Politicians

TEL AVIV, Israel -- The super-hero of Israel's strident secularists is an irreverent, rotund pundit who parlayed public outrage over the increasing power of ultra-Orthodox Jews into a surprising electoral success in last month's election.Yosef "Tomy" Lapid skewered Israeli politicians in newspaper columns and on raucous talk shows for almost 40 years. Now, he's one of them. The 67-year-old dean of Israeli talk-show personalities won election to Israel's parliament May 17 and resurrected a moribund political party in the process.

SHAKESPEARE was wrong. To solve our collective problems, we don't first kill all the lawyers. We first kill all of those we think might grow up to be criminals.That is the inescapable conclusion reached in an unpublished study circulating among economists and "experts" in criminal law.The study suggests that since abortion was made legal in 1973, the crime rate has declined.The implication is that crime is down because abortions are up. So, a good anti-crime package includes first killing all the babies our sociological models determine might grow up to be criminals.

MAQUOKETA, Iowa -- With his long-shot presidential candidacy suddenly on a roll, Bill Bradley is "having the time of my life."He's drawing friendly audiences on the campaign trail, flexing early fund-raising muscle and establishing himself as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. "It helps that people think this is now a shot," he says in an interview.The former senator may be enjoying more prosperity than he can stand. His newfound prominence may be hurting as much as it's helping, by raising expectations that he could have trouble meeting, and sending an urgent wake-up call to front-running Al Gore.

"Republic of Denial" by Michael Janeway. Yale University Press. 256 pages. $22.50.It is hardly news that politicians and the media are not among the most popular groups these days. Or that both stand condemned by many Americans for contributing to a public cynicism about government that has led to a deepening spirit of alienation.In an exceptionally strong indictment, Michael Janeway concludes that a dumbing-down of standards is at the heart of the disaffection. While no one suggests that the politicians and the press are co-conspirators, the author believes that a merging of mutual trends has eroded support for the civic community and made it more difficult to achieve a sense of common purpose.

YOU KNOW what it is the average American has most to fear in life, don't you?Well, sure, it's that late some night a teen-age black male will break into his house, rob him and beat him, all as a result of uncontrollable anger over being cut off in traffic earlier in the day.The poor average American then has to be flown to a hospital for surgery, but the plane crashes. Subsequently, he is given a blood transfusion, but the blood is tainted, infecting him with the AIDS virus.In the hospital, he is infected with a flesh-eating virus carried by an illegal-alien janitor.

WASHINGTON -- It is a mistake to read too much into the endorsements politicians collect from other politicians. Most voters are not as impressed as the politicians might imagine.But Al Gore can draw some encouragement from the declaration of support he has received from Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. She is a popular Democrat who has demonstrated a strong appeal to independents, a voting bloc that opinion polls show has been leaning strongly toward Bill Bradley.The timing of the endorsement suggests, however, that the Gore campaign is reacting defensively.

AS USUAL, Dan Quayle put it best. "Do we really want to ask or answer all these irrelevant questions about what someone may or may not have done 20 or 30 years ago? Quite frankly, the American people don't care," he told the New York Times recently. "And quite frankly, it's not that important. What's important is who you are today, what you're going to do."Quite right. What does it matter if, for example, President Clinton forced himself on Juanita Broaddrick way back in 1978? Whom a man may have raped in the privacy of her hotel room when he was attorney general of Arkansas has nothing to do with his ability to lead the nation into the 21st century.

SYDNEY, Australia -- In a referendum that could end more than 200 years of formal ties with Britain, Australians are going to the polls today to decide whether to cut their ties to the British royal family.The vote will determine if Australia, born as a British penal colony, will drop Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and scrap its 98-year-old constitutional monarchy in favor of a republic.Polls have shown that as many as 75 percent of Australians favor becoming a republic, in which a largely ceremonial president would replace the queen as Australia's head of state.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening -- blessed with a $283 million state surplus -- spent yesterday basking in the glow of incumbency as he traveled through Columbia dispensing favors and honing pitches for his re-election campaign.He announced $4 million to help save a local farm from developers and nearly $1 million more to renovate an aging elementary school with faulty ventilation.That's on top of about $40 million in road work he pledged to Howard County three weeks ago."Governor, you've been so good to Howard County," gushed Del. Frank S. Turner, a Columbia Democrat, "I'm running out of things to ask for."

In the midst of White House scandal and fall elections, an impromptu poll of pollsters and political scientists on polling produces the usual mixed results, with at least a 4 percent margin of error.Despite doubts, dismissals and denials, polls of every sort continue to proliferate like rabbits on Viagra and spout out information as fast as a well-oiled Gatling gun.Politicians from President Clinton to the local dogcatcher seem to take polls daily, if not hourly.Indeed, Clinton uses polls more than any other president has, says Iva Deutcher, a political scientist at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y."

Researchers from the University of Maryland who plodded through more than 6,000 Twitter postings by members of Congress have found - surprise! - that politicians spend most of their time on Twitter promoting themselves. The study was designed to determine whether the social networking revolution, and specifically the arrival of Twitter, had opened a new era of dialogue between elected leaders and the public. But the College Park team found that 80 percent of the postings fell into two categories: links to news articles and news releases, and status updates that chronicle the politician's latest trip to the sawmill or the supermarket.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's bizarre disappearance and sudden re-emergence last week to confess an extramarital affair is cause for liberals and Democrats to rejoice, but not for the typically narrow, partisan motive that there's good news to be found in bad news for the other guys. Sure, there is the satisfying schadenfreude that comes from seeing yet another social conservative fall far short privately of the moral standards he set publicly for others. The list of prominent Republicans bitten by the sexual serpent is big and growing, including as it does former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former almost-Speaker Bob Livingston, airport toe-tapping former Sen. Larry Craig, and page-pestering former Rep. Mark Foley.

President Barack Obama signed legislation last week to more than triple the number of Ameri-Corps members, from 75,000 to 250,000. Mr. Obama declared that the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act is about "connecting deeds to needs." Paying people on false pretenses to do unnecessary things is the soul of AmeriCorps. Since President Bill Clinton created this program in 1993, politicians have endlessly touted its recruits as volunteers toiling selflessly for the common good. But most AmeriCorps members go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups; their AmeriCorps gig is more of a career steppingstone than an act of financial sacrifice.

Public funding is wrong solution While the legality of transferring public funds from the Fair Campaign Financing Fund to pay for upgraded voting equipment may be in doubt, the heated debate over the issue demonstrates the folly of subsidizing politicians with taxpayer dollars in the first place ("Fund diversion irks state GOP," April 14). "Fair campaign" and "clean election" programs are supposed to end, or at least severely limit, abusive practices by politicians and control the perception that they are looking out for their own interests and not those of the voters.

H. L. Mencken would have savored this presidential election year. To him, political conventions and elections were made for "connoisseurs of the obscene." He had a lusty appetite for crackpots of every kind. "A good politician, under democracy," he wrote, "is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar." In the romantic era of the 1920s, when Mencken reigned from Baltimore as America's most famous journalist, presidential primaries were few. The suspense of national conventions rested in watching the candidates jockey for position at state caucuses in hotels outside the convention hall.

Fire incumbents who ignored credit crunch The editorial "Rescue or rebuke?" (Oct. 3) correctly notes that the $700 billion bailout bill is not an end all to our economic crisis. In fact, the statement, "The collective response in some offices in Washington and on Wall Street was, now what?" only amplifies how loosely all our politicians have played with our money and our trust. Every one of the politicians in Congress failed us, and now middle-class taxpayers will have to pay the bill.

For a people so obsessed with race, we are exceptionally bad at talking about it. Some of us fear talking about it, get nervous and fluttery and act as if this is a topic polite people should avoid. Some of us are unequipped to talk about it, too ignorant of the history that undergirds it, too willing to bend that history toward ideological ends, too blithely dismissive of the fact that history matters, that past informs present informs future. Some of us lack the compassion to talk about it, prefer to use it only as a means of denigrating, diminishing and dismissing the Other.

If you wonder why voters are often disgusted with inside-the-beltway politicians, you might consider what's happening this week to the $146 billion economic stimulus bill on which President Bush and Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives reached uncharacteristically quick agreement. The bill would quickly put tax rebates from $600 to $1200 into the pockets of 111 million Americans, and everyone - economists, business leaders, central bankers and even normally balky politicians - agrees that swift passage is an urgent priority if it is to have any effect in helping dodge a dangerous recession.

Two recent tragedies - in Minnesota and in Utah - have held the nation's attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention. Those politicians who are always itching to raise tax rates have seized upon the neglected infrastructure of the country as another reason to do what they are always trying to do. Those who live by talking points now have a great one: "How can we fight an expensive war and repair our neglected infrastructure without...

Many, if not most, college commencement addresses are essentially special-interest advertising. Politicians, political activists, judges and bureaucrats tell the graduating students how it is nobler to go into "public service" - that is, to become a politician, political activist, judge or bureaucrat - instead of going into the private sector and producing goods and services that people want enough to spend their own money for them. Parents who want to counteract politically correct commencement speeches - often after four years of politically correct indoctrination on campus - might include among the things they give their graduate a new book titled The Prince of Darkness by columnist Robert Novak.