Centerfield

On The Spot In France

Jack Grant, the blogger at Random Fate, is in France, and has a report and colorful photos on the vote on the EU constitution. (Thanks to The Moderate Voice for the tip!)

Deep Throat Exposed!

It's confirmed.

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's groundbreaking Watergate stories.

All right, let's be honest here. Who's every heard of this guy? I never had.

How do y'all feel about whistleblowers, and anonymous sources? In my view, there is no way to hold government accountable without them, and I see little downside to leaks about domestic policy, as opposed to leaking classified information, which I believe is wrong in almost all cases.

Radical Middle Entertainment?

The other day I saw the Life of David Gale on DVD with some of my friends. For those of you who haven't seen it, you should. It's a film about a death penalty abolitionist who has himself gotten the death penalty. At first the film seems to have a pro-abolitionist slant and feels like just another liberal preaching vehicle. However, if you stick it out, you'll find it's an incredibly radicl middle piece of entertainment.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for centrist fare from the entertainment field?

Gordon Smith - Moderate?

The answer to "who is a moderate?" is shifting

Smith, a millionaire Mormon who was elected as Oregon's most explicitly conservative senator in a half-century, said he is amused to see himself described as a moderate -- a label he earned by opposing the Bush administration on gay rights, Medicaid cuts and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among other issues. "I believe I'm as I have represented myself to Oregonians in all of my campaigns. I'm center-right in my political orientation," Smith said. His newfound image as a moderate is less about him than the Senate, Smith added, noting that Congress and the country as a whole have "moved further to the right" since he took office in 1997.

I'll confirm this apparent shift. I considered myself center-right in 1997. Now, I seem to be slightly left-of-center, without having changed my opinions much. Have you shifted since 1997? Have you seen others around you shift?

Emergency!!!

I can always be counted on to bring up a medical issue. This one isn't as "sexy" as Medicare finance but sure seems to drive EVERYONE crazy. Here's (its a PDF) the CDC's annual ambulatory care survey. This 2003 data report focuses on Emergency Department care in America. A few highlights (and my comments in italics):

-ED visits increased from 90.3 million to 113.9 million visits annually (up 26 percent). This represents an average increase of more than 2 million visits per year.
-The number of hospital EDs in the United States decreased by about 12.3 percent during the same period. (Hmmm, more patients and fewer providers. Sounds like a recipe for overcrowding)
-Utilization rates were highest for Medicaid enrollees (81.0 visits per 100 persons) and lowest for patients with private insurance (doesn't sound good for ED finances)
-The most frequently reported primary diagnoses were contusions, acute upper respiratory infections, abdominal pain, and chest pain. (so some potentially serious problems and many minor problems)
-About 15.8 million ED visits resulted in hospital admission, representing
13.9 percent of visits. (Yup, the vast majority of problem aren't so serious that they require immediate hospital care)
-On average, patients spent 3.2 hours in the emergency department and waited 46.5 minutes to see a doctor (why would anyone spend half the day in the ER just for a common cold?)

This is a long and technical report so you may want to just read the intro and peruse the tables. In short, Emergency Department's are crowded and "over-burdened" with non emergent and low-paying patients. My ER colleagues say its only getting worse. Anyone been in the ER lately and have a personal experience? Anyone have any solutions?

The Evangelical monolith?

Here's a nice little article in "Christianity Today" about the politics of evangelicals. The focal point is President Bush's commencement speech at Calvin College.

Several Calvin faculty received national media attention because they disagreed with the President's politics. The size of the protest ultimately was smaller than billed but

Undeterred by reality, The New York Times struggled the morning after commencement to maintain the Rove-tricked-by-Calvin storyline. In "Preaching to the Choir? Not This Time," Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller wrote, "At first glance, it seemed as if a mainstay of Mr. Bush's base, the Christian Right, had risen up against him. At second glance, the reality was more complex. The protests at Calvin showed that Mr. Bush's evangelical base was not monolithic and underscored the small but growing voice of the Christian Left."

What we have here are two common journalistic mistakes: assuming something is news if the reporter didn't know about it before, and reaching for a trend that doesn't really exist. In fact, Bumiller gets things exactly backward: For the vast majority of American history, evangelicals have been anything but a monolithic voting bloc. They helped Democrats hold the Solid South under segregation, fueled William Jennings Bryan's unsuccessful Democratic bids for a populist presidency, and gave moral impetus to Republican abolitionist and Reconstruction efforts.

Granted 20% of evangelicals opposing GW is not a huge problem. I think the greater issue here is how evangelicals are stereotyped in the media. From what I've seen and heard of GW's personal faith Calvin seems to fit it better than say Liberty University (Falwell's college). The article does mention the possibly growing Christian Left but I'd suggest the larger uncovered story is the already sizeable and unnoticed Christian middle. (NOTE: my personal opinion.) Anyway the article closes with a nice quote from a student Republican

Bush's trek to Calvin showcased a healthy diversity of evangelical thought and political opinion that too often escapes unfamiliar observers. "If ever there [was] a story about respectful dialogue, the kind of political engagement which this country needs right now, there it was," Nate Bulthuis, outgoing chair of Calvin College Republicans, told me Monday. "But by the very nature of its respectfulness, the news media didn't have the time to cover it." It's not that the Times and Post didn't have time, Nate. Who needs reality when fantasy is more fun?

Memorial Day Open Thread

Let's give thanks to those who bear arms to protect our safety, and remember those who had died doing so.

EU Constitution Voted Down

Well, today the French voted down the EU Constitution. That's likely to be a fatal blow to it, because in theory, every country must adopt it, or it fails, and its creation was overseen by former French President d'Estaing, so it's kind of sort of looked at as of French origin.

My guess is that we'll see much rejoicing and tearing of hair, and especially lots and lots and lots of talking, then maybe a revote attempt somewhere, and then the existing Union treaties will be amended to extend the borders out to the new entrants and make a couple of the other changes from the Constitution.

Interestingly, apparently one of the issues that's been working against the Union is software patents. It's the most recent exemplar of the directly-elected EU Parliament having a hard time rejecting something the EU Commission wants. The Commission is roughly as democratic as the Senate originally was - Commissioners are appointed by member states. The appointed Commission controls the elected EU Parliament's entire legislative agenda. The proposed constitution wouldn't have changed that; it might've made it worse (unclear).

There's something that REALLY BUGS ME about the coverage of the EU Constitution referenda, as much in the blogosphere as traditional media. Few articles show interest in what the actual people saying no actually think. An NPR segment saw it as a revolt against that rightie Chirac. The NY Times sees it as having turned on immigration fears and extreme rightist politics. Some American conservative blogs see it as an only natural revolt against what silly and foolish French leaders want. To be fair, the Economist, Reason, and some others did OK.

Looking at things myself, I still think that the margin against it probably came from the fact that the proposed constitution sucked. That, and reservations over the EU Parliament limitations are what I've seen even many pro-EU Europeans posting on Groklaw and Slashdot say.

There seems to be a feeling that people can't have read it, it's so long. But the fact is that it's intended to be the law of the land. A copy of the proposed Constitution was sent to every French household, and books of explanations are selling well in France. Maybe people are taking appropriate care to understand a document of such importance, just as they read the Constitution and Federalist Papers here when they were up for consideration.

I thought that despite its length, it didn't do what a constitution should do. Its authors didn't aim to create a skeleton for the generations, that would allow economic, defense, foreign policy, infrastructure, etc. etc. problems to be addressed in the long term. It was more a combination of wishful-thinking political cookie jar and lots and lots and lots of tweaking to try and keep from scaring people. Except that if you do that, people look at the huge mound of paper and get scared wondering what it does.

In practice, I expect life under it would be like life in Texas, where we have to amend the Constitution every two years (the last series included detailed legislation on selling wine; another allowed local fire departments to donate old vehicles to Mexico). Except it'd be worse, because the TX constitution is kept in bounds by the well-crafted Federal one.

UPDATE: Perry de Havilland correctly pointed out that Samizdata isnt a conservative blog. Sorry, guys! I've updated accordingly.

Two Stories

In the American Prospect, Robert Kuttner discusses how Republicans are helped by having an ideology that most of them agree with, while:

There are basically two stories on what liberals and Democrats need to espouse. Either might conceivably produce a majority movement and party. Both cannot; the competing messages simply cancel each other out. We saw the effects in 2000 and 2004 of Al Gore and John Kerry trying to take a dollop of each.

In one story line, liberal interest groups have disproportionate influence, leaving the Democratic Party with a message too left wing for the country on both social issues and national defense. On economics, New Democrats want a modernizing party committed to fiscal responsibility, globalism, and market-like strategies for social problems such as health care and education. This is said to be “pro-growth,” though its detractors view that as a code for pro-business. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), initially cheering Gore-Lieberman as just the ticket, became progressively disillusioned the more populist Gore sounded. In a DLC postmortem, Joe Lieberman declared that Gore’s “economic populism stuff was not the pro-growth approach. It made it more difficult for us to gain the support of middle-class independent voters who don’t see America as … us versus them.”

The opposite view -- whose exponents include Tom Frank, Robert Borosage, and David J. Sirota -- holds that by failing to run as progressives, Democrats allow Republicans to use cultural issues as a proxy for class issues. Frank, sifting through the ashes of the Democrats’ 2004 defeat, wrote recently in The New York Review of Books: “Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics -- trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden … . But define class as culture, and class instantly becomes the blood and bone of public discourse … . Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions.”

Kuttner prefers the latter, most liberal story, which I believe has a strong basis in wishful thinking than in practicality. The centrist story is more reasonable, in my view, but it's more complex. The reason it's more complex to be in the center is that the idea of balancing left and right requires understanding both ideologies, whereas the left and the right need only one ideology, and can merely stereotype the other.

Something else about class war rhetoric: I don't think it's immoral, but I don't think it's effective either. Despite Marx, most historical conflict has been between nations and religions, not between classes. During the period 1789-1989, class war had some salience. There was also some major class conflict during the ancient Roman Republic. But even during these periods, the upper classes have come out the winner with rare exception. Even when populist economic rhetoric was joined with populist religion in the figure of William Jennings Bryand a century ago, it went down to crushing defeat. FDR was elected in 1932 without sounding the populist note, and his New Deal program could never have passed absent the Great Depression. Populist economics stripped of populist religion has an even smaller chance of success. It's adoption by the Democratic Party would keep the Republican Party in power indefinitely, and allow the GOP to weather the crises that result from the corrupting influence of holding unchecked power.

Let's Call Iran's Bluff

Iran says it is only enriching uranium for civilian power purposes, but the US claims it is enriching uranium to make a bomb. It seems to me there is a workable solution.

First, the BBC's website explains the difference between weapons-grade uranium and the less dangerous power plant stuff.

For uranium to work in a nuclear reactor it must be enriched to contain 2-3% uranium-235. Weapons-grade uranium must contain 90% or more u-235.

The problem then is that Iran might over-enrich the uranium it has. The solution? Simple. Sort of.

If Iran is truely sincere about its civilian energy needs, it should give up its uranium enrichment machines. All of them. And it should allow UN inspectors to verifty their absence at any reasonable time. In short, their surrender of uranium enrichers should be totally transparent.

In return, the West (probably Europe) will give Iran power plant-grade uranium to use in its reactors. This would cost the giving nations some money, but it would ensure both sides are satisfied with the honesty of the other. It would be an incredible good will gesture on both sides, and at little cost to either.

Now, this is all assuming Iran is as innocent as it says it is. If it were to turn down this offer, I would send the situation immediately to the security council.

New Bathrobe: Ready to Blog

The Profesora just gave me a bathrobe, so now I can properly blog in my bathrobe. And I gotta get started somewhere, so here we go. I went looking through my backlog, but it's just two really long posts that still need more work than I want to think about, and two short halfway-done posts that I don't care about any more. And I have another post kind of in mind, which would be short, but need almost one link per word.

So, the Profesora suggested a topic: Nordstrom's, where she got the robe. She said,

"Didn't you blog about Nordstrom's? Just tack on to that post, or something."

Well, I haven't blogged about Nordstrom's. They were a key source of inspiration to a business plan, though, and I mentioned them in the plan. So I'll just repeat that bit. Although I'd much rather spend time at Frys, I do admire their biz plan.

As incomes have risen, more and more of us can and do afford more and better stuff. One way that extra money is spent more and more is on service. Nordstrom's is the embodiment. You can get goods anywhere now. But Nordstrom's offers most kinds of help you might want getting goods. They have personal shoppers who will giving you exactly the level of support you want, and give you the comfort of repeated service. That raises the value of their goods, letting them charge more. What's more, Nordstrom's can sell expensive goods that require customizing, like the dress and skirt the Profesora bought.

This seems to be one of several important directions the economy is shifting. IBM has been making Open Source pay by using it to offer packaged services, making money hand over fist.

Of course, dealing with the unusual level of service is embarrasing to some. And, high labor costs mean that buying at Nordstrom's can be an almost painfully expensive experience.

"Definitely more expensive than Goodwill," the Profesora said.

Bolton Blues

According to Charging RINO, freshman South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune will be opposing the Bolton nomination. I thought Thune was a rock-ribbed conservative. Apparently, his opposition to Bolton is a shot at the Pentagon for threatening to close Ellworth Air Force Base. In addition to being a nominee, Bolton is now a football.

Centrist Cabal

John Avlon makes a call to arms for militant moderates in an article in the New York Sun

If increasing numbers of militant moderates and middle-of-the-road warriors
to stand up and speak out in arenas from town halls, talk radio, blogs, and
television to the halls of Congress, they can ultimately win this fight. The
bipartisan centrist coalition of 14 senators who stopped the so-called
nuclear option and simultaneously secured confirmation for formerly blocked
judicial nominees like Priscilla Owen need to hear applause from the broad
public that appreciates their independent stand against the party
leadership. They will get no such vote of approval from their more partisan
colleagues.

Their counterattack has already begun. It was evident in the torrent of criticism from among ideological absolutists and their apologists. One headline from the conservative Michnews.com Web site summed up the tone of the attack: "Seven Cowardly Senate Republicans Surrender, Join Centrist Cabal." This is the sound of the paranoid style in America rearing its head. In the dictionary, "cabal" is defined as "a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act" and "conspiracy" is offered as a synonym. The use of the word "cowardly" is instructive as well. In today's hyperpartisan political dialogue, if you are not an ideological ally, you are automatically considered an enemy. As a result, there is a determined confusion of terms: If someone votes in lockstep with party leadership, they are described as "courageous," where the far more difficult decision to take a principled stand of independence and vote conscience instead of straight party line is routinely described as cowardly. This is not a little Orwellian.

Look at the 14 members of the bipartisan centrist coalition and it is
evident that they are a balanced combination of Blue-State Republicans and
Red-State Democrats, Senate traditionalists and independent-minded
mavericks. There are Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine, Lincoln
Chafee from Rhode Island, Mark Pryor from Arkansas, Mary Landrieu from
Louisiana, Ken Salazar from Colorado, and Ben Nelson from Nebraska.
Arizona's John McCain and Connecticut's Joseph Lieberman are always steady
leaders of the independent center in the Senate, but they were joined out of
principle by figures ranging from South Carolina's Lindsay Graham, Ohio's
Mike DeWine, Hawaii's Daniel Inouye, West Virginia's Robert Byrd, and
Virginia's John Warner. This is not an ad hoc collection of special
interests but a broad and representative cross section of America fighting
for what they perceive to be the national interest.

The Ford Family

Moderate Democrat Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. is one of our favorites on this blog. He has high ambitions, but his uncle isn't doing him any favors.

Those charged include state Sens. John Ford (D), Kathryn Bowers (D) and Ward Crutchfield (D); state Rep. Chris Newton (R); and former state senator Roscoe Dixon (D). Calls to the legislators' offices were not immediately returned. Ford also is charged with three counts of attempting to threaten or intimidate potential witnesses. The indictment said he told an undercover agent that "if he caught someone trying to set him up he would shoot that person." Ford is alleged to have taken a payoff of $55,000 from E-Cycle Management; the other defendants allegedly got lesser amounts.

His brother is former U.S. representative Harold Ford Sr. (D-Tenn.), who served 11 terms. His nephew, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), has served five terms in Congress and just entered the race for the seat held by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

Harold Ford, Sr. also had his legal problems, being acquitted of bank fraud charges. I've never heard anything bad about Harold Ford, Jr., however--other than the opinion of some Democrats that he's too conservative.

We're Open To New Contributors

A couple of new blogs have come to my attention.

John Brodigan for a Better America

The Reaction

Both authors have expressed an interest in contributing posts to Centerfield. I'm inclined to give them a try-out, though I'm a little less certain about The Reaction, as the author is a Canadian (who has lived in and frequently write about the USA). He's also a shade on the liberal side, but he tells me he's definitely a moderate.

Take a look at the blogs and let me know what you think.

By the way, as it says in the column on the left, Centerfield is open to new contributors. That means YOU! Generally, we ask to see samples of your writing before we add you on--that could be on your own blog, or simply by contributing intelligent comments here at Centerfield.

First Blood

Cross-Posted from The Debate Link, here.

Oh, baby, this feels good to read:

Ethics questions swirling around U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay mounted Thursday when a Texas judge ruled that a committee formed by the powerful Republican had violated state law by failing to disclose $600,000 in mostly corporate donations.

State District Judge Joe Hart in Austin made the ruling in a lawsuit filed by five Democratic candidates defeated in 2002 by Republicans who received money from Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee founded by DeLay to help Republicans capture the Texas Legislature.

The Daily DeLay has more here and here. DeLay wasn't himself a defendant, and this is only one case. But it represents perhaps the most overt bruise on DeLay's ethical character he's sustained to date.

The blogosphere seems awfully quiet about this. Kos has a blurb, of course. But that's about it. I know most people aren't as rabid about this issue as I am, but still, nothing? Not even from the anti-corruption center?

Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, how on earth do you log into to post on this site? I had to go to another Movable Type site I co-write for, then manually change the URL to get here. There has to be an easier way, though.

Oh! Canada

I found the irony of this article in the New York Times appealing since it seems all we hear from our neighbors north of the border is how good they are and how terrible we are.

It seems, however, that the Canadians do have their share of less than honorable politicians and, even, believe it or not, groups looking out for their own interest. Horrors!

I'm someone that believes no nation, whether the US or anyone else, should be sanctimonious about it's behavior. Almost anyone has feet of clay. And, certainly, we have been guilty of our share of self-righteousness. But I've certainly gotten tired of the steady drumbeat of Canadian moral superiority vis a vis the US. Now, it appears maybe Canada is not much different than anyone else.

A government program sponsoring sporting and cultural events in Quebec has been tainted by allegations of millions of dollars in kickbacks and money laundering. Witnesses before a federal inquiry into the scandal have described envelopes full of cash left on restaurant tables to advance the cause of the governing Liberal Party

.

This notion of national rectitude and compassion, long promoted by the Liberals, has been captured in the slogan of a national book chain: "The world needs more Canada."
Of course, quite a few nations have an embellished sense of righteousness, not least among them, many would say, Canada's southern neighbor. But perhaps no other country puts such a high premium on its own virtue than does Canada

.

It does seem to me, however, that the uproar over this scandal is a bit overblown. Scandals are an inevitable part of political life and it's pretty naive for anyone to believe that his or her country is above that or that everyone will love the environment more than their own pocketbooks. The Canadians need to get over their shock and join the rest of the world.

Democratic "Leadership?"

If this analysis in The Atlantic is correct, the Democrats are in deep trouble for the foreseeable future. Joshua Green completely pans Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as being, for all intents and purposes, totally ineffectual and incapable of managing a Democratic resurgence.

Pelosi and Reid both maintain that they expect the Democrats to win back the House and the Senate next year, and after that the presidency. But their failure to manage their own party's chairmanship race, coupled with an aggressive Republican majority, has left many less sanguine.

What seems to be most troubling is that Pelosi, especially, seems to think that history is on the Democrats' side and that will be sufficient to win back the House.

Pelosi bases her belief in the inevitability of a Republican downfall on historical precedent: in the midterm elections of a president's sixth year (which Bush reaches next year) his party typically loses congressional seats. "There is an average loss of twenty-eight or twenty-nine [House] seats for the sitting president's party," she points out. "We don't go by history, but the fact is that it is in our favor." If that pattern holds true in 2006, the loss will be more than enough to put the Democrats in the majority and make Pelosi the first-ever female speaker.

But as Green points out, this is nonsense because the changing political landscape makes relying on history pointless. There aren't many competitive races because of gerrymandering so it would be almost impossible for the Democrats to win enough seats to take back the House in 2006. Plus, it ignores the fact that the Republicans gained seats in 2004 and, of course, reelected a president.

this grim scenario makes the Democrats' choice of leaders somewhat puzzling. Reid and Pelosi both apprenticed as whip, a job that requires corralling and cajoling fellow congressmen to support the party line. But circumstances now demand Democratic leaders who can win outside Congress. That will require abandoning the party line for a new course, which Reid and Pelosi are unequipped to do. Many members of Congress say privately that the real energy and tactical smarts in the party are concentrated in two recent arrivals, Representative Rahm Emanuel, of Illinois, and Senator Charles Schumer, of New York—both of them rising in party ranks and estimation.

I'm not sure what new course Green thinks they need and I suspect that's part of the problem. No one really has a an idea of what new course to chart that would be acceptable both to moderates and to liberals. I suspect Schumer would likely want to move the party to the left.

Nevertheless, the incompetence of the Democrats is mind-boggling. They just don't seem to get that this is not 1974 anymore and that people aren't going to vote for them because of some divine right to govern.

A New Way to Interrogate

This is a fascinating article in The Atlantic relating to the interrogation of prisoners. About six months before the Abu Gharib stuff broke, a group of Marine offices posted a document from a WW II interrogator on how to get information from POWs, in this case Japanese. His advice was contrary to the standard get-tough approach and apparently achieved very good results.

Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

According to the article, Moran was able to obtain the Japanese order of battle during the Saipan invasion, an extremely valuable piece of information, by treating his prisoners as people rather than using the harsh tactics common to such interrorgations.

The point of this, obviously, was to contrast this with the interrogation tactics used at Abu Gharib. According to the article, a lot of the professional military interrogators were very critical of the use of civilians who did not speak the language and did not know what they were doing. These people think that the Abu Gharib tactics are, in general, counterproductive. What is interesting to me is a point they make and that I have read elsewhere. People tend to think of torture as being most effective in the "24" (TV show) "ticking bomb" scenario. However, aside from the fact that the ticking bomb scenario is highly unlikely in the first place, the idea is that information extracted under torture is likely to be unreliable anyway. In this regard, I have always wondered about the information that we supposedly obtained about terrorist attacks from the captives at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This was trumpeted as proof that our interrogation tactics were effective, but I always wondered how much of what we got was simply disinformation.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that it makes sense to simply abjure more harsh interrogation. I doubt that "being nice" is a panacea, especially since Major Moran was not exactly the typical interrogator.

Moran spoke fluent Japanese, but more important, he was thoroughly familiar with Japanese culture, having spent forty years in Japan as a missionary. He used this knowledge for one of his standard gambits: making a prisoner homesick

Moran's approach seems to have been effective, at least in part, because of his knowledge and background in Japanese culture. He was probably pretty exceptional then and there probably aren't a lot of people available today with that much knowledge about Iraqi or Middle Eastern culture. We don't have a draft; we can't just pull people out of thin air to help interrogate prisoners. In addition, it seems to me the context is significantly different. The Pacific War was a conventional, if especially brutal, war. The Japanese prisoners were soldiers and not terrorists. And while the Japanese soldiers had been indoctrinated with how evil Americans were, for the most part, they were just ordinary guys forced to fight in a war, however much they may have accepted it as their duty to fight for the emperor. Plus, I suspect that their feelings toward Americans, especially as prisoners, was fear more than hate. The insurgents are, I suspect, different. These are people totally committed to the cause and ideology and they hate the very existence of the Americans. The very fact that these people are willing to to become insurgents makes it likely that they would be much more committed than would the ordinary Japanese soldier. So, I'm not sure that "being nice" would have the same effect on an insurgent as it did on a terrified Japanese prisoner. (I should also point out that several months ago, The Atlantic ran an article based on interviews with experienced interrogators, that sort of took the opposite view: while actual physical torture was counterproductive, effective interrogators should use tactics that put the captive under some physical or emotional stress.)

Still, I think the article makes some interesting points. For one thing, it points out the lack of trained interrogators.

In contrast, in late 2002 the military's Southern Command had so few interrogators and interpreters that it was forced to employ inexperienced and untrained civilian contractors to perform these jobs at Guantánamo. The officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib had no interrogation experience himself and no skilled interrogators or interpreters working underneath him. He, too, turned to civilian contractors.

In fairness, it would be hard to expect the military to anticipate every contingency and to have as many trained interrogators as we had during WW II, when the entire nation was mobilized for war and we had a draft. And, let's face it, there was a lot less scrutiny in WW II than there is now. If some reported had written a story about this Moran "being nice" to the heinous Japanese soldiers, I suspect there would have been an outcry for his head. Today, it would probably be even worse because this isn't just military information they are trying to get, but, in some cases, information about terrorist attacks. Can you imagine what Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity would say if we had an interrogator whose technique was to "be nice" to the sworn enemies of America? Still, it seems to me that we could profitably examine our tactics and strategies, not just with respect to Iraq but with regard to the WOT more generally. It seems much of what we do is rather shortsighted.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic.

(Yes, it's a day early. I'm on my way out of town for the holiday weekend, and wanted to beat everyone else to the punch....)

The Smoking Gun?

As most of you know there is a trial going on in my homestate of Washington. The state Republican Party is attempting to have the election of Governor Christine Gregoire, who was ahead of former State Senator Dino Rossi only after two recounts, overtuned or thrown out in favor of a new vote. Although polls show a majority of Washingtonians suspect there was funny business going on with the election, there is not much political support to start all over again. Some have argued that the Republicans are fighting an uphill legal battle and that Rossi should graciously bow out, which leads me to conclude that they truly must believe in the merits of their case, because the possible fallout outweighs the political gains. I have also argued that the election is in question enough to at least have the discussion and that Dino deserves his day in court.

The Republican Party's argument is that fraud existed during the vote counting process in the state's largest county, and that enough ballots were wrongly counted to falsely give Gregoire the election. There case was boosted today by the testimony of a King County poll worker. King 5 reports:

The mail ballot supervisor in Washington state’s most populous county testified Wednesday that she had raised concerns about the county’s inability to track ballots months before last year’s disputed governor’s race.

Nicole Way, King County supervisor of absentee ballots, said she repeatedly told her bosses as early as spring 2004 that the King County elections department couldn’t tell how many ballots were being mailed out or received back. About two-thirds of the county’s 900,000 votes in the November election were mail ballots.

She testified on the third day of a trial in the GOP’s challenge to the governor’s race, which Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, won by 129 votes on the third count.

The Republicans are trying to prove election errors and fraud stole the victory from Dino Rossi. They want Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges to nullify Gregoire’s victory, prompting a new election.

Under questioning by GOP attorney Harry Korrell , Way said she was asked to create spreadsheet to track absentee ballots after the election. The spreadsheet was intended to track the total ballots issued and the total ballots returned.

Way testified that she asked what information she should put in the spreadsheet since the computer system for tracking didn't accept some ballots, so the numbers didn't reconcile.

GOP lawyers tried to show that upper level supervisors knew about problems with the county's vote tracking software. Way said she told supervisors about problems, creating a computer spreadsheet to track ballots, but she eventually gave up.

Later, Korrell asked Way to lead the court through a detailed reading of a batch slip, the form that follows a group of ballots through the time they arrive to the end of the counting process.

Specifically, Korrell used examples of batch slips where the number of ballots that were recorded as ultimately counted appeared to exceed the number that moved through the system.

In a sworn deposition, Way said that she and her direct supervisor, Garth Fell, an assistant elections superintendent, approved a Nov. 17 mail ballot report that falsely showed all absentee ballots had been accounted for. She said they couldn’t get the numbers to add up otherwise."

The crux of this issue is simple.... If poll workers knew about problems and did nothing about them, does that amount to fraud? IMO, it does, regardless of their intentions.

Romney Says No to 2006 MA Gov Re-Election Bid

Well, no, not really, not just yet, but he might just as well have:

Governor Mitt Romney said this week in a nationally published interview that he is ''in a different place" on abortion than at the time of his first run for public office in Massachusetts, when he pledged to keep abortion ''safe and legal in this country."

...

''Understand, over time one's perspective changes somewhat," Romney told USA Today. ''I'm in a different place than I was probably in 1994, when I ran against Ted Kennedy, in my own views on that." The governor declined to elaborate.

Yesterday Julie Teer, the governor's spokeswoman, refused to explain how Romney's position has changed, saying only that it has ''evolved over time." Teer emphasized, however, that his ''commitment to the people of Massachusetts to maintain the status quo while he is governor has not changed."

Yeah, he's in a different place all right. A place where he wants to run for the GOP prez nom, not state office in MA. In other words, a place where his previous position is no longer convenient.

The thing that really cracks me up is that it's national conservatives who are doubting Romney's props, when it's the liberals in MA who should have looked askance at his moderation of convenience. If anything, Romney has been TOO successful, and not transparent enough. He's got conservatives giving MA liberals too much credit. They're assuming that if Romney was elected in MA he must be too liberal. The notion that he's one of their own and so good he pulled the wool over the eyes of enough liberals to get elected is not even entertained.

Romney's living proof that you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time, and that's usually good enough. In case you've missed my previous blatherings on Romney, here's the thing: Romney is closest to Dubya 2.0. A venture capitalist, only in his work, an extremely successful businessman, not a silver spoon guest host. A pretty effective governor given his venue. A much better speaker than Bush. Shrewdness and intellectual sophistication across a wider domain than Bush. A solid family man (he has 5 or 6 kids I think...anyone?) and a solid mormon. I mention that latter only because it suggests a fairly conservative social character.

Conservatives who think Romney is anything like a RINO have no clue. I've been watching Romney for over a decade, and he is quite obviously about as mainstream a conservative as you can get, even though this seems to have been lost both on many MA natives and many national conservatives. Many arch-conservatives are bound to think it only looks this way from my liberal MA perch. I hope you keep believing this, and thus nominate someone far too socially conservative to win the general election.

Send More Chuck Berry

Here's a story that made me go hmm. Amazing to think it has taken 28 years for Voyager to reach reach the edge of the solar system, and that they expect it to keep transmitting until 2020.

NASA: Voyager I enters solar system's final frontier

If you don't get my title, check out here. Scroll down to Chuck Berry in Outer Space.

What a difference a week makes

Dick Morris.

The deal to avert a change in Senate cloture rules is more than just a temporary outbreak of sanity in this highly charged partisan accelerator chamber. It amounts to a transfer of leadership from the polarized, party leaders to the narrow but critical center of the institution.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) still has the corner office, and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still has the key to the executive washroom, but it is the 14 senators who crafted this deal who now are the people to see in the Senate. . .

Do you believe this? If so, what is next?

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Embraces Hillary

You won't believe what they're saying at The Corner on National Review Online

Another highlight: Hillary Clinton. (Get up off the floor, close your gaping jaw, clean up the coffee you just spit out.) She praised our military. She praised, without qualification, the explosion of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. She reiterated Israel's right to defend itself against terror. The Hillary who hugged Arafat is gone. The new Hillary delivered a Middle East policy speech this morning that (to my ear, at least) could have been from a Republican.

Another reason to Be an Independent

Supreme Court Says States Can Limit Participation in Primary Elections

Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion. I continually find this guy's opaqueness astounding, and he seems inevitably to be the majority opinion writer of choice when opaqueness is required.

I once had a wet-nap that included the instructions "open package and use." I think this must have been the Clarence Thomas-friendly version of a wet nap. Could this guy cook a frozen dinner if the instuctions didn't tell you to put the package in the oven? "Well it says cook for 35 minutes at 350 degrees, but it doesn't tell you how to do that...gee whiz, I'll have to eat it cold."

Political Tilt Among The Professoriat

An interesting interview with Stanley Rothman, an expert on political bias in the academy and media. One of Rothman's observations is that there is a natural proclivity for smart conservatives to go into business, and smart liberals to go into teaching. But this split was accentuated more recently:

One piece of evidence is quite clear: during the 1980's and l990's there was a distinct shift to the left in the academy as the rebels of the sixties were tenured. This was not part of a plot of any kind but rather of a natural affinity. However, I am sure that it has discouraged some conservative and centrist intellectuals from seeking an academic career, as have various affirmative action and "diversity" initiatives, to some extent at least.

One thing that tickled me about the interview is that Rothman says that his ideas are not "completely formulated." Rothman started college in 1944, and yet he's still actively thinking and considering ideas in an open-minded fashion. How many young bloggers can say that?

CENTRISTS DEAL, PARTISANS REEL

Averting a showdown, centrists from both parties reached agreement Monday night on a compromise that clears the way for confirmation votes on many of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, leaves others in limbo and preserves venerable Senate filibuster rules.

"In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

"The Senate is back in business," echoed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of 14 senators who signed the two-page memorandum of agreement, which cited "mutual trust and confidence."

More...

Refreshing Honesty

Daniel Okrent has left the position of Public Editor at the New York Times. In his farewell column yesterday, he had some very refreshing things to say.

13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did

I particularly enjoy his take on the paper's op/ed columnists.

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

And don't miss his link back to his original Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? column from last year. A classic piece of honest journalism!

I'm gonna miss that guy.

What a Difference a Few Days Makes

Just a few days back, Rick was remarking on an article in the NYT suggesting something of a nadir of centrism, the latest echo of the "we're more polarized than ever" theme. So imagine my surpise to see this article in today's Globe:

Senate moderates forming power center

Here's the thing. In the absence of genuine activity, speculation rises, and so does spinning. Both this article and the one Rick cited are largely speculative. Congressional Inertia begets poop tossing. Not to mention increased interpretation of the poop tossing. Meanwhile, nothing's really happening. Every ounce of energy expended over the fillibuster and the handful of unconfirmed judges is an ounce of energy and political will not expended debating the nature of much needed reform of social security and later, medicare.

Look for this theme to arise soon. Look for this food fight to be spun as the reason why social security reform couldn't get done. ("Critics are now pointing to the protracted fight over judicial nominees as the main reason why...")Look for both sides to point the finger at the other.

Well you know what, I'm pointing the finger at both sides.

Our nation's deliberative body should be able to resolve its differences. Important nuts-and-bolts problems that effect every working American (again, SS, Medicare) should not take a back seat to a poop fight over ideology. This should have been figured out weeks ago. But it wasn't, maybe even because both sides would subliminally rather have such ongoing flashy fights as red meat for the faithful. It's embarassing.

Update: The Globe has added an odious registration feature.

American Nationalism

This article in Prospect magazine, a European-based journal, reviews a book by Anatol Lieven, "American Right of Wrong." (This article does not require a subscription so you should have access.)

I have read several reviews of this book. The essential thesis is that American foreign policy traditionally embodies a nationalism that reflects a tendency toward self-righteousness and an unwillingness to listen to others. Note that Lieven does not claim that this began with George W. Bush but that it has been a part of American policy for many years. However, Linda Colley, the author of this review (and a professor at Princeton), says that Lieven believes that Bush embodies many of the characteristics of this American nationalism.

In reading reviews of this book, it has struck me how differently reviewers have perceived it. Some believe that the book is a harsh attack on the United States in general, while others, including Colley, think that Lieven generally likes the U.S., but has problems with some aspects of policy. Of course, in reading a review, it is often difficult to distinguish between the views of the book's author and the views of the reviewer. Thus, according to Colley,

Yet Lieven is in no way anti-American, or even anti-American dominance. He accepts that "a relatively benign version of American hegemony is by no means unacceptable to many people around the world." His point is that instead of consolidating the status quo and buttressing its hegemony, America's hyperactivity and nationalism threaten to disrupt them. To this extent, he likens the US now to Britain and Germany before the first world war. Back then, both of these European empires felt unconfident in their power, under threat and aggrieved. As a result, they overcompensated in ways that proved destructive to themselves and to others.

Lieven (or Colley) does not seem to be a visceral Bush-hater.

Official America is now pointedly colour-blind and even positively discriminatory. Bush's enthusiasm for advancing black men and women and Chicanos to high office has been impressive. But this strenuous political correctness on the domestic front does not mean, Lieven argues, that American nationalism has been stripped of all its ethnic components. Suppressed and glossed over at home, nativist hostility to those perceived as culturally different has found vent instead in aspects of US policy abroad.

I agree with much of what the article says. I think we need to address criticism of American policy (and this book is not solely related to Iraq) as a means of self-examination, not simply read it as reflexive anti-Americanism. There are a lot of people in Europe and elsewhere that admire the United States, but that believe our policy is misguided and that we have lost the ability to listen to legitimate criticisms. And, if someone reads this as simply a diatribe against Bush, it is not. As Colley (or Lieven) points out

At one level, this belief in America's uniqueness fostered introversion and isolationism, as in some respects it still does. At another level, however, this same conviction nourished an aggressive, missionary zeal towards the rest of the world. As Woodrow Wilson put it: "every nation of the world needs to be drawn into the tutelage of America"; or in Madeleine Albright's better known version: "We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future."

Certainly, Wilson and Albright's statements reflect some truth. But they also manifest a sanctimony and arrogance that the rest of the world finds off-putting. Bush has taken this to a new level and I believe (as does Lieven and Colley obviously) that this has damaged not just America's standing in the world but our specific interests.

Flushing Newsweek

Ever wondered how the international editions of NEWSWEEK differ from the domestic version? You probably won't like the answer that Riding Sun blog in Tokyo found.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance and stupidity. Unless, of course, you find substantial evidence of malice.

(Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit.)

Oregon Non-Partisan Proposal

There's a proposal to make statewide offices in Oregon non-partisan. What do you think?

I'd like to see it tried. Would it really make any difference?

Rhode Island Twist

Burnt Orange Report is upset at abortion rights group NARAL for throwing roadblocks in front of a pro-life Democrat who would challenge Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, and now endorsing the Republican Chafee, who is pro-choice.

The question is, what is the level of granularity in support of abortion rights that makes sense. If pro-choice is your primary issue, does it make sense to support a pro-choice candidate who helps a pro-life party control the Senate, or would it make more sense to support a pro-life candidate who would vote for the leadership of a pro-choice party.

Rorshach Blog

A picture for your consideration. Click on the photo for a bigger version.

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic.

Partisanship Reaches New High

The NY Times has another discouraging article about the irrelevance of centrists citing objective measures of growing partisanship.

In fact, partisan voting in 2003 was at a 50-year high in Congress as a whole, and 2004 was nearly as high, according to a Congressional Quarterly analysis of roll-call votes. Senate Republicans voted with their party 90 percent of the time in 2004; Senate Democrats 83 percent of the time, according to an analysis of important votes in which party leaders staked out clear positions. Some scholars say voting has not been this polarized for a century.

A Better Place to Point the Finger

I've been a little put off by the leaps of condemnation at Newsweek for toiletgate, blaming Newsweek for retaliatory murders by Muslim extremists. Apparently, publishing unsourced rumors is sometimes a hanging offense. Now I'm not defending Newsweek. I just think the real blame belongs elsewhere. Perhaps surprisingly to some, Jeff Jacoby strikes it right in Why Islam is Disrespected:

The Muslim riots should have been met by outrage and condemnation. From every part of the civilized world should have come denunciations of those who would react to the supposed destruction of a book with brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people. But the chorus of condemnation was directed not at the killers and the fanatics who incited them, but at Newsweek.

From the White House down, the magazine was slammed -- for running an item it should have known might prove incendiary, for relying on a shaky source, for its animus toward the military and the war. Over and over, Newsweek was blamed for the riots' death toll. Conservative pundits in particular piled on. ''Newsweek lied, people died" was the headline on Michelle Malkin's popular website. At NationalReview.com, Paul Marshall of Freedom House fumed: ''What planet do these [Newsweek] people live on? . . . Anybody with a little knowledge could have told them it was likely that people would die as a result of the article." All of Marshall's choler was reserved for Newsweek; he had no criticism at all for the marauders in the Muslim street.

Jacoby's views don't surprise me. He's been in the forefront of critics pounding the drum for Islamic accountability and the end of lower standards and a tolerance of apologia for Islam. i wish more people would bang thus:

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

As is often said, read it all.

Darth Bush?

Boi from Troy points out:

The internets are buzzing this week with the theory that there are hidden, anti-George Bush messages in Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, out in theatres tomorrow near you!

Apparently PABAAH, or Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood (giggle), is in a tiff and calling for a boycott of Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith, because since the show has started playing "film critics, commentators and Internet bloggers have been debating whether filmmaker George Lucas is comparing President Bush and the Iraq war to the Dark Side of the Force."

First, who cares, and second, here is a piece of advice to my friends at PABAAH... Get a life!

Really, how dare those liberal movie evil doers make a film that actually is relevant to current events? People might get interested and, as opposed to anything starring Ben Affleck that has absolutely no social value at all, go see it. Hence the point of capitalist Hollywood... To make money!

I guess it is good to laugh at those in my own party who seem to be content on living every waking hour like the entire world is out to get them.

The Washington Post recently wrote a piece on another flick, Kingdom of Heaven, that has some interesting parallels to the current issues surrounding the Middle East. Although I am more interested in finding out what kind of spectacle Ridley Scott and George Lucas can create, I plan to go see both movies, and I could give a rat's backside about the political message. It isn't Hollywood's fault that there aren't any talented right-wing filmmakers except of course for the token himself, Mel Gibson

Bravo!

Pregnant student defies graduation ban

Because even though the school might have had the right to ban her participation, they weren't right. I applaud Alysha Cosby's defiance. Good for her.

Pork, with a Lotta Beans

U.S. Gives Anchorage $1.5M for Bus Stop

Remind me again, why exactly do we need a line item veto?

Bye, Bye Brooks

New York Times columnists won't be available online for free much longer, but David Brooks gets in one last bit of sanity

Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness. I used to write for Newsweek. I know Mike Isikoff and the editors. And I know about liberals in the media. The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet. The Nation and leftish Web sites are in a frenzy to prove that the story is probably true even if Newsweek is retracting it.

It does seem that some on the conservative side want journalists to become stenographers for the White House, eschewing any critical reporting, which can only come from anonymous sources--or people looking for new employment.

At the same time, I have noticed a lack of perspective on some left-wing sites, transparently hoping for the worst so it will reflect badly on the President--even though it can't hurt him as he won't be running for re-election.

Nuke it?

The Senate is on the verge of starting the debate, predictions are being made, leadership on both sides has walked away from the table, Priscilla Owens and Janice Rogers Brown are taking part in meetings and phot-ops with the White House and Republican Leadership, a few brave souls continue to push for compromise, and the LA Times sides with conservative activists over centrists who oppose the "nuclear option."

Today, a Times editorial states:

"We usually like it when centrist senators like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) try to galvanize the sensible center on behalf of some compromise, but we sincerely hope they fail in their attempt to preserve the Senate's filibuster. Count this page on the side of conservative social activists who are pushing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to "nuke" the filibuster.

We don't share these activists' enthusiasm for the White House judicial nominees triggering the current showdown. But we do believe that nominees are entitled to a vote on the floor of the Senate. The filibuster, an arcane if venerable parliamentary tactic that empowers a minority of 41 senators to block a vote, goes above and beyond those checks on majority power legitimately written into the Constitution.

The filibuster is an inherently reactionary instrument most famously used to block civil rights legislation for a generation. Democratic senators themselves decried the filibuster not long ago when they were in the majority and President Clinton's judicial nominees were being blocked.

Frist is on the verge of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. He plans to bring the nomination of Priscilla R. Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, before the full Senate today. Democrats have blocked her nomination in the past, and Frist is now threatening to force a change in rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees. That would be a great triumph for the American people. It would be an even greater triumph if the Senate were to destroy the filibuster altogether.

Alas, we shouldn't uncork the champagne bottles just yet. Because the filibuster is at heart a conservative's weapon, and because Frist is essentially asking senators (regardless of their ideology) to relinquish some of their individual power, we're fearful that the centrists may yet prevail. That would be one judicious compromise that would deny the American people a worthwhile victory."

Regardless of were you come down on this issue, one can only marvel at what could eventually be an historic moment in our country.

Going Nuclear

Charging RINO has a great roundup on the latest developments regarding the judicial filibuster rule. It's remarkable how close the divide is on this issue. Nobody seems to know the outcome with any certainty. The Republicans have a big numerical advantage -- it would take 6 defectors to deny them the rule change. But there's a relatively strong distaste for that option among moderate Republicans and an ongoing bipartisan effort at compromise.

Here's an interesting new quote from Joe Lieberman:

"It's a very dynamic situation. There are clearly, in my opinion, more than six on either side open to, interested in and pursuing a compromise agreement that would avoid the nuclear option. But there has not been a literal meeting of the minds."

Update: On reflection, I wonder if this isn't a fairly dramatic pivot point in abortion law. If the brakes are off on Appeals Court and Supreme Court nominations, it's hard for the Republians to offer any excuses to their base when it comes time to make these selections. The Appeals Court is a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. We may see a procession of very conservative judges through those seats.

The question doesn't really come to a head when Rehnquist retires, since he can easily be replaced by another conservative. What if John Paul Stevens (who is 85) or Sandra Day O'Connor (who is 75) retires?

Will the Republicans, with a relatively free hand, replace either a moderate or liberal vote with a conservative one? What are the odds that we'll see the likes of Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor again?

The Church of the Mouse and the Disco Ball

.. .remember, ye must catblog and worship the disco ball.

Some additions to the liturgy.

Reservations About Running A True Story

I've started a media blog now. I previously questioned whether the Newsweek Koran-flushing story should have been run even if true, given its incendiary nature. I didn't know if that was a kosher attitude for a future journalist, but it turns out now that the head of BU's journalism department has a similar view.

Canadian Flip

Something unusual has happened in Canada--a moderate Conservative politician who ran for party leadership has crossed the aisle to join the Liberals.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said he met with Ms. Stronach -- who had been an outspoken and moderate Conservative -- for a private dinner at 24 Sussex Dr. Monday evening and after a lengthy discussion, Ms. Stronach said she felt confident that leaving the Tories was the right decision.

"We talked about all that is at stake in Thursday's vote on the budget and we talked most of all about what's required to build a stronger, better future for all Canadians," the pleased-looking Prime Minister said at a hastily scheduled press conference in Ottawa Tuesday morning, where the official announcement was made.

"We found that on critical questions of both policy and politics that we have much in common. We both believe in a centrist, balanced and moderate set of policies." Ms. Stronach said she struggled with the decision to leave the party she once sought to lead.

Canadian conservatives have been in a hole for a long time, and this defection could keep them there for some time longer.

We Now Have A Centrist Podcast!

Actually, it's A Little Left Of Centrist. Here is the feed:

http://home.comcast.net/~sherific03/rousecast001.rss

You can subscribe to it in your podcast client (don't worry if that page doesn't come up. It's not meant to be human-readable). If you're not ready to plunge into podcasting, you can still go to the blog and listen to the mp3 file.

I was impressed by the professional quality of the recording. Robert promises to do more of these, and I'm looking forward to it. Just a word of warning: the first podcast will probably sound more "left of" than "centrist" but Robert has a lot of opinions, and I expect the podcasts will feature a variety of them.

Another Small Step

Kuwaiti women win right to vote

The Kuwaiti parliament has voted to give women full political rights.

The amendment to the Kuwait's electoral law means women can for the first time vote and stand in parliamentary and local elections.

Nuclear Options?

In Sunday's Washington Post, William Arkin claims that the US military is continuing to work on options for using nuclear weapons in certain situations regarding Iran and North Korea.

He argues that the military has developed what is known as a "global strike" plan that combines elements of both "kinetic" (ie, bombing, both conventional and nuclear) and "non-kinetic" (e.g. information) warfare in response to contingencies arising out of crises with Iran and/or North Korea. He thinks this is dangerous.

This blurring of the nuclear/conventional line, wittingly or unwittingly, could heighten the risk that the nuclear option will be used. Exhibit A may be the Stratcom contingency plan for dealing with "imminent" threats from countries such as North Korea or Iran, formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02.

The plan envisions a gamut of US responses depending on the specific threat. In response to "a specific and imminent nuclear threat",

A quick-reaction, highly choreographed strike would combine pinpoint bombing with electronic warfare and cyberattacks to disable a North Korean response, with commandos operating deep in enemy territory, perhaps even to take possession of the nuclear device.

The other scenario would be in response to a more long-term threat, e.g., that "Iran announces that it is mounting a crash program to build a nuclear weapon." In this case,

A multidimensional bombing (kinetic) and cyberwarfare (non-kinetic) attack might seek to destroy Iran's program, and special forces would be deployed to disable or isolate underground facilities.

This second scenario apparently contains a specific nuke option in this plan--"a specially configured earth-penetrating bomb to destroy deeply buried facilities"--which he believes is "particularly disconcerting."

Global strike thinkers may believe that they have found a way to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle; but they are also having to cater to a belief on the part of those in government's inner circle who have convinced themselves that the gravity of the threats demands that the United States not engage in any protracted debate, that it prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Frankly, I have some problems with revealing specific war plans; however, I assume that the Pentagon wanted this plan to leak out because, as the author notes, the "global strike contingency plan cannot be a credible threat if it is not publicly known.

Arkin is quite worried about the potential consequences if this plan were implemented.

And though CONPLAN 8022 suggests a clean, short-duration strike intended to protect American security, a preemptive surprise attack (let alone one involving a nuclear weapon option) would unleash a multitude of additional and unanticipated consequences. So, on both counts, why aren't we talking about it?

It seems to me that he is unduly alarmist. Having a plan is not the same thing as using it. During the 50s, SAC had a plan to respond to a Soviet attack that would have involved massive nuclear bombing of the Soviet Union. It doesn't necessarily mean that this is what we actually would have done. And he acknowledges that is unlikely that a US president would order a nuclear attack on Iran or North Korea.

The point of having a plan, it seems to me, is two fold. First, it provides a point of departure in the event that there is a crisis. If you have no plan or if the plan doesn't consider possible contingencies, you are starting from scratch--which is essentially what Truman had to do when North Korea invaded South Korea. Similarly, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I read somewhere that the military had apparently not considered specific bombing options that the Administration was considering, under the assumption, I guess, that these weren't good ideas. No reasonable official (and, yes, I know this is a big assumption) would blindly follow a boilerplate plan regardless of the consequences. Second, it lets the adversary know what it might face in the worst case scenario. Of course, that means the plan has to be known.

So, I'm not so worried about having a plan that contemplates using nukes. It all boils down to the officials making the decisions and I'm not so sanguine about that.

Does this Include Anyone Other than Andrew Sullivan?

Andrew Sullivan has written a pretty interesting article in The New Republic about what he claims are the two types of conservatism and how these are splitting the GOP. What he calls the "conservatism of faith" are, as I read it, consists of religious zealots and crazies bent of turning America into a theocracy, while the "conservatism of doubt" consists of throughtul, well-meaning people, ie . . . Andrew Sullivan.

I don't mean to mock him too much, but it does seem like he created this typology to contrast himself from everyone else in the Republican Party. Actually, though, I think he makes a lot of sense, but I doubt the dichotomy is as extreme as he says. Essentially, he argues that conservatives of faith don't really care how large the government is as long as it is being used to further moral ends (e.g., sanctity of life, no gay marriage, decency on TV, etc.). He also makes an interesting point that a lot of the conservatives of faith of pursuing agendas not too different from liberals.

In a recent speech to conservative activists, according to John Heilemann of New York magazine, "Rove rejected the party's 'reactionary' and 'pessimistic' past, in which it stood idly by while 'liberals were setting the pace of change and had the visionary goals.' Now, he went on, the GOP has seized the 'mantle of idealism,' dedicating itself to 'putting government on the side of progress and reform, modernization and greater freedom.'" The model for Rove's conservatism, in other words, is liberalism. The difference is merely how government directs its vast power, and for whom. In some cases, where the conservatism of faith seeks to use government power to protect the weak, it is indistinguishable from liberalism. It is no accident, I think, that left-liberals like Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader embraced the cause of Bush's federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case. And it is equally no accident that sincere internationalist liberals see much to admire in Bush's hyper-liberal foreign policy, or that long-standing campaigners for action against hiv/aids in the developing world have been pleasantly surprised by his activism and generosity. The fact that the president almost never publicly worries about levels of public spending and debt is also music to traditionally liberal ears. Only bitterness has prevented many on the left from seeing that this administration is on their side on many issues. Or, perhaps, that this president has brilliantly co-opted liberal rhetoric for big-government conservatism.

Conservatives of doubt, on the other hand, seem to be traditional conservatives who were skeptical about the ability of government to solve problems and were more concerned about maintaining individual liberty rather than pursuing a moral agenda for government.

The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues

As a result, conservatives of doubt (ie, Andrew Sullivan) believe in pluralism, while conservatives of faith think that pluralism leads to moral error. Sullivan thinks that the GOP is eventually heading for a showdown between the two types of conservatism--those of faith who are willing to use government for their own ends ("big government conservatives") and those of doubt who want to limit government. Obviously, he hopes the conservatives of doubt win.

If Sullivan is right, the question is whether the GOP can reconcile the two types of conservatism. These are obviously ideal types and I suspect that, to the extent that such groupings exist, they are not as mutually exclusive as Sullivan makes them sound (obvio Still, one would expect that two such distinct movements would eventually have problems holding together. However, the problem with that scenario is that it assumes that adherents could leave the Republican Party. That would require that they feel comfortable with the Democrats (or be willing to become independents or start a new party). Moreover, it seems to me that the conservatism of faith has a big advantage because it is based in the South, a highly ideologically homogenous region. Moreover, by its very nature, conservatives of faith are likely to be more intense and active. Skeptics are likely to be less zealous about their positions and, I would argue, less able to prevail in a fight like this. IMO, intensity in politics is more important than sheer numbers.

Toiletgate

Joe Gandelman has a good roundup of reports on the Newsweek story about flushing the Koran down the toilet that is said to have sparked anti-American riots.

As a future journalist, I'll learn how its supposed to be done. However, given that we are at war, I'm troubled by reports that are extremely damaging to our side, even if they're true. I suppose the argument can be made that these stories have been circulated for months, based on charges made by released detainees, and that it's only the American public that does not know about them. Still, I do think journalists should consider the consequences of reports on the tide of military events.

Perhaps my professors will straighten me out.

Wexler Bolts from the Pack

Democrat to break ranks, unveil retirement bill

Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida has brought out his own Social Security proposal. Wexler has proposed an income surtax of 6% on salaries over $90,000 split between the employer and the employee.

Among other things, the plan has the same serious problem as most of the tax-increase pre-funding proposals. It depends on the myth of the "Trust Fund" to hold surplus taxation until it's needed. But....

I suspect that Wexler's proposal is a "Trojan Horse" bill meant to bring tax increases into the discussion along the lines of Republican Lindesy Graham's proposal of cap-raising--among other things (see below). That it's not really intended for substantive consideration is betrayed by the fact that it includes an even more ambitious proposal.

"Wexler's bill would also put in place so-called "pay-go" rules requiring that all new tax cuts or spending increases be paid for in other areas of the budget."

The bill is intended to put Republicans on record as opposing pay-go when they oppose the tax increases. The shame is that returning to pay-go is a good idea, even if Wexler's SS "reform" proposal isn't.

Mutually assured destruction?

Seven GOP senators hold key to filibuster fight.

I don't know what to say about this spectacle. The floor is open.

A Little Left of Centrist

Here's a new blog I recommend, A Little Left of Centrist. I've added it to our blogroll, and to the Centrist Blogosphere. Check it out.

No Missionaries, Please

The New York Times reports

A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force's chief chaplain. The academy chaplain, Capt. MeLinda Morton, 48, spoke publicly for the first time as an Air Force task force arrived at the academy in Colorado Springs on Tuesday to investigate accusations that officers, staff members and senior cadets inappropriately used their positions to push their evangelical Christian beliefs on Air Force cadets.
...
Critics including Captain Morton attribute the problem in part to the academy's location in Colorado Springs, headquarters to dozens of the largest evangelical ministries and churches. They say there is significant crossover between the leadership of the academy and those organizations and churches in or near Colorado Springs, including Focus on the Family, the Navigators and the Officers' Christian Fellowship.

I know some conservatives are going to go into spin mode and attack the "liberals" and "atheists" who are objecting to a problem they wil argue is non-existent. But a military academy, where young people are coming under authority for the first time in their lives, has to be very careful about how that authority and leadership is used or abused.

I'm sad to see this happening, because I have an affection for the academies--the USNA in Annapolis specifically, where I spend a week in a summer program in high school, the first time I ever was away from my family. It was a great experience. But let's remember; even if members of the military tend to lean Republican, are disproportionately religious, or disproportionately Southern, the military and its academies belong to all Americans.

Update: Here's an article on the controversy from the local Colorado Springs newspaper.

Here's an attack on the chaplain from Air Force Voices. The Mudville Gazette goes after Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (I'm not fan of Lynn, but he wouldn't be pursuing this case if he wasn't given so much fodder). Cdr Salamander compares the investigation to a sharia court, and another bloggers says its a shakedown.

Here is the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State report (pdf) that's at the heart of the controversy

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic

Why I'm Not a Commie After All

I dunno why I feel the need to address this subject - mebbe Gates' comment on the subject got to me. But here we go.

The difference boils down to something really simple. Communism subtracts from personal liberty. Open Source adds to it.

Right now, you could, if you chose, download Linux or Open Office and install them on your computer, for free. They might or might not be right for you, but it's your choice. Similarly, Open Source licenses effectively allow programmers to modify, use, and even redistribute software with sufficiently minor restrictions that it happens an awful lot.

In Communism, by constrast, individuals are required to give up their wishes for the betterment of the state. Even if we hypothesized a mythical Communism that 'actually worked,' that would remain true. Communism where the State doesn't tell you what to do wouldn't be Communism.

Interestingly, there are two basic threads of Open Source thought. I'm in the practical side, that's mostly interested in seeing the most people get to use the most stuff. We see no problem with, for example, MS getting to use BSD TCP/IP code, because even MS users deserve non-horrible networking, and the MS code was clogging up the Internet. The other line of thought thinks free software is a right up there with Enlightenment freedoms, and wants software available free of charge as possible, and with source code available to allow easy changing. They don't like that MS can make money from selling a product that includes BSD TCP/IP code.

There is a communistic thread there, in that the far end (personified by one Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation), resent and fear the software industry. But, to Stallman's credit, he has never worked for or lobbied for an elimination of the industry. He has, in fact, only increased freedom. Alot.

I will just note that, although Stallman wishes he could take it back now, one reason his GNU Public License has been so successful was that he did a pragmatic deal. His FSF spent vast effort on a 'C' compiler, but no business wanted to touch it, because it was licensed so that compiled code would fall under his GPL. He made a pragmatic decision to change some licenses a bit so that compiled code would bear whatever license the user chose. The FSF has been vastly successful ever since.

Not Home On The Range

More discouraging words for moderate Republicans.

But here in the Capitol, their numbers are so few, said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they quit having their weekly lunches about a year ago. "Susan and I were there alone for so much of the time," Mr. Specter he said, referring to Senator Susan Collins of Maine, "we worked through all of our conversation and decided to disband."
...
By this week, Ms. Collins seemed a bit worn down by that debate. "It seems like it's issue after issue this year," she said, adding that she often envies "those senators for whom everything is black and white." Ms. Snowe, meanwhile, had a message for fellow Republicans: "Frankly," she said, "the election of the president drew from Americans who describe themselves as moderates, which is about 45 percent of Americans today. That's something we overlook at our own peril."

What's the Matter with Democrat Analysts?

We've spent a little time lately on voter demographics, one of my own applied professional fields. And we've spent a LOT of time over the last year on apparent contradictions between population demographics and party affiliation and voting trends. I have pointed out over and over again that one must beware of trying to make predictions or gain any serious insight to the electorate based on single correlations, and weak ones at that.

Democratic analysts (Thomas Frank leaps immediately to mind) seem to have real trouble understanding how "working people" in red states can vote Republican. A recent SLATE article by Timothy Noah, oh-so-charmingly titled Conservatism As Pathology: Are Bush supporters literally insane? is a case in point.

Now Steve Sailer of the Human Biodiversity Institute and VDARE.com has come up with an extremely insightful statistical analysis of the voting populace, one that goes well beyond the misleading and uni-dimensional analysis so beloved by some. No matter which side of the divide you're on, there's some good news and some bad news here. But most of all, it's one of the most informative examinations of the electorate that I've seen in years. If you really want to get a grip on what drives current voting trends in America, I highly recommend Sailer's article.

CBS--Can They Just Not Stop Themselves?

The rightie talk radio community and blogosphere is hopping mad today about a quote by Ken Starr used on CBS News. CBS interviewed Starr about the filibuster flap.

In what was apparently an in-context statement about the GOP's proposed use of the "nuclear option," Starr is shown on camera saying:

"This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government."

The problem? Starr wasn't talking about the "nuclear option" at all. He was talking about the Democrat's refusing to let judges come up for a vote because of their judicial philosophy.

Starr later said:

The 'radical departure from our history' snippet was specifically addressed to the practice of invoking judicial philosophy as a grounds for voting against a qualified nominee of integrity and experience. I said in sharp language that that practice was wrong.

He apparently went on in the interview to compare the current flap with the Republican's voting for the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court during the Clinton Administration.

I contrasted the current practice...with what occurred during Ruth Ginsburg's nomination process as numerous Republicans voted, rightly, to confirm a former ACLU staff worker. They disagreed with her positions as a lawyer but they voted -- again rightly -- to confirm her.

The broadcast that started the furor can be found here ("Filibuster Showdown"). CBS is refusing to release the complete tape of the Starr interview for review. And it wasn't even a Mary Mapes production.

(For the nuance-impaired--this is a thread on media bias and the manipulative nature of "selective context" reporting, not on the filibuster flap itself.)

Another quiz

This political typology quiz from the Pew Research Center is interesting. I'm in the "Upbeat" group.

Daring to Think On His Own

If you haven't heard, the Foreign Relations Committee has voted to send John Bolton's nomination to the floor without reccomendation (10-8). Senator George Voinovich who voted against a positive reccomendation for Bolton (9-9), but gave Conservatives their floor debate by voting to send the nomination to the floor with no reccomendation, was given thanks by the folks at ConfirmBolton.com:

"(9:56 AM)With three of the four potential GOP defectors signaling support for Bolton in today’s committee vote, there is cause for cautious optimism. The only hiccup? Sen. George Voinovich, who must be loving his time in the time in the spotlight. He’s now earned the label that every moderate Republican covets from the Big Media: 'maverick.' Let’s hope he doesn’t get too drunk on his own good press...

(11:02 AM)Is he trying to sink Bolton? He just said, 'I believe he’s not the best candidate for the job.' My guess: he’s just playing up every last second of his 15 minutes, but he’s fundamentally too gutless to vote against Bolton....

(11:07 AM)Poor, poor Voinovich. He simply lacks the intelligence to understand what’s going on around him. He’s repeatedly quoting Carl “conservative to the core, but not too conservative to cut checks for Charlie Rangell and John Kerry” Ford, a man who met Bolton exactly once. And now he’s citing people from State with whom he spent a few days on a trip to the Balkans. What he simply doesn’t understand is that John Bolton was in the lion’s den, that State is the sworn enemy of President Bush....

(11:16 AM)Sen. Voinovich’s stupidity has lost out to his gutlessness, as he’s at least going to allow Bolton to go to the floor for an up-or-down vote. He’s lapping up the fawning press coverage–he’s a “maverick..."

Your movement has got to be really pathetic if you feel it is neccesary to resort to blatant name calling when someone doesn't vote the way you think they should.

A Centrist With Teeth, Finally

Independent-Republican candidate for Virginia Governor, Senator Russ Potts, is not shying away from straight talk on the campaign trail. The Post