Jimmy Carter

The Guardian's Jon Ronson profiles Paul Davies, the Arizona State Univerity scientist who chairs the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Post-Detection Task Force. SETI, the brainchild of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, has been active for almost 50 years. So far, nothing.

Ron Brownstein has an interesting piece in National Journal about President Obama’s problems with blue-collar voters. His argument is that the cross-tabs in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, in which Democrats bled working-class white voters, resemble the key characteristic of the 1994 election.

Thankfully, it seems finally to have dawned on President Obama that al Qaeda is an indefatigable enemy of the United States, and will seize any and every opportunity to kill Americans. And it appears to have surprised Janet Napolitano to realize how determined al-Qaeda can be, whether commissioning individuals to commit acts of terror or planning large-scale operations.

FINALLY THE DEMOCRATS have found their hot issue: The Confederate heart of George Bush, and of Bill Frist, who by virtue of their membership in the Republican party have indicated their desire to live in a slaveholding past. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi--to name just three prominent Democrats--have delivered themselves of the judgment that Republicans and those who vote for them are all closet racists. The demise of Trent Lott was only a smokescreen to hide this dark secret.

IN A NOBEL LECTURE YESTERDAY that is a familiar mixture of personal self-satisfaction and national self-abasement, Jimmy Carter names the greatest challenge in the world today, and it is us: the tragic failure of the wealthiest nations to cure the poverty of the poorest.

Implicitly, the second-greatest problem is also us: our failure to recognize that war is evil and to embrace "the premise that the United Nations is the best avenue for the maintenance of peace."

Let's start with the self

FOR WHOM THE NOBEL TOLLS

The only mystery surrounding Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize is how it could possibly have taken the sanctimonious Norwegians this long to hand out their badly devalued award to the sanctimonious former president. Face it, they were made for each other--the president who wanted America to get over its "inordinate fear of communism" and the Scandinavians who never met a Soviet fellow traveler they didn't want to throw a cocktail reception for and shower with several hundred thousand tax-exempt Swedish crowns.

"A few weeks ago, we were doing some work on my back porch back home, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes. . . . A copperhead will kill you. It could kill one of my dogs. It could kill one of my grandchildren; they play all the time where I found those killers. You know, when I discovered those copperheads, I did not call my wife Shirley for advice, as I usually do on most things. I did not go before the city council. I did not yell for help from my neighbors.

SOMEONE TELL Jimmy Carter to give back the Nobel prize. Since the million-dollar Peace Prize was awarded to the former president as an expression of anti-American pique, Carter should politely decline.

Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Nobel committee, said giving the award to Carter "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken. . . .