ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 28, 2005

Simon Says:
I see nothing wrong with iceberg lettuce.

Su do ku is the opiate of the ruling class.

Does anybody remember when Arbor Day is? And how come we don't get the day off? Does management hate trees?

Gleaned from being forced to listen to other people's cell phone calls: People say "good-bye" about 10 times before they actually end the call.

The U.S. Constitution lists no qualifications for Supreme Court justice. It doesn't even say you have to be a lawyer. Are you interested? There is an opening for an associate justice and it pays $199,200 a year. There is little chance for advancement, however.

"If it makes sense for the citizen out there to curtail nonessential travel, it darn sure makes sense for federal employees," President Bush said this week. And just in case you were wondering: The fuel cost of Air Force One is a reported $6,029 per hour.

And while we are on the subject of wretched excess, Michael Brown, who resigned as head of FEMA, is still on salary at a reported $145,600 per year. That is not a lot of money for someone running a major agency. It is a lot of money for a guy without qualifications who doesn't know how to run a major agency, however.

Maybe Brown and Bernard Kerik could start a business together and call it Losers, Inc.

And do you get the feeling Brown was thrown from the sled in order to keep the wolves from nipping at the heels of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff?

Notice to television: I think we may be nearing the saturation point (no pun intended) with Gulf Coast disaster video. Can't we find something else to feel miserable about?

Go ahead and clip a playing card to the spokes of your bicycle wheel. It makes a cool sound and you know you want to.

I thought the recent PBS documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" by Martin Scorsese was excellent. I had no idea that the leading "protest" singer of his generation had very little interest in actual protest.

Another thing I learned: We should all age as well as Joan Baez has aged.

When is the last time you actually looked up something in a phone book? But they keep dropping them off year after year. Couldn't those people who use the Internet instead of phone books opt out of getting them and save a few trees from destruction?

Let's settle this once and for all: sushi is finger food.

Things to keep in mind: A submarine is called a "boat" unless it is a nuclear submarine in which case it is called a "ship."

Al Qaeda now has its own video newscast during which the anchor wears a ski mask. Remember when Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" was considered outrageous?

Paperback Pick of the Month: "Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March" by Adam Zamoyski. Fascinating and very well written. But you better read it before winter sets in.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 26, 2005

WASHINGTON - - Bill Frist is a statue in search of a pedestal.

He has a droning, cinderblock speaking style coupled with an unquenchable sense of his own destiny. He is currently the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and would like to be elected President of the United States in 2008.

This is not a laughable notion. The Republicans lack a clear front-runner. There are many interested: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, George Allen, Mitt Romney and Frist, to name some of the more viable ones.

None is a stopper, however. None can keep others out of the race. And, speaking ability aside (Bob Dole was the Republican nominee in 1996, after all), Frist has an impressive resume: A surgeon, a senator, a former chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and now majority leader.

His fellow senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, said a year ago of Frist's presidential possibilities: "He's got the pole position in practical, tactical terms…."

But First has run into a few potholes recently.

The difference between pandering and groveling may be a fine one, but Frist seemed to cross the line in March when he questioned the diagnosis that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "I question it based on a review of the footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," Frist said on the Senate floor. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."

Even before an autopsy confirmed that Schiavo was blind and virtually without a brain, Frist came in for criticism for his video diagnosis, which seemed to have more to do with wooing the Christian right than serious medicine.

Not long after, Frist was neatly outfoxed by McCain, who helped form a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to oppose Frist's plan to scuttle the filibuster rule on judicial nominees.

Having pandered to the right on one issue and avoided the center on another, Frist then went left in July by endorsing the federal funding of embryonic cell stem research.

(A "Statue in Search of a Pedestal" was the title of a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette written in 1976 by Noel Bertram Gerson. Lafayette ended up a national hero in two countries, but who knows if Frist is a Lafayette.)

If his life weren't complicated enough, Frist recently became the subject of a civil investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a criminal investigation by the Justice Department over his dumping of stock in his family's company shortly before the price nosedived.

Frist has denied any wrongdoing, but the knives are out. "We don't need Martha Stewart in the United States Senate," said former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga. (who was defeated in 2002 by a candidate handpicked by Frist.)

And speaking of knives, there is a terrible episode in Frist's past, which he hopes voters will forgive, if not forget: As a medical student, Frist went to animal shelters, asked for cats, pretended he would give them a good home and then cut them to pieces in medical experiments. Years later, he apologized.

He probably will get a pass from the media on this, since it happened years ago and the media will find it beneath the "dignity" of a presidential issue.

But of the 102.8 million households in the United States, 33.2 million of them have at least one cat in them as a pet. Some 39 million cats receive Christmas gifts from their owners and some 13.4 million cats have their birthdays celebrated.

And, according to the American Pet Association, these are the reasons that cat owners acquired their cats: Someone to play with, 93 percent. Companionship, 84 percent. Help children learn, 78 percent. Someone to communicate with, 62 percent. Security, 51 percent.

In looking over that list, I would say that pet owners might prefer their cats to Bill Frist in each and every category.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 21, 2005

WASHINGTON - - Once again, John Hinckley wants to spend more time outside the mental institution he has been locked up in since 1982.

He wants to visit his parents and, one of his psychologists now says, "to have a girlfriend" and "intimate contact with a female."

And you can't blame him. Which is the problem. You can't blame him for anything.

Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan and three other people on March 30, 1981. But Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and has been locked up in St. Elizabeths mental hospital in Washington, DC, for the last 23 years.

This is far longer than most murderers are locked up, let alone attempted murderers, but Hinckley, 50, can (and may) be kept locked up forever, even though most people accept the premise that if you don't know the difference between right and wrong, you ought not be punished for your acts.

In our society, we cure sick people. We treat them therapeutically, not punitively.

Unless they shoot the president of the United States, that is.

After Hinckley was found not guilty, Congress and half the states enacted laws making it more difficult to use the insanity defense.

Even before the new laws were passed, however, insanity was a very rare defense that failed about 75 percent of the time.

(It is also a defense largely restricted to middle- and upper-class defendants. You rarely see a poor person, represented by a public defender, using the insanity defense because psychiatric research and testimony cost a lot of money.)

As a reporter, I covered one famous insanity defense case on a daily basis: the trial of John Wayne Gacy, who strangled 33 young men and boys and buried 26 of them beneath the floorboards of his home in suburban Chicago. He was found guilty and was executed on May 10, 1994.

Another famous killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, who dismembered and partially ate 15 young men and boys in Milwaukee, also tried an insanity defense. It, too, failed and Dahmer was murdered in prison on Nov. 28, 1994, while serving 15 consecutive life sentences.

Insanity defenses are a big gamble, because they require the defendant to admit he committed the crimes.

And most insanity cases fail for the same reason: If a defendant truly cannot distinguish between right and wrong, then he should not do what most criminals do: try to cover up the crimes, lie about them, hide from the police, etc.

In Hinckley's case, however, he was arrested immediately and did not deny his actions.

So his insanity defense "worked", but he has been locked away for a long time. In the past, the Reagan family has opposed Hinckley's trips outside St. Elizabeths and the Secret Service has tailed him.

The therapists at St. Elizabeths say Hinckley's insanity is in "full remission" and that time outside the hospital and normal relationships will help him.

Which doesn't mean he will ever be released. Even though he is no longer front-page news, there is usually negative public reaction every time he asks for time away from his institution.

Just because the law says he is an innocent man, that doesn't mean he will ever be a free man.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 19, 2005

WASHINGTON - - It is not so much what President Bush is saying these days, but what he is not saying.

If you count Hurricane Katrina as the third great crisis of his presidency - - Sept. 11, 2001 and the occupation of Iraq being the first two - - Bush has once again refused to call for any real sacrifice on the part of the American people to meet the crisis.

This is no accident. Sacrifice is what Democrats call for, not Republicans.

In his January 6, 1941 address to Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: "I have called for personal sacrifice, and I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes."

Hard to imagine a president saying that today.

John F. Kennedy famously said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1961: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - - ask what you can do for your country…. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."

On January 23, 1980, Jimmy Carter said to Congress: "Our material resources, great as they are, are limited. Our problems are too complex for simple slogans or for quick solutions. We cannot solve them without effort and sacrifice."

But Jimmy Carter had to run against Ronald Reagan for president that year, and Reagan bashed him repeatedly for calling for any sacrifice whatsoever.

"Carter says we've got to get used to austerity and sharing and scarcity and giving up luxury," Reagan would say to crowd after crowd. "Well, I don't believe that! I think we should cover our children's ears when they hear that kind of talk!"

In Ronald Reagan's world, sacrifice was for other countries, not for America. Americans could have whatever they wanted - - whether they had the money to pay for it or not.

And George Bush is very much in the Ronald Reagan mold. He equates sacrifice with pessimism and, like Reagan, he wishes to be eternally an optimist.

In a formal speech from New Orleans last Thursday, Bush did not call upon Americans to sacrifice. The next day, responding to a reporters question about paying for the massive relief effort, Bush offhandedly said: ''You bet it's going to cost money. But I'm confident we can handle it. It's going to mean that we're going to have to cut unnecessary spending.''

But in Washington, unnecessary spending is like unnecessary sex: It doesn't exist.

And within minutes, CNN's John King was on the air saying he had talked to presidential aides, who admitted they had no specific spending cuts in mind.

Others did: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said we should cut some of the pork from the $287 billion highway bill that Bush signed into law a month ago. Or we could delay the Medicare drug benefit or axe some of the tax relief that benefits the wealthiest Americans.

But the White House is not talking about any of that, even though we are also fighting a war in Iraq that is costing us $6 billion per month.

What is wrong with all this spending? Who cares that the deficit is currently about $331 billion and the national debt (all the deficits and surpluses - - remember surpluses?- - added together) is about $7.94 trillion?

A story by Knight-Ridder last week points out what's wrong with it: Starting in the fiscal year that begins next month, the United States will pay $208 billion in interest on the debt. That figure is "more than 25 times next year's $8.2 billion budget for the Environmental Protection Agency."

In other words, interest on the debt buys us nothing: It doesn't buy environmental protection or aircraft carriers or highways or levees. It just pays for the debt.

Who owns our debt, our IOUs? Well, China and other foreign countries own 46 percent of them.

Is it sound national policy to have countries with political agendas than can be radically different from our own in control of the U.S. economy?

No, but that's what you get when you put everything on a charge card.

We could raise taxes to pay our bills, of course. But that would involve sacrifice.

And George Bush is not going to ask for that.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - - Shortly after he left the second day of hearings on the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States, Ted Kennedy went to a reception a few blocks from the Capitol and poked some rueful fun.

Roberts had remarked that a Supreme Court Justice is merely an impartial observer in the game of life and not a player.

"Judges are umpires," Roberts said in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I will remember it is my job to call balls and strikes, and not pitch or bat."

Roberts also said: "Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role."

Kennedy, who clearly thinks judges play more than a limited role - - they determined who the President of the United States was in the 2000 election, for example - - told an old joke at the reception that went like this:

There are three umpires at a baseball game and after a close play at the plate, the umpires call the man out. The manager runs out of the dugout and asks each umpire why he called the man out.

The first umpire says, "He's out because I calls 'em as I sees 'em."

The second umpires says, "He's out because I calls 'em as they are,"

And the third umpire says, "He's out because I called him out."

After delivering the punch line, Kennedy smiled a bleak smile.

Humor may be all that is left for the Democrats. The hearings are continuing exactly as the White House wanted them to, making them one of the few White House victories in recent months.

Roberts is being earnest and enigmatic. He has said virtually nothing of any substance and nothing of any controversy as of yet.

Todd Purdum of the New York Times, who called Roberts "Delphic," also said, "At times Judge Roberts's responses were so bland as to tremble on the precipice of platitude."

Roberts was probably pleased by that. The "precipice of platitude" gets you to the Supreme Court.

Controversial specificity sometimes can keep you from it, as Robert Bork found out in 1987 when he was denied a seat on the High Court by a 58-42 vote of the U.S. Senate following a particularly powerful evisceration by Sen. Kennedy.

This will not happen to Roberts. Even if the Democrats should filibuster his confirmation - - and they won't - - Roberts seems a sure bet to get, if not exceed, a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

Even Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., who is toying with a run for the presidency in 2008, and can be disarmingly folksy when in attack mode, was unable to get a hold on Roberts, let alone pin him to the mat.

"His answers are misleading," Biden complained at one point.

"They may be misleading," Arlen Specter, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee shot back, "but they are his answers."

No matter what was said about him or to him, Roberts remained unrattled, the perfect umpire.

In fact, only one piece of media coverage possibly may have irritated Roberts: In a Dana Milbank article in the Washington Post, Milbank observed that Roberts was avoiding direct answers and said, "Roberts, his bald spot exposed under the studio lights, offered a stream of such evasions."

Evasions, Roberts could forgive.

But 50-year-old men do not take references to their bald spots lightly.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 12, 2005

WASHINGTON - - If you want to know what went wrong with the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, just examine the following statement by Dick Cheney.

When asked by a reporter why he did not return from his vacation earlier than last Thursday, three days after the hurricane hit, the vice president replied: "I came back four days early."

And you can see why Cheney is so testy. He had to miss four days of his vacation to help a bunch of people who probably had never voted Republican in their lives.

The same sense of irritation was noticeable in the initial post-Katrina public appearances by President Bush (though his handlers now seem to have him under control.)

It was a sense of "Why me?" Wasn't a quagmire in Iraq enough of a burden? In addition to his own man-made disaster, did he have to deal with a natural disaster, too?

Bush, his supporters once bragged, was a president in the mold of Ronald Reagan: a man who knew how to delegate, knew how to pick good people and let them do their job.

Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was one of those good people.

Brown had no actual qualifications for the job save one: He was the buddy of Joe Allbaugh, a Bush crony, who, along with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, formed part of the Texas "iron triangle" that helped Bush get elected to the presidency.

Hiring political hacks and cronies has always been a presidential prerogative. But these hacks used to be dumped in places like the old Post Office department (which goes a long way to explain why the mail has always been screwed up.)

But dumping hacks and cronies in an agency in charge of federal emergency management? Isn't that a recipe for disaster?

Well, yes. George Bush is out of the Ronald Reagan school: disengaged, affable, dependent on and loyal to his subordinates.

So even when it was clear that Brown had done a terrible job in helping people after Katrina, what was the reaction of George Bush?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush said on Friday, Sept. 2.

A week later, Brown was booted back to his desk in Washington by Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Brown resigned Monday.

Nancy Staudt, a visiting professor at Northwestern University School of Law and a specialist in how government institutions make decisions, said in a release: "At the time Katrina hit the gulf coast, Michael Chertoff, the DHS Secretary, and FEMA Director Michael Brown did not have the necessary expertise to undertake emergency relief efforts."

Expertise? Who said anything about expertise? This is government.

Bush's polls continue to nosedive. ABC reported Monday that "more than six in 10 say the administration lacks a clear plan to handle the situation caused by the hurricane and subsequent flooding. The percentage of Americans who think there's no clear plan is somewhat higher now than it was in an ABC News/Washington Post poll on Sept. 2 when 80 percent of New Orleans was under water."

In other words, even with the waters receding, even with the horror shows at the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center over, the public's view of how Bush handles emergencies is going down.

Further, "independents are about twice as likely to strongly disapprove as to strongly approve" of Bush's performance post-Katrina."

As ABC's political newsletter, The Note, wryly observes "that will be read with some concern among those GOPers whose names will be on ballots next November."

Georgie, you're doing a heck of a job.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 7, 2005

SIMON SAYS:
If you have to find a job for a political hack, why put him in charge of emergency management? Whatever happened to postmaster general?

Plantains are highly underrated. (Just don't forget to cook them.)

In my next life, I intend to be a flair bartender.

John Roberts could put on a ski mask and stick up a 7-Eleven and he would still get 65 votes in the U.S. Senate.

People will collect anything.

The Hurricane Katrina tragedy has coined a new word: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it will "de-water" New Orleans.

Whatever happened to Pong? I coulda been a contender!

Cheap wine tastes better if you chill it.

It is amazing how many people talk to themselves while driving.

Paperback Pick of the Month: "Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy" by David Stevenson.

Pretty cool website (though I am not exactly sure what you do with it): technorati.com.

Don't say I didn't warn you: Your refrigerator magnets will not stick to that fancy new refrigerator you've been eyeing.

Response to Baffled in Buffalo: If it's outside your apartment, it's a rat and if it's inside your apartment, it's a field mouse.

I can't help it. I'm just a fool for Gore-Tex.

Two more phrases I never knew Shakespeare coined: "Foregone conclusion" from "Othello" and "Off with his head" from "Richard III." (I think he also coined, "The last one to leave Cleveland, please turn off the lights!" but that may have been Marlowe.)

If you're looking for a new car, but don't know what you want, just go to any shopping center and drive through the parking lot to see all different makes and models.

If we're not supposed to compare Iraq to Vietnam, how come President Bush gets to compare it to World War II?

If you don't know how to "muddle" a drink, you don't know anything.

I apparently am the last person on the planet to get high-speed internet service, Yes, I like it and no, it's not worth the money.

I don't understand those people who say they never read the fiction in the New Yorker. Almost without exception the fiction is excellent.

Things We Are Tired Of: The use of the word "destination" as in "Simon Says" is a destination column.

If you've shopped for a mattress lately, you know they are now divided into "stomach sleepers," "back sleepers," and "side sleepers." I guess you could just simplify your life and become a "floor sleeper."

Why didn't I buy HBO when it was a nickel a share? "Entourage," "The Comeback," and "Rome" are all well worth watching. (Although I am still wondering why everybody in Ancient Rome spoke with a British accent.)

I hate people who send e-mails with those little red exclamation points to indicate the message is urgent. It never is.

Never trust a man who owns his own pool cue or a woman who says she never wore a scrunchy.

President Bush says we should not play the "blame game" over the Hurricane Katrina response. But isn't the "blame game" just another phrase for "accountability"?

A lot of people who have tattoos today will regret them tomorrow.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
SEPTEMBER 5, 2005

WASHINGTON - - First fix the problem and then fix the blame. Or so the old saying goes.

But the Bush administration's initial response to Hurricane Katrina was such a debacle that the blame-fixing has started early.

At the top of the blame list is, of course, President Bush. His laggardly, confused and inadequate response will have political repercussions that will outlast his presidency.

Gone, at least for awhile, will be the presidential model that both he and Ronald Reagan symbolized: The likeable, somewhat disengaged, CEO-style president who (allegedly) surrounds himself with good people and then lets them work pretty much without direction.

In the past, this worked. If you look at recent presidential elections you can make a case that voters always picked the most likeable candidate, not necessarily the brightest one:

George Bush was more likeable than John Kerry or policy wonk Al Gore (though Gore did win the popular vote). George H.W. Bush was more likeable than wonky Michael Dukakis, but not more likeable than Bill Clinton. And Ronald Reagan was more likeable than both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

President Bush's political team has always depended on his likeability. When I went down to Austin in 2000 to interview his top political aides, one told me that the whole purpose of the campaign was to show that Bush could clear the minimal "bar of competency" and after that the voters would be won over by his affability, his pledge to be a uniter and not a divider, etc.

After Sept. 11, the nation rallied around its president and only relatively recently, in the midst of our prolonged and continuing occupation of Iraq, has Bush's popularity begun to slip.

Now, after Katrina, the policy wonks are beginning to look a lot better than the grip-and-grinners. A policy wonk might have actually had a plan for dealing with a major flood in a city largely below sea level, and he might have executed that plan with reasonable swiftness.

A policy wonk might, for example, have immediately sent in our resident experts in amphibious operations: the U.S. Marines. A policy wonk might have done something right away instead of staying on vacation.

Just how bad is the political fall-out for Bush? Ask his fellow Republicans.

The first U.S. senator I know of who called for a congressional investigation of the Katrina shambles was John Kyl, Republican of Arizona, who chairs a subcommittee on homeland security.

"There has to be a plan in place - - along with adequate resources - - to be able to evacuate people, or at least provide relief supplies before panic sets in," Kyl said. "None of this appears to have been done in Louisiana."

Republican Mark Foley, a congressman from Florida, unsuccessfully called upon Bush to bring back from Iraq National Guard units whose states were devastated by Katrina.

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said: "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is eyeing a run for president in 2008, called the federal rescue effort "an embarrassment."

Bush seemed at first to join the critics. On Friday morning, he called the Katrina response "not acceptable."

But later in the day, confronted by reporters, Bush amended his statement, saying that only the lack of National Guard troops in the area was "not acceptable."

Then, still later in the day, the president said he wasn't criticizing anybody.

However befuddled Bush seemed on Friday, his spin team settled down to a strategy it has used before with considerable success: Blame somebody else.

There are going to be congressional hearings? Fine, just make sure the hearings end up blaming the State of Louisiana, which has a Democratic governor, and the City of New Orleans, which has a Democratic mayor.

Slowed down by local incompetents, the spin will go, the president did his very best to straighten out the mess.

And, if the president needs to throw somebody from the sled to slow down the wolf pack, he can always throw out Michael Brown, the head of FEMA.

Brown, a political hack, was the college roommate of Joe Albaugh, Bush's political crony. That, apparently, was qualification enough to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Bush could help redeem himself with one grand gesture that would help many Americans: Bush could do to rapacious oil companies what John Kennedy did to greedy steel companies in 1962: Tell them they do not deserve enormous windfall profits and force them to lower prices.

I would not count on Bush doing this, however. Bush knows the pressure on him will lessen. After all, aid is finally flowing to the stricken area and eventually attention will turn to a new story.

Bush, a man of considerable personal charm, has been underestimated before, and he wants to leave a positive legacy.

So all he has to do in the next couple of years is rebuild the Gulf Coast, win the war in Iraq and save Social Security.

Otherwise, he might give likeability a bad name.