A little while back, I wondered about consecutive multi-term wins. Now, with the New York mayor's race beginning, I'm wondering about a possible effect of term limits: Do you think that once someone is term-limited, the public is more forgiving when they run for reelection, thinking that the candidate doesn't have long in office anyway? Consider that since Eisenhower, the first president affected by term limits, five presidents have won reelection and only two (not counting Ford, who was never elected and could have run twice) have lost. I'll have to crunch the numbers of everyone from before, though.

I also wondered about Religious-Zionist accommodation of chareideim. Looks like some of the backlash (toward the end of the piece) has begun, thankfully.

Meanwhile, Safire and his good buddy Sharon continue to be blithering idiots, with Safire all busy justifying Mazen's support of terror. And there's this beaut: "But disengagement or relocation, euphemisms for withdrawal..." Why not, "Withdrawal, a euphemism for expulsion of Jews..."

Elsewhere on the op-ed page are two good pieces on France: The one by John J. Miller (picture on this blog!) is great, of course, but surprisingly, the other piece, which I suppose was chosen to "balance" it, isn't bad either. Sort of a "Yeah, Frenchmen are jerks, but be nice to us" thing. I would add one point to his reasons Americans don't like France: There may be something of a backlash against the "high culture" France supposedly represents, and which we're all supposed to be in awe of.

Rush has a Kojo Annan song. Hee! Question: Can anyone find a picture of him? It's for my mom.