Opinions to go Online

Primary predate: With so many senators doing a drive-by lay-of-the-landing in Afghanistan, it’s beginning to look like the first primary of the 2004 presidential race. So where’s Al Gore? Would he have to shave for a better fit with post-Taliban fashion?

Plane speaking: If an airline pilot says he’s uncomfortable with paperwork and the deportment of a man of Middle Eastern descent who’s armed and says he’s with the Secret Service, and you’re about to board that American Airlines’ plane, who do you side with? Thought so.

Born (Suit) Free: The U.S. continues to reign, of course, as the world’s most litigious nation. No one is close. But not even in the U.S. has a court ruled that a person has a right not to be born — and a concomitant right to sue for being brought into this world.

But that’s what a French court ruled in the case of a boy who was born deaf, nearly blind and retarded. His mother said she would have aborted him had doctors correctly diagnosed her German measles when she was pregnant.

But tragedy and heartache do not excuse flawed law and perilous precedent. The French National Assembly has approved a bill overturning that decision. States the bill: “No one can sue for damages for the sole fact of their birth.”

Imagine having to actually codify that concept. Only — to date — in France.

Driven to extremes: How ironic — and unsettling — is it that Charles Bishop, the 15 year old who flew a plane into a Tampa skyscraper, had to get his grandmother to drive him to his flying lesson? And she had done so before, when he was 14.

Bishop was too young to be at the wheel of a car but old enough to be at the controls of a plane. Anyone want to revisit this logic?

Drawing conclusions: Please, no more Defense Department-doctored photos of a westernized Osama bin Laden as he might look on the lam. Is the generic geek look some sort of dead give-away? It makes it too easy for those too easily disposed to dismiss legitimate evidence, such as videos and hard drive information, as the devious work of American infidels. Save it for Comedy Central and Jay Leno’s “Where’s bin Laden been hidin’.”

Flag flap: Not everything that is run up a flagpole is salute-able. Case in point: the flap over the 19-foot bronze sculpture that ostensibly replicates the famous photo of the three New York firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade Center.

A major liberty was taken, it turns out, in moving between mediums, and it has nothing to do with artistic license. It has, however, everything to do with assuring and enshrining political correctness. Not even the trauma, tragedy and sanctity of Sept. 11 is immune from the PC police, because the photo depicts three white firefighters — members of a fire department that is 93 per cent white. It’s a sensitive issue. As a result, two of those firefighters have now morphed into a black and a Hispanic.

If the controversial sculpture hadn’t been based on an actual, historic photo, then no harm, no foul, no problem. In fact, had that been the case, why not show a black, a white and a Hispanic firefighter? It would symbolically honor all those who made the supreme sacrifice.

But there’s this famous photo of three white firefighters. It was these three, actual, New York firefighters who historically hoisted that flag. Not three demographically acceptable figures. What those firefighters did was symbolic; who they were wasn’t.

Atoms Family values: Is this a definition of obscene or what? India, which can’t quite feed itself and leads the world in the number of people who live on traffic islands, has a defense budget of $15.6 billion. Pakistan, smaller but no better off, prioritizes defense to the tune of $2.6 billion annually.

The NCAA is threatening to penalize member schools for academic deficiencies. Among the proposals: taking away scholarships and withholding eligibility for post-season play. It’s all aimed at improving graduation rates — especially among football and basketball players, especially among blacks.

The proposal is well intentioned, of course, because big time intercollegiate athletics is rife with hypocritical, sham programs where players major in sports eligibility. The devil, however, is in the details, where the calculation of graduation rates is less than precise. For example, how best to factor in transfers and early pro league departures?

Here’s a suggestion. Approach it from the other end. Make athletes meet the same incoming criteria as the student body at large, where high school GPAs and SATs matter more than 40-yd time, bench-press reps, vertical leap, touchdown passes and points-per-game average. Let’s ask “Who’s got grades?” — not “Who’s got game?”

Need remedial help? That’s what high schools and community colleges are for. Need to prep for the NBA and NFL? Try hire ed and go semi-pro — and at least be honest about it.

It’s been a long time coming, but out of the atrocity of Sept. 11 has come a reality check of America’s immigration policy. In effect, we need a meaningful one.

As a nation of immigrants, we’ve been reluctant to look beyond Statue of Liberty rhetoric that never envisioned 10 million illegal immigrants in a nation at war with Islamic terrorists. Whether “huddled masses” or “muddled asses,” a “c’mon over” sentiment has been the American way.

By contrast, there’s nothing ennobling about “border security,” but it comes with the sovereign territory. The very words “border security” have all the warmth and fuzziness of a “Bad Dog, Keep Out” sign. It’s just that without it, a lot of “yearnings” will go unrealized and undermined.

The experiences of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all “nations of immigrants,” should be illustrative. They have no qualms about saying, in effect, “It’s our country, and we get to choose who’s invited to stay.”

They have quotas as the U.S. does, but they have criteria that make much more sense. Economic and security issues matter more than family connections. For example, age, education level, prioritized skills and English proficiency are critical factors. Family ties are relevant, of course, but they aren’t in themselves determinative.

Patrick Buchanan raised this issue a few years back, but unfortunately his ham-handed, politically incorrect phrasing overwhelmed his argument. “Who would better assimilate into Alexandria, Va.?” he asked. “A hundred thousand Brits or 100,000 Zulus?”

But then, that requires agreement at some point that assimilation — even at the expense of some diversity and charges of racism — is desirable as part of a national immigration policy.

It’s not about Islam. It’s not about Islam. It’s not about Islam.

Of course it is.

But no one, from the president on down, can admit it — for obvious reasons. A billion obvious reasons.

Any religion that so self-righteously and definitively divides the world into believers and infidels is a problem. A big problem. It makes it all too easy to pervert in the name of doing unto infidels. And that’s us.

Moreover, Islamic societies have shown a nearly uniform inability to adapt well to the modern world. It’s past time to get over the Crusades — as well as the concept of women as chattel.

As a result, such sovereign societies are not among the world’s most successful — either as economies or democracies. Even the ones awash in oil are mired in corruption, feudal mores and skewed, monarchial priorities — and are running scared from Fundamentalists.

It’s a schizoid scenario that breeds internal unrest and resentment of the West’s culture and values — as well as specific jealousy of America’s economic success and military reach. And that’s just our Muslim friends, allies and “coalition” cronies.

Our Muslim enemies really hate us.

We in the West are resented for who we are and who we were — which doesn’t leave much wiggle room. Certainly not for infidels.

You better believe it’s about Islam — and it’s about infidels. It’s also about time we acknowledged as much.

Rudy Giuliani, of course, was the perfect choice for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award. Here’s hoping, however, that his post-9/11 leadership and resilience — as well as subsequent political successes — never obscure his most important legacy. He cleaned up the Stygian Stables of Gotham and proved that a big metropolitan colossus wasn’t congenitally dysfunctional — but governable and, even, lovable. On and off Broadway.

With Giuliani out in front, New York meant business. As in investment, commerce, tourism, and safe streets.

Under Giuliani, the city fully implemented the “broken windows” theory of policing, which holds that minor offenses — such as graffiti scrawling, turnstyle-jumping and prostitution — do matter and have a corrosive, ripple effect throughout society. Smut shops were zoned out of Times Square — or out of business. For the last six years, the FBI has ranked New York as the nation’s safest large city.

Were it not for such successes, New Yorkers would have had a pre-Giuliani quality of life to return to after the 9/11 attack. New Yorkers still would have rallied, of course, because they’re tough, but Giuliani made it much easier. New York was on a solvent-and-safe roll and there was no going back — horrific atrocity notwithstanding.

As New York’s point man, Giuliani personified the resolve of the city and by extension, the country. He even made it easy for all Americans to identify and empathize with New Yorkers, no small phenomenon in its own right. And in so doing, he helped bring all Americans together.

Yes, Giuliani had become “America’s Mayor,” but it was two terms in the making. He showed cities across America that the forces of crime, cultural sludge, civic resignation, welfare dependency and urban liberalism need not triumph.

Giuliani proved that it was possible to clean up and govern New York, a task in some ways more daunting than defying terrorists and rebuilding a chunk of South Manhattan.

Rudy Giuliani: After eight years, the right person at the right place for the right Time cover. Hillary Who?