I sent this out to a few blogs I read, and I'm going to issue the same challenge here. The following paragraph was from a recent AP story. Read it, think about it, and let me know what you think:
A federal judge has ruled that some provisions of [controversial piece of legislation] remain too vague to be understood by a person of average intelligence and are therefore unconstitutional.
I didn't need another reason to view Jeremy Dibbell's blog Charging RINO as one of the best things on the internet. But here it is. With his usual emphasis on substance, breadth of knowledge, and clear reasoning, he delivers a report card for the current Congress.
Latin America has managed to stay mostly democratic over the last decade, but many of their governments have not performed well. One reason is corruption
As he campaigned for the presidency in 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva boldly pledged to clean up the sordid politics of Brazil. His, he vowed, would be an ethical, honest and moral government the likes of which Brazil had never seen.
That pledge helped him win the votes of more than 50 million Brazilians and a sweeping mandate. But now, in a gloomy echo of what has happened time and again across Latin America, Mr. da Silva's government is mired in the biggest, most audacious corruption scandal in his country's history.
A congressional inquiry has heard testimony that the governing Workers' Party paid dozens of deputies from other parties a $12,500 monthly stipend for their support. This month, a party functionary was detained at an airport with $100,000 - stashed in his underwear - which he claimed to have earned selling vegetables.
I point this out with reference to events in the Middle East, and the notion that democracy is a solution to the problems faced there. Democracy is a good thing in and of itself, but the difficultly faced by Latin American democracies, which were plagued by terrorism in the 1970's, shows that democracy is not in and of itself a cure for terrorism.
I think the Bush Administration's push for democracy in the Middle East fills more of a need to give meaning and purpose to American policy rather than actually addressing security issues.
We've heard it argued that one of the greatest "root causes" of Islamic terrorism is poverty. But there's a paradox there, as David Ignatius pointed out in his Washington Post column yesterday.
This is the revolt of the privileged, Islamic version. They have risen so far, so fast in the dizzying culture of the West that they have become enraged, disoriented and vulnerable to manipulation. Their spiritual leader is a Saudi billionaire's son who grew up with big ideas and too much money....
Reading some of the London bombers' biographies, you realize the depth of their cultural confusion: "Shahzad Tanweer, 23, came from one of Beeston's most respected families," wrote the London Independent about one of the July 7 bombers. And according to The Post, he had just received a red Mercedes from his dad.
Booker Rising's Quote of the Day for today runs along the same lines, from a much different angle.
That cancels the thesis which claims that poverty is the cause of terrorism. That confirms the seduction of the Islamist message. In fact, the circumstances open the way with terrorism, it is an individual choice. In the Netherlands, they are young graduates from good universities, on the way to finding very good employment, which sought the fundamentalist message on the Internet and yielded to the totalitarian seduction.
That comes from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament. If you don't know who Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, you should find out. A profile in courage, indeed.
And for more European insight into the minds of the terrorist in Europe and America, there's this New York Times piece by Olivier Roy from last week on "Why They Hate Us." (Roy is perhaps the top French scholar on Islamic terrorism.)
Stunned by terror attacks in a Red Sea resort, Egyptians are in a remarkably frank debate about whether mosques and schools - and the government itself - should be blamed for promoting Islamic extremism.
Have any of you ever heard of Spiral Dynamics? Radical Middle Newsletter editor Mark Satin attended a Spiral Dynamics conference in Dallas recently, and reports back. I heard Don Beck, the Spiral Dynamics impresario at a World Future Society conference several years ago, and was most impressed. The basic theme is very relevant to centrism.
As I see it, the basic idea is that as people and societies evolve, they move back and forth between individualism to communitarianism, but under the best scenario, they are not retreading old ground, but rather exploring new territory at a higher level. For instance, the most primitive society might be a society without any rules, like in the Wild West, where violence rules. A step of from that might be a tribal society, which is communitarian but repressive. A capitalistic society is more individualistic, but it has basic rules of behavior that distinguish it from anarchy.
The notion of a spiral allows one to consider that actions which are somewhat retro, seemingly back to the past, might in fact be a way forward if they echo the past, but at a higher level. The demand for a return to family values is one such instance. Most baby boomers are not hoping to bring back the 1950's, but they are trying to create a society more family friendly than the one they created in the 1970's, as they were breaking from from their parents. With the fissure within the AFL-CIO, I'm hoping that unions, which have been passe for some time, might find a way to reinvent themselves as worker advocates outside of bargaining units with all their traditional baggage.
As I see it, centrism tries to focus on the center line of progress, rather than the left-right tugs which are mere course corrections.
Let me say first that I think Romney deserves credit for what feels like an open and honest expression of his views. So be sure to read the whole thing, out of fairness. It is also fair to note that he has been circumspect and at times misleading about his abortion views on past occasions. And due to previous statements he has made, his current position is undeniably a flip-flop of sorts. Leaving that aside, I'd like to focus on the questionable aspects of several parts of his carefully crafted shiny new position:
You can't be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time, the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the child waiting to be born.
Why? Why should that be the starting point? Why shouldn't the starting point be the right of an individual to make difficult personal decisions themselves without governmental interference? And who do you mean when you say we? The government? Are you proposing vast new financial supports for women facing unwanted unplanned pregnancies, or are you just saying that we should be nice to pregnant women after we tell them that they must bear a child? Don't just say nice vague things, tell us what your policies would be in the wake of the substantial changes you are supporting.
There is much in the abortion controversy that America's founders would not recognize. Above all, those who wrote our Constitution would wonder why the federal courts had peremptorily removed the matter from the authority of the elected branches of government. The federal system left to us by the Constitution allows people of different states to make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus avoiding the bitter battles engendered by ''one size fits all" judicial pronouncements. A federalist approach would allow such disputes to be settled by the citizens and elected representatives of each state, and appropriately defer to democratic governance.
Isn't the idea to let states decide instead of the feds driven by a desire to foster personal liberty and automony against the dictates of the government? If it's better for the states to decide than the feds, isn't it even better to let each and every person in each of the different states make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus avoiding the bitter battles engendered by all sorts of governmental ''one size fits all" pronouncements? Since you are tacitly granting that it would be OK for some states to decide that it's OK for abortion to be legal, why is it then wrong to let each individual make this choice? Notice that Roe v. Wade's finding/declaration of a right to privacy was a decision which found (or declared) a right to privacy that emphasized personal autonomy. You are suggesting that your change is due to a desire to give the people more autonomy, and that's plainly not so. What you are really suggesting is that we give each state's majority the right to dictate the proper decision to make on abortion. Forgive us if we pass up on the chance to tell other people what's right for them.
Except on matters of the starkest clarity like the issue of banning partial-birth abortions, there is not now a decisive national consensus on abortion. Some parts of the country have prolife majorities, others have prochoice majorities. People of good faith on both sides of the issue should be able to make and advance their case in democratic forums -- with civility, mutual respect, and confidence that democratic majorities will prevail. We will never have peace on the abortion issue, much less a consensus of conscience, until democracy is allowed to work its way.
What real reason is there to think that allowing each state to decide separately for all of its citizens will result in more peace, and a nation less bitterly divided? Isn't it just as likely that going this route will make the red states redder, the blue states bluer, and result in 50 states that are each bitterly divided?
I can't account for why day-old links work when I click them from the Globe 48-hour free search results, but when I embed the URL in my own link, the Globe rejects it. See how much longer I subscribe to their paper.
Booker Rising has an excellent post with advice for the GOP on how to recruit Cosby Republicans from what it calls "old-school blacks" who might be tempted to leave the Democratic Party for a renewed Moderate Republicanism.
Cosby Republicans are skeptical about the effectiveness of free markets, and favor government regulation to protect the public interest, protect morality, and government assistance for the poor. They may overlap with white moderate Republicans on issues such as the environment and tax cuts for the middle class, but will diverge on key social issues.
However, this group is also suspicious of the Republican Party, because of its infamous Southern Strategy in wooing white voters - whom they or their parents fought battles against during the Civil Rights Movement - and wonder if the party likes black folks. The recent GOP apology, via chairman Ken Mehlman, at the NAACP's national convention may help thaw the ice. However, this is a huge hurdle for the Republican Party to cross in its outreach to old-school blacks. To get over the hump, the Republican Party must do a far better job of defining itself in media that this subgroup actually follows, which is black media. Right now, the Democratic Party defines the GOP in black media, and it ain't a flattering definition either.
To help draw this group into its ranks, the GOP should highlight the above-mentioned issues, which rankle old-school blacks regarding Democratic Party leadership.
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is meeting in Columbus. Bull Moose is there, and so is Hillary Clinton. Joe Gandelman has some observations on her centrist positioning, and whether it's a pose, or if its real. There is also a new issue of the DLC's magazine, Blueprint, which just came out. Haven't read it yet, but there are always articles worth reading.
Marc Cooper, a liberal but not an automaton, offers some constructive criticism for like-minded folks.
I'm honestly trying to figure out what is in the mind of Democrat activists and the more I ponder the question the more baffled I become.
On this past Saturday, 350 meetings and rallies were held across the U.S. in which -- it seems-- Democrats closed themselves off in auditoriums, read from the now sacred Downing Street Memos, chanted "Impeach Bush!" and repeated to themselves, once again, that Bush is a liar and that he certainly lied us into Iraq. . .
I'm not being snide (for heaven knows I have often been quite persnickety on this subject), but I really want someone to enlighten me and tell me just what effect any of this supposed to have? My ongoing problem with this sort of "politics" is that it doesn't seem like politics at all. In my jaundiced view it seems like more therapeutics than anything else. . .
I continue to think that those who most oppose Bush continue to burn up a lot of energy chanting with themselves and not nearly enough trying to forge a new majoritarian political strategy . . .
The grass roots should listen to the man. Locker room rah-rah sessions may feel good, but they don't win games.
Sen. McCain was a guest on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. I knew there'd be some discussion on John Roberts, but I was also hoping to hear more about the legislation he is co-sponsoring Sen. Graham and Sen. Warner that would (in a quote interpolated from ChargingRINO) "...bar the U.S. military from engaging in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual."
Instead, I got an interview about Karl Rove and Wedding Crashers.
Apparently, because Sen. McCain had a seven second cameo where he shook hands with Christopher Walken outside of a church, there's a controversy brewing because he's a U.S. Senator and the movie is, as Drudge Rreport calls it, "a boob raunch fest." McCain's response is, "In Washington, I work with boobs everyday." That's good enough for me, so instead of wasting any of my own sarcasm on this nonsense, I'd rather just move on to Mr. Rove.
I'm still not entirely sure what the story is exactly, but here's what I've pieced together. Karl Rove was accused of something bad. Liberals don't like him, so since he was accused of something bad, he's guilty and should be fired (or at least tarred and feathered). Conservatives like him, so it doesn't matter what he was accused of in the first place. They're taking the stick your fingers in your ears and scream "I'm not listening" defense. Somewhere in the middle Time Magazine got a lot of publicity, Newsweek had fun criticizing them, and a New York Times reporter is jailed for not writing anything. I think Jude may have broken up Brad and Angelina too.
My point - and I do have one - is this: There aren't nearly enough facts to know exactly what they knew and when they knew it, so people just make it up as they go along. We've become an overly opinionated society where, instead of forming an opinion once all the facts are in, we form our opinion as all the facts come in. For every five minutes of factual information, we get five days of people giving their opinion on it. Yet if anyone ever changes their mind based on new facts that came in, they're accused of not getting their facts straight.
In the case of the morning shows, important issues get glossed over so Senators and other government officials can give an answer without giving an answer, while the bloggers (shut up) look for any excuse to jump in and say, "Gotcha!"
Is there a story here somewhere? Duh. Releasing classified information is a serious offense, and I don't mean it to sound like something to be taken lightly. But it's a serious offense - that's why there is an investigation under way (with a special prosecutor who apparently knows how to git r' done). When that investigation has concluded and people in the Bush Administration are being charged with something, then bring the comeuppance and let the media circus begin. I'll even bring the feathers.
However until then, let's focus on current issues like a war that still isn't going well (and is fixing to get worse come Aug. 15th), terrorist attacks on London, a war of a different kind brewing in the senate over Stem Cell research funding, rising gas prices, extreme interest groups on both sides in need of a serious smackdown, congress over reacting because a democrat wants to buy a major league baseball team, growing concerns in China and Iran, the next time some white chick goes missing...
FAIRFIELD, Ohio -- Less than 24 hours after a Tri-state soldier was buried, someone pulled up 20 American flags from his father-in-law's front yard and set fire to them under a car in the driveway, News 5 reported.
First, let's acknowledge that whoever did this is, quite simply, a wretched excuse for a human being. Period. It's an outrageous and deeply offensive act of cruel unthinking idiocy.
Second, let's refrain from the almost certain leaping upon the left that is sure to ensue. At the absolute least, let's refrain until more is known. There's a very good chance, IMO, that this was an act of very misguided (and indeed, bottom line inexcusable) youthful passion by someone who was unaware of the background of a death in the family. I don't hestitate to bet that the vast majority of zealous anti-war advocates find this very troublesome. As for whoever remains among the anti-war left that might see fit to act as an apologist, well there are always a few. Refer to the recent thread on zeal as needed.
Unless facts come to light showing that this was a planned act by an organized group made with full knowledge of the family's circumstances, it's a stretch to make any sort of "this just goes to show how [insert condemning insult] the left has become." Absent such facts, this act is no more representative of anti-Iraq war Americans as a group than that nut who killed the abortion doctor is representative of Americans who oppose legal abortion.
So if we want to pour our energies into some response to this, let's focus it upon showing the Hines family that the overwhelming majority of Americans honor and respect their family's sacrifice. I hope whoever did this gets caught, and punished to the full extent possible. If the guilty person or people are ever to become anything approaching decent human beings, they'll come to harbor an unrelenting shame at what they've done to the Hines family. Maybe we choose a day in August as a solidarity day to express our support for the Hines family and all the troops, and resolve on that day to display extra flags. Or find some other way. If contact information becomes available, let's share it, and show our support. Perhaps we can turn this around and some good can come from it.
UPDATE II: As of this A.M. 7/26, neither CNN, Fox, nor MSNBC, shows coverage of this story upon a search for "Timothy Hines." I take the Fox failure as calling into the question the notion that this coverage gap is due to the MSM's liberal bias. So if you're the sort who is prone to jumping on that particular easy excuse train, be aware that it's struggling to leave the station. I further note that Yahoo News pops it right up. If we want real bias-free coverage, place another W in the column of the aggregators.
By now you'll now I'm a great fan of the Economist. I particularly love their focused reviews of selected countries and topics. Well in the July 16th issue they focus on Americans.
Pardon my enthusiasm but I think this is must reading for Americans. There so much good stuff in this series of articles. The one area that has gotten some media play (i.e. NPR) is the widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans.
But in the past quarter-century, the rich have been doing dramatically better than the less well off. Since 1979, median family incomes have risen by 18% but the incomes of the top 1% have gone up by 200%. In 1970, according to the Census Bureau, the bottom fifth received 5.4% of America's total national income and the richest fifth got 40.9%. Twenty-five years later, the share of the bottom fifth had fallen to 4.4% but that of the top fifth had risen to 46.5%.
But here's where the Economist is so good, they flesh in that change with some interesting data:
Perhaps Americans think the rich deserve their success. They certainly work more than they used to. In the 1970s, the top 10% worked fewer hours than the bottom 10%; now the reverse is true. Back in 1929, 70% of the income of the extremely rich (the top 0.01%) came from capital (dividends, rent and interest). Now, 80% comes from wages and stock options, which is earned income of a sort.
or
Moreover—and this was the most surprising thing about the study—despite America's more flexible labour markets, social mobility there is no longer greater than in supposedly class-ridden Europe, and if anything it seems to be declining.
AND (for me) the kicker
Over the past 25 years, globalisation has increased rewards for intellectual skills, pushing up the value of a degree. The income gap between college graduates and those without university degrees doubled between 1979 and 1997. This has gone hand in hand with changes in the nature of work. It used to be possible to start at the bottom of a big firm and work your way up. But America's corporate giants have got rid of their old hierarchies. Lifetime employment is at an end, and managers hop from job to job. That makes a degree essential. In the 1930s and 1940s, only half of all American chief executives had a college degree. Now almost all of them do, and 70% also have a higher degree, such as an MBA. People with a university degree are now more likely to move up an income bracket than those without. This is a big change since the 1970s, when income rises were distributed equally across all educational levels. America is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy.
AND
It is the possibility that, as Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution argues, your chances of a good education, good job and good prospects—in other words, of moving upwards—are partly determined by family behaviour. On this view, the rich really are different, and not just because they have more money; moreover, these differences are becoming embedded in the structure of the family itself. Class stratification, in other words, is more than a matter of income or inherited wealth. College graduates tend to marry college graduates. Both go out to work, so in the households of the most educated the returns to a university education are doubled....
"Get a good education and you'll go far" Growing up I heard that often (as I'm sure many of you did). We didn't expect it to have these unintended consequences.
There's just so much good stuff in this review of America. And you can read it ALL on online.
I just got an email from Jeremy (Charging RINO) that contained some really good news. A Mason Dixon poll released last night has the maverick Republican State Senator, and Independent candidate for Governor Russ Potts, at 9%. This is a four 4 to 5% increase from the last polls that were released.
Yes, 9% still represents a long way to go, but I think this will at least take some air out of the argument, from the Republican nominee, that Senator Potts is not valid enough to be included in the debates, especially in a three way race that could be won by the candidate who reaches 36%. Furthermore, an increase of 4 to 5% shows that people are starting to tune into the Potts candidacy, and more and more are relating to his message.
The good news is that it is still early, if Potts can get that number up above 10%, or closer to 15% by Labor Day, than a Jesse Ventura/Lowell Weicker type upset is not out of the question. Stay tuned, a radical centrist may be making history in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Here is Jeremy's excellent take on the latest poll.
Go here to email Jerry Kilgore's staff and let them know that someone who wants to be Governor should have the courage to debate his opponents, and not behind closed doors in a private West Virginia club.
Medicare's handling of Palm Beach Gardens is an extreme example of a pervasive problem that costs the federal insurance program billions of dollars a year while rewarding doctors, hospitals and health plans for bad medicine. In Medicare's upside-down reimbursement system, hospitals and doctors who order unnecessary tests, provide poor care or even injure patients often receive higher payments than those who provide efficient, high-quality medicine.
As a followup to some
recent discussion of GM, I though I'd offer some skeptical Kaus
GM-blogging. He doesn't have permalinks, so you'll hafta
scroll down a bit.
Yeah, the new models look better, but they'll only save GM if they work
a lot better than their predecessors and aren't expensive.
I think GM is being run into the ground, and the excited BW article KF points
doesn't change my mind. I notice that one feature of Bob Lutz' management is to go to war with the engineers - just the guys who make this stuff work, that's all. Of course, I'm an engineer, but I think you have to get everybody working together to prosper.
Reports of more attempted bombings in London today. The Guardian has a newsblog with running updates.
I was at Heathrow the day before last, on a layover between flights coming back from Greece. I also read a lot of British papers in Greece, as the only American paper available was USA Today. One of the things that impressed me was the stoicism of the British, and how they were proud of exiting bombing sites areas in good order, without panic and screaming. There is such a thing as national character, and growing up, one learns how to behave by watching one's fellow citizens. Our thoughts are with the British people, and prayers that they can put an end to the campaign of violence against them.
Yesterday, I posted in the comment section a quote from Berkeley law professor John Yoo who believes that Roberts isn't an ideal pick for the social conservatices. Today, Yoo wrote a guest column for the Post, and he has some interesting points about Roberts.
Democrats should recognize an olive branch when they see it...
Potential nominees such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, or federal judges Edith Brown Clement, Edith Jones, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell or J. Harvie Wilkinson, rightly or wrongly would have prompted intense opposition in the Senate for their written views on abortion, affirmative action, religion, race or the regulatory powers of the federal government.
But Roberts has no far-reaching ideology, no creative articles, no revolutionary plans for constitutional law. He looks like an emblem of the Washington establishment: currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, commonly referred to as "the second-highest court in the land"; deputy solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush; associate White House counsel under President Ronald Reagan; clerk on the Supreme Court to then-Justice William Rehnquist; managing editor of the Harvard Law Review; summa cum laude Harvard graduate. If he had gone to St. Albans for grade school, he would have been perfect.
He is most likely to follow the center of the court in its current direction, and he may try to engage in course corrections, but as a standing member of the Washington establishment he won't try to turn the ship around or steer it to a completely different port.
Senate Democrats do not get to choose the nominee; the Constitution vests that power, as Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, in the president. But many Republican partisans did not get their favorites, either. Roberts is no Robert Bork (and I for one wish there were more judges with Bork's intellect and abilities on the Supreme Court and in the lower federal courts).
In fact, the Roberts nomination represents the best opportunity since the outrageous Bork hearings to repair the polarized confirmation process and to bring consensus to our fractured constitutional law.
Jeremy posted a link to a new moderate Republican blogger named Chris Battles. I went and checked him out and thought he deserved a blip here at Centerfield.
Battles is an amiable, intelligent, and young proud RINO. His only fault is that he attends a Big Ten school; Chris is a Buckeye majoring in political science and business. So far he has written posts on, among other issues: how to stick it to Bush, Harry Potter's standing in the Catholic Church, the scandal regarding a certain WH employee whose name I dare not mention, and his pick for 2008: New York Governor George Pataki.
I like Pataki also. He would be a good President, but I am concerned that moderate Republicans are going to blow their opportunity to put a middle-of-the-roader on the ticket if we crowd the primaries, and I would prefer McCain or Giuliani over the Guv. That been said, it is good to know that there are more moderate Republicans in the blogosphere, and I look forward to much more From the Mind of Chris Battles.
Part Deux: And in other news, in Roberts' 2003 Senate hearing for his Appeals court appointment, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) elevated the discourseby calling some of Senator Schumer's inquiries "dumbass questions." With all due respect, of course. Sheesh.
Broken record time again and just to remind you there are other issues beside Carl Rove and John Roberts. Just point your browser to this address and you'll find there are still A LOT of uninsured in the US. In fact
Among the 16.5% of persons aged <65 years who were without health insurance at the time of the interview, approximately one fourth had never had health insurance
Last night, at The Reaction, I argued that Roberts is something of a "right-wing radical". On issues like abortion, the separation of church and state, criminal law, and habeas corpus, he is certainly on the right, though of course how you label him is very much a matter of perception. (See Slate's review of his background here.)
I'm on the center-left, generally speaking, and so to me he's too conservative. Mathew makes an excellent and eloquent case for him here, but I respectfully disagree.
In this sense, I must say that I'm somewhat disappointed with Bush's nominee. I was hoping for Gonzales, or perhaps Luttig, and I might even have been willing to consider an intellectual heavyweight like McConnell. But it seems that Roberts was the most conservative pick Bush could have made without risking a serious confirmation battle. He thus played it safe while simultaneously pushing the envelope and satisfying his base. Yes, I'm disappointed, but I was enough of a realist not to expect a moderate nominee and, to be honest, I'm certainly not outraged. He may indeed turn out to be an excellent justice (whether or not I agree with him on any number of issues).
I suspect that he'll be confirmed, and rather easily. There are hardly any "extraordinary" circumstances here, and there likely won't be any surprises, and he's spent much of his career inside the Beltway. This makes him something of a known quantity, and he's obviously quite likeable (given what we saw of him last night and given what people are saying of him), but there are also a few problems that worry me: First, he's only been a federal judge for a couple of years, and hence there's hardly any paper trail. Second, most of his career has been spent as an advocate for conservative causes and political appointee/operative under Reagan and Bush I. As the Times put it today (see here for its editorial), "he has a thin record on controversial subjects". The Post even calls him "sphinx-like". And, third, his tenure on the D.C. Circuit Court, however brief, indicates that he may very well be an ideologue.
What's interesting is that liberals seem to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude (see, for example, the Post's quite favourable editorial; some more left-wing groups like People for the American Way, as predicted, are already attacking the nomination) while conservatives are in, well, disharmony. It probably doesn't matter much what Ann Coulter thinks (on anything, but especially this), but over at The Weekly Standard, where many of the more thoughtful conservatives hang out, there is some disagreement. Bill Kristol sees Roberts as a courageous (i.e., good) pick, while Fred Barnes sees him as a safe (i.e., bad) pick.
For an interesting critique of one element of Roberts's judicial record, see Emily Bazelon's piece at Slate, where she reveals that "[a]s a member of a three-judge panel on the D.C. federal court of appeals, Roberts signed on to a blank-check grant of power to the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists without basic due-process protections". In addition, see William Stuntz's piece at TNR, where he argues that Roberts is essentially a Rehnquistian, more about political bottom lines than judicial reasoning.
I look forward to a thoughtful debate here at Centerfield. I realize that there's been a lot of -- perhaps even an overkill of -- SCOTUS-talk lately, but, as the Times put it so well:
President Bush did the country a service by making his nomination early enough for the Senate to have ample time to investigate the judge's record and hold hearings. The leaders in both parties should resist any pressures to move quickly. It would be irresponsible to take a position on the nomination of Judge Roberts until his background is carefully reviewed, and until senators have a chance to question him at length. The nomination of a new Supreme Court justice is a great moment for the nation, providing new vigor to a great American institution. The entire country has a stake in the outcome.
Those of us who are Star Trek fans have lost a dear friend today. Actor James Doohanpassed away of pneumonia and Alzheimer's. As Commander Montgomery Scott, Doohan was the perfect irascible engineer, overly protective of his beloved Enterprise so that it could protect his fellow crew.
The Enterprise's five year mission may have been exploring new life and new civilizations, but Star Trek's mission was exploring our own life and our own civilization, boldly going where few TV shows had gone before. How do "human beings" of different races and even species live and work together? How do we deal with threats to our way of life both from without and from within? What obligations does an "advanced" society owe to one which is not so advanced? Star Trek explored all of these questions, always searching for answers which balanced fundamental humanity with self protection, respecting others but making sure the others returned that respect.
As Scotty, Doohan was the one who reminded us that sometimes right needs technological might to back it up, that sometimes philosophy must needs give way to pragmatism, and most importantly that the first requirement is to work hard and get the job done. He always stayed at his post, he always got the job done (no matter how many of his red-shirted deputies were killed within 5 minutes of landing on the new planet).
To James Doohan, who was himself beamed up to a safer place today, thank you for the memories and the lessons.
I really mean this to be a thread to continue the discussion from Tully's post earlier today, but my take on the nomination of Robert's is a positive one.
This is clearly not the nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O'Conner that I would have liked, but I will say that if the President wants a conservative ideologue on the Court, I am glad John Roberts is the choice. I think undeniably he is qualified for the job. Roberts is extremely well respected, incredibly intelligent, and has the proper experience as a Circuit Judge, an attorney who very successfully argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, and as a former law clerk to then Associate Justice Rehnquist. Roberts, IMO, has the potential to bring some much needed intellectual consistency to the current Court.
Furthermore, the President made a smart political move. With his nomination to the Circuit Court in 2003, Roberts was backed by judges from all ideological backgrounds, and received strong support as extremely well qualified from the American Bar Association. His nomination was approved unanimously with the exception of three Democrats on the Judiciary committee.
The argument he wrote in favor of overturning Roe under the employment of Ken Starr at the Solicitor General's office will no doubt be an issue, but he was representing a client at the time and not his personal views. I think the Democrats will ask him about his personal opinion regarding Roe and other issues, but he won't tell them, nor should he. Judge Roberts' political point of view or party affiliation should not be the issue. At this time, I see no reason why he will not be, or should not be, easily confirmed.
On a personal note, I was impressed with the Judge's speech after the official announcement this evening. He seems to be a thoughtful man with solid character. Speaking only on what I saw from him tonight, my impression is that John Roberts seems to be the type of judge that will approach the bench with respect for the rule of law and the institution to which he has been nominated to serve in.
I've been reading both Red State and DailyKos as rough indications of what the right and left sides of the blogosphere think of a rumored Edith Clement nomination. (Actually, that sampling probably works pretty well, because both are leading activist centers for the right and left -- there are tons of liberal and conservative blogs, but Kos and Red State cater to the hard-charging activist types.)
This is, I must say, truly fascinating. While there is quite a variety of opinion on both sites, there's a pretty strong current in both cases to the effect that this is "not bad", or "as good as you could expect", or even "very good", in some cases.
Those initial impressions probably result from very different sets of facts. E.g., the right is being assured behind the scenes that she's "really one of them", and the left has dug up the nugget below regarding her views on a right to privacy which lead them to believe she may uphold Roe.
This suggests that we may have someone who is surprisingly uncontroversial in the early going. But there may be some odd volatility, too, with perhaps a few on either side drawing the conclusion that she is not reliably in their camp, or perhaps not in their camp at all.
Question 1: Do you believe there is a guaranteed right to privacy in the Constitution?
Answer: The Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy.
Question 2: What are the elements of that right?
Answer: The elements of the right to privacy depend on the aspect of that right at issue in a particular case. Different factual situations call for different definitions of privacy. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to privacy exists in multiple facets of a person's life. For example, the right to privacy found in the First Amendment focuses on a person's right to make certain personal decisions without government interference. The right found in the Fourth Amendment gives heightened protection to what a person does in the sanctity of the home.
Question 2A: What is your approach to constitutional interpretation where the text of the constitution is ambiguous?
Answer: I would, of course, be bound by Supreme Court precedent and would evaluate the decisions of other courts. The history, text, and purpose of the provisions should be studied as well as considerations of how the text should be applied to the specific facts and circumstances.
Question 2B: Do you believe the constitution contemplates a "right to privacy"?
Answer: Yes, as I stated in my responses to the follow-up questions asked by Senator Kohl, I do believe that the Constitution contemplates a right to privacy. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Constitution encompasses a right to privacy.
Question 2C: Do you believe the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a woman's right to have an abortion?
Answer: The Supreme Court has clearly held that the right to privacy guaranteed by the constitution includes the right to have an abortion. The cases handed down by the Supreme Court on the right to abortion have reaffirmed and redefined this right, and the law is settled in that regard. If confirmed, I will faithfully apply Supreme Court precedent.
With a win last night, tragedy has occurred. The bastard New York Yankees are a 1/2 game in first place over the Boston Red Sox. I can see the smirk on Derek Jeter's face. I really thought they were heading for a bad season. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them...
Not about politics, I know, but that won't kill us.
Just so the train isn't completely off the track, does anybody else understand why House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis is threatening Major League Baseball over the George Soros bid to purchase the Washington Nationals? In the NBA a U.S. Senator owns the Milwaukee Bucks, in the NFL the owner of the San Diego Chargers was a big time contributor to the President... Should someone's political beliefs determine whether or not they own a professional baseball franchise? Should the fact that MLB has a monopoly exemption mean that Congress gets a say about who buys a team?
Maybe I am missing something, but you would think, as a Congressman from Northern Virginia, Davis wouldn't care who bought the team as long as it stayed in the metro DC area. Maybe he is hoping the ownership group from Northern Virginia, who didn't end up getting the Nationals before they ended up at RFK in DC, gets a second shot.
After the 9/11 attacks, Michael Walzer, a liberal journalist, wrote a piece questioning the possibility of a "decent left." His article was fueled by the spectacle of a good many leftists, in effect, apologizing for the attacks by blaming US policy.
It appears that little has changed. The New York Times yesterday quoted Clare Short, who quit Tony Blair's cabinet because of her opposition to the Iraq War as follows
"Some of the voices that have been coming from the government talk as though this is all evil and that everything we do is fine, when in fact we are implicit in the slaughter of large numbers of civilians in Iraq and supporting a Middle East policy that for the Palestinians creates this sense of double standard - that feeds anger."
Now, I have no problem with someone objectively connecting the bombings with the Iraq War--it seems to me quite likely that that was one of the causes. And I would not have problems with someone saying, we need to get out because the war is bringing terrorism home. That's a prudential analysis and, while I might disagree with the policy of reacting to terrorism, I can understand it.
What I can't understand is someone essentially justifying the bombing of subways in London because of some ostensible "anger" supposedly caused by particular policies in the Middle East. The idea that somehow the policy toward Palestineans creates anger that apparently justifies mass murder is simply appalling. But it's typical of how some portions of the left, especially in Europe, have reacted to Islamic terrorism. It's as if they are afraid to confront the fact there is someone out there that hates them.
Aside from the fact that it is not clear what was the specific motivation of the bombings, it is reprehensible that a former member of the British cabinet would apparently see terrorism as at least a quasi-legitimate tactic. It's interesting that some denizens of the left are so quick to accept violence as politically legitimate. In my mind, the only valid response to such an attack is to say something like, "whatever your feelings about our policy, it is an outrage to resort to bombing subways as a poltical tactic. It is simply not acceptable." While I'm sure Short doesn't "condone" the bombing, she (I assume it's a woman?) comes disturbingly close to my mind to accepting it as a legitimate political tactic.
I have seen too much of this kind of rhetoric from the left on blogs and other places. Apparently, they don't think much of Gandhian non-violence; violence seems to appeal to them, especially, I suppose, to the extent that they thing the West is violent and deserves what we get. In their minds, it's much better to blame George Bush or Tony Blair than to blame the nutjobs that did this and their patrons in the Middle East.
I have no great love for the way that our politicians spew forth with purple rhetoric everytime there is an attack, especially invoking evil and the threat to western civilization. We don't need politicians moralizing about evil. It seems counterproductive to rational thinking. But at the same time, we don't need people relativizing murder and equating blowing up subways with political activity. IMO, as long as the left cannot distinguish between murder and legitimate political activity, it has no call to govern civilized nations. Whatever the west has done or not done, it does not justify bombing subways or flying planes into buildings and our leftist politicians need to learn that.
I only just noticed this post from yesterday, but Jeremy at Charging RINO has a truly outstanding piece on redistricting reform that is part history and part analysis. Brilliant.
I've paid a good deal of attention to this issue, and I learned several interesting tidbits from Jeremy's post. Check it out.
The Centrist Coalition is also wading into this issue, by the way, and will be gearing up to launch a full-scale advocacy campaign in the Fall.
We all know the quote from months ago when President Bush stated that anyone who leaked information to the press, regarding the identity of a CIA agent, would be fired.
"I would like this to end as quickly as possible. If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."
I've already made my point that to leak the name of a CIA agent is, even if it is not illegal, an offense that should cost you your job if you work at the White House. At the time I was of the opinion that this was the standard of the President I voted for twice. Apparently, that is no longer the case.
I am very nervous about the precedent that is being set. Whether or not Valerie Plame was a desk jockey or a field agent, employees of the CIA put their lives on the line everyday. White House officials should not be permitted to discuss their identity with reporters, no matter the reason.
This article in the New York Times discusses, in the context of the London bombings, the sources that create suicide bombing. My impression is that there seem to be two schools of thought about the origins of suicide bombers are. One school sees terrorism, in general, and suicide bombing in particular as a symptom of desparation and economic hardship. The solution, in this scenario, is to abjure military solutions and help these countries to modernize their economies and give the youth some hope. (A variation of this with respect to Palestinean suicide bombers is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinean conflict). The other school sees suicide bombing as a reflecting an ideological devotion to radical Islam and a reaction to and a rejection of the freedoms of the west. The solution here seems to be military action to eliminate the terrorist frings and promoting democracy to provide a political outlet. Both of these have some merit. But the Times article suggests that it's more complicated, at least with respect to suicide bombing in the West.
Many, if not most, suicide bombers, are not poor. The London bombers appear to have been middle class. Second, while the Palestinean suicide bombers seem to come from social systems that encourage such actions, this was not true with respect to London. According to the article, none of the London bombers were particularly unhappy and some of the parents opposed such violence. But two of them had been to Pakistan.
The article suggests that suicide bombing is much less likely to become an epidemic in the west than in the Middle East because there is much less of support system here than in the Middle East, where suicide bombers are actively encouraged even by their parents. However, the article suggests a cause that I find both more and less disturbing than those that are typically bandied about.
Some social science studies have found that suicide can move through a population like an epidemic, with the transgressive act of one young person lowering the threshold for others to follow. Michael Clarke, a professor of defense studies at King's College in London, expressed the fear that others who want to be famous might now emulate the British bombers.
And, according to Jessica Stern, a lectural at the JFK School at Harvard
"To be angry and rebellious these days is to be angry, rebellious and Islamist, and, unfortunately, to be violent." In a previous era, she observed, they might have embraced Marxism. She said that while these young people experienced some prejudice and economic hardship, their grievances were reinforced by "a feeling of vicarious humiliation" of Muslims elsewhere. The radicalism of some appeared driven less by contact with a charismatic cleric than by what they found for themselves on the Internet.
This is more disturbing because the causes are so nebulous; almost a form of teenage (or young adult) angst, which is extremely hard to stop. Also, this suggests just how powerful and potentially dangerous the Internet has become. In effect, our value in free speech is being turned against us. Moreover, how do you stop someone from feeling powerless?
On the other hand, if, as Stern says in another part of the article, violent Islamism has become "a fad", don't fads change? In some ways, the young suicide bombers seem to have something in common with alienated youth in the west in general. Suicide has often been in vogue among teenagers in the West (obviously without the dimension of killing innocent bystanders). But perhaps this too will pass. How long will Muslim kids in the West want to keep killing themselves? (The Middle East is another story.) I am not suggesting that we simply wait for such a change, but let's not also assume that Muslim kids are always going to want to kill themselves and others to alleviate some alleged humiliation. Right now Osama bin Laden and his ilk are romantic beacons to these kids, but that might not always be the case. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of what we do in the meantime.
I read a pretty entertaining and interesting article, on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, in the Outlook section of the Washington Post this weekend. Here it is. I thought it was worth posting because we haven't spent much time at Centerfield talking about Reid's pretty solid centrist credentials.
I like Reid. I was critical of him at first, but I think since the "gang of 14" deal he has handled the judicial nomination process well. Unlike Republican Leader Frist, who stumbled through a press conference and understandably looked like he got his ass handed to him by John McCain, Reid almost immediately heaped praise on the compromise and promised cooperation. Since the O'Conner retirement he has been quick to call on Bush to nominate a consensus candidate in the mold of Earl Warren. This is noteworthy, not only because that is what would be best for the country, but also because Reid has tied Bush’s hands politically. If the President should appoint a far right conservative, because of how the Minority Leader has handled the issue, the Democrats are going to look like they are the party of the mainstream.
Reid got much deserved slack for calling Bush a "liar" and a "loser." He apologized for the latter but commented on the former that Bush had on two different occasions said one thing to him and did another. In his words: "what else do you want me to call him." Although I don't think we should condone name calling by our nation's leaders, I will say that having someone in the leadership of the U.S. Senate with Reid's straight forward approach, is refreshing.
I encourage you to click on the link above to learn more about Senator Reid.
There's a new "middle" group blog with some decent writers (including Michael Totten) named "Donklephant". It's geared to "a multi-author political blog that caters to the forgotten generation of Americans who have an interest in politics but don’t agree with either side on everything and are turned off by the unquestioning partisan nature of many leading blogs today." Love their slogan. "Bit Teeth. Huge Ass. Surprisingly Reasonable."
There's also an amusing parody site spoofing Arianna Huffington's blog. This one is called "Huffington's Toast." It may be less-than-fresh in well under a week, but for now there's something tastelessly over-the-top for everyone.
Major Party Candidates for Virginia Governor Using the Wrong Map
Well, they didn't let him in. This weekend, the major party candidates for Governor, in Virginia, will be having a non-televised debate hosted by the VA Bar Association. The independent candidate, State Senator Russ Potts, was not invited because, according to the bar association, he hadn't declared his candidacy when they organized the event. BTW, the President of the bar association is a partner in the law firm that employs the Republican nominee, former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, who coincidentally refuses to participate in any debate that Potts is invited to because the straight talking State Senator isn't doing well enough in the polls. Also coincidentally, the debate is being held in a part of Virginia that was on the commonwealth's map in 1861. It is now more commonly referred to as the state of West Virginia.
Potts, being the kick-ass centrist that he is, has responded in kind.
A press release from his campaign states:
Potts stated, "I'd like to remind my opponents that we are the candidates for Governor of Virginia, not West Virginia. I hope Tim and Jerry will send a post card of their wild and wonderful time in West Virginia. Unlike my opponents, my campaign is focused on Virginia 's present geography."
The Kaine and Kilgore campaigns must be using an 1861 map of Virginia. Hopefully, they will continue taking refuge from their responsibility to Virginians in West Virginia as Election Day nears.
Potts continued, "The closed door session of lawyers in West Virginia does not count as a debate. There will be no television, no radio and only a small, elitist group of Virginia lawyers will witness the exchange. 99.99% of Virginians will not have access to the forum. Unfortunately that is Jerry Kilgore's strategy. I'd like to remind everyone that a debate is a free exchange of ideas open to all candidates and accessible by all voters."
To his credit, Democratic nominee Tim Kaine has also slammed Kilgore's reluctance to debate not only Potts, but at all:
Kaine accused Kilgore of a "rigid unwillingness" to commit to meeting him or independent H. Russell Potts Jr. in statewide broadcast debates, demonstrating a "level of fear that should raise serious red flags among the voters of Virginia."
Kaine and Kilgore are expected to face off at least twice: first, next month in West Virginia, and again in Fairfax in September. Neither event, however, will be broadcast live, nor will they include Potts, a Republican state senator from Winchester whom Kilgore refuses to debate.
MSNBC reports Senator Clinton is proposing a bill that would fine retailers for selling violent and/or pornographic video games to minors, and along with Joe Lieberman, another bill that would increase the current authorized strength of the Army from 502,400 troops to 582,400 by September 2009.
Good for her.
Bush webmaster Patrick Ruffini points out that the new HillaryClinton.Com looks very similiar to those of the two major party candidates in 2004.
Rox asks if Hill is electable, followed by some interesting comments from those on the more "progressive" side of the political spectrum. Personally, if I where a Deaniac, I would be worried that Clinton is going to run in the mold of Joe Lieberman and her husband. She isn't exactly acting like a candidate from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. "
Admittedly, I have been hard pressed to develop a strong opinion regarding Plamegate, and haven't been able to passionately support the argument of either side. If this post serves only as a thread to continue the debate that has been going on here at Centerfield, than so be it, but I think Johnathan Cohn of the New Republic has written something on this matter that is worth taking note of:
Legal trouble still seems unlikely for Rove, given the high threshold for proving a transgression, but political trouble is another matter. It's now clear that Rove's past denials of involvement--namely, his statement to CNN last year that "I didn't leak her name"--rest only on the quaintly Clintonian distinction that he never uttered the words "Valerie Plame," referring to her instead as Wilson's wife. Both McClellan and Bush himself have made broad statements about the moral impropriety of leaking such information--and the consequences that would befall any officials caught doing so. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it," McClellan said in 2003, "they would no longer be in this administration.
Regardless of whether or not Bill Clinton's actions during the Lewinsky scandal should have resulted in impeachment, I have always strongly felt that the man was unfit to serve for two specific reasons: First, he was the Commander in Chief of a military whose troops are dishonorably discharged for committing adultery, and second, he was involved in a legal proceeding under which he clearly lied. Yes, a prosecutor has the ability to "prosecute a ham sandwich" and the Starr investigation was little more than a pornographic witch-hunt, but that doesn't change what Clinton did under oath.
My question is: Why should the standard for Karl Rove, or "turd blossom" as his boss affectionately refers to him, be any lower?
Maybe what Rove did technically wasn't illegal, maybe the accusations that he is a threat to national security are overblown, and certainly the call for criminal proceedings are premature at best; however, that doesn't change the fact that his discussion with Cooper was inappropriate, irresponsible, unethical, and wrong. Furthermore, what he did certainly goes against the spirit of what the President and his Press Secretary previously claimed was the standard for the administration. To me, the words "Valerie Plame" have little meaning.... For a senior adviser of the most powerful office in the world to have a discussion with a news reporter about the work of a CIA agent, regardless of the seriousness or importance of that work, is the action of a man who clearly sees politics at any cost as a means to an end.
Some of us voted for then Governor Bush in 2000 in large part because of Clinton fatigue and a desire to move our country away from this sort of political gaming. To say that Karl Rove has not lived up to Bush's promise to "change the culture in Washington" is an understatement, and for that IMHO, he should be fired.
I've been surprised at how little we've discussed terror since the London bombings (other than argue over semantics.) This week Michael Chertoff presented a plan to revamp homeland security and that slipped under our radar screen, too. Personally, I have this vague sense of dread, "When is it going to happen again?". I mean its nice that there've been no terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11 but is that at all indicative of greater safety.
In my web wanderings regarding this I came across this essay from the Times of London. The author used to serve the Clinton White House in National Security and now is a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. (So background from the left of center and the right of center.)
His basic premise is that with "home grown" terrorists we must empower our local law enforcement to be "proactive" in the war on terror.
Training police as first preventers also brings substantial deterrence to domestic counter-terrorism. First, if terrorists feel that all the police eyeballs are trained on them, they might look for less daunting places to operate. Second, in a post-9/11 version of George Kelling’s and James Q. Wilson’s “Broken Windows” theory of policing, officers who are taught to identify the support structures of potential terrorists are more able to create the environment in which the terrorist will not feel comfortable.
Since police have typically focused on investigation and prosecution of crime, special programmes are required for terrorism prevention. Just as a seasoned drug enforcement officer can spot signs of drug dealing or use, these programmes seek to train police to identify signs of terrorism: religious radicalism, clues of bomb-making, target surveillance and other suspicious activities.
There's logic in this but it kinda scares me. I guess I'm a child of the sixties but I fear giving greater surveillance power to the local police. Will it lead to an erosion of civil liberties? Is that where we're stuck: between foregoing some civil liberties for greater sense of "peace"
The reality is that his health does not permit him to continue now, at least in a capacity that the nation is entitled to expect from its top judicial officer. In fact, he recused himself in a substantial number of cases from the last term because of his health and a dramatic turnaround in that regard seems unlikely. It seems clear to me that Rehnquist is addicted to the power and prestige of the office, and he has decided to have his death certificate serve as his resignation notice.
I wasn't intending to post a third story today, but then China threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States if we helped the Taiwanese resist an armed invasion by Red China. The remarks are by one of their "hawks" and so may just be saber-rattling, but nuclear saber-rattling is a scary thing. Taiwan is essentially a free, modern democracy with a strong economy. Mainland China is a curious amalgam of communism, socialism, and capitalism which seems to be rapidly strengthening on the economic front, but remains an essentially totalitarian state on anything hinting of politics. I don't know why they think it would help them to invade Taiwan. It's certainly far more important an issue than what various pedantic politicians pontificated 3 years ago (or yesterday) and who was covered, covert, or otherwise inconspicuous with the CIA, so let's talk about this, instead. What should we do about Taiwan and China?
I decided to answer my own question and look into just how Senator Santorum's 3 year old one-sentence comment about Boston suddenly became a national story. I present herewith actual facts, with citations. I will leave my speculations about the motives of the parties involved for the comments section.
As everybody knows, Senator Santorum will shortly be up for reelection. His principle opponent is Bob Casey, Jr. A Philidelphia Inquirer columnist, John Baer, has written several columns recently criticizing Senator Santorum and supporting Mr. Casey. On April 25, he wrote "Incumbency Acts as a Santorum Shield", highlighting how good Casey was showing in the polls despite the massive advantages of incumbency. Then on June 24, Baer wrote "A Look Into Santorum's Brain" in the aftermath of the release of the Schiavo autopsy, where he said:
I'd remind you this is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis, who once equated homosexuality with bestiality and who claimed the Catholic priest pedophile scandal in Boston should be no surprise since Boston is "a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America."
In other words, Harvard, the Kennedys, Kerry and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts are to blame for priests preying on altar boys.
Then, on July 12, a Boston Globe columnist cited the Baer column, in a story entitled "In Sanctum Santorum". The Boston columnist got a Santorum spokesman to reaffirm the 3-year old sentence. This laid the ground work to elevate it from column opinion to news, resulting in the July 13 Globe article, "Santorum Resolute on Boston Rebuke". Santorum notably didn't help himself by going off again on Boston and expanding a little bit on his remarks. Senator Kennedy used that article to justify his rather unusual floor rebuke of Senator Santorum.
And that's how it became a national story. My thoughts on motive and process inside.
UPDATE: I can't belive I forgot to post this link to Senator Santorum's original column, "Fishers of Men", which appeared at CatholicOnline on July 12, 2002.
In the giving credit where credit is due department, I commend Molly Ivins for forthrightly admitting just how badly she had underestimated the horror of Saddam Hussein. I normally think little good of her as a columnist and analyst of world events, but at least she had the intestitinal fortitude to stand up and admit her error. I wish more journalists were willing to do so, and quicker. I've always admired David Broder for his annual column listing his screw-ups, big and little, from the previous year.
When setting up your new home office cuts into your time surfing Da' Net for things to kvetch about, make it a random thoughts column...
Is it wrong for me to want Alberto Gonzales to be nominated to the Supreme Court, for no other reason than I think Rob Bartlett impersonating him on Imus in the Morning would be hysterical? Plus it would open up the AG spot for Major Giuliani, which I think would be cool.
There isn't a "Blogging Bill of Rights," but if there were I think the first one should be that you don't have to comment on something just because it's in the news and every other blog is doing it. There are some stories I just don't have an opinion on. Case in point - Karl Rove. I'll admit my curiosity as to why reporters would be willing to go to jail over him (particularly one from the New York Times who never wrote anything in the first place), but other than that, meh. There might be a bigger, different story down the road, and if there is maybe I'll have more of an interest. Right now there's just a bunch of snarky bickering over an e-mail published in Newsweek and a Press Secretary who regretted going to work on Monday.
Besides, is anyone all that surprised that the administration would stand by the man who is responsible for them all having jobs in the first place?
How is it that conservatives are receiving the bulk of the blame (at least, as far as I can tell), over that recent property rights case in the Supreme Court? The only three proper conservatives on the bench (Justice's Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) made up 3/4's of the nay votes (along with Sandra D.), siding with the homeowners over the developers.
Only my fellow West Wing fans will find this humourous, but if you look at the signatures on the Declaration of Independence, one of them is actually Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire.
Much like how pink is the new black and Coldplay is the new U2 (not); stem cell funding is the new social security reform. Come to think of it, whatever happened to social security reform? And how soon until we're wondering whatever happened to stem cell funding?
Speaking of stem cells and those who oppose science, whenever I hear the extreme right complain against stem cell research, or the extreme right complain against anything for that matter, I think of Charlie Daniels. "He says Jesus walked on water / I know that it's true / I just wish that ol' preacher man would do a little walkin' too."
Finally, you really do have to hand it to the British. Attacked in the morning. Having a pint and an argument over soccer in the afternoon. Back to work the next day. Cheers!
Given the level of comment activity, now seems an appropriate time to hit "refresh." So here is a new Plame/Wilson/Rove/Novak/Miller/Cooper et al. thread.
Dear Fox, what's a homicide bomber? Why is this a helpful phrase?
The latest development backs the theory that the attacks were carried out by homicide bombers. There had been initial speculation that the explosives were detonated remotely, with timing devices.
Isn't the subset of bombers who are not homicide bombers a vanishingly small set? I'd say Fox has just lost its license to complain about PC word policing. What kind of idiocy is this? Don't we try to use adjectives as modifiers when they provide additional information, as opposed to redundancy? This seems especially peculiar to me given that a relevant issue is the nature of how the bombings were conducted. If for some reason people object to the self-referential aspect of "suicide bomber," couldn't we call them kamikaze bombers? At least that tells a story.
"Homicide bombers" is just, well, dumb. I mean, no sh!t, sherlock.
In reading through some of the recent comments on judicial nominations, I noticed that several regular and excellent posters succumbed to the use of "strong" language. I'm not a language Nazi, but opinions are running very hot and heavy on this subject (myself most definitely included, despite my recent posting lull), so I suggest that it would be a good idea for all of us to work extra hard to avoid cuss words and other harsh language. I don't think anybody has gone too far, but I noticed the language did raise my own emotional hackles, and I had to stop and think to avoid responding in anger. In the words of the immortal Barney Fife, it's probably best to "nip it in the bud, Andy, nip it!"
Alas, more on the Supreme Court, cross-posted at The Reaction:
There's an effort underway to take philosophy (or ideology) out of the Senate's upcoming confirmation process for Bush's soon-to-be-announced nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court and to replace it with more limited considerations of experience and character. That is, if a certain nominee has the requisite experience and character, why bother examining his (or her) judicial philosophy?
This is what was behind Bush's well-received, if misunderstood, statements in Denmark the other day. Bush is credited (and I credited him myself here) for defending Gonzales and for calling for greater civility (and here). In fact, he advised senators not to listen to "the special interest groups, particularly those on the extremes that are trying to exploit this opportunity" and called for "a good, honest debate about the credentials of the person [he] [puts] forward, no matter who he or she is, and then give the person an up or down vote". That is, don't listen to those on the left and right who are talking judicial philosophy, just focus on "credentials" and vote (note: "up or down" means no filibuster).
If this means that Bush is set to nominate Gonzales, so be it. As I've said before, I'll support Gonzales as the least bad of all the leading candidates. But E.J. Dionne made the case in the Post over the weekend that a fight over philosophy is a fight worth having, not least because with this battle over O'Connor's replacement (along with a likely battle over Rehnquist's replacement in the near-future) on the Supreme Court the right threatens to assume control of all three branches of government:
Should a temporary majority of 50.7 percent have control over the entire United States government? Should 49.3 percent of Americans have no influence over the nation's trajectory for the next generation?
Those are the stakes in the coming fight over the next Supreme Court justice. The much-maligned "outside groups" preparing for battle over President Bush's choice deserve credit for openly acknowledging this struggle for power...
Paradoxically, that's why the White House is telling its right-wing allies to shut up. It's not just that the president is understandably peeved over conservative attacks on his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales. By being so vocal, the conservative groups are making clear what the administration would like to obscure: that this is a political and philosophical choice. We are deciding whether one ideological orientation will hold sway over all three branches of the federal government.
That means that the most important questions for senators to ask a nominee have to do with his or her philosophy. It is preposterous to rule such questions out of bounds. It's also hypocritical...
In other words, to win an ideological fight and take control of "all levers of the federal government," Republicans will insist that the battle has nothing to do with either power or ideology. The conservative "special-interest groups," no less than their liberal counterparts, have so far refused to play this misleading game...
Those who say that politics, philosophy and "issues" shouldn't be part of the confirmation argument typically bemoan the prospect of a mean and dirty fight. But if the only legitimate way to stop a nominee is to discover or allege some personal shortcoming, all the incentives are in favor of nasty ad hominem attacks. If senators disagree profoundly with the philosophy of a nominee who happens to be a perfectly decent human being, isn't it far better that they wage their battle openly on philosophical and political grounds? Why force them to dig up bad stuff on a good person? Paradoxically, denying that politics matter in confirmation battles makes for uglier politics.
Dionne shows that Democrats have actually done quite well in terms of the popular vote: "Consider that since 1992 the Republican presidential vote has averaged only 44 percent and the vote for Republican House candidates has averaged roughly 48 percent. In 2004, with large margins in some of the largest states, Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate received nearly 5 million more votes than their Republican opponents." Republicans may control the White House and Congress, and all the Democrats may have is the filibuster, but the U.S. is not a one-party, one-philosophy state.
So it's time to talk philosophy and for Americans to know exactly what is at stake here. I have no doubt that the leading candidates to replace O'Connor are qualified jurists. That's really not the issue. But if the nominee is Luttig or McConnell or Gonzales or some old-fashioned conservative (see here) or someone still below the radar of speculation, there should be an open debate about what that nominee stands for, what his or her decisions in lower courts mean, what his or her political history is, and what can be expected from him or her on the Supreme Court (where he or she will have enormous power to change the course of American life as we know it).
Conservatives know what they want and they're pushing Bush to nominate one of their own. Liberals, in turn, need to be prepared to fight for what they believe in.
Because philosophy matters. Even when there's an effort to silence it.
OK, so we're obsessed. The Supremes and questions/opinions/attitudes relating thereto are creeping into every thread. Originalism, activism, possible candidates, the political machinations and preparations of the partisans, etc., abound and are creeping into every subject. A relief valve is needed! So here it is, a thread for the Supremes, and nothing but.
(Posts mentioning Ross, Ballard, and Wilson will be left undisturbed for their humorous density content.)
This morning, the Centrist Coalition issued the first in what we intend to be a series of statements on the Supreme Court nomination process. Our goal is to encourage a balanced, substantive, and civil discussion at each step along the way, and to make room for centrists to participate in that discussion. You can find our first statement here.
Increasing Economic Value - Why Farming Bites and Globalization Rules
I'm blogging about a poorly-understood, but vital
aspect of events today. It explains why we're getting more
prosperous, why we shouldn't be too unhappy when we hear about a loss
of farming or industrial jobs, and why globalization is worth the
trouble.
Product Value and the Value Chain
Roughly speaking, the more a product is processed and improved, the
more it's worth. A hoe is worth more than the chunks of wood and
metals that go into it. A silicon chip is worth a helluva lot more
than sand. A desktop computer is worth more than a computer chip.
F/X software is worth still more. A movie produced digitally beats
all of those, though. It's what's called the value chain. Farms are
low on the value chain, software high, and entertainment highest. Of
course, there are other factors - how helpful is your product? Is
everybody else doing the same thing? Does anybody actually want it?
How's its brand? All that other good capitalist stuff.
Let's consider a particular inevitable result. In a capitalist
system, the amount one is paid is related to what kind of product one
produces. An average farmer can't be paid much because agricultural
produce is largely unimproved, and so farms overall make little per
worker; farms often sell lightly processed products to get around
this. Factories make more money per person (selling hoes is better
than selling wheat), but less than software shops (Microsoft, Oracle,
etc.), because software has more intrinsic value. Art and
entertainment may have the best value, but tend to pay little to most
because everybody wants to do them - supply is very high.
As time goes on, value produced by individuals in particular
nations tends to go up. The US started with an agricultural economy
on independence, and slowly moved toward industry. Now, industrial
jobs tend to be low-paying for us. In the early 20th century century,
steel work was a prestige job in advanced countries. Now it's just
too unimproved to make money here. Jobs have gotten more
sophisticated - more teaching, web design, lawyering, engineering,
medicine, management, etc.. The trend's been going on for all human
history, and the trend will very likely continue indefinitely.
Farming Sucks
That, in turn, means that farming will always pay poorly, even though
it's also the most labor-intensive. Almost any kind of job is better
than farming. For that reason, I am against subsidizing farmers. It
amounts to encouraging unpleasant, low-paying, back-breaking work. It
makes sense to specialize in higher-value items, and give the money to
people in countries with bad economies. IMHO, it makes more sense to
encourage people to have jobs in their own countries than to subsidize
industries that nobody here wants to do.
Now, every nation with a healthy economy is, on average, always going
up the value chain just a tiny bit every year. Production-per-capita
is always on the rise, along with salaries-per-capita. What that
means on the ground is that we're always making slightly better-paying
stuff, which in turn means that it's harder and harder to make an
average wage doing low-end stuff like farming.
Similarly, making hoes isn't good as making computer chips or (better
still) software or web pages. Note that the steel industry is low on
the chain. Its salaries are inevitably low. Workers do better
looking for work outside the steel industry at this point, which is
probably why it's vanishing in this country.
Globalization Rules
Now we get to why globalization is good. It's good because it keeps
goods cheaper for poor worldwide, and because it's the hope for said
bad economies to get good.
Incomes in globalized places grow faster and poverty goes down.
Outside the industrialized countries, this is generally because
economies are either establishing farming/mining, or moving beyond it
to factories, the second rung of the ladder.
Some people say that people elsewhere
should live differently than we do, that capitalism shouldn't
be exported, and that it corrupts some peoples and brings pollution
and slave-like wages. I say that should be their choice, not ours,
as its their fastest route out of poverty. I also say that somebody
so poor he can't reliably feed and shelter his family cares a lot more
about having a job than about American minimum wage, pollution, or a
union. In fact, the best way to get people caring about pollution
worldwide is
to strengthen economies worldwide, and globalization is the
best way there.
Globalization is often accused of taking away American jobs. It's
true - it takes away the worst jobs, that Americans least like doing,
that pay the worst. Like farming. We subsidize farmers for $billions
to hire people from Mexico to do the actual farming. Why not let
farmers stay at home? Furthermore, because globalization makes
capital go farther and raises value,
there are more of the new, better jobs around than there were of the
nasty, old ones.
Globalization is often accused of exploiting workers, turning them all
into miners for First World mills. In fact, what it is is moving
those mills offshore so they can have the jobs themselves, while we
write software, do research, manage, etc.. What's more, because
factories pay better money, that means more capital for local
education and infrastructure; furthermore, the institutions of
globalization encourage infrastructure and education investments, so
everyone in a globalized country can hope that their kids or grandkids
will have the jobs we have now.
It's really their hope for AVOIDING the mines.
Globalization's Problems
As
Tom Friedman wrote in
Lexus and
the Olive Tree, as well as in numerous columns, globalization does
cause particular problems. It makes obsolete the jobs of people who've
been working hard all their lives. Often these are people who were
relatively close to retirement, so they thought they wouldn't have to
retrain. As a society, we should be compassionate and helpful to
globalisation's losers, just as we're compassionate and helpful to
other kinds of capitalism's unlucky losers.
Another problem is that the increase of capitalistic mechanics
worldwide means that, although there are more winners worldwide, there
are also more losers losing old jobs and having to learn new tricks to
get a job. What's more, capitalism does bring its inevitable
winner-take-all and
inequality problems
(note: careful about the 1st graph).
One problem that's less of a problem than often presented is people
having bad jobs overseas. Jobs provided by globalization largely (not
entirely, alas) involve relatively good pay, worker safety, and
pollution by the standards of the place where the job is. We simply
don't know any way to immediately get the world up to American wage
expectations at a jump. To do that, the whole world would have to
produce American levels of value, and only the industrialized nations
have the built-up infrastructure, low corruption, and built-up
economies needed to do that.
The final trouble source is what Friedman calls the Olive Tree - it is
often tranformative on traditional societies. We must be understanding
of the shock and disorientation caused, and encourage the creation of
local cultures adapted to globalization by education and local freedom
to choose lives and careers. These problems are a major study topic
among the humanities. At the same time, one shouldn't lose sight of
the fact that life in a traditional society means hard farm work,
frequent failure of food and shelter, and little personal freedom.
It's so unpleasant that governments of traditional societies often
work hard to deflect blame and the inevitable armed rebellions onto us.
It'd be better if we knew some way of getting the whole world
immediately up the value chain, with broad equality of outcome for
all, and that was gentler on traditional societies. We don't, though.
Globalization is our best shot with what we know today.
Recap
Most of the world is slowly moving up the value chain, producing
ever-more-valuable products, which is why per-capita incomes are
always rising, and we're always getting better stuff.
Globalization is great because it lets everybody in the world move up
the value chain from where they are. That, in turn is good, because
more people can feed and shelter themselves and their families,
educate themselves, keep down pollution, and have better stuff.
I actually get annoyed when abortion becomes an issue in state races, because in the past there is little that could be done about it at the state level, but here is an article in the Washington Post that points out why things could change.
With the O'Conner retirement, and possibly Rehnquist and Stevens, the future of the Roe v. Wade decision is somewhat in doubt. It is only natural that candidates for Governor or other state offices get asked the what if it gets overturned question.
In Virginia, the responses so far have been pretty typical from the two major parties. The Republicans are accusing the Democrats of acting pro-life, the Democrats are laying the crazy wing nut label on Republicans, and nobody is actually answering the question... Second verse same as the first.
Then there is firebrand State Senator Russ Potts, who is running as an independent for Governor, when asked what he would do if a bill came to his desk that banned abortion:
Virginia State Senator and Independent candidate for Governor Russ Potts, continues to have no fear on the campaign trail. Ron says:
"State Senator Russ Potts (Independent) has found a way to distinguish himself from his two major party opponents in the gubernatorial contest. Potts -- a church-going Methodist, grandfather and registered Republican -- told the AP he unequivocally supported allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children. "We're all God's children. I don't think that they ought to be precluded from adopting a child ... I know of several situations in which a gay person adopted a child and [was] just a very loving, caring parent," he said. Potts does not support same-sex marriage, but added "I can't imagine that a gay person gets to the pearly gates of heaven and this loving, benevolent God is going to deny that person a place in his kingdom because he or she is gay." Former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (R) and Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine (D) both quickly distanced themselves from Potts. "I've said that I don't support same-sex adoption or same-sex couple adoption and I don't favor gay adoption," said Kilgore. "I very much believe that the law in Virginia right now is the right law ... The only couple that can adopt is a married couple," explained Kaine."
Good for Senator Potts!
I find the typical coal walking from both parties on gay right issues to be diplorable and offensive. As a Republican I am even more dismayed by my own party, which claims abortion should be illegal, but then advocates limiting adoption to a select few. There is simply no reason for it... The act of forbidding gay couples who are capable of taking care of children and wishing to adopt, from doing so, lacks compassion and reeks of the same kind of hatred that was responsible for the lynching of young African American men after the Civil War. Regardless of your personal convictions regarding homosexuality, wrong is wrong... To deny a child from being accepted in a loving home because a pair of perspectiv
