A reader in talkback noticed this interesting BBC article on how hard it is for soldiers to kill. It doesn’t go as in depth as Dan Baum, but it’s still pretty good.

No one is paying enough attention to Venezuela, but Thor Halvorssen is on the ground down there and has a report. His mother was just shot by a group of Hugo Chávez’s supporters.

Thor has been covering the Chávez regime for a while and has reported on some truly horrifying stuff, like the torture of Jesus Soriano. It makes you wonder how some Americans–both Democrats and some Republicans, like Jack Kemp–can offer Chávez cover.

I suppose it’s possible that Chávez really does have popular support (although I doubt it), but that isn’t entirely comforting. As George Will noted yesterday, government that is “all sail and no anchor” often leads to trouble. Democracies produced both Napoleon and Franco.

My boss catches Kerry in a pretty bad flip-flop on troop deployment.

The Bush twins may be attending a gay wedding. I’ve long suspected that opposing gay marriage is a losing fight. Forget the rights or wrongs of it–the train is moving down the track and it’s not clear to me that there’s any way of stopping it.

Part of the reason for this is that the best arguments against gay marriage are explicitly religious. Another reason is that the equality aspect of the pro-gay marriage arguments are fairly powerful (at least on their face). But the biggest reason is this: Rising generations are going to inhabit radically different positions of gay marriage than their parents and grandparents did. Opposition to gay marriage has crested, and is only going to erode over time as Gen-Y begins filling the demographic ocean.

As far as I can tell, the question conservatives should be asking themselves isn’t “Can gay marriage be stopped?” The real question is: Are religious groups that oppose gay marriage going to be allowed to keep doing so 20 years from now?

It seems possible that down the road the Catholic church is going to have its tax-exempt status put in jeopardy because they’ll refuse to marry people of the same sex.

If I were a conservative committed to defending traditional marriage, I wouldn’t be caught up in the fight against gay marriage–I’d be quitely setting up a defensive perimeter so that down the line religious groups won’t be compelled to buy into gay marraige by a broader secular society which will almost certainly see it as the norm.

The most important line of this story: “Some political watchers said McGreevey was planning to leave early but delayed making the announcement to round up pledges for his legal fees.”

The mayor of Belmar, New Jersey (not to be confused with Belmawr!) tosses that suggestion aside, saying, “That’s crazy. People will contribute to McGreevey’s legal fees because they like him. To dangle that as a carrot, or think people will withhold that if he doesn’t go along with what they want, smells of the worst of Jersey boss politics.”

Oh, so all the Democrats and Republicans calling on him to resign immediately really, really like him. You know, deep down. Also, these FBI investigations surrounding McGreevey’s administration–that’s not evidence of the worst Jersey boss politics.

It’s the BEST Jersey boss politics!

That’s how Michael Nora describes my friend Matt Labash in a recent New York Press interview. That doesn’t seem quite fair. Or even a little bit fair. Labash is funny, unpredictable, and smarter than anyone ever gives him credit for being. Also, he can write.

Oh, and one more thing: That’s Matt Labash, not “Matt LaBash.”

Still, the interview is worth a read.

Vote Kerry! In recent weeks downtown Washington (and parts of suburban Virginia) have been clotted with young DNC volunteers. They stand on street corners in red t-shirts with clipboards asking every passer-by, “Want to help beat Bush?”

I’ve always politely declined. I’m happy to sign petitions to get someone on the ballot (I did so in Virginia for Wes Clark), but being asked to help “beat Bush” seemed a little off-putting. Plus, the volunteers were slightly annoying: If I had to walk, say, from my office to the ATM to Au Bon Pain and back, I’d get hit up 3 times in the span of 15 minutes. You know, in most cities, they have laws saying that pan-handlers can only ask once.

But yesterday there was a change: The begging DNC volunteers asked, “Would you like to help elect John Kerry?”

Paging Mickey Kaus . . .

Today’s Washington Post carries a story on the police in Falls Church, Va. The cops there have strict quotas. They have to make three arrests or give out three tickets per day. If they don’t, they’re automatically put on probation. Over time, cops who don’t meet their quotas can get fired.

Obviously, this is pure revenue generation on the part of the city.

But leaving aside the pedestrian concerns which arise from handing your police quotas, there are two overarching problems:

(1) The quota system drastically undermines respect for the law. Which over time, will result in more crime.

(2) The quota system means that, as a statistical matter, crime in Falls Church can never decrease.

Crazy people on the left often insist that the United States manufactures foreign enemies to feed demand for the military industrial complex. (Paging Dr. Caldicott!) But in this case, that’s exactly what could happen. If criminal acts in Falls Church dropped precipitously because of, say, a particularly effective police chief, no one would know, because the police officers on the street would have to keep making arrests and handing out tickets. The geniuses at Falls Church City Hall have required their police to keep crime at a consistent level.