THE GOOD PART OF THE PATIENTS’ BILL OF RIGHTS CONSERVATIVES DISMAYED BY THE SENATE GOP’S rollover on the patients’ bill of rights can perhaps find a silver lining, thanks to Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum. For the bill includes as a rider—introduced by Santorum and passed 98-0 on June 29—a modest pro-life measure known as the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The born-alive act, brainchild of constitutional scholar (and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor) Hadley Arkes, would extend the protection of law to the small number of children each year who survive abortions. It might seem to the uninitiated that this would go without saying. But of course what we have learned in recent decades under the imperial judiciary is that nothing ever goes without saying. Last year’s Supreme Court decision striking down Nebraska’s partial-birth abortion ban continued a trend in federal jurisprudence in which the abortion right is construed not simply as a right to an empty womb but (as some call it) a “right to a dead child”—which is to say, legalized infanticide. The born-alive act, as Arkes conceived it, was intended not just to provoke a clarifying power struggle between Congress and the courts over the creeping legalization of infanticide, but to spark arguments that would be more uncomfortable for the National Abortion Rights Action League than for pro-lifers. For the moment, though, NARAL has thrown in the towel—hence the 98-0 vote. This means we will be deprived of more debates from the floor of the Senate like this one of October 20, 1999, which Arkes memorably annotated in these pages: SEN. SANTORUM: I would like to ask you this question. You agree, once the child is born, separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed. Do you agree with that? SEN. BOXER: I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born…the baby belongs to your family and has rights. SANTORUM: Obviously, you don’t mean they have to take the baby out of the hospital for it to be protected by the Constitution. Once the baby is separated from the mother, you would agree—completely separated from the mother—you would agree that baby is entitled to constitutional protection? BOXER: I don’t want to engage in this. You had the same conversation with a colleague of mine, and I never saw such a twisting of his remarks. Arkes then noted: “Boxer treated it as a bit of insolence that Santorum should ask the most elementary question of all, which runs back to the core of the argument over abortion: What is the earliest moment at which the child can be protected by the law? If it is not when the child is separated from the mother, then when?” Whether because of guile, cowardice, or a shrewder political sense, the Barbara Boxers of the Senate have now decided not to argue this point. Which, all things considered, probably counts as a gain for civilization. PLUS ÇA CHANGE? TWO WEEKS AGO, THE SCRAPBOOK reprinted a picture from Bill Clinton’s recent trip to England (see below), which provoked one reader to respond. She e-mailed to us a similar photo (see below, right)—taken during President Bush’s recent trip to Poland. This, she wrote, is “for your next SCRAPBOOK. Trust me,” she explained, “it really is just a guy thing.” We prefer a different interpretation. An unnamed Associated Press caption writer explains what’s really going on: “President Bush reaches for his glass to toast Polish first lady Jolanta Kwasniewska, left, as she toasts first lady Laura Bush during a state dinner at the presidential palace.” Although the angle makes it hard to see, it’s the champagne he’s staring at. YOU CAN’T FOOL AL NEUHARTH STUPIDEST COLUMN IN THE USA award for last week goes to USA Today founder Al Neuharth for this July 6 gem explaining why the IOC should award the 2008 Olympics to China when it meets next week in Moscow to select the host city: “Preparations and enthusiasm for the Olympics were evident everywhere when I visited Beijing last month. Huge billboards and banners displayed ‘Olympics 2008.’ Local polls showed 95% of Beijing residents support hosting the Olympics.” Well, yes, Beijing is good at billboards and banners, no one denies it. But what about the Berlin 1936 precedent—an acknowledged propaganda feast for Hitler? Shouldn’t we have learned from history not to award this plum to regimes before they liberalize? Not to worry! says Al. “The Olympics historically have been above politics. They are athlete-to-athlete, people-to-people. That’s why Nazi Germany got the games for Berlin in 1936. And why the communist USSR was host in Moscow in 1980. In each case, the Olympics helped locals understand what the rest of the world was all about. And vice-versa.” Why learn from history when you can simply rewrite it? TIMESLISH THE JULY 1 NEW YORK TIMES carried a front-page story by foreign correspondent Seth Mydans about the spread of non-standard English dialects around the world. It seems that professional linguists have already organized an International Association for World Englishes (note the plural), and regional variants like “Singlish” in Singapore and “Taglish” in the Philippines are rapidly taking shape. One trouble with this pidgin proliferation, Mydans notes, is that “an outsider” from Great Britain or the States “would need a multilingual dictionary to understand” the modern world’s English-based babble. Never fear, however: the Times helpfully appends a handy-dandy, chart-format “glossary,” so the next time you’re in, say, the Bahamas, you’ll be totally comfortable with the local lingo. For example: The Bahamian phrase “hard of hearing,” confides the paper of record, actually means “obstinant.” Which is itself, apparently, a slang term used by the islanders of Manhattan to indicate …well, we’re not sure what. Call us obstinate, but we haven’t kept up with our Timeslish lessons. CONGRATULATIONS! THE THIRD ANNUAL ERIC BREINDEL Award for Excellence in Journalism went this year to a particular favorite of THE SCRAPBOOK’s, our friend and former colleague Jay Nordlinger, now managing editor of National Review. Breindel, a longtime editorial page editor of the New York Post who also contributed to this magazine, died in March 1998, at age 42. We hope it is not presumptuous to speculate that he would particularly approve of this year’s award. Sponsored by the Eric Breindel Memorial Foundation, the Breindel Award is the most lucrative in the field of opinion journalism, with a prize of $10,000. It goes each year to the columnist or editorialist whose work best reflects the love of this country that animated Breindel’s writings, as well as his courage in bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby was the first winner of the award. Tom Flannery of the Pennsylvania weekly Carbondale News won last year. News Corporation, Breindel’s employer and the corporate parent of this magazine, has been a generous donor to the Eric Breindel Memorial Foundation.
