The Week.

-- Schumer decides. Now what?

-- The Kerry camp wants to attack Howard Dean, but not just now. Maybe they're waiting for a French okay?

-- A thought for 9/11 + 2 (from Grant by Jean Edward Smith). "[S]ometime after midnight [on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh] Sherman went looking for Grant. He had worked five hours to prepare his division to attack, but it seemed hopeless. His men had been thoroughly beaten and Sherman -- who would have been the last to say so -- thought it important 'to put the river between us and the enemy.' This is why he sought Grant, to see when and how the retreat could be arranged. The rain was coming down in buckets, punctuated by heavy thunder and lightning in the background. In this surreal setting Sherman found Grant standing alone under a large oak tree, dripping wet, hat slouched down over his face, coat collar up around his ears, a dimly glowing lantern in his hand, cigar clenched between his teeth . . . Sherman approached and said, 'Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?' 'Yes,' answered Grant, puffing on his cigar. 'Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow though.'"

-- Last year, California governor Gray Davis vetoed a measure to let illegal immigrants have driver's licenses, calling it a security threat. This year, he is pandering to Hispanic voters in order to defeat a recall election brought on by his own misgovernance. So he has signed the measure. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the leading Republican candidate to replace Davis, opposed it. (Nobody seems to be advocating the appropriate solution, which is that the illegals be given free rides, back to Mexico.) But Schwarzenegger is still offering little to conservatives -- except, now, insults. He came out against Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative, which would keep the state government from collecting data on race. That's disappointing, but there are honorable opponents of the initiative. What is less excusable is Schwarzenegger's labeling of its supporters as "right-wing crazies." The only candidate in the race who isn't pandering is conservative Tom McClintock. Schwarzenegger skipped a debate with the other candidates in order to avoid giving a spotlight to McClintock. This was wise: The more people hear from McClintock, the more they will understand that he has convictions and knows how the state government should be run. McClintock points out that Schwarzenegger refuses to pledge not to raise taxes -- and that it takes a Republican governor to raise taxes in California. We know that McClintock is currently behind Schwarzenegger in the polls. But we also know that if elected, McClintock would fight the spenders and taxers in Sacramento. About Arnold Schwarzenegger we know no such thing.

-- Ed Gillespie, the head of the Republican National Committee, met with editors of the Manchester Union Leader . To the editors, Gillespie seemed to be saying that the Republican party no longer stands for smaller government, but merely for increasing the size of government at a slower pace than the Democrats want. Not the most inspiring of battle cries. Gillespie claims that his remarks were taken out of context; the Union Leader stands by its interpretation of his remarks. No one who knows Gillespie will doubt that he is sincere in saying that he is still a Reaganite. But this is really an argument about President Bush and Republican officialdom generally, not about Gillespie. We are well aware that it's difficult to shrink the government or even to restrain its growth, having advocated doing so without much success for 50 years. But the president could try a little harder. Will Bush attempt to pare back corporate welfare? Will he threaten to veto a Medicare bill that skimps on reform? Will he renew his campaign for personal Social Security accounts? Will he ditch the steel tariffs? If the administration ignores the restiveness of its base -- or responds merely by sending emissaries to reassure conservative leaders -- that restiveness will only increase.

-- The Democratic field is quickly separating into three camps: Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, and Everyone Else. Everyone Else is worried about attacking Dean. Attacking Dean might make him look even more the front- runner. Worse, it might alienate Dean's supporters. Better to wait for Dean to collapse, or for some other candidate to attack him. For the most part, Everyone Else is saying nothing worse about Dean than that he is unelectable, while aping his policy positions. In the candidates' recent debate in New Mexico, Dean said that our troops in Iraq needed to "come home" -- a statement his campaign quickly modified -- and John Kerry said that we needed to "minimize" America's role in Iraq and on no account should we send more troops there. Dean has also staked out the position that we should trade freely only when Mexican wages are equivalent to Sweden's. Joe Lieberman is the only candidate who is pointing out that Dean is weak on national security and that his protectionism would devastate the economy. We hope that the Democrats will not choose to contest 2004 on Dean's platform -- but if they do, President Bush had better be prepared to explain why it's wrong.

-- Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Tom Daschle are very, very happy guys. Two years ago, they set out to kill the federal appeals court nomination of Miguel Estrada, one of President Bush's premier judicial picks. But they had nothing -- not even a phony allegation of racism or "insensitivity" to minority concerns -- to use against him. Yet they still managed to pull it off; on September 4, Estrada, his nomination paralyzed by a Democratic filibuster, withdrew his name from consideration. In a gloating news conference, Kennedy called it "a victory for the Constitution." He also praised Schumer, who had devised the strategy of opposing Estrada for allegedly not answering the Senate's questions, even though Estrada had in fact answered all the Senate's questions (and met personally with any Democrat who asked). Schumer had also come up with the "stealth" nominee idea, once saying that Estrada was "like a stealth missile . . . coming out of the right wing's deepest silo." All of that would seem kooky had not Schumer been able to convince more than 40 Democratic colleagues to support an unprecedented filibuster. In light of that -- two other Bush nominees face filibusters, and others may soon follow -- what are Republicans to do? GOP senators are often urged to make Democrats engage in an old- fashioned talk-all-night filibuster, but that's not possible under today's parliamentary rules (and with the GOP's one-seat majority). Several Republicans now believe it's time to try the "nuclear option" of changing the Senate's rules on filibusters without summoning the supermajority that such rules changes usually require. But Republicans are not united on the idea; some don't want to resort to unconventional tactics. So it appears that the real resolution might not come until November 2004. If the GOP can knock off a few Democrats who took part in the filibuster, they will a) have more votes available to break future filibusters, and b) remind Democrats that taking part in such obstruction carries a political price. Victory is very, very, very important.

-- The long-suffering parents of Washington, D.C., got a step closer to school choice. The House, and a Senate committee, both approved vouchers for the District -- but not before liberal congressman Danny Davis warned that the message of the school-choice bill "goes far beyond Washington, D.C." He said: "It's D.C. today. It's Chicago tomorrow. St. Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles next week. Then it's all of America." From his mouth to God's ear.

-- All politicians like to say they're in favor of jobs in manufacturing, although it's not clear why these are better than other jobs. President Bush, no exception, promised that an assistant secretary of commerce would work full time on manufacturing issues. He also sent Treasury secretary John Snow to China. Manufacturers have complained that China, by holding the yuan at an artificially low value, has hurt American exports. Snow was to get China to revalue the currency. But as the editors of the Wall Street Journal noted, China's currency may actually be overvalued now, because China also makes it difficult to export capital from the country. Manufacturing jobs have been in steady decline, as a proportion of the workforce, for decades in the United States, as in other advanced countries. Using fewer people to produce more goods is what economic growth is all about. Luckily, no government official is likely to be able to stop that trend.

-- Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, employers have to give overtime pay to some employees if they work long hours. Which employees? Well, that's not always clear -- and the confusion has made for rich rewards for trial lawyers. Elaine Chao's Labor Department is trying to update and clarify the regulations. The current rule automatically grants overtime to anyone who makes less than $8,000 a year. Chao would raise that threshold, as labor activists have long demanded, to $22,000. But many workers would be reclassified so that employers would no longer be legally required to give them overtime pay. The unions have therefore launched an ad campaign accusing President Bush of being the Grinch who stole overtime. If we had our druthers, Chao's new regulations would be scrapped, along with the old ones: Wages and work conditions are properly a matter to be worked out by employees and employers competing in an open market. But at the very least, congressional Republicans ought not let the unions scare them away from supporting Chao's modest deregulation.

-- President Bush has signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, legislation crafted by Republican Frank Wolf in the House and Ted Kennedy in the Senate. The bill provides $40 million worth of grants to help reduce rape in the nation's prisons and jails, and will call negligent prison administrators to Washington to answer questions about their failures. Running state prisons in a responsible and decent manner is a duty of the states, not of Washington. But we're glad that one of America's most serious human-rights crises is finally getting official attention. By conservative estimates, the number of rapes behind bars exceeds the total number reported in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Boston combined. Other estimates put the numbers much higher: It's even possible that more men get raped than women each year. The new law will not, of course, live up to its title. Violent, racist prison gangs (black, white, and Latino alike) all use rape to keep non-members in line, and many prison administrators turn a blind eye because the threat of rape often makes inmate populations easier to control. But thanks to the law, not everyone will turn a blind eye to this shameful aspect of American life.

-- The Rev. Jesse Jackson, arrested in New Haven while lending his name to the employees' strike against Yale University, boomed, "This is going to be for economic justice, as Selma was for the right to vote." Hearing such talk, one turns away in disgust, and maybe with a rueful smile. As you might expect from a place such as Yale, the employees -- clerical, library, dining hall -- have generous agreements. They are paid an average of $32,000 a year, and recently rejected a package that would have yielded a 44 percent raise in five years. They get pension benefits that amount to about 85 percent of their salaries -- and they can retire after 30 years . They have a minimum of seven weeks' paid vacation. Yale will subsidize up to $46,460 in college bills for families. Etc. Yet Jesse Jackson rants about Selma and the right to vote. Please.

-- What about the far eastern leg of the Axis of Evil? The United States, shifting its stance, is dangling the possibility of American assistance to North Korea in return for its dismantling its nuclear weapons program and the weapons it has already built. One advantage of this maneuver is involving China in pressuring Pyongyang. But we must not count on a crazed dictatorship willingly to remove its only prop, the threat of force. The United States must prepare other options -- an intrusive inspections regime, a pre-emptive strike. South Korea, which truckles cravenly to the monster on its doorstep, must be warned that it should devote a sizable chunk of the GDP that flourished under American protection to dealing with the results.

-- Just about everybody's a critic of Islamofascism these days, but scholar Daniel Pipes was at it long before 9/11. This has earned him the right kind of enemies, who howled in protest when the White House announced that it would nominate Pipes to an unpaid position on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. There should be no controversy when a group such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations complains, but Ted Kennedy and a few other Democrats decided to kick up a fuss anyway. On August 22, Bush decided to avoid a nasty confirmation fight over a minor post and made a recess appointment of Pipes, who will now serve the interests of his country -- including the peace- loving Muslims in it -- for the next 16 months.

-- Mahmoud Abbas stepped down as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, reportedly citing his frustration in dealing with America, Israel, and Yasser Arafat, whom he had supposedly superseded. America and Israel would not, in his view, follow the road map. What was Arafat doing? Abbas, at his last appearance before the Palestinian parliament, was greeted by dozens of masked, chanting members of Fatah, Arafat's organization, who heckled him. This was not like the prime minister's Question Time in the British parliament, rough though that can be. In American history, masks were worn by the Klan and other desperadoes intent on murder; that is why many states have anti-mask laws to this day. So it is among Palestinians, though there are no mask laws. Abbas looked out at the crowd, and saw that it was time for him to go. The United States will resume its efforts to broker peace with such partners.

-- Bombs began to explode in the Saudi capital of Riyadh in the fall of 2000, killing Westerners in what proved an al-Qaeda prelude to September 11. In their habitual style, Saudi officials refused to look at the evidence, instead accusing Westerners of killing each other in a bootleggers' war. A hideous case was concocted against several Westerners. One of them was Sandy Mitchell, a Scot in his forties and an anesthetic technician in a Riyadh hospital for over 20 years. Still wearing his white coat and stethoscope, he was picked up one morning, accused of the bombings, chained and regularly tortured to extract a confession that he was acting under instructions from the British embassy, denied a lawyer, kept in jail for 30 months (half the time in solitary confinement), and finally sentenced to be crucified. In this barbarity, the victim is "partially" beheaded, then tied to a cross publicly for three days. But while Mitchell was in the throes of his ordeal, the bombings in the country increased so that the charges against him became absurd, even to the Saudis. Mitchell and two other English victims were made to write a groveling letter to Prince Nayef, the Saudi minister of the interior, who duly "pardoned" these broken men and put them on a flight home. It's their culture, the Saudis like to say. Those princes and al-Qaeda share it equally.

-- According to Gerald Posner's new book, Why We Slept , bagged al- Qaeda big Abu Zubaydah wasn't frightened when the U.S. pretended to have handed him over to the Saudis. He was relieved. He proceeded to give his captors a phone number for a Saudi prince who would "tell you what to do," and outlined the pre-9/11 arrangement whereby both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan secretly supported bin Laden. Whether Posner has the details of the interrogation right, or whether Zubaydah gave accurate information, is impossible to say. But Posner's book serves as a reminder of all we still don't know about 9/11, and how our "allies" have managed to escape giving a full public accounting of their relationship to al-Qaeda. Since the Bush administration shows little appetite for such an airing, Congress should keep at it, in hearings and investigations.

-- Hatred of Ahmad Chalabi seems almost de rigueur in the American media. Seldom has a man less deserved such hatred. Chalabi has spent his life opposing tyranny in his country, Iraq, forming the Iraqi National Congress, the most prominent and most promising exile group. But Chalabi is thought to be favored by the Defense Department, and whatever the Defense Department favors . . . many people feel obliged to attack. One of the things left-liberal journalists score Chalabi for is having been an exile. Just recently, a writer in Newsweek contrasted Chalabi to "rival contenders . . . who stuck it out inside Iraq during the decades of Saddam Hussein's rule." Stuck it out inside Iraq . The implication, of course, is that Chalabi is somehow cowardly or unpatriotic. What would his critics have had him do? Remain in fascist, Baathist Iraq to be imprisoned or killed? What good would that have done his countrymen? Further, do we hold it against de Gaulle that he was abroad while France was staffed by Nazis? And Chalabi's critics must really hate the Dalai Lama -- in exile, rather than in a PRC dungeon or dead. Chalabi has lived an admirable life; those who smear him aren't fit to wipe the dust from his Iraqi boots.

-- Oriana Fallaci is famous as a free spirit. As a teenager she was already an anti-Mussolini partisan in her native Italy. Her specialty as a journalist was the probing interview, in which she said what she thought to the likes of Yasser Arafat and Muammar Qaddafi. Obliged to drape herself in a black chador to meet Ayatollah Khomeini, she ripped it off in front of him. Now living in New York, she wrote an impassioned book after September 11, The Rage and the Pride , to say that these terrorists might be Muslims but she could recognize fascists when she saw them. Accusing her of inciting racial hatred, some Muslims are bringing a case against her in -- naturellement -- Paris, world headquarters of the thought police. She's 73, and suffering from cancer, but her refusal to attend the trial is the proper middle- fingered salute.

-- An odd feature of the last few decades is how many of the wilder kinds of political paranoia have migrated from right to left. Anti- Semitism, for instance, once characteristic of old-style "throne and altar" European conservatives, then taken up by early 20th-century ultra-nationalists, is now found mainly on the political left. Something similar has happened with water-fluoridation scares. Back in the 1950s, these were promoted chiefly by far-right outfits like the John Birch Society, which tried to persuade Americans that fluoridation was a Communist plot to poison us all. Nowadays it is hard to find a conservative of any stripe who gives a fig about fluoridation. The people objecting to it are environmentalists, anti-globalists, Greens, and others hostile to capitalism and national sovereignty. Not very surprising, therefore, to find that the anti-fluoridation nuts have now enlisted "diversity" to their cause. A British group called the National Pure Water Association has argued that it is a violation of Islam for Muslims to drink fluoridated water. "You don't deliberately pollute the gift of God. There is no question it is against Islam," they tell us. Something called the Islamic Medical Association has chimed in with support, and there is to be a march on Parliament. Water, declares a spokesman for this organization, is declared in the Koran to be "holy and blessed and healthy and safe." So on your next trip to a Muslim country -- Egypt, perhaps, or Yemen, or Bangladesh -- you need have no qualms about drinking water straight from the faucet. It will contain no fluoride. It will be holy and blessed and healthy and safe.

-- Swaziland is a small (pop. 1 million), landlocked country in southern Africa, governed as an absolutist monarchy. The king, Mswati III, has nine wives and two fiancees. He was last in the news two years ago when, in an attempt to halt the spread of AIDS in his country, he ordered Swazi women to remain chaste until age 19. The effect of this edict was somewhat diluted when, a short time later, the king selected a 17-year-old girl to join his harem. The king fined himself one ox for the offense, but there was considerable grumbling nonetheless. Now the heavens themselves seem to be showing displeasure at King Mswati's lifestyle. It is the custom in Swaziland for several thousand young women to assemble once a year before the king and dance bare-breasted. Mswati has frequently used the occasion to select a new companion for himself. This year, however, just as footmen were unrolling a red carpet so that the king could begin his inspection, a terrific hailstorm broke out, and the young ladies fled the scene. "Hailstones the size of peas," says a news report. We certainly feel for the young ladies, under the circumstances, but can't help wondering . . . Was the band playing "Hail to the Chief"?

-- "May God continue to bless America" is the typical closer for George W. Bush's speeches, and this has brought a thoughtful response from Constance Hilliard, associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. Writing in USA Today , Professor Hilliard notes that "we are, after all, a pluralistic society," and suggests that Bush might say "Allah bless America" too. This would show the same respect that so many Muslim nations give their Christian, Jewish, and Hindu subjects. President Bush, and we, have much to learn.

-- MTV is a pop music station on cable TV, and of course they have one of those endless self-congratulatory award ceremonies to honor the creators of music videos. At this year's ceremony, pop stars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Madonna performed a suggestive dance together to dull thumping music. At one point, the women kissed each other lasciviously. This caused a media sensation of the minor sort, which of course was the intention. Few noticed (columnist Michelle Malkin being an honorable exception) that Madonna's six-year-old daughter was on the stage when this cynically obscene display took place. The child was dressed as for First Communion: white dress, lace gloves, and a crucifix -- plus a studded belt with the words "BOY TOY." Her father is of course far away; her stepfather was in the audience, smiling approvingly. "The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

-- A 13-year-old schoolgirl in Beaver County, Pa., was suspended from school for engaging in oral sex with a boy of the same age while riding the school bus. The boy was also suspended. The girl's mother promptly sued the school district for having violated her daughter's constitutional rights. She further claimed that there was nothing in the district's written policies to suggest that the particular activity for which the girl was suspended might be unacceptable. So far there is nothing very surprising in this story. It is just another slice of life in early 21st-century America. Now here's the real stunner: The fool woman's claim was thrown out of court! The judge -- let his name be known: George E. James -- upheld the girl's suspension! That many of the nation's children are utterly ignorant of any decent standards of behavior is not news; that their parents encourage and condone their ignorance and irresponsibility is not news, either; that at least one of our judges is willing to stand up for decency and common sense -- that's news. Any chance we can get Judge James nominated for the federal bench? Nah, he'd never get past Chuck Schumer.

-- The new general manager of the NBA's Indiana Pacers, Larry Bird, fired the head coach, Isiah Thomas, replacing him with Rick Carlisle. Bird and Carlisle are white; Thomas is black. Who cares? Who cares? you ask! How long have you lived in America? Harvey Araton, sports columnist of the New York Times -- the sports pages in which are as least as political as the editorial and op-ed pages -- wrote, " . . . here came Bird, in his first bold move as the Pacers' general manager, to fire an African-American legend, intending to replace him with Rick Carlisle, his very white friend and former occupier of space at the end of the Boston Celtics' bench." A few questions: Why can't Isiah Thomas just be a legend, instead of an "African-American legend"? And why is Rick Carlisle "very white" -- not just white (if he has to be a color, instead of a person or coach, at all)? And would Araton, or any other Times columnist, or any other human being, ever, ever write the phrase "his very black friend"? Just asking.

-- Gary Coleman is one of the gang running for governor of California. He is the tiny actor who starred as Arnold on the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes . Appearing on Fox News, he was asked by Sean Hannity who the vice president of the United States was. Mr. Coleman could not come up with the answer. (Come on, Gary, Dick Cheney isn't that self-effacing.) In a later interview with the New York Times , Mr. Coleman declared, "Hannity is evil. He didn't ask Schwarzenegger that." We would like to think of a closing comment that does not include "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout?" -- but cannot.

-- "Are you the famous Dr. Teller?" a man once asked. "No," came the reply, "I am the infamous Dr. Teller." As a longtime enemy of Communism, Edward Teller was infamous for all the right reasons. He was the chief inventor of the H-bomb and one of its strongest advocates, pushing for its development in spite of stiff opposition from arms- control liberals who underestimated the Soviet threat. In 1967, he introduced Ronald Reagan to the idea of missile defense and 15 years later became a crucial supporter of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Probably no other scientist had a greater political impact in the 20th century. His left-wing detractors are legion, in large part because Teller once testified against granting a security clearance to his old Manhattan Project colleague Robert Oppenheimer. Teller was ostracized for this decision and later said he regretted it, though his actions remain defensible: Oppenheimer had lied to federal investigators about his contacts with known Communists and was a member of the Communist party until at least 1942. On July 23, President Bush awarded Teller the Medal of Freedom. On September 9, at the age of 95, Teller died. A giant, who saw the moral issues of his time as clearly as he did the scientific ones. R.I.P.