less of their greatness than of his potential. They are great, it seems, mainly because of what they have meant to him and what they have allowed him to become. It all begs the question, "What if he had failed?" Would their majesty have been diminished in that failure or would he, Barack Obama, have been the sole proprietor of it? As Kristol notes, he seems to imagine that he infuses the office of the presidency with some special power of bargaining and, even, rationality that the office itself cannot hope to possess. The power of the presidency does not seem to be vested in him--at least by his lights--but, rather, it exists because of him.

Whether sophisticated or bumbling and comedic, this level of self-regard when exhibited in the presidency is something that should not escape notice. It may be that the sophisticated version will be able to carry on unnoticed for a longer time and with less obvious tragic consequences. But pride really does seem to "goeth" before a fall. The tragedy of Bill Clinton--though suffered for a time by the nation--has receded comfortably into a kind of tragi-comedy and the effects it produced are felt most keenly, I think, by those who most deserve them. In Barack Obama’s case, if tragedy follows on the heels of this pride, I think it may be a deeper and more engaging kind of tragedy for the nation as a whole. For it is we who are bending toward his story and not his story that is bending toward us.

For instant reactions, go to NR’s Bench Memos. I’m going to try to find some time to read some of her appellate opinions.

FDR wanted to save capitalism from itself, and he exploited so masterfully all the ambiguities in that objective that thoughtful people can be found, even today, who think he succeeded. They tend to forget that he changed not only capitalism but constitutionalism, and the latter unambiguously for the worse. They tend to overlook, too, that the relatively benign reform era they like to celebrate, the New Deal of public works projects and Social Security, is the New Deal stripped of its more corporatist, or to put it less kindly, fascist elements like the National Industrial Recovery Act. It was the unreformed Supreme Court’s "horse-and-buggy" constitutionalism that saved the country from that ugly experiment, and thus allowed future generations to praise FDR’s moderation. (emphasis added)

The trend has been noted for years and it is now impossible to deny the vast and growing gap between male and female achievement in higher education. Even professors who have been more inclined to emphasize the inequities for women have had admit the problem. What may be worse, however, is the vast over-representation of men among campus judicial offenders. I have no statistics suggesting that male offenders have not always outnumbered female offenders (and I doubt that one could find them if he tried) but the story seems to suggest an uptick in the number and intensity of the crimes. There seems to be more violence and, of course, more crimes of a sexual nature. Recognizing facts is one thing, however. Understanding reality is always another.

Predictably, this conference trotted out the usual refrains that now seem to me to represent something more of a "stereotype" than the old stereotypes used to do. Two "studies" (described as "qualitative") formed the basis of much of the discussion at this conference and most of the substance of this article. In these studies, men at public university on the east coast and men at a private university on the west coast were asked a series of questions about their feelings on being a man. As one of the researchers put it, "The men in both studies really described external pressures to perform hegemonic masculinity." In English, this means that these boys are finding it difficult to be both manly men and succeed in an academic environment. But instead of questioning whether these young men are getting any guidance about how to do that--whether there is anything about the college experience of today that gives positive outlet to a manly instinct--these geniuses are suggesting that what these guys need is more "women's studies" courses! They need to find ever more and clever ways to pound square pegs into round holes? Does it ever occur to university types that the the bad behavior and underachievement we're seeing on campus after campus across the country may be, precisely, in reaction to (largely successful) attempts to make college life less "manly" or masculine? Does it ever occur to any of them that all of their efforts to take aggression and competition out of the academic and extracurricular activities on campus have only succeeded in making them unattractive to a good number of students who ought to be among our best and brightest? So as colleges and universities have softened things, they have not (as they had hoped) succeeded in softening or rooting out these manly men. They have only succeeded in pushing them away and giving them an excuse to ignore alleged "authority" and wreak havoc in a completely undirected and unintelligent ways. Would it not have been wiser to have come to grips with the nature of these exuberant young men, accepted it, and allowed them productive outlets? But that would have required their professors (many of whom have a notable lack of thumos at their core) to admit the fact (and the salutary necessity) of it in others.

And if you have a child who is obsessed with Spongebob, try this James Parker piece from The Atlantic. All three of these artistic creations proclaim the virtue of innocence, which requires serious protections.

When asked about how they think of their personal identity, only about a quarter (28%) of all Muslim Americans say they identify themselves first as an American rather than as a Muslim. This number is strikingly similar to the percentage of white evangelicals (28%) and black Protestants (33%) who say they think of themselves first as American and only secondarily as Christian. In fact, a higher percentage of evangelicals (62%) and black Protestants (55%) identify themselves first by their faith than do Muslims (47%). (About one-fifth of Muslim Americans – 18% – say they think of themselves as both American and Muslim.)