Centerfield

Hurricane Blame

We're all stunned by the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and the fact that Americans are being referred to as "refugees," a term we generally reserve for people overseas. Once the rescue phase is complete, goverment and private charitable contributions will be needed to help people rebuild.

In the wake of a disaster, it's not surprising that attempts will be made to fix blame on others besides God. Robert F Kennedy, Jr. wrote a widely discussed item on Huffington Post suggesting that global warming might be behind an increase in destructive hurricanes, and the President indirectly at fault for neglecting to address global warming. Some have called for his remarks to be condemned. I found them to be somewhat tasteless in seeming to approve of destruction in Mississippi, in addition to being wildly speculative in linking the hurricane to global warming.

But there is an obviously link between the inundation of New Orleans and flood control projects in the region, so reports that flood control expenditures in the region have been cut are entirely relevant.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze.

Linking the spending cuts and the Iraq War seems gratuitous to me; in the orgy of spending going on in Washington, I don't see much evidence that higher defense spending has resulted in budgetary discipline elsewhere. If there indeed was a decision to downgrade the priority of hurricane protection for New Orleans, the decision should be evaluated on its own demerits.

Most importantly, if this report is true, I'd like to see someone fired. The Bush Administration never seems to fire anyone for incompetence. With various disasters like 9/11, the loss of the space shuttle, and numerous failures in Iraq, no one has paid a penalty (well, George Tenet perhaps, but only after a long delay). High government officials are not entitled to their positions. It's true that responsibility for failures can be diffuse, but if failure has no consequences for those reponsible, we're likely to have more of them.

Bolton Already Underperforms

IMHO, new Ambassador John Bolton's already messed up chances of fixing the UN by fixing on zillions of details (hat tip, more discussion here)

Fukuyama on Iraq

If you read one thing today, this should be it:

Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man (and, like me, something of a Straussian -- see here and here), writes on the Op-Ed page of today's Times that the Bush Administration "squandered the overwhelming public mandate it had received after Sept. 11" and "alienated most of its close allies, many of whom have since engaged in 'soft balancing' against American influence, and stirred up anti-Americanism in the Middle East".

He's right on the mark, but I'd certainly like to know what you all think.

Key passages below the fold...

"So much attention has been paid to [various] false determinants of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush administration got support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" -- American nationalists whose instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism.

"Happenstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda left the president, by the time of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively in neoconservative terms: that is, as part of an idealistic policy of political transformation of the broader Middle East. The president's Jacksonian base, which provides the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a war, particularly if there is clear hope of success.

"This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure, there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign policy as a whole...

"With the failure to secure Sunni support for the constitution and splits within the Shiite community, it seems increasingly unlikely that a strong and cohesive Iraqi government will be in place anytime soon. Indeed, the problem now will be to prevent Iraq's constituent groups from looking to their own militias rather than to the government for protection. If the United States withdraws prematurely, Iraq will slide into greater chaos. That would set off a chain of unfortunate events that will further damage American credibility around the world and ensure that the United States remains preoccupied with the Middle East to the detriment of other important regions -- Asia, for example -- for years to come.

"We do not know what outcome we will face in Iraq. We do know that four years after 9/11, our whole foreign policy seems destined to rise or fall on the outcome of a war only marginally related to the source of what befell us on that day. There was nothing inevitable about this. There is everything to be regretted about it."

Misrepresenting liberalism: How the IDers got it (and still get it) wrong

Understandably, much of our focus is on the devastation in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast, not to mention on today's horrific tragedy in Baghdad. Needless to say, our thoughts are with those who are suffering and with those who are doing incredible work trying to help them.

But I wanted to post a follow-up piece to my recent post on intelligent design. I was happy to see such an excellent discussion ensue in the comments section, and perhaps there will be more to say here. As I've mentioned before, I learn a great deal from all of you, and, whether you like what I have to say or not, I thank you all for responding. I apologize in advance is this seems like ID overkill!

This post is a defence of liberalism -- and that may irritate some of you, I know -- but I want to be clear that the liberalism I defend, the liberalism I take to be at the core of my own political philosophy, is more the robust, classical liberalism of the American Founding than the illiberal left-liberalism that has emerged in recent decades.

**********

In response to one of my recent posts on intelligent design at The Reaction (see the follow-up here), Annie of AmbivaBlog, one of the most thoughtful centrists out there, wrote this:

It isn't genuine relativism. It's a ploy to call "diversity" liberals' bluff and hoist them by their own petard. The religious people behind Intelligent Design believe that God is the Designer. They've simply come up with an argument they think liberals can't refute without exposing their own dogmatism and hypocrisy.

She's right, and I need to clarify my argument: The proponents of intelligent design, including political proponents of the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution in the schools, are not relativists. Some of them may be, for all I know, but most seem to be absolutists in the sense that they are what we would generally call believers. That is, they believe that God (their God, or at least their version of God, a god) is the Creator, the prime mover behind all life, indeed, behind the universe more generally. Where relativists hold that there is no absolute truth, just a multiplicity of truths determined by power and perspective, creationists, whether open about their beliefs or hiding behind the political convenience of intelligent design, believe that there is but one ultimate and overarching truth.

The proponents of intelligent design may not be relativists, but they have adopted the rhetoric of relativism. They know that creationism isn't likely to offer much of a challenge to the teaching of evolution, but speaking the language of diversity, that is, adopting the language of liberalism, or more specifically of the new liberalism that eschews moral absolutes, including the moral absolutes of classical liberalism, and embraces relativism in some form, may force their opponents into an uncomfortable choice: either they accept intelligent design as an equal alternative to evolution or they deny its validity as an equal alternative to evolution and thereby turn hypocritically against their own philosophical foundations.

In short, if Annie is right, they expect their opponents, including the proponents of evolution, to cave. But this strategy, such as it is in any way strategic, betrays a serious misunderstanding of their opponents, and that misunderstanding results from a simplistic understanding of liberalism long fostered by its right-wing critics. Forget for a moment that American conservatism is essentially a distillation of classical liberalism, neo-liberalism, mixed with various illiberal strains of modern and pre-modern thought. Forget that America is the liberal nation par excellence (however imbued with certain strains of conservatism). Conservatives have largely succeeded in vilifying liberals and liberalism in the public imagination. If you're a liberal, you're somehow un-American, well out of the mainstream of American life and belief. But they've done this by reducing liberalism -- the political philosophy of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness -- down to relativism, that is, to moral bankruptcy, to an absence of what are generally referred to as values. In reality, liberals may defend the natural rights of the individual, as those rights were set down by Locke, America's philosopher, and his early-modern liberal contemporaries, but conservatives want you to believe that they represent a profound threat to all things American.

To be sure, some of today's liberals are relativists, more or less. But liberalism is the philosophy of a rival absolute truth to creationism, an absolute truth discovered in nature through reason and/or experience. It is not relativism. Relativism, which denies even the primacy of reason and the certainty of experience, is illiberal, just as much so as any illiberal ideology of the right. In short, conservatives have attempted to reduce liberalism down to an element of postmodernism, where nothing is true except the absence of truth, and this is where the proponents of intelligent design have hoped to catch their opponents in that bind.

Some conservatives have intentionally distorted liberalism, equating it with illiberal relativism, and the proponents of intelligent design have picked up on that misrepresentation, predicting that their opponents wouldn't have much to say in response to their challenge. Liberals have generally failed to counter the larger conservative offensive, but they are now fighting back. If liberalism is relativism, then there really isn't much to fight for, including evolution. But it isn't.

I do not mean to equate liberalism and science. The two are clearly distinct. And it may be true, as one of my other readers put it, that political liberals may believe in intelligent design (although I would suggest in response that such liberals, including certain supporters of the Democratic Party, may actually be philosophically or theologically conservative). But I would argue that science is very much akin to liberalism. Like liberalism, science sought to liberate humanity from the errors of superstition by placing reason above, or at least in contradistinction to, faith. Is it any wonder that many of the early-modern liberals were scientists? Indeed, far from rejecting truth altogether, liberals hold that truth may be uncovered through the scientific method and that, in short, truth must be empirically demonstrable. Evolution is a theory, not a belief, but much of it is empirically true, which is to say, true to us who live empirically. Creationism is a belief based on biblical revelation, not a scientific theory and certainly not empirically demonstrable. And intelligent design is just silly.

Regardless, terms like "liberal" and "conservative" are just labels. What's important is that science, however liberal in a philosophic sense, is not about to give in to such silliness. And now that the proponents of intelligent design are making a name for their silliness, science is finally fighting back. Not by employing the postmodern left's rhetoric of relativism, which wouldn't get it anywhere, but by defending the truth of evolution and empirical truth more generally. As Tufts Professor Daniel Dennett -- author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and, once upon a time, of a letter to the editor of The Tufts Daily criticizing one of my columns on education and multiculturalism -- put it recently in a brilliant piece in the Times, "contemporary biology has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt... that natural selection -- the process in which reproducing entities must compete for finite resources and thereby engage in a tournament of blind trial and error from which improvements automatically emerge -- has the power to generate breathtakingly ingenious designs," a sound, scientific refutation of the central claim of intelligent design, that evolution cannot explain the profound complexity of life.

Ah, but it can.

Admittedly (and positively), "genuine scientific controversies about evolution... abound," but intelligent design has failed to offer anything in the way of an alternative to evolution:

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist's work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach.

Note that the trick is content-free. You can use it on any topic. "Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat," you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: "See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms." And here is the delicious part: you can often exploit the very technicality of the issues to your own advantage, counting on most of us to miss the point in all the difficult details.

And:

In short, no science. Indeed, no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.

To formulate a competing hypothesis, you have to get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications. So far, intelligent design proponents have conveniently sidestepped that requirement, claiming that they have no specifics in mind about who or what the intelligent designer might be.

Yes, intelligent design is content-free. It has no place in America's, or anywhere else's, classrooms -- science, philosophy, religion, or otherwise.

But let me be clear: I am not a scientific absolutist. I acknowledge that there may be more on heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our materialistic philosophies. But let those alternatives to science, to empiricism, be taught in non-science classes. Let them be taught as metaphysics, not physics. That way we can avoid the pitfalls of relativism while still allowing for the possibility that there is more to life than what science says there is.

Large-scale tragedy in Iraq, too

Iraqi official: Stampede toll likely to reach 1,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The death toll from a stampede on a Baghdad bridge Wednesday was expected to reach 1,000, a general manager at Iraq's Heath Ministry said.

"An hour ago the death toll was 695 killed, but we expect it to hit 1,000," Dr. Jaseb Latif Ali told Reuters.

The stampede occurred when panic engulfed a Shiite religious procession amid rumors that a suicide bomber was about to attack, officials said. It was the single biggest confirmed loss of life in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Scores jumped or were pushed to their deaths into the Tigris River, while others were crushed in the crowd. Most of the dead were women and children, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

Tensions already had been running high in the procession in Baghdad’s heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against the shrine where the marchers were heading. The shrine was about a mile from the bridge.

This story is bound to get less play than it otherwise would, given the scope of the death and damage and ongoing struggles due to hurricane Katrina. Not saying there's anything wrong with that, just pointing out that this Baghdad incident is a very terrible thing.

The Student Right

Never was I more proud to be an alumnus of our shoestring operation of an urban state university, UMass-Boston, than yesterday, when the Boston Globe published Randi Powell's editorial welcoming the intellectually invigorating influence of students with conservative views. Randi is currently a student at UMass-Boston.

Since my first course as a political science major, I've seen dramatic change in the make-up of class discussions. More-conservative students are challenging the norms of the liberal classroom. After George W. Bush was elected to his first term, I remember one of my professors speaking about how the country had ''fallen into the hands of the dark side" -- and most of the students laughed in agreement. I had that same professor just two years later, and he made a similar comment, but this time along with the liberal snickers he got a few conservative boos.

It may sound odd coming from a liberal, but I welcome conservative arguments. I believe they raise questions and ideas that aren't offered by professors most of the time. It generates political balance, which is needed.

As polarized as the country is, it seems that having a conversation about the real policies and goals of government never happens. A college classroom is the prime environment where this conversation should take place.

But let's face it, many liberal students have lived a sheltered life while conservative students were publicly damned. With an increasingly strong conservative presence on campus, liberals can no longer get away with putting down conservatives. Indeed, they can learn from them.

Strangely enough, conservative views have only reinforced my political stance as a liberal. I can no longer make comments in class about my opposition to the Iraq war or my support for a woman's right to choice without hearing disagreement from a conservative student. It has forced young liberals like myself to be better informed on both sides of the political spectrum.

Boy, proud to bursting! UMass-Boston, in my day, was politically VERY liberal. I had the daily experience of representing the right at school, and the left at home. It does my heart good to see a current student acknowledge that the growth in campus conservatives is a positive for the reinvigoration of liberal thought and critical thinking, as both sides can be kept honest. As centrists, we know how much more can be learned by assuming that an intelligent passionate person claiming insight actually HAS some insight, and is not simply a demon.

It's people like Randi Powell who show promise of being actual problem-solvers in tomorrow's world, instead of complainers, insulters, yellers, discounters, and so on.

Democrats go west

Interesting article in The Washington Examiner which urges democrats to go west:

recent Western successes point to potentially fertile political ground for Democrats mapping out Electoral College game plans for the 2008 presidential election...In an ironic twist, Democrats can run as quasi-libertarians, arguing that people in their region just want to be left alone from meddlesome government bureaucrats. Out West, many more people are pro-choice on abortion than in the South. And Western Democrats regularly push to curb federal mandates, such as the test-heavy No Child Left Behind law...Democrats also take advantage of environmental and land use issues: They favor improved access to public lands for hunting and fishing, which have a ripple effect in helping local economies. Environmentalism is becoming a major wedge issue against Republicans.

The article concludes that "If approached and courted correctly, voters could be receptive to similar electoral rebellion against governing Republicans and give a Democratic presidential candidate a shot at electoral redemption." As per all the conventional wisdom, though, the article essentially repeats that if the Democrats want to wing, it will come at a price. While some commentaries suggest that the partyy must change its stance on (or at least, become less rigidly identified with) issues like abortion or gay marriage, the bitter pill to swallow in the "western strategy" turns out actually to be the kindest cut:

Gun control is the issue on which these Western Democrats break with their urban and coastal brethren. Govs. Schweitzer and Freudenthal have stressed their hunting credentials and made a point of distancing themselves from national Democratic leaders, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who back strict gun control measures.

Aftermath

While Katrina has gone on and New Orleans managed to dodge the 200mph Armageddon wind bullet, it's still in a world of hurt. Other areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Gulf Coast were hit hard, and they're quickly already moving on into relief and clean-up phase as the waters recede. Volunteers and money and supplies will be sorely needed everywhere, and greatly appreciated.

The waters are NOT going down in New Orleans. At least two of the levees on Lake Pontchartrain have breached, and water in the city continues to rise. Some of the lowest spots are twenty feet deep. The city pumps are working, but as they send their output back into the lake that doesn't help much. There is surface flooding in all the parts that are actually below sea level, which is about 80% of the city. Both airports are under water. Rescue efforts are ongoing. The death toll will likely be in the hundreds. Much of the city will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps even months.

Juliette of Baldilocks Blog has a list of relief agencies that are on the job, courtesy of SignOnSanDiego. Cash is the biggest immediate need. As usual, if you want to be sure your donations go to a legitimate and focused effort, the American Red Cross is tops.

The call for volunteers with needed skills will also go out soon. Do not head to the area on your own to volunteer--go only with relief agency credentials. But even if you have zero or minimal experience you can also help by volunteering in your community, to fill in locally for those with training and experience who are going to the affected area. Check with your local community services agencies, and your local Red Cross.

UPDATE: The New Orleans Times-Picayune continues to publish! Electronic only, but their ongoing coverage is here.

UPDATE: The Superdome refugees are going to be moved to the Houston Astrodome.

Good news from Iraq, part 34

Despite last month's announcement that he was going to cease blogging for employment reasons, Chrenkoff is back with more of the Iraq news that you don't see at 6 o'clock.

Good news from Iraq, part 34

Is it time to take on intelligent design?

As I mentioned recently at The Reaction (see here), Senator John McCain has come out in recent days in support of the teaching of (so-called) intelligent design alongside evolution in America's schools. In so doing, he has aligned himself with President Bush and (insert sarcasm here) no less an enlightened practitioner of modern medicine and defender of the scientific method than Senator Bill Frist — you know, the guy who "diagnosed" Terri Schiavo by videotape and then flip-flopped (over to the right side, thankfully) on stem-cell research.

Here's how Frist put it, as reported last week by AP: "I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith… I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future." Bush himself argued (wrong choice of words, I realize) that including intelligent design in the science curriculum would help people "understand what the debate is about". In response, Howard Dean — doing what he should be doing (i.e., picking apart the opposition, not generalizing and name-calling) — declared that Bush is "anti-science".

Note what the proponents of intelligent design — here, the advocates of its inclusion alongside evolution and other scientific theories — are doing. They're arguing that all points of view, all possibilities, all claimants to the truth, even the most absurd, should be considered on an equal basis with one another. Since the truth itself is, it seems, largely indeterminate (except for ardent creationists, who must be willing to go along with intelligent design so as to sneak creationism back into the schools), various "truths" may be put on the table — and into the minds of our children. In short, they — right-wingers all — have become relativists, at least in rhetoric (more on this in a follow-up post).

What would Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind and the inspirational teacher of my teachers, say? For years, theorists and commentators like Bloom railed against what they saw as the encroaching nihilism brought to America by German and French philosophy, namely, by the followers of Heidegger. And, to a certain extent, they were right, which is why the right, the new Republican Party, has had such success winning the "values" votes. Blue-staters on the coasts and in the urban heartland may be quite comfortable with some of the softened aspects of postmodernism, such as value relativism and multiculturalism, but huge swaths of middle America object, often with good reason, to what is seen as the political supplanting of their theistic and absolute values by the levelling of all values.

But this is precisely how intelligent design is being sold. Creationism won't work politically in diverse America, but intelligent design can be brought in as a substitute, as one value among many, as one possible answer to the fundamental questions of existence. Which is precisely why the rhetoric has changed (always look to the rhetoric, for therein lies the political truth). Frist refers to "a pluralistic society," that is, a society with different values, a society without one overarching truth (except, perhaps, the absence of any one overarching truth). And Bush calls for more "debate," as if our children, who would be subjected to this debate on the origins of life, need to consider all possible options before settling on, well, what? Do proponents/advocates of intelligent design hope that the teaching of their theory would be the thin end of the wedge that reasserts creationism? Or will there simply be endless debate? Or are we left with nothing more than infinite possible truths, with pluralism run amok? After all, as Sir Humphrey Appleby says in the great BBC comedy Yes, Prime Minister to the impressionable Bernard Woolley, "anything might be true". That, for now, seems to be where people like Frist are coming from.

In the end, I oppose the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution. Science must allow for introspection and self-doubt — and the most of it does — but theories that have no basis in the scientific method have no place in science classes, especially where our children are concerned. But, then, I live in reality. If you don't, and you can't accept that some things are scientifically true and some things aren't, then you might as well tell your children, not to mention yourselves, that life is, say, The Truman Show, or a figment of Bill Gates's imagination, or "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

But here's an interesing suggestion: Over at Slate (see here) Christopher Hitchens — whom, these days, I am usually not one to quote with pleasure — argues that it might actually make sense to allow intelligent design to be taught alongside evolution in the schools, as long as evolution is taught alongside creationism in tax-exempt religious institutions. How could evolution — how could science — lose?

If we take the president up on his deceptively fair-minded idea of "teaching the argument," I think we could advance the ball a little further in other directions also. Houses of worship that do not provide space for leaflets and pamphlets favoring evolution (not necessarily Darwinism, which is only one of the theories of evolution and thus another proof of its scientific status) should be denied tax-exempt status and any access to public funding originating in the White House's "faith-based" initiative. Congress should restore its past practice of giving a copy of Thomas Jefferson's expurgated Bible—free of all incredible or supernatural claims—to each newly elected member. The same version of the Bible should be obligatory for study in all classes that affect to teach "divinity." No more Saudi Arabian money should be allowed to be spent in the United States on the opening of jihadist madrasas or the promulgation of a Wahhabi Quran that preaches hatred and contempt of other faiths and of atheism until the Saudi government permits the unmolested opening of Shiite and Sufi places of worship; Christian churches and Hindu temples of all denominations for its Philippine, Indian, and other helot classes; synagogues; and Thomas Paine Society libraries. No American taxpayers' money should be given to Israel unless it can be shown that it is not being used for the establishment of religion by Orthodox messianic settlements in the occupied territories and/or until the Israeli rabbinate recognizes Reform and Conservative Judaism as authentic.

He calls it "equal time," and he's got a point. Theories like intelligent design thrive in part (and perhaps mostly) because they're never subjected to rigorous scrutiny. They're so mind-bogglingly stupid, after all, that no serious person, and certainly no reputable scientist, would ever waste much time on them. But this just allows them to fester beneath the surface, acquiring popularity and momentum and eventually emerging, as intelligent design is now, to challenge our accepted (because discovered through the scientific method) truths.

So shall we tackle intelligent design? Shall we expose it for what it is? Yes? Well, then, let's find out what John McCain really thinks. I'm sure he's all for having a spirited debate on its merits.

(See also fellow blogger PatHMV's thoughtful post on debunking creationism from this past June.)

America's Wetlands

Since the turn of the 20th century, as America has tamed the Mississippi and scoured the Louisiana coast for oil, we have lost 1.2 million acres of coastal wetlands. That's 1,900 square miles since the 1930s. We're currently losing 24 square miles a year, or about a football field every 38 minutes. If nothing is done, by 2050 we will lose an area the size of Deleware and the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area combined.

The wetlands protect vital economic centers of our country. Including production from the outer continental shelf, Louisiana produces more crude oil than any other state, and ranks second in natural gas production. And a million tons of crude oil (12% of US total) is imported every day through the LOOP facility offshore. Louisiana ports carry 21% of our nation's waterborne commerce. Four of the top ten ports in the country are in Louisiana. We also catch 30% (by weight) of the seafood for the entire country.

The wetlands are responsible for or protect most of these economic engines. If we hadn't lost so much coastland and so many barrier islands over the years, they would have absorbed a lot of Katrina's fury before it hit the refineries and New Orleans. Loss of wetlands has already cost us. If they disappear entirely, the economic damage will be incalculable.

This country relies heavily on coastal Louisiana. But precious little of the economic benefits go to repairing the damage caused by 100 years of development and exploration. Louisiana has started a campaign to save America's Wetlands. We need only $14 billion for wetlands restoration which will protect hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity. Please ask your Senators and Congressmen to support America's Wetlands.

Press Manipulation Of Sheehan

The Moderate Voice has insight into the press coverage of Cindy Sheehan, whose radical message has been suppressed, both to her own consternation, and to that of her critics.

And you'd think that both sides would be clamoring now for papers to completely report what she says due to their agendas: the left would want her to get her point across (because they agree with her and think it will trigger support); the right would want her to get her point across (because they think it'd lose her support). Instead you see the left seeking lots of press coverage using a tightly controlled image and some on the right angry over the press coverage she's getting.

Kopel's point is a good one: why not report in MORE detail and let thinking people decide for themselves. The imagery (grieving mother) won't change. Nor will the boomerang effect that seems to be there of some on the right vilifying her and even gloating over her divorce. Also, Sheehan would want that more extensive coverage.

Why does the press do this? Part of the reason is time constraints (broadcast). Part of it is space constraints (shrinking "news hole"). But some of it is the fact that by leaving this out it's a much "cleaner" story and the focus is just on the "high concept" portions of the story: a grieving mother standing out there in Crawford, TX, demanding to see a President who is not just vacationing but apparently took a vacation from his vacation.

I was listening to the soundtrack of Chicago yesterday. The musical satirizes the press' love for a good story, and their desire to trim the edges off a story that would interefere with its presentability. Thus, while reports from the Sheehan encampment may be distorted, the bias may be sensationalism as much as liberal bias.

Hurricane a'comin!

Well folks, if you don't hear from me for a few days it's because I'm directly in the path of a Category 5 hurricane, Katrina. As you can see from the satellite photo, she's big. Covers the entire Gulf of Mexico big. The sustained winds are 175 mph right now.

If she continues on the projected path without significant weakening, she could truly devastate the city of New Orleans, where the mayor has ordered a mandatory evacuation. Even my area, more than 100 miles north of the coast, could get hurricane force winds. It's projected to still have tropical-storm force winds up to the Mississippi-Tennessee border.

Please take a moment to pray or medidate on behalf of all those in its path. We really need it to weaken a whole lot in the next 24 hours.

[Update 16:43 CDT] It's looking very, very grim for New Orleans. From the National Weather Service: MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. See full text in the comments.

[Update Sunday 16:33 CDT] It's mostly passed Baton Rouge. We're out of power but otherwise not too badly damaged. New Orleans seems to have missed the very worst possibilities, but is still badly damaged. Seems like Gulfport and Mobile really took it very hard. i've posted some pictures of the aftermath in my neighborhood.

Supporting Troops They Know

What does this tell us?

People with friends or relatives serving in Iraq are more likely than others to have a positive view of a generally unpopular war, an AP-Ipsos poll found.
Some of those surveyed said their relationships with troops helped them learn more about what's going on in Iraq beyond the violence. Others said their opinions of the war were shaped by a sense of loyalty to those in harm's way.
A solid majority of those who did not know anyone in Iraq said they thought the war was a mistake, 61 percent, compared to 36 percent who thought it was the right decision. Those who had a relative or friend there were almost evenly split, 49 percent right decision, 47 percent mistake.

Opponents of the war could argue that the troops are constantly propagandized to believe in the mission, and this filters back to their friends and relatives. However, the concrete risk of losing a loved one is surely something that gives those who know troops pause. One could argue that those for whom the war is abstract may have a more objective view than those "biased" by personal involvement.

It is among those who are absolutely enraged by the war that I wonder about their personal knowledge. Aside from a few grieving families, like the Sheehans, it does seem like the strongest opposition to the war comes from those with the least personal involvement. The notion that war supporters are "chickenhawks" not risking their own skin or their loved ones would seem to be belied by this data.

Sheehan and transferrence

Cindy Sheehan - after Rovegate, the summer's second least-interesting non-event - has even managed to leak over onto the Volokh conspiracy, where an interesting (and, by Volokh's standards, pretty acrimonious) argument as sprung up.

Two posters in particular - 1, 2 - have posted similar thoughts which seem worth repeating for discussion here. Both essentially allege that Sheehan is projecting her rage at her son's deviation from her principles onto the President.

Jguns writes:

Sheehan has always been against the war. That much is documented. She also raised her son with that ideology. What did her son do? He enlisted in the army, in fact knowing that in all likelihood he would be sent to Iraq. He then volunteered for Reenlistment and even volunteered for the daring mission in which he was killed. Let's be dimestore psychologists here. Could it be that Casey's actions were a rejection of his mothers belief system? could it be that his Mother's "crusade" is less about her being angry at Bush and more about her anger with her son for dying in a cause that goes against everything that she believes in?

I don't have any means of proving or denying the assertion that Sheehan has long been a pacifist, the premise on which this passage rests, but I think I remember reading that she has long been opposed to the war in Iraq, for which her son twice volunteered. This lends some credence to the theory, even in the absence of a longer-term view of her alleged pacfifism.

The poster Splunge adds:

I think Mrs. Sheehan is transferring her rage and anger at her son onto the President. Fact is, she was always opposed to the war, and opposed to the military as an institution, yet her boy not only enlisted, he re-upped after the Iraq war started, and he volunteered for the mission on which he was killed.

Like any parent in such circumstances, she has a great deal of anger and hurt directed at her son, 'cause he ignored mommy's wisdom and went and got his ass killed, bereaving her greatly. (Calvin's father in Calvin and Hobbes observed that being a parent is often wanting to hug and strangle your kid at the same time.)

But Mrs. Sheehan can't handle that truth, it seems. So she has semi-deliberately mis-identified the object of her anger and sorrow. It's not that Casey let me down (she may think), but that that awful bastard George Bush tricked Casey into letting me down. Every parent has to cope with this sort of disappointment and hostility towards his or her child, especially as they grow older and deviate further and further from your wishes and dreams and advice. Most normal parents recognize the hostility for what it is, do not project it onto others, and discharge it in some private and healthy manner (e.g. by humor, or by evolution of your own philosophy -- seeing things more from your child's point of view, for example).

The sad thing is that Mrs. Sheehan, unusually, can't do this. She is unable to resolve her sorrow and hostility towards her child, and instead projects it inappropriately on to the President, Israel, the neo-con think tanks, et cetera. Her inability to recognize the real object of her grief and rage, her farcical fantasy that the resolution of her maternal distress lies in a political development, or in a show-trial "meeting" with the President, or by enhancing her own stature as a media darling and within the ranks of the Left, and her willingness to turn her own son into a cheap media caricature, all bespeak an unaware and deeply narcissistic personality.

I can't comment on the pop psychology that underlies these views, but it's an interesting idea. Thoughts?

Cut And Run For Senate

Kweisi Mfume, running for an open senate seat in Maryland, and advised by former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, is focusing his campaign on a
rapid withdrawal from Iraq.

In an e-mail solicitation, Mfume, a former congressman and NAACP leader, called the fighting in Iraq "a war without justification and apparently without end" and compared it to the Vietnam War. "It's time to get out," Mfume wrote, urging a timeframe for withdrawal.

Kweisi Mfume wants to highlight differences between his and Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin's positions on the Iraq war. In an interview, he said that by highlighting his views on Iraq, he is trying to draw the first in a series of contrasts with Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, another candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Cardin himself voted against the war resolution, but is against abandoning Iraq now that we're involved.

This seems like a smart strategy for Mfume, to attract white suburban support in the primary. It might also work in the general election in a state as Democratic as Maryland.

However, I think it would backfire on the Democratic Party as a whole if the party were to become identified with quitting Iraq prematurely. Right now, there is increasing support in the polls for withdrawing from Iraq. I believe some of this support represents "magical thinking" under the supposition that a withdrawal would stem our losses and have no negative consequences. But if it did take place, and the highly negative outcome that most experts anticipate would result from an immediate withdrawal occurred, those who championed the policy would suffer scorn in the long term.

Advice and consent, all over again

I stumbled across a recent Debate Club matchup between Erwin Chemerinsky and Brannon P. Denning. The latter has written extensive work on the dormant commerce clause, ranging from the sterling to the outright stellar. The debate covers what questions might be asked of Judge Roberts and retreads the constitutionality of the filibuster.

My favourite moment - a genuine, and very literal, laugh-out-loud moment - is when Denning responds to Chemerinsky's assertion that the filibuster should be used to reject nominees he dislikes by quoting a 1997 article co-written by Chemerinsky arguing that the filibuster is "simply a minority veto.... It is not part of a long Senate tradition and history alone cannot justify it." Denning drops a hammer-blow coup de grace - "what changed your mind?" - leaving Chemerinsky to stumble and blithely change the subject to the nuclear option. It isn't every day you get to see a senior and widely-respected constituional scholar get blown out of the park by an associate Professor of the Cumberland School of Law.

While this face-off justifies a read alone, the debate is excellent and well-worth a read in preparation for the slugging match next month (which I predict will be far less polite than prevalent wisdom since Roberts' nomination suggests).

Friday Open Thread

Why? Because it's Friday.

Lanced?

I've been trying to root out the details on the Lance Armstrong story, but as usual, new accounts focus more on quotes than on the actual mechanics.

I am open to correction on this, but it seems to me that either Armstrong has been framed for guilt via a conspiracy of of reporters, enemies, and lab technicians, or else he has simply been caught red-handed, retroactively. The only other possible option is that the numbers on the samples misidentify the donor, that they aren't Lance Armstrong's, and it's all a big snafu.

Having recently been treated to the spectacle of Rafael Palmeiro blatantly lying, I have no trouble wondering whether Armstrong is doing the same. None of his public statements seem geared towards addressing the actual substance of the accusations, but rather geared towards attcking the credibility of his accusers. Lance can't tell us why we should think the pee tested wasn't his.

He is quick to suggest that he'd never jeopardize his health by doing such things, saying "why would I do this, I'd NEVER do this..."

Why, Lance? To win, that's why, we already know the answer to that one. It's not even clear to me whether EPO represents a serious health risk as opposed to just giving you an unfair advantage. Anyone know?

As usual, we're likely to never know the whole truth for sure. My personal preliminary opinion as of now is that he's been busted, and that most Americans will not bother to look into the details, preferring instead to continue to believe their hero.

Update: Here's a link to the current CNN article. YMMV, but IMO it seems pretty damning. The most interesting angle seems to be that Armstrong gave 17 sample pairs during the 1999 race. All of the A samples were destroyed after testing done at the time they were taken. The B samples were saved. Of those 17 B samples, 6 tested positive for EPO. Apparently 15 other riders also tested positive.

This seems to reinforce the probability that Armstrong has been either framed via conspiracy or caught red-handed.

Thursday Open Thread

Why? Because I can.

What It Takes To Be A Lobbyist

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about how ex-Democratic Congressman Dan Glickman has adjusted to being a lobbyist for the film industry.

A few months after Mr. Glickman's appointment, Republicans cost the industry more than $1 billion by leaving movie studios out of a major tax bill. Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of California and Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, said that including the Hollywood provision in the bill would have cost too much money.

Earlier this year, Mr. Glickman personally wrote a $500 check to Mr. Santorum's re-election campaign. The MPAA sent another $2,000 to Mr. Santorum, who faces a strong re-election challenge next year. Since being named MPAA chief, Mr. Glickman has given 85% of his $10,000 in personal political donations to Republicans. In the previous 18 months, Mr. Glickman steered 95% of his $18,500 in contributions to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The MPAA's political action committee, meanwhile, has steered 77% of its contributions to Republicans this year.

It makes politics seem like an extortion racket, doesn't it?

I'm sure the Democrats did it too when they controlled Congress. It's just another brushstroke in the portrait of how Republicans have gone native now that they run Washington.

Pre-emptive Back-Patting

Well, it's been over 24 hours since oblivious nutjob Pat Robertson called for us to make Hugo Chavez a prophet by assassinating him. And none of us bothered to make it the centerpiece of post that led down the path to a pissing context about which side's nutjobs were worse. Good for us. So far....

Seems to me that over time we've traced out a common rut, one which we don't enjoy falling into, but which we still find ourselves surprised to be in more than we like. Here's the thing: whatever odious blather steams from Pat Robertson's mouth does NOT "just go to show" anything about responsible conservatives. Anymore than whatever heaping pile of vitriol steams from Michael Moore's cakehole would "just go to show" anything about responsible liberals. Such people really don't deserve an audience, and we shouldn't help them with that.

Maybe we need a list of partisan loose cannons that we don't regard as worthy of being taken seriously, along with a brief accounting of their sins. Maybe we could call it "People it's better to laugh at than take seriously."

Or maybe we need some sort of descriptive title or a link to an essay about the nature of such phenomena to preface any post that calls attention to such people when pure crap starts spewing out of their mouth. Let's face it. Robertson is as useful a tool for the left as Moore is for the right. The wings keep collecting money and marginalizing moderates by playing clown show. Who else is tired of this?

The Danger of Yellow Ribbon Patriotism

Baring any majour developments, this is going to be the last I say on Iraq. I'm running out of eloquent ways of saying that this country needs to shit or get off the pot, and no one reads them anyway. As soon as people see the word "Iraq" they already have a pre-conceived opinion, and instead of reading what you have to say they just look for an opening to attack. Disciples of Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore, followers of the Christian Right or MoveOn.org...they're all the same. Just with a different opinion that is better than yours.

If I say nine negative things about the President, I'll get attacked for the one time I don't. If I say nine negative things about protesters, I'll get attacked for the one time I don't. Agree with the war and you're a blind patriotic warmonger. Disagree and you hate America. Liberal or Conservative. Red state or blue state. I'm in the minority trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong, in a country that only seems to cares about who's right and who's wrong. And I've just simply had enough.

Anyway Time had a great editorial called "The Danger of Yellow Ribbon Patriotism." I highly suggest reading the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

...The military is frustrated by both the mission and the sense that the war isn't front and center for the rest of the country. There is a fair amount of anger among the returning troops, especially the noncareer soldiers, the National Guard and reservists whose tours were extended and then extended again

...They echoed a question that the battalion commander who had lost five of his lieutenants had asked me. "Why hasn't the President issued a national call to service? I don't mean a draft," he said. "But if the President called on people to serve, they would. And not just in the military. My mother mentioned this the other day: 'Why aren't there the war-bond drives we had in World War II? Why aren't we being asked to collect clothing for the children of Iraq?'

...There's no coffin, just the inverted rifle, boots and helmet of the fallen. We call the roll, up to the name of the missing trooper. We call his name: Specialist Doe. Then a second time: Specialist John Doe. A third time: Specialist John R. Doe. And then taps is played. It really gets to you. It's an important emotional experience for the troops. It closes the door and enables you to move on.

Against The Center

Vietnam protestor Tom Hayden has surfaced to propose an anti-war alliance of left and right against the center

Centrists, moderates or national security types are unlikely to take a strong stand on withdrawal. It is more likely that an antiwar majority will grow from the right and left of the political spectrum.

Together, critics from both sides of the aisle can overcome mainstream caution. The antiwar movement doesn’t need the editorial page of the New York Times if it has an alliance with conservative members of Congress and their constituents. William Buckley and Pat Buchanan are against this war, along with a silent minority in the armed forces. New converts include representatives like Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who once called for re-naming the French fry the “freedom fry.” Having become deeply disturbed by the funerals in his district, Jones has decided to co-author with Democrats a bill calling for a 2006 withdrawal timetable.

The left-right alliance demonstrated its potential at least briefly in June, when the library protection amendment to the Patriot Act passed with 38 Republican votes, causing a White House strategist to warn of “crazies on the left and crazies on the right meeting in the middle.” The rebellion was quelled, but the restless majority is still there, undermining the pillar of the center.

Any chance this might take hold?

Having your cake and eating it

The Washington Post is reporting that a Harvard research team has succeded in morphing ordinary skin cells into what the Post calls "embryonic stem cells" - without using human eggs or make new human embryos in the process.

The research team stress that this technology is not yet "ready for primetime" - but if it holds up to scrutiny (remember cold fusion, everybody?), this advance has the potential to profoundly shift the terms of the debate over the ethics of stem cell research.

More information also here.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world: Russian pair challenge UK expert over global warming

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.

The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.

The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

I dunno who's right. I have doubts that we'll see a decline, just as I have doubts that any rise will be on the scale that some predict. I'm not posting this because I have a dog in the fight, I'm posting it because I like it when people making predictions are willing to put some money on the outcome. There are few things I enjoy more than giving someone talking out their butt the old "I'll bet you $100 you're wrong" and then enjoying the retreat to safer more qualified ground.

While We Wait for Castro to Die...

The oppression just south of Florida goes on.

The most recent repression traces back to a May 20 gathering at Havana at which at least 150 dissidents demanded democracy and the release of political prisoners. Mr. Gomez Manzano was one of the organizers. After this unusually strong showing, Mr. Castro apparently felt compelled to send in his paramilitary to suppress a small annual opposition commemoration on July 13. A wave of arrests followed just more than a week later.

Since July 22, 50 opponents of the regime have been arrested, of whom 15 remain in jail, including Mr. Gomez Manzano. Seventy-five dissidents were arrested in 2003; 61 of them are still behind bars. The government has launched a campaign of intimidation against other leaders. For example, a crowd of pro-government thugs recently surrounded the house of Vladimiro Roca for several hours, hurling invective at him as they tried to block an anti-government meeting.

Democracy in Iraq would be good. Democracy in Cuba would be good too.

Tea Leaf Reading: Lining Up the Opposition

I've suggested before that we can learn a lot about the current state of the Democratic Party by watching the Senate debate over the Roberts nomination. That, in essence, we can watch the debate and figure out which Democratic Senators are "owned" by the various SIG's, and which can (and will) step "off the reservation" and away from the more leftist base.

The New York Times and some Democrats seem to agree, even if that isn't quite how they put it.

Democrats Split on Tactics for Confirmation Hearings

Former Senator John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, said the hearings were a test of his party's independence. "The interest groups are going to be out there, and this is their issue, and they are going to fight it until the dead warm over, but gas prices, health care costs and Iraq are the things that motivate most people," he said. In a Supreme Court fight, "we are not expanding the base, and even if we get 100 percent of the base, we do not win a national election."

Um, duh?

The pressure from both sides is expected to increase this week. Many of the major liberal groups have told Democratic aides that they planned to begin running television advertisements against confirmation, arguing that a more conservative court would threaten federal social programs and protections against discrimination.

Officials of the [special interest] groups have warned Democrats that if Judge Roberts becomes a Supreme Court vote against their causes - for example, in a New Hampshire abortion rights case expected to be decided before the 2006 elections - they will hold accountable any senator who votes to confirm him.

Pull up a chair and crack a beer. Anyone bring popcorn?

USS Iowa Rejected by San Francisco

San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa

Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific....

...But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.

Friday morning open thread

There now. I've done it! Now send us your comments.

Writing our Constitution Today

Brad Rourke poses some intriguing questions in his Christian Science Monitor column today that I thought were worth bringing up here and expanding on for discussion.

What if the United States had to write its constitution from scratch today?

Would our political leaders be able to deliberate their way to a workable governing blueprint?

What would the resulting document look like if they managed to do so?

Rourke's piece is well worth reading in full, and offers up a few other excellent points which you're welcome to comment on as well. But I'm particularly interested in what you all think a 2005 United States Constitution might look like (assuming you think one could be hammered out). Have at it!

Compounding Kelo Disgrace

How about a candlelight vigil for these folks:

Those who believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours" might take the tale of the plaintiffs in Kelo v. New London as a cue to buy two of every animal and a load of wood from Home Depot. The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for the years the owners fought confiscation.

In some cases, their debt could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover, the homeowners are being offered buyouts based on the market rate as it was in 2000 .

Either national politicians are failing to seize this opportunity to grandstand against a widely despised decision, or this deserves more coverage. This shouldn't be happening, it's a shame and a disgrace.

Feds Working Hard to Keep Us Safe!

So I come home last night, and the news is on in the kitchen, and they're covering the story about some town that wants to build some sort of waiting center for hiring undocumented illegal immigrants. Which leads my wife to wonder why we don't have federal agents to solve this problem, since these immigrants are just standing around waiting.

The very next story suggests an answer. It's about federal agents digging up pot plants in an Arizona National Forest. I feel safer just watching.

This makes a nice seque to Peter Bagge's latest cartoon on misplaced federal priorities.

Pro-Choice but Anti-Naral

An interesting op/ed by the New York Times today by John Tierney (bio), in which Tierney argues that NARAL's strategy - displays a PETA-esque ability to alienate. This goes beyond, Tierney says, the organization's patent tomfoolery over the Roberts nomination (actions best characterized, I would argue, as desparately thrashing around in the shallow waters of irrelevance, flailing for an enemy - any enemy).

Their entire approach of framing abortion as a civil rights issue, "presenting it as women's fight for freedom against an oppressive patriarchy" is wrongheaded and self-defeating. "It's true that pregnancy is a uniquely female burden and that most pro-life politicians are men - but then, so are most pro-choice politicians. There's no gender gap in opinion on the issue...Treating the issue as a civil rights crusade may be good for mobilizing some women, but this strategy alienates the public because it ducks the central issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then protecting women's rights means protecting the rights of females in the womb, too."

While Justice Ginsburg's polite disapporoval of Roe rings hollow, Tierney's piece expresses a feeling of "how'd I end up on the same side as these idiots" that must surely ring true to mostly everyone who'd begin to contemplate themselves as a moderate. Can there be anyone on the moderate wing of the GOP who hasn't regarded Fox News' perpetual chicken little complex with, at best, polite bemusement? Or a democrat who didn't try to hide a pained look when Howard Dean railed against the "right wing justices trying to give your home to private developers" after Justices --err-- Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg (aka, the court's liberal bloc) and Kennedy voted to give your home to private developers?

But anyway, Tierney concludes: "I wish the pro-choice movement would appeal to centrists of both sexes instead of playing to its activist base. The best way to keep abortion legal is to rely not on the Supreme Court but on the public, because three-quarters of Americans do not want to outlaw abortion." I do not agree with him, insofar as I do not agree that keeping abortion legal is a good thing, I do not agree with him that returning the issue to the states will serve his goal in the way he thinks, and I believe that if pro-choicers had any conviction that this was the case, they would immediately repudiate Roe and its progeny, and resort to the democratic process. It's not my belief that liberals, any more than conservatives, want to further their cause illegitimately through the courts, but that they do so in the absence of any other way to do so. However, I do concur with Tierney's remedy, insofar as he is correct to dismiss the role of the Supreme Court. Abortion, in my view, is not now, nor has ever been, a right protected in the Federal Constitution; nor is discretion over it granted to the Federal Government. It therefore is and will remain legitimately an issue for the states, where Mr. Tierney and I will politely argue past one another, and the matter will be legitimately resolved by the democratic process.

It would also mean that this issue - which has done more than any other to inflame passions and partisanship - would cease to be an issue at the level of national politics, which can only serve to cool the temperature of the national political debate. Most centrists would not agree with my views on abortion (or the discipline of the constitution, I suspect), but the goal of brining rational debate back into play is one we can all agree on.

The DLC Playbook

For your consideration, the Democratic Leadership Council has issued a playbook of state and local policy positions and initiatives. Available both in HTML and PDF. Have fun!

Streets Paved with Sanctimony

Hat tip to the Mighty Middle for this article on Tom Monaghan's plan to build God City.

Bold talk — but the most dramatic part of Monaghan’s speech is yet to come. Ave Maria won’t be just a university, he continues. It will also be a new town, built from scratch, in which the wickedness of the world will be kept at bay. "We’ve already had about 3500 people inquire on our Web site about buying a home there — you know, they’re all Catholic," Monaghan says excitedly. "We’re going to control all the commercial real estate, so there’s not going to be any pornography sold in this town. We’re controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives." A private chapel will be located within walking distance of each home. At the stunning church in the center of town, Mass will be said hourly, seven days a week, from 6 a.m. on. "So," Monaghan concludes, with just a hint of understatement, "it’ll be a unique town." As he exits the stage, the applause is thunderous.

This is a TREEEEEEEEEEEE-mendous idea. This has to happen. I don't even have a joke here.

Wait, yes I do. Count me in as an investor with whoever wants to start a sin city over in the next county.

Nothing Wrong With Human Cloning

Once the current technical problems that make human cloning unreliable and dangerous are solved, I think it should be allowed. Mind you, I'm talking here about full-sized-human cloning, not embryo cloning.

The bottom line is that human cloning is just a new way of making identical twins, except probably more widely distributed in time. After long thought, and reading a bunch of clone-related fiction, I see no new societal problems that cloning per se will pose. The contentious issues WRT cloning, IMHO, aren't about cloning per se, but about the creation of a clone using already-existent but still new and poorly understood practices like sperm donorship and surrogate motherhood. But a clear trail of responsibility and parental assignment can be traced in both of these cases, which is the important consideration here. Clones won't be born in some kind of limbo, and once born, it's just another kid, just a little more chip-off-the-old-block-like than normal.

Vain people may wish to make closer copies of themselves than is currently possible, but there are serious limits on how much they can succeed with a genetic mirror - nature may be duplicated, but it will be a kid from a different generation, with different ways of thinking, dressing, and probably even rebelliously inclined toward Dad.

Does cloning threaten genetic diversity? I think not for a very long time. There are always plenty of non-vain people. And enough vain people that we'll just get lots of copies of different people. It's possible that we'll see slow convergence of lines toward successful genesets ("Dear, let's have us a Tiffany Rae 2! They're so elegant!"), but it seems unlikely to be a threat for centuries, giving plenty of time to pass appropriate legislation should it become a problem.

Richardson on Immigration

The Southwest bears the "brunt" of immigration: border enforcement, health care costs, etc. In that light its been interesting to watch the political maneuvering regarding immigration. In AZ we've seen several prominent Republicans come out against Prop 200 while it was proposed and pushed by other Republicans. Democrats have been equally challenged. Democrats control two key Southwest State houses: NM and AZ. By way of example, I was struck by Gov. Bill Richardson's recent declaration of a "State of Emergency" on the NM/Mexico border.

"I'm taking these serious steps because of the urgency of the situation and, unfortunately, because of the total inaction and lack of resources from the federal government and Congress," Richardson said. The emergency declaration will allow the spending of US$1.75 million in state and federal funds on beefed-up law enforcement, a new cattle fence and a New Mexico Homeland Security Department field office, probably to be located in Luna County near the Chihuahua border town of Palomas.

Sounds a bit like the now imfamous Minutemen.

I was a bit confused because I recalled a previous statement by Gov Richardson. After President Bush's 94 State of the Union, Gov. Richardson, in a response,

called the president's plan "a small step forward" that included "some positive points." But he said the plan was a "dead end" for Hispanics because it "does not help immigrant workers to obtain the golden dream: legalization and residency without impunity."

Can there be a "crisis at the borders" if Mexicans are only seeking their "golden dream of legalization and residency without impunity"

I'm not trying to make political hay I'm just struck how immigration really does wreak havoc with political boundaries

Good News From Iraq

Arthur Chrenkoff has stopped compiling his Good News From Iraq series due to job/time pressures. Others, however, have picked up the slack.

Good News From Iraq

Also, the Brookings Institution has issued a status report on Iraq. It isn't nearly as pessimistic as the 6 o'clock news.(PDF warning)

UPDATE: Chrenkoff hasn't quite signed off yet....

GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ PART 33

Cindy Sheehan

The Moderate Voice has a good analysis of the new issue of a slow news cycle, the grieving mother turned protestor Cindy Sheehan. I don't agree with Ms. Sheehan in terms of her policy stand, which is for a rapid pullout from Iraq. But neither do I see a need for opposition research by conservatives to tear her down. Why can't the President sit down and have a one to one discussion with someone who vigorously disagrees with him. I do all the time. Does the President ever have this experience? Among the many things which impress me about John McCain, one is that when I saw him in person a few years ago, he took a hostile question from the audience, answered it, and then invited the hostile questioner to follow-up, to make sure the question had been answered fully. You can get some credit from your opponents simply by listening to them. Is President Bush listening?

Cities From Blue To Red

Opinion Journal links to a word document from the Bay Area Center for Voting Research listing America's cities, from liberal to conservative. Provo is the least liberal, while Detroit is the most liberal. Many of the most liberal cities are in Northern California, while many of the most conservative are in Southern California. While Cambridge is very nearly as liberal as Berkeley, Boston is not nearly as liberal as San Francisco. These results pretty much match my perceptions, though I wonder about the omission of Santa Monica, one of the most liberal cities in my experience, located in Southern California.

Friday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Using Credit Ratings to Set Insurance Premiums

Credit-scored for life: Broader uses hurt consumers

But what may not be so fair is the way the scores are being used today. Many of the nation's leading insurance companies use the scores to set premiums for motorists and homeowners. Lower scores translate to higher bills. Employers use credit scores to make hiring decisions. What started as a simple number is fast becoming a scarlet letter that threatens to brand some Americans as losers.

Progressive Corp., a very successful auto insurer based in Ohio, has been especially vocal in its defense of using credit scores to set insurance prices. The company says that a review of its own claims history found that people with below-average credit scores were twice as likely to have an accident as those with better-than-average scores. A study by the Texas Insurance Department found similar results for both auto insurance and homeowners insurance.

''How a person manages his financial affairs is a good predictor of insurance claims," according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. Employers have said less about their use of credit scores, but presumably they view the numbers as a measure of trustworthiness and reliability.

Does anyone else find this troubling? I acknowledge that insurance sellers need to be able to predict risk. It just seems morally suspect to me to charge someone more for say car insurance based on a correlation to credit scores. My feeling is that they should stick to demonstrably causative relationships, like living in a high crime neighborhood, being a bad driver, driving many miles, and so on. Thoughts?

Fiscal indiscipline, redux

I dissented last week regarding the highways bill boondoggle (see Fiscal indiscipline, 8/5/05). While I don't like to toast my fellow Republicans too harshly, this is one area where the bulk of the Congressional party deserves no mercy. The Cato Institute - which has been concerned about the strength of the Bush Administration's commitment to fiscal discipline for some time, per Veronique deRugy's previous study "The Republican Spending Explosion", Cato Briefing Paper no. 87, 3/3/04 - today highlights its report "The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders". A summary of the report follows.

Stephen Slivinski argues that:

President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn’t cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.

Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush’s first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton’s last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush’s first term.

The rest of the essay doesn't get any less peremptory or blunt. "Government spending has grown from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion—up 33 percent since 2001". While certainly, some of this increase has stemmed from 9/11 and the subsequent shift in foreign policy, "nondefense spending has gone up dramatically as well: since Bush took office, domestic spending has shot up by 36 percent".

By an objective measurement, "George W. Bush is the biggest-spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson", ranking 5.0% real annual growth of total government outlays, vs. Johnson's 5.7%. This is a President who has grown government and spending at a rate unseen since the very President to which the rise of the modern Republican party is traditionally seen as a riposte - and what's more:

Bush has signed into law only four budgets so far, whereas Lyndon Johnson signed five into law during his presidency. In other words, Bush and a Republican Congress have expanded the federal government almost as fast as did Johnson and a Democratic Congress—and in less time.

And:

The trend of years past when entitlement
spending was the driver of budget growth has been reversed under Bush...[G]rowth of discretionary spending (which includes defense spending) has outstripped growth of entitlement spending in three of the past four years.

We have talked here at Centerfield recently about "Cosby Republicans" - a theory which contrasts the standard "fiscal conservative/socially liberal" centrism against an argument that many blacks and latinos are fiscally liberal and socially conservative. By that yardstick, it may be George W. Bush, not Bill Clinton, who is more properly called the "first black President".

However, while the Bush administration will no doubt take the blame, this report is essentially a scathing indictment of the failure of the Congressional GOP to escape the hubris and outright corruption which destroyed the Democratic party's control of the House of Representatives. For does the Constitution not provide that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law"? And does the first clause of the first section of the first article of the Constitution not reserve to the Congress the sole and unique prerogative of making those laws? Blaming the administration is displacing the blame:

President Bush has not been alone in the spending binge. The Republican-controlled Congress has been fully complicit and indeed bears much of the blame since it controls the purse strings.

The best example of how far the Republican budget revolution has strayed is the Department of Education budget. The story of the education revolution is a three-part story: [first,] the utter failure of grand proclamations about destroying the federal education bureaucracy; [second,] capitulation to Clinton stand-patism...and finally, a reluctant embrace of an intrusive federal mandate [the No Child Left Behind Act] tied to the largest increases in federal education spending in history. There is no part of domestic policy on which congressional Republicans have ended up farther away from where they started.

Most of all, the report is a contemptuous scold to those Republicans still in the House who signed the Contract with America, in that "Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent". In 1994, Newt Gingrich swore to abolish the Department of Education; a decade later, led by George W. Bush, many Republicans seem to have concluded (the report, I think, is overgenerous in calling CGOP support for NCLB "relectant") that Federal control over schools is kind of neat if it means Texas politicians dictating to Massachusetts schools, rather than Massachusetts politicians dictating to Texas schools. The same hubris and arrogance which militated the Democrats to try to eliminate the Filibuster in the 70s and 90s now militates for Republicans to eliminate the filibuster.

However, while it is certainly the Congress which must bear a lot of the blame, the report points out that sooner or later, one cannot avoid pointing the finger squarely at the Executive Mansion:

That trend [towards greater spending] has been exacerbated by President Bush’s refusal to veto a single bill during his first term. Once the president proposes a budget, Congress often adds more money to the spending request and treats the proposed spending limits as a floor, not a ceiling. The main check the president has on such behavior is his veto power. However, President Bush has chosen not to exercise that power. As a result, government has grown far faster than even he recommended in his already-extravagant budgets of years past.

Slivinski offers several solutions in the latter part, but they are already too brief to summarise, and a full reading of the report is encouraged.

Most Republicans in Washington today have shown that they are more interested in expanding government than in scaling it back. With a firmer grip on Congress and a reelected and confident president in the White House, Republicans have a golden opportunity to finally get government under control. If they don’t cut spending, it won’t be because they can’t. It will be because they don’t want to.

The report concludes, "The GOP establishment in Washington today has become a defender of big government." It seems that the current GOP is a strange beast. For all the talk that the theocon wing of the party wishes to shut out moderates, it seems that libertarians and Newt Gingrich / Grover Norquist style radicals have little place here either; the report even quotes Newt as saying that "Republicans have lost their way". This is strange - albeit not entirely unwelcome - company, but my fear is not that the tent is shifting one way or another, but rather, may be contracting on all sides.

How High the Moon

The smart money is on gas at $3+ per gallon by end of year

The Internet betting site opened wagering with the odds on the average price of regular gas in New York or Los Angeles hitting $3 a gallon by New Year's Day as a 30:1 long shot.

Since then, those odds have dropped to 7:5, PinnacleSports.com spokesman Kyle Fratini said Thursday, citing the most recent odds.

...

The shift in odds shows that the majority of bettors are expecting gas prices, which reached fresh peaks Thursday, to increase to unprecedented levels.

"Betting is a better indicator of public perception than opinion polls," Fratini said, adding that bettors on PinnacleSports.com accurately predicted the winner in every state in the last presidential election.

Most consumers take little consolation from those who usually rush in at this point in such stories to point out that gas prices are not at a historical high when adjusted for inflation. And in fact, the days when this can be trotted out may be numbered.

What Are the Roots of Terrorism?

I am skeptical of analyses that posit a single underlying "cause" of militant Islamic terrorism, whether it is poverty or culture or American policy. In this article in the New York Review of Books, Max Rodenbeck, a writer for The Economist, reviews five books that discuss the subject in what, I think, is a pretty broad and fair-minded way. Yes, the NYRB is liberal and anti-Bush but Rodenbeck distances himself from

both the neoconservative refrain that the DNA of Islamist violence is somehow embedded in the Koran and from the popular liberal notion that terrorism is purely a response to Western encroachment.

I want to focus on the book by Oliver Roy, a French scholar, called "Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah." I would say that this book is somewhat "optimistic" about the future of radical Islam. Roy believes that jihadism will fail.

He argues now that global jihadism also carries the seeds of its own destruction, rather like a virus that kills its host before the host can pass on the disease. The hideous cruelty of al-Qaeda and its offshoots, which has now touched so many countries, already appalls and repels many Muslims. And having failed to mobilize the Muslim masses, jihadists should be regarded not as a strategic challenge capable of changing the balance of power, Roy argues, but as a security threat that can be contained.

Roy argues that modern jihadist ideology is not a reflection of traditional Islam, but is, in fact, a form of westernization:

The real genesis of Al Qaeda violence has more to do with a Western tradition of individual and pessimistic revolt for an elusive ideal world than with the Koranic conception of martyrdom.

Thus, the jihadists have distorted the traditional Islamic notion of jihad as "a collective Muslim responsibility" into the notioin that it is an "individual duty for each Muslim."

Roy believes that the shift reflects, in large part, a rejection by young Muslims of traditional Muslim culture, in large measure because most Muslims no longer lives in traditional cultures. The jihadist ideology feeds on the western notions of alienation and anger. I see this as an important point, not because it means that poverty is not a factor in the acceptance of jihadist ideology--the ideology has obvious appeal to Muslim minorities in the West as well as to "often unemployed, undereducation, and sexually deprived youth" in the Middle East. But it's more than just a simple "poverty causes terrorism" meme. Roy argues that

to a large degree, Islamist radicalism represents an attempt to Islamize "an existing space of anti-imperialism and contestation," the resentment of the dominance of technology and markets by rich nations. It just happens, at the moment, to be the most gaudily packaged product in the same market for anti-globalization remedies that, say, activist Green movements are responding to in more settled, comfortable societies.

Yes, I know that this language is a lot of academic leftist claptrap, but I think Roy is trying to make the point that it's not Islam that is making war on the West--in fact, it's almost a rejection of traditional Islam that owes much to western ideologies. But it also means that it's not just poverty and it's not just having western troops in the Middle East. And it's not necessarily permanent.

Roy believes that the jidhadists' ideology borrows a lot from that of the European radical leftists of the 60s and 70s. For example, both draw from similar "pools of alienated, dislocated youth", they use similar symbols (e.g., the Koran substituting for Marx), a sense of historical inevitability. More controversially, Roy believes that

Modern jihadists have also borrowed the classic revolutionary idea that the most effective way to rouse the cowed masses is to goad their masters into acting rashly, so revealing the supposedly true, exploitative nature of their relationship.

If you accept this premise, it suggests that Bush's GWOT strategy is misguided, at least in terms of its scope. Roy does not oppose taking strong action against terrorists and does not believe that "negotiation" is an option. But he does think that the concept of GWOT is flawed because

it risks infusing local disputes with the jihadists' millennialist goals. This, of course, is exactly what has happened; the old rallying cry of Palestine is now joined by the new one of Iraq.

There are several points that I believe are important here. First, while radical Islam is obviously a threat to the health and safety of the west, it is not an inexorable force that will inevitably consume the Muslim world and force a "clash of civilizations." Jihadism does not appeal to most Muslims and is not likely to succeed as long as the west does not help it through ill-conceived policies. Second, jihadist ideology reflects, in part, an internal struggle within the Muslim community. Poverty clearly plays a role--and its eradication might well lessen its appear--but the struggle is at least as much social and political as it is economic. It also means, as I think most people, including the Bush Administration accept, that the solution has to involve more than just fighting wars.

Redistricting Reform: Action in the States

Cross-posted last night, in slightly different form, at Charging RINO.

I have largely been concerned with redistricting reform efforts at the federal level, but movements have also been percolating along quite nicely in several states around the country in recent months. Bill Swann's done some excellent work in the last few days collecting articles and data on these efforts, and I wanted to provide a summary of recent and upcoming action in Ohio, California, Florida and Massachusetts. It's long, so I've moved it to after the jump.

Ohio: Supporters of redistricting reform in the Buckeye State, coalescing under the banner of Reform Ohio Now (RON), seem to have succeeded in a petition drive to put a constitutional amendment (text here, in PDF) mandating redistricting reform to a statewide vote this November. This week, reform backers submitted nearly 521,000 signatures to the Ohio Secretary of State's office, dwarfing the requirement of 322,889 (ten percent of the total number of voters who participated in the most recent gubernatorial election). The redistricting amendment - one of three backed by RON - would wrest control of the district-drawing process from a partisan state Apportionment Board and put it in the hands of a five-person board appointed by a judge. Plans for districts could be submitted by any citizen of Ohio, and would have to meet certain criteria, including compatibility with the Voting Rights Act, as well as placing premiums on competitiveness and maintaining a "statewide partisan balance."

Ohio's political structure is in a bit of turmoil right now, with its Republican Party embroiled in a series of scandals and their opponents sensing opportunity. This proposal, as well as the others proposed by RON, has a very decent chance of success this fall, although court challenges and the p.r. campaigns remain to be fought.

I have three major concerns with the proposal as it's currently phrased. One, while I hold competitiveness to be a key component of any reform plan, I think it is ridiculous to seek a "statewide partisan balance." If voters in Ohio want to elect a congressional delegation full of Republicans, they should be able to. If they want to elect Democrats, they should be able to. If they want to elect Greens, or Bull Moose, or Libertarians, or - well, you get the idea - they should be able to. Congressional districts should be based on geography and compactness ... not some scheme designed to "balance" the delegation. That just means more of the same, someone else picking your representatives rather than you.

My second concern is the makeup of the "independent commission" charged with creating the districts. According to RON, the five members would be selected in the following way: the first by "the state appeals court judge with the longest continuous service;" the second by "the next senior appeals court judge from a different political party;" the third, fourth and fifth by the first two, "including one member not affiliated with a political party." This is not independent redistricting - this is partisan redistricting with a mask on (and an "independent tiebreaker" thrown in).

Third and finally, the proposed amendment would allow a redrawing of congressional districts prior to the 2008 election cycle. I strongly oppose partisan mid-decade redistricting (witness Georgia and Texas in recent years) in any form, and this provision in the bill gives me serious pause.

I worry that RON's efforts are little short of an attempt by "reformers" to capitalize on current upheaval in Ohio to push through a redistricting Trojan horse, a scheme that would do little to actually put non-partisan concerns ahead of scoring political points.

The success of the Ohio petition efforts have been covered widely in the national press over the last couple of days: articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Associated Press, among other outlets.

California: The most recent turn in the quest for redistricting reform in the Golden State is a decision from a state appeals court tossing Governor Schwarzenegger's plan, Prop 77, from the November ballot. Prop 77 (text here), which would have turned district-drawing over to a panel of three retired judges (picked by lot after a complicated nomination process) - and also calls for mid-decade redistricting- requires consideration of population equality, contiguity, existing geographic and political boundaries (i.e. county lines), and compactness.

I have less issues with the California plan than I do with Ohio's, although I would prefer that the drafting panel be comprised of more than three people, and obviously the mid-decade redistricting provision remains repugnant. Now that it appears, however, that Prop 77 will not be on the ballot in November, it is incumbent (no pun intended) on Governor Schwarzenegger and leaders in the state legislature to work together to develop a redistricting plan - either passed through the normal legislative channels or by referendum at the earliest possible date.

The latest on CA redistricting, from the LA Times.

Florida: The Committee for Fair Elections - made up of groups including Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the Florida Conservation Alliance, several labor unions and other groups - has proposed a series of three amendments to the state constitution for a referendum to be held in November, 2006. They need 750,000 signatures by February 1, 2006 to qualify for ballot access; as of August 4, their website indicated that 140,940 signatures had been collected.

The first amendment (text of all three here) would create a 15-member commission for drawing districts: the commission's members would be selected by the president of the state senate (3), the speaker of the state house (3), the minority party in the senate and house (3 each), and the chief judge of the state supreme court (3, all not registered with a political party). The amendment also provides strict limits for those who can be made members of the commission.

The second amendment establishes criteria for the commission to use when constructing districts: it requires that "districts shall be compact and, where practicable, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries; that districts, where practicable, preserve communities of interest; that districts not be drawn to favor an incumbent, political party or other person; that competitive districts should be favored and that districts not consider the residence of any individual, except to comply with the constitution or laws of the United States. Competitive districts should be favored where to do so would create no significant detriment to the other goals."

Finally, the third amendment - and the only one which I would not support - allows for the creation of a redistricting commission to redraw boundaries for the 2008 election cycle. Since this is a separate issue from the other two portions of the plan, it would be a simple matt