Conservative Donnybrook

On this, the first day of Hannukah, a group of environmentalist Jews has a suggestion which has ignited somewhat of a controversy.

Their suggestion? In order to stave off the catastrophic effects of millions of Jews creating excessive greenhouse gases during the holiday, they have suggested that Jews forgo the lighting of the last menorah candle. Apparently, the burning of that candle adds 15 grams of CO2 to the atmosphere. And, if you multiply that by the number of Jewish households…well, it would make AlGore blush. Or rush out to purchase a CO2 credit.

Ridiculous.

Regarding that US intelligence assessment (mentioned by Mike in the post below), which concludes that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program, Taki writes:

But I’ve got a suggestion for [Norman] Podhoretz. Label the National Intelligence Estimate (or perhaps the very concepts of “National” or “Intelligence”) anti-Semitic and then go out and buy four pizzas for your son, John.

Ha ha!

But the White House hawks are undeterred, of course. From the AP article:

The White House says it will continue to try to build pressure on Iran to prevent it from ever acquiring nuclear bombs.

And of course, the Administration presumably sees the culmination of this escalation as involving military force if necessary. Is our policy meant to prevent Iran from starting a weapons program, or to encourage them to build a nuclear deterrent? It’s hard to tell.

It would appear that former Sen. Rick Santorum picked the wrong windmills at which to go a-tilting. Chavez was smacked back to reality and prevented from standing for another election in three years. Our latest National Intelligence estimate even has people like former Bush national security team member Rand Beers saying “cool it, dudes.” (Could anyone help Pastor Hagee spin the quote from Ehud Barak, please? They had a weapons program, they stopped it, but they continued it. Must be a translation thing.)

Jon Alterman has a point, of sorts: why believe the intelligence community in this assessment of Iran, now, when they’ve been wrong before? Well, sir, as Barak said, only time will tell who was right, but I’d say that the intelligence community who contributed to this estimate have been stung by previous cherry-picking, have a sense that their contribution to this debate will very likely prevent future death and destruction of American personnel and assets (not to mention Iranian civilians), and finally feel like they don’t need to fear repercussions from the Bush administration. I dunno.

What will Rick do now? I guess the book and film will continue unabated. I’m getting the popcorn ready.