ELSEWHERE

How quickly the tune has changed: “The European Union has embraced a new doctrine of hard-nosed military intervention around the world. EU leaders meeting in Greece on Thursday ditched their strategy of "soft power". Instead, they favoured a more muscular mix, including pre-emptive strikes against dangerous regimes if necessary. "Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the single most important threat to peace and security among nations," said the text, drafted by Javier Solana, the EU's security chief.”

"The House voted Wednesday to eliminate estate taxes by the end of the decade, keeping the Republicans’ tax cut efforts at the top of the congressional agenda. Republicans, criticizing the levy as a 'death tax,' said it forces families to liquidate small businesses and sell family farms to pay tax bills." See also here. Much the same bill was passed by the House last year but failed to get through the Senate so this is only a tiny step. Wealthy elderly Americans should migrate to Australia where such taxes were abolished years ago..

Jeff Jacoby has some ideas about what the U.S. should be doing to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran.

USA Today can have surprisingly sensible editorial pieces at times. This one about High School students being required to pass a final test before they get a graduation diploma makes a lot of good points. Example: “U.S. Department of Education researchers found that ''A'' students in schools in poor neighborhoods had the same reading scores as ''D'' students in schools in affluent areas.” In other words, without the tests, a lot of diplomas are meaningless. But I guess we really knew that.

As their science comes increasingly into question, the “Greenhouse” advocates just push the panic button harder. They now claim that temperatures COULD rise by 6 degrees next century and that this would wipe out most life on earth! This article in “Spiked” points out the obvious however: “Humans live in a wide diversity of weather conditions already. Even within a single city like New York, people live very successfully with temperature extremes of 50 degrees Celsius or more.” So what’s a puny 6 degrees to that?

If only: Japanese Genetic engineers may soon give us decaf coffee that actually tastes like coffee.