The Week - politics - Column

-- The Council on American-Islamic Relations is organizing a prpro- Palestinian rally in Washington. They already have the State Department, don't they?

-- Sweating through his shirt and at times shouting, Al Gore pounded ththe Bush administration again and again in a speech to Democrats in Florida. In a play on nearby Disney World, Gore said, "We're the party of Main Street USA. They're the party of the Pirates of Enron." Republicans are for "special interests" and the "well-heeled," Democrats for "the little guy." The people vs. the powerful is still his theme, and it is still premised on a cartoonish and slightly paranoid view of the world. In its strong form, this view leads to the lunacy of a Cynthia McKinney; in its weak form, it is merely false to the experience of American life. The audience roared its approval, which may be a problem for Gore's party. Most voters, even Democratic voters, tell pollsters they are tired of him, and the party establishment scorns him as a loser. But party workers love the man. Gore isn't the only Democratic politician who ought to be sweating.

-- For 30 years, the Catholic archdiocese of Boston knew that Fr. Paul ShShanley was an unrepentant pederast and that he had admitted to molesting boys. The response of the church hierarchy was to shuffle him through ministries, sometimes lying to the church authorities to whom they transferred him. This revelation comes three months after we found out that the archdiocese acted similarly with respect to another pedophile rapist, Fr. Thomas Geoghan. Bernard Cardinal Law, the archbishop of Boston since 1984, has acknowledged that he erred in not taking the conduct of these priests more seriously. What he has not acknowledged is that the only way to do justice to the magnitude of his dereliction is to resign. Cardinal Law no longer has the credibility to be a moral and spiritual leader for his people. It is a great sadness, but if he does not face it his error of judgment will only be compounded.

-- Congressman Jim Traficant, Ohio Democrat, was convicted of ten cocounts of racketeering, bribery, and fraud. Democratic leaders have called for his ouster, but Republicans have been more cautious, reflecting their tacit alliance with Traficant in recent years. Traficant said he would vote to keep Republicans in power in the House if necessary, so Republicans pretended he wasn't a crook. A dispiriting spectacle, now brought, one hopes, to an end, thanks to a solid prosecution.

-- A marijuana-legalization group has been running ads in New York CiCity, playing off a quip by mayoral prospect Michael Bloomberg that he smoked pot -- "and I enjoyed it." After the ads first appeared, Mayor Bloomberg exhaled, saying "we should enforce the laws, and I do not think decriminalizing marijuana is a good idea." So the mayor is in favor of maintaining a law which the intelligently hip and, of course, the rich flout with next to no risk, while the less savvy and the less prosperous can and do get nailed. Conscientious politicians should enforce the laws, but they should also seek to change capricious, inequitable, and needless ones.

-- Shortly after an appeals court declared Ohio's 80-year-old ban on coconcealed weapons to be unconstitutional, state representative Edward Jerse, a Democrat, fumed: "We have an unacceptable level of violence in our society. We have got to change our culture. And you don't do that by throwing up your hands and saying, 'Okay, everybody get a gun.'" We quite agree -- it's not at all necessary for everybody to get a gun. Concealed-carry has been shown to lower the frequency of murder by 8.5 percent, of rape by 5 percent, and of aggravated assault by 7 percent; as John Lott has noted, it works as a deterrent precisely because "cab drivers and drug dealers who carry guns produce a benefit for cab drivers and drug dealers without guns . . . homeowners who defend themselves make burglars generally wary of breaking into homes." Criminals have long known that they are worse off with victims who might be armed than with victims who definitely aren't. With 43 states now permitting concealed-carry, the law is finally catching up.

-- Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah is heading to Crawford for a memeeting with President Bush. Prediction: Abdullah won't come away with a presidential nickname. Crawford is an inappropriate place for the meeting, since the president should reserve his Texas getaway spot for real chums, such as Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, rather than share it with Arab dictators with whom we are forced by circumstances to maintain correct relations. Bush should not shrink from making Abdullah uncomfortable, despite the homey surroundings: Why hasn't Saudi Arabia followed through on its "peace plan" with a full-throated condemnation of suicide bombings? Why are its fingerprints all over the radical Islamic network in the U.S.? Why is it obstructing a goal -- toppling Saddam Hussein -- that we consider a strategic imperative? If Abdullah has satisfactory answers, then maybe he can join Bush for some relaxing brush-clearing. Otherwise, the sooner he gets back to Riyadh, and its religious police and murderous anti-Israel vitriol, the better.