Centerfield

One Alito Tidbit

Here is an account of Alito's opinion on a school's harassment speech policy. For those it troubles, fair warning that the web site is called "right side redux." I saw this decision accounted for elsewhere as well, so I have reason to feel it's accurate, and therefore am at least for now untroubled by whatever else this web site might be purported to stand for. If you want to call me a tool, knock yourself out. The money point, IMO, is this:

"There is no categorical 'harassment exception' to the First Amendment's free speech clause," Judge Alito wrote, adding that the policy banned much speech that is not considered harassment under federal or state law.

On reading this, I was reminded of a bit from the flick The Untouchables, where Irish cop (with Scottish accent) Sean Connery is interviewing Italian recruit Andy Garcia for a spot on the team. Connery insults him on purpose. And Garcia pulls a gun on him. Whereupon Connery turns to Ness/Costner and announces "Ohh...I LIKE him!"

Centrist Donkey

Welcome The Centrist Donkey, the new blog of old, or rather young friend, Max Burns.

Scalito

Bush Picks Alito for Supreme Court

How We Shoulda Done Vietnam

Repeated arguments about why Iraq is vastly different from Vietnam (in Vietnam, we were against the elected, if autocratic government, and here we're for the elected government, there we were blowing people up to win their hearts and minds, in Iraq the enemy are).

Anyway, my opinion is that we should've left Vietnam alone, and let Ho Chi Minh conquer the dictatorial south. We did not in fact know how he would behave - as a liberal democract, a communist, or good old fascist (my guess is, conflicted between socialist and communist). If he had never held another election, and ruled autocratically, well, he would've inspired a strong and wide armed opposition. And THAT is the moment we should've acted, and supported said rebellion militarily. Only then could we have gained popular support - after the communists lost it.

Why didn't we do that? Well, IMHO we lost faith in our own ways. We were afraid that Ho Chi Minh might go autocratic without losing support. Others (LBJ?) were too much into friend-of-my-enemy thinking. And Kissinger didn't think democracy mattered, despite Vietnam's demonstration that it did: the Vietnamese opposed us passionately and thoughtfully because we tried to squash their free election result militarily.

So, then what should Nixon have done when he inherited the situation? IMHO, he should've issued a public ultimatum to S. Vietnam to give it two years to hold truly free elections or face US withdrawal. That would've helped two ways: put serious pressure on S. Vietnamese tyrants to move to democracy (that later worked with S Korea), and it would've framed withdrawal honorably.

Ballot Diddling, Detroit

Absentee ballots tainted?

Among findings by News reporters were ballots cast by people registered to vote at abandoned and long-demolished buildings; a master voter list with 380,000 incorrect names and addresses -- including people who have died or moved out of the city; and a practice of hand-delivering ballots from senior citizens and disabled voters that were filled out in private meetings with Currie's paid election workers....

...At the Passion Caring Home for the Elderly, three people who voted absentee in the August primary could not name the mayor of Detroit or recall having voted when interviewed Thursday. Each was helped by Currie's election assistant in a private room. Of eight recent absentee ballots mailed to the home for the general election next month, seven of the ballot recipients have been declared legally incapacitated by Wayne County Probate Court judges and suffer from dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

• People who were mailed absentee voter applications by Currie's office and later voted by absentee ballot have voter registration addresses of two long-abandoned nursing homes, the LaSalle Nursing Home on West Grand Boulevard and the Woodward Nursing Center.

• In one case, Joseph Koziara voted by absentee ballot. His application for the ballot was addressed to his registered voting address, 3456 Martin, a building that was demolished in 2002 and remains a vacant lot, according to city records. Currie's office has addressed ballot applications to demolished and vacant buildings. In one case, 34 applications were sent to a juvenile detention center for teenagers that need to be hospitalized.

Back To Blogging

Michael Totten is in Lebanon, and has some pretty good coverage of events there.

Update: more interesting developments in Syria (annoying antiprivacy nyt registration req'd). It's hard being an autocrat....

The New Malaise

Peggy Noonan feels it. (hat tip to Marcus).

If Bush is the new Carter, can the Democrats come up with a new Reagan?

Some Miers post-mortem from the "Religious Right"

I thought this article in Christianity Today might provide a slightly more nuanced view of the Miers withdrawal and the "Religious Right" than Harry Reid's declaration that

The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination. Apparently, Ms. Miers did not satisfy those who want to pack the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues

Some key points from the article.

"It was a lot better to withdraw the nomination than to go through a bruising battle and lose," said Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). "At least we didn't have to go on squabbling as a Christian family over this. There was a lot more behind-the-scenes squabbling among Christians than was reported.
"Harriet Miers displayed an incredible degree of character and integrity throughout the process, by everyone's admission. She showed more of the right stuff than the President did in selecting her."

and

"Judicial philosophy is relevant in the nomination process, but religious affiliation or creed is not, and it shouldn't be used to exclude or include any nominee," said Anthony Picarello, president and chief counsel of the Becket Fund. "Recent experience shows that this is a risk for politicians on both sides of the aisle."
"We evangelical Christians didn't inject religion into this. The President did," Cizik said. "[The White House] wanted support for her and went to some high-profile evangelical leaders and got it. But as others have pointed out, the 'faith-based conservatives' who trusted in the infallibility of President Bush's judgment on this one didn't win out. It was the reality-based conservatives who did."

As I've commented many times before the "Religious Right" is not nearly as monolithic as portrayed. Personally, I believe this whole process has rattled (as opposed to energized) religious conservatives. Clearly Ms. Miers was "personally" an evangelical however, how that would impact future court positions was uncertain. I think the "faith-based conservatives" are worried they were "played" and at the same time they're confused as to how to "play". Multiple surveys have indicated that the majority of Americans AND sizeable proportion of evangelicals (if not the majority) feel the "religious right" (whoever that is) has too much power.

OK Tully, maybe I'll have a little bit of that popcorn.

Libby goes bye-bye

I've just speed-read the entire indictment. The fundamental issue is whether Libby learned that Plame was a CIA employee from reporters, as he testified, or from official sources, which he denied under oath. The indictment alleges that, before talking to any reporters about Wilson/Plame, Libby was told that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee by: 1) the Undersecretary of State, 2) a senior CIA officer, 3)his CIA briefer, 4) the Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs, and 5) the VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Based on the transcripts supplied in the indictment, Libby repeatedly claimed to have only learned that Plame worked for the CIA from reporters, not from any governmental sources... even when directly asked the question.

This is just mind-boggling stupid for someone in Libby's position. Who did he expect to cover his lie? Why not just tell the FBI and the grand jury what happened? He has clearance, and there is nothing wrong or illegal with the vice-president or any of those other people telling Libby the information. Why lie about that? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This is not just a minor or technical perjury. It is perjury on a substantive, material issue. He deserves what he gets. But it should be a minor political issue. The Vice-President and the President are not connected to any lying or wrong-doing in any way. There's no claim in the indictment that anybody told Libby to lie or urged him to spread the word about Plame's position to the press. There are a couple of references to unnamed officials and an "Official A" for fun detective work for the nattering nabobs, but that's about all there is, folks. One official's idiocy in lying to the grand jury and the FBI.

Plame Thread

Rather than wait for the inevitable post-conference thread, I thought I'd just go ahead and open the forum, dust off the chairs, and set out the punch and cookies.

Document dump reportedly scheduled for 12pm Eastern, Fitzgerald announcements at 2pm Eastern.

UPDATE: Scooter Libby, three counts. Obstruction, perjury, and false statements. This indicates that a majority of the grand jury believes he intentionally tried to deceive them, and lied to do so. His resignation (I presume) will be announced shortly. (Moral: As I've said repeatedly, don't try to dance with the prosecutor and grand jury. Tell the truth, or have a lapse of recollection, or just shut the hell up. But leave your tap shoes at home.)

Well it's Friday on the East Coast anyway open thread

And out of the great Southwest comes our weekly free for all!. Red Sox, White Sox, next year the Cubs? (I hear bears don't sh*t in the woods either.)

A few last words regarding Miers

I had been in Indianapolis all day, and in communicado at that, and therefore only learned the joyous news of Miers' departure on arriving home this evening. The Hotline has the whole sordid timeline. For the record, kudos must go to Charles Krauthammer, whose sword she either fell - or was pushed - onto. The sense of relief is palpable.

While not wanting to retread ground previously covered by Rick, I cannot resist adding my two cents.

[I apologize in advance if this does not seem entirely "centrist," although I cannot fully articulate the delight at a commenter here at Centerfields offering a good rationale a couple of weeks ago as to why my seeming hard line stance on Originalism and otherwise moderate approaches are less of a Jeckyl-and-Hyde transformation than I had thought.]

In any case, to do so, I will cannibalize a few entries from my own blog. First, there should not be any lack of clarity on my position on Harriet Miers. I was sceptical from the word go, and explained why in two posts here and here. I defended the need for a Justice who was pursuasive rather than just a vote here, and scepticism finaly gave way to outright hostility 10/7/05 here. Her unceremonious withdrawal (or, more accurate, if less kindly, the delayed realization that her highly speculative nomination had disintegrated on contact with reality) in the face of impending rejection by the Senate is a victory for none, a defeat for a few, and a relief for everyone (except the Democrats, who, needless to say, are now beginning to canonize Miers in anticipation of a Michael Luttig or Edith Jones nomination).

It is not a victory, in the sense that one would not usually celebrate preventing a friend from making a fatal mistake by shooting him in the leg as a "victory;" it simply is what it is, and what was done was what was necessary. But it is not yet a victory in a more important sense: the goal of the anti-Miers forces was never limited to kericking (or, if necessary, borking) her nomination. While different opponents had different goals, mine was always fulfilment of the President's campaign pledge to appoint Justices in the mold of Justice Scalia (who, incidentally, has a very fine book review just released in First Things) or Justice Thomas. The champaign corks will pop here only when Bush nominates - and the Senate confirms - such a Justice, regardless of what color their skin is, what their religious beliefs are, what gender they are, or which school they went to.

Laura Ingraham is right to point out today that "[i]f the President bows to...pressure and shies away from a verifiable judicial conservative, we will be back to square one;" or, as Captain Ed gracefully puts it today, "[n]ow can we nominate a candidate whose qualities and track record presumes we control the Senate?" Quite. I would add, could we have a nominee who does not imply that conservatives are so ashamed of their legal philosophy as to refuse to publically defend it, so much so as to disavow membership of the Federalist Society as if it were the League of Shadows? In that vein, it seems to me that Dahlia Lithwick - albeit, doubtless, with a heavy heart (Lithwick being not just pro-choice but pro-Roe) - offers the best-case scenario for the post-Miers world:

"[With the Miers nomination] movement conservatives weren't willing to settle for a coded message anymore. They have built up a strong and capable stable of thinkers and jurists who are not speaking in half-promises or symbols. And they wanted a nominee with the brains and brawn to overturn Roe because it's bad law rather than just because it's "a sin." The code also didn't suffice because the right had heard the same coded promises about Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter—and had dejectedly watched them go on to uphold Roe. Sick and tired of ambiguous messages and middle-of-the-road nominees, they would not be placated by anyone who wasn't willing to say, as are Janice Rodgers Brown or Priscilla Owen or Edith Jones, that Roe must die now.

John Roberts was the last wink, or coded nominee, the far right will ever accept...[I]t's a big win for honesty, and that may be, in the end, a good thing."

I hope that Dahlia is right, because as I explained last week:

"[GOP judicial nominees] should be going in [to Senate confirmation hearings] and calmly, dispassionately and respectfuly explaining precisely why Roe was wrongly decided, demolishing the myths that surround the case (and, following from that, what precisely overruling it would do, in practical terms [q.v. at part I.a]), and commit themselves to upholding the Constitution of the United States, a pledge which inherently and inescapably requires their vote to reverse Roe."

Are we to fete outsider status or something? The liberal charge that those with an Originalist or textualist judicial philosophy are "outside the mainstream" simply isn't going to go away unless and until we are willing to stand up and publically defend those theories, and to explain in the public forum why living documentarian theories of adjudication are vacuous, asinine, deeply undemocratic, irretrievably flawed, and must therefore be discarded into the dustcan of history. Even honest liberals such as Akhil Amar yield as much. I am not ashamed of my judicial philosophy, nor so worried for its stability as to protect it from public scrutiny.

I have previously worried that the most pernicious aspect of Miers' nomination was its stiffling effect on the intellectual debate around jurisprudence. Her removal from the board seems to repudiate this view. This is a debate that should be had candidly and honestly, in the public square.

Which leads us to the final matter, being who is to follow. I have previously cheered for candidates such as Sam Alito, Maura Corrigan, or Edith Jones; having read his opinion in County of Wayne v. Hathcock, 471 Mich. 445 (2004), a case which tackled essentially the same problem as the dreaded Kelo v. New London, but with a far more sound approach, I have become a fan of Justice Robert Young of the Michigan Supreme Court. I would prefer to keep in in reserve, though, until Justice Stevens retires, as I feel that the replacement of the author of Kelo with the author of Hathcock would be the stearnest and most visible repudiation of the former decision. I would also offer Judge Diane Sykes, formerly of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, currently of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Jessica McBride is leading the charge, and makes many good points in favor of Sykes. out of a desire for consistency or at least self respect - one or the other - we must be carefull to avoid favoring a nominee who exhibits the same problems we criticize in Miers. The problem for Miers is the absence of a paper trail, the total lack of relevant experience, and most of all, the complete lack of any substantiable commitment to originalism and textualism as the underpinnings of a consistent judicial philosophy (more of my views on which here).

It appears, at first blush, that Sykes does not suffer from these problems. She has a decent-sized paper trail, and has said, in her own words, that:

"I generally follow a textualist approach to statutory interpretation and look to text and history in constitutional interpretation. I have been cautious about the expansion of the common law and generally have not been in favor of recognizing new causes of action or expanding existing theories of liability unless there is a sound, compelling reason to do so and a clear set of governing legal principles can be articulated to define the claim or scope of liability"

(source) - encouraging stuff! In terms of potential Scalia-ability (if Specter gets to coin semi-coherent neologisms, so do I), Chairman Hatch asked her during her previous confirmation hearings where we could expect biting dissents, to whit she replied "Well, biting, no. But strong and forceful perhaps" (source); well, her dissent in Wisconsin v. Oakley, 239 Wis. 2d 235, 619 N.W.2d 308 (at ¶65) suggests a decent level of potential Scalia-ability.

Praise be, the mistake is half-rectified. Let us go forward together and finish the job.

SCOTUS, Act II

Don't throw away your popcorn, folks! With Miers down, we get to begin the pointless speculation and tea-leaf reading all over again!

So dust off those oldies-but-goodies, bring out the lists, shake the tea around the cup once more, and welcome the next act.....

For a quick example of how Bush could now come clear out of left (right?) field with the next nomination by way of saying "Screw you!" to absolutely everyone, I say let's give this guy a look.

Centrist Contract Brainstorming

I thought the Democrats' contract was weak. This raises the obvious question, what would a centrist contract with America look like?

I'll start out with some things I'd like to see. Let me just add this request first, though. Let's start out by trying to list things we'd like to see and refrain from complaining that they are vague and otherwise tearing them apart. In the beginning, I think we should look for commonality of sentiment and of problems perceived. Here goes:

1. Treat Americans like adults. This means sometimes telling us things we don't want to hear. We expect our leaders to occasionally be able to pick different large constituencies across the ideological spectrum, and tell these groups things they won't like. Responsible people know that living in the real world means making difficult choices, and responsible leaders should have the guts to tell Americans when hard choices are required, describe what you think those choices are, and listen to our feedback.

2. Give us the government we can afford. All choices about what the government does must be informed by the people's ability and willingness to finance these choices.

3. Give us the government we deserve, whatever that is. Start getting more real and detailed feedback from the people. The government should, in a bi-partisan way, start doing the sorts of market research and customer feedback that private companies do. Occasional voting is not enough.

4. Give us a government we can understand. Towns should have the responsibility and resources to do what they do better and more efficiently than states and the feds. States should have the responsibility and resources to do what they do better and more efficiently than towns and the feds. The federal government should have the responsibility and resources to do what it does better and more efficiently than towns and the feds. When we pay taxes, we should have some idea about what that money might be used for. The vast majority of private individuals with a high school diploma that they deserve should be able to understand their taxes and do them in a few hours.

Curtain Closes on Act One

Miers Withdraws

A surprise ending to Act 1. What can we expect in Act 2 of My Fair Justice? I expect conservatives who opposed Miers to leap forward with their laundry lists of rockribbers. Democrats would be smart stay quiet, other than to perhaps voice a few kind platitudes. The wild card, of course, is GWB. I expect he's more than a bit irritated...

Miers Withdrawn

Despite the pretext of executive privilege issues, I think it was the ambiguous language on abortion which surfaced recently that proved fatal.

John Bolton, UN and France together! Huh?

Maybe its just me but this story ,given all the flack some time ago about how Bolton was a hard ass and wouldn't work with the UN nor collaborate with others, just caught my eye.

The United States and France circulated a Security Council draft resolution on Tuesday threatening economic sanctions if Syria fails to cooperate with a U.N. probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri....It was uncertain whether the resolution would suit Security Council members usually wary of sanctions, like Russia, China and Algeria, although U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said all had been consulted. He said he did not expect sanctions to be considered until Mehlis again reports to the council, probably around Dec. 15....Written by the United States and France and backed by Britain

Tuesday Two-fer

Cathy Young, Boston Globe columnist, Reason Contributor, and one of my favorite editorialists, now has a blog, The Y Files. Regrettably, her advertising sponsors smack of conservative kant, but I think she's a pretty reasonable and fair-minded person who I'd classify as fairly centrist.

The Pew center's recent report on American public opinion on abortion includes a wealth of detail. It surveys results from a variety of similar polls. I was surprised by the extent of expressed report for fairly substantial limits on abortion AND support for keeping Roe v. Wade. There's an interesting bit at the end about what Americans think is important in a Supreme Court nominee. A solid majority of Americans think that knowing a nominee's views on issues like abortion and affirmative action is important. So many Americans disagree with the technical insider's view that probing such matters is inappropriate. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Let's call it a three-fer. Reason's daily brickbats is always well worth a read for an accounting of government enforcement gone idiotarian, and some of the recent ones are real head-shakers. Especially the one about a NJ town planning to take a bar by eminent domain so a catholic school can build a soccer field. (The link to that actual story has gone down, BTW.)

Good News From Iraq, Part Many

Draft Constitution Adopted by Iraqi Voters

Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.

Nationwide, 78.59 percent voted for the charter while 21.41 percent voted against, the commission said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.

And then there's this:

There are now over 200,000 Iraqis either in the Iraqi army or the Iraqi police forces.

There are over 100 battalions of Iraqi army now considered battle-ready; Gen. Pace said he believed it was actually 117 battalions (which matches other reporting).

And in breaking news, the chairman stated that fully one-third of these battalions are already "in the lead" in fighting the terrorists. The other two-thirds are fighting alongside American troops but not yet ready to assume the lead.

Time for the Quagmire Chorus to move the bar again.

Here we go

NY Times: "Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report"

Media frenzy to follow.

Dems own "contract with America"

ModerateVoters.org offers a Democratic-themed 2006 "contract with America." Worth a click, interesting stuff.

Blog valuation

On a slow day here, I offer this: Someone thinks that this blog is worth more than $100,000.

Instapundit comes in at more than $3.8 million, and Daily Kos at close to $5.7 million. Conversely, my personal blog comes in at $0.0.

Bloggers On Record

The Truth Laid Bear has a list of blogs pro, anti, and neutral on Miers.

Catch Up

I'm in school now, so I've fallen behind in putting up some links that have been sent to me. Without comment, then, I give you

Extreme Middle Forum

Uncorrelated

and noted science fiction author David Brin, who has been posting on gerrymandering

Thanks to Ryan and others for the tips!

Income Paradox

This pdf has an interesting powerpoint presentation discussing the paradox that high income states are "blue states" yet high income people vote Republican, and this pdf rebuts the What's The Matter With Kansas argument that people are voting against their economic interests. The don't resolve the paradox entirely, but it seems like the income extremes drive the differences--the very rich vote Republican even if they are socially liberal, and the very poor vote Democrat even if socially conservative, but among the people in the middle, say $50K up to $200K, both parties are competitive on their income policies, and lifestyle differences are important.

DLC on Democrat Centrism, Redux

Peter Ross Range over at the DLC has some thoughts on Centrism and the future of the Democratic Party. It'll sound awfully familiar to our regular readers.

...yes, we need to find a way to offset the exaggerated polarization of our big parties and give the center its due. The way for Democrats to do that is not by mimicking the Republican hard-right strategy of driving their party toward its natural extreme. Rather, it is by seeing problems through a non-ideological lens and seeking commonsense solutions that can appeal to a broad swath of voters.

Heh. No foolin'.

(Hat Tip to Booker Rising)

Hell Freezes Over

Absolutely nothing to with politics or centrism, but vampire novelist Anne Rice has declared "...that from now on I would write only for the Lord." She's working on a multi-novel opus about Jesus.

Well, that's certainly a change of pace!

The Harriet Miers three ring circus.

As I cruise the blog-o-sphere I am struck by two things.
1)Both the left and right want a savage bloody battle (the right a bit more then the left).
2)That senate hearings use to actually have a practical purpose.

When the first supreme court justices were appointed there was no Internet, email, TV, radio or telegraph. The media of the day was newspapers, there were a lot of them, and they make the screaming heads of cable news channels seem mild. Anyone with a printing press and an attitude could lie his way to infamy. Ben Franklin had a lot of fun with this, when he published letters about his foes and competitors, while attributing them to a third person. At one point he published an article saying a competitor was dead, knowing full well he wasn't. (Rupert Murdock, the new Ben Franklin? Yeeeew!)

IMHO the reason he could get away with this, is that he had his tongue very firmly planted in his cheek, and had a genuine love of knowledge and wisdom. He was also a voice of moderation in the continental congress. (Ben Franklin the first Centrist?)

But I digress. The point I am trying to make is that the Internet has accelerated the pace and

invasiveness to an incredible level. It seem like there is no point having actual hearings. Lets just have an online poll and let the whole country vote on the nomination. The microscope of the conventional media 20 years ago is nothing compared to the current level of information mastication occurring today. You can use a site like memeorandum.com to look at an original news item, then watch it discussed in blogs, then watch the blog entry be chewed on by other blogs. By the time a physical hearing occurs few minds are left to influence. All that really is left is for the senators to play sound byte gotcha.

It would appear that Miers has been nominated, probed and rejected even before a hearing date is set. I get the distinct feeling that the bloggers have voted, and her fifteen minutes are up. Why bother with those pesky elected representatives? I'm not sure I'm happy about this.

The picture that is emerging on the net is that of the worst kind of person. A fawning sycophant, who will say whatever the listener wants to hear, just to get on the supreme court. But I've never meet the women! Heck, I've never even seen her interviewed on TV. Has she even had a sit down, pre-staged, pre-scripted “interview” on FOX? I have heard nothing but bad things. Yet I have the sense she is getting the shaft.

I know the president is busy. Syria needs invading, most of his confidants are about to be under indictment, his poll numbers suck, Iraq, yadda, yadda, yadda...... But this whole nomination thing just doesn't feel right.

It feels like he wants it to fail.
Harriet Miers, human sacrifice?
Isn't All Hallow's Eve coming up?

Ye Olde Friday Open Thread

Because it's, well, Friday.

Redistricting Redux

Steve Chapman has a good commentary over at RealClearPolitics. Check it out.

Restoring Democracy to Our Elections

The U.S Constitution provides life tenure for federal judges, which means they depart only if they die or choose to leave. It does not provide life tenure for members of Congress or state legislators, but politicians have gone a long way toward correcting that oversight.

It's true that these elected officials do have to answer to the voters every so often, but for most, elections are a symbolic ritual that have been drained of all suspense. The re-election rate for incumbent members of the U.S. House of Representatives typically exceeds 98 percent -- which means the average congressman is statistically more likely to marry Angelina Jolie than to be voted out of office.

Are They Back?

From the Wall Street Journal:

It's only taken a decade or so, but suddenly there's momentum in Congress for spending restraint. We'll be watching the fine print, but you can tell Republicans are worried about complaints from conservative voters because for a change they're trying to act, well, like Republicans.

About damn time. Drunken sailors have been looking reputable by comparison. Naturally, many Democrats are incensed that anyone would try to reduce scheduled increases from baseline in the budget. Some things never change, I guess. Or maybe they do--other Dems are quietly applauding.

Democrats are deploring an across-the-board cut as a "mindless buzz saw" that fails to set priorities and hurts the poor. And it would be nice if Congress actually debated priorities. But since the late 1990s, spending has gone up on nearly everything every year. Given Hurricane Katrina and the war on terror, an across-the-board cut is a blunt political instrument whose time has returned.

Don't miss the accompanying "Beltway Bonanza" chart, which shows where those increases have been during the Bush years. It might surprise you.

Continuing with my disastrous theme:

There is an article at Tech Central Station that really struck a nerve in me (and I don't mean in a good way). It was about the avian flu and disasters in general. You can make you own judgements about the article, but one section really ticked me off.

“After all, our recent history is full of doomy media sensations that never amounted to much. Remember global cooling? Or swine flu? Or Y2K? Even the recent SARS breakout proved to be dangerous but not devastating. “

I think the general public needs to realize that the reason previous “doomy media sensations” didn't amount to much is that professionals working in those fields sacrificed health, sanity, life and limb to ensure that nothing happens.

I helped vaccinate people against Swine flu when I was in high school. We did just about everybody in the town. So of course they didn't get sick.

I was involved in insuring our critical systems were Y2K compliant. They were definitely not, and replacing them by the deadline damn near killed me. My health hasn't been the same since. If people like myself hadn't fixed a plethora of problems, things would have gotten really ugly.

SARS is a highly contagious and deadly virus. There was an outbreak in North America. If not for the diligence and dedication of health professionals it could have easily spread and been the 21 century equivalent of the 1918 pandemic.

There is a reason the death toll from the last two years of hurricanes hasn't numbered in the tens of thousand and it starts with a bunch of much maligned people called federal employees. These are people who (in spite of the anti-government belligerence of the current administration) work long hours and make considerable sacrifice to ensure you know a hurricane is coming.

People need to stop laughing at the disasters that didn't happen, an thank god that someone is out there watching their back.

Hurricane Wilma is a Category 5

If you had told me in March that we were going to have three Cat 5 storms in the Gulf of Mexico this year, I would have been really skeptical. I've plotted the data and read the papers, but three Cat 5's !? I know the data indicates more storms, and more intense storms, but this is getting a little ridiculous. The trend lines also indicate that next year will be as bad, if not worse. There is no way we can pay for this kind of repeated damage. My dad has a condominium in Florida. He tells me that they still haven't finished repairing last year's damage.

On a different note:

I left the Catholic Church at the age of 18. After looking at the other available religions I became and agnostic. Over the years I have drifted to atheism. But the programming the vicious little nuns inflicted on me has remained intact. They created a virtual nun in my brain. Over the years I have managed to gag her and lock her in a mental closet. But after all the earthquakes, tsunamis, bird flu and hurricanes, she has managed to spit out the gag and is screaming at the top of her lungs, "Mankind has been very bad and god is now punishing you".

I am a man of science. I do not believe in the wraith of god, the current spat of disasters are natural processes. Indications are that some have been aggravated by man's cavalier attitude toward nature, but still, they are just the laws of Physics at work.

On the other hand, that nun is getting really annoying.

Open Thread Tuesday!

Why? Because it's there!

3rd Party Conference

I attended a portion of the 3rd Party National Conference in Merrimack, New Hampshire this weekend. The conference brought together a number of minor parties which might disagree on policy, but share common interests in terms of ballot access and voting rights. The conference was organized by Daniel Vovak, whose own challenge to Barack Obama and Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate in Illinous was unsuccessful.

Friday's sessions were covered by the Nashua Telegraph, and featured a speaker from the Green Party. Saturday morning, I listened to the chairman of the American Patriot Party denounce corruption in Washington, and the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System. At lunch, I chatted with a representative of the New York Constitution Party, which among other things would like to abolish the income tax. There was also a large contingent from the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.

Jesse Johnson

I wasn't expecting to be impressed by anyone among these fringe parties, but I was. Jesse Johnson, the 2004 candidate for governor of the West Virginia Mountain Party is a charismatic speaker with a rich voice. A West Virgina native, he worked in the film industry for many years, both as an actor and with film crews. The Mountain Party was formed as a left-of-center party focused on protecting West Virginia's environment. "After having been a Republican for 26 years, I switched to the Mountain Party," Johnson said. "I brought them more to the center than they had ever been." Johnson's 2.5% of the vote was pretty respectable as third party candidates go.

The luncheon speaker was Bev Harris, of blackboxvoting.org, speaking to an audience of 30 about the problems of electronic voting machines. While Harris apparently has a history of getting into spats with former allies (here and here), she seemed quite knowledgeable and professional in her talk. She warned that the boom in voting machine procurement following the passage of the Help America Vote Act created an environment where vendors may employ corrupt practices in order to win contracts. Without alleging that vote fraud had occurred, she said that electronic voting machines without paper audit trails were ripe for abuse. The possibility of such fraud has been an obsession of liberal groups like MoveOn. But members of the audience who belonged to right-of-center parties expressed their full agreement with her concerns. Harris isn't wild about a printer add-on to electronic touch-screen machines either. She fears that many voters won't bother to check the printout. Instead, she favors optically-scanned paper ballots which voters fill out on their own.

Is western civilization coming to an end?

There have been doom sayer ever since there has been anything worth dooming. Prophets, politicians, writers, sages, wise men, wackos, newspapers, radio, tv and cult leaders have been selling doom for quite a while. There is always a market for their wares, so sales have been brisk over the centuries (millennium?). Just off hand, I can't think of a prediction of doom that ever came about. On the other hand, its only been within the last 200 years that we had anything resembling modern science, and only within the last 50 that we have the computer available to model nature.

What started me writing this, is an article from the Times in the UK. It foams at the mouth more than I like, but it got me thinking of my grandparents. They lived through the great depression, and it permanently changed the way they looked at the world. I am going to assume everyone reading this has never been homeless and starving. That no tech savvy blog reader has ever know true want, gone for days without food or been tossed out on the street penniless and alone. The generation that experienced the great depression have, for the most part, left the building. With their passing goes a wisdom born in fire and tribulation. That wisdom can be summed up in the boy scout phrase “be prepared”.

One of my grandmothers had an enormous garden. As long as she was able, she grew her own food and canned it for future use. Gramma knew what it was like to have nothing, and she wasn't going to go there again.

The great depression was about a level of deprivation that most living Americans have not experienced. Oh sure, we have a cataclysmic hurricane every once in a while, and the occasional mega flood, but historically speaking they are really small potatoes. Even the great depression didn't destroy our civilization. Governments still operated, goods came to market and things eventually returned to “normal”.

As I ramble on, I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make. Should we all put concrete bunkers in our backyards and stock them with food? No! I once read an article about Bosnia's civil war. It said something that stuck with me for years, and I'm paraphrasing: “Individuals don't survive, but a community can”. If civilization collapses and you have resources, someone will come along, shoot you and take them.

I guess I just wish people would have a better knowledge of history. That they would understand that civilizations come and go for a lot of different reasons, but eventually the do leave. It looks like the Anasazi lost a battle with climate change, while a Peruvian civilization ended because tectonic upheaval cut off their aqueducts. Did the Mayans loose to deforestation? The Minoans went out with a volcanic blast. And does anybody want to take a stab at why Rome fell?

Living in fear, with an apartment stacked with cases of Spam and drinking water, is silly. But living in complete denial about our own mortality is just as silly.

PS: The Seattle times has a really nice series of articles on climate change (make sure you scroll down and click on the pretty graphs). Including a question and answer series with a respected climatologist.

The Most Important Thing...

...going on today is not a football game or a nomination debate or orbiting taikonauts changing their underwear.

It's the vote on the constitutional referendum in Iraq. Apparently "under the radar" this week as far as the major media outlets were concerned, the day is now here and Iraqis are voting. If this is how they report positive developments....

Over the last week there have been positive signs for passage of the Constitution. A last-minute deal was reached with Sunni leaders in Parliament on the language, one that allows an easier method of modifying the Constitution in the next Parliament. The largest Sunni party dropped opposition to the refrendum. Their offices were quickly attacked by insurgents but their position did not change. Some Sunni leaders who had opposed the referendum softened their stances and told their followers to vote their consciences. Some Sunni tribal chiefs urged their members to go to the polls, and vote in favor. Sabotage knocked out electricity and water in the Baghdad area overnight, but by morning the power grid was coming back up and the taps were flowing.

It may be a day or two before we have any results. But extremely tight security seems to have held violence and terrorist attacks on polling places down, and turnout at the polls is reported to be heavier than the previous election.

Cross your fingers. Or better yet....

UPDATE: Initial reports from Iraq indicate that the Constitutional referendum will PASS. Initial counts from at least two of the four Sunni-majority provinces indicate positive majorities voting in favor of the referendum.

UPDATE: This AP story about the referendum makes me wonder if it's simply impossible for AP to find anything good about Iraq. Part Deux: I mean they seem really really sad that it passed....

RESULTS: Partial results are now available, and it looks like a solid "Yes" vote. Only in Anbar province did the anti's make the 2/3's NO vote required of four provinces to stop the Constitution. (No results from Salahuddin province yet, though it may also get more than 2/3's NO votes. Nineveh and Tamim provinces went YES by large margins.)

Do Prisoners Have an Unqualified Right to Abortions?

The High Court has temporarily blocked a federal judge's ruling the ordered Missouri prison officials to transport a pregnant inmate to a local abortion clinic, in order to have an abortion. Missouri state law forbids any tax dollars being used to fund abortions, but U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple ruled Thursday that "the prison system was blocking the woman from exercising her right to an abortion and ordered that the woman be taken to the clinic Saturday."

Justice Clarence Thomas issued the SCOTUS ruling, acting alone, and granting the temporary stay until a final ruling can be made. One has to ask the question: Do prisoners have an unqualified right to abortions? Prison officials estimate costs for transportation and security around $350. As the story reports, this unnamed woman "has said she will borrow money for the abortion from friends and family but cannot afford to pay for transportation." Is it the state's responsibility to pay for prisoner abortions?

Under the Missouri law passed in July, the prison system does not provide transportation for prisoners. The story continues:

Missouri's prison system does not provide transportation or security for inmates seeking abortions. The policy is based on a state law that prohibits the spending of public funds "for the purpose of performing or assisting an abortion not necessary to save the life of the mother."

The state argued that this policy was reasonable because her abortion is not medically necessary. That's certainly a good point. Another thing to note: This woman is in prison. Do even prisoners have the right to have taxpayers pay for their abortions? Even those which aren't involving the health of the mother?

"It is not the prison that has imposed the burden, but the prisoner's violation of the law that resulted in her incarceration that has imposed the burden," Attorney General Jay Nixon's office said.

The woman's attorney, James Felakos of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in court papers that the woman is running out of time because she is 16 weeks to 17 weeks pregnant, and Missouri bars abortions after 22 weeks.

In court papers, the woman said she discovered she was pregnant shortly after being arrested in California in July on a Missouri parole violation. She said she tried to get an abortion in California but was transferred back to Missouri before it could be performed.

This woman's claim just doesn't wash. The fact is, the burden of transportation was created by her breaking the law. If Missouri law forbids state-funded abortions, one cannot sidestep that ruling based on the fact that the woman cannot pay her transportation costs, because she's in prison. Also, if the state law banning abortions after 22 weeks is valid, that why is the law banning state funding subject to judicial override? What right does a federal judge have to overturn Missouri law in one case, but not in another? If this woman's right to an abortion is so absolute, then what's to stop this judge from overturning the abortion law itself?

Last I checked, prisoners don't get the right of a free ride to the abortion clinic, unless it's a health issue. The judge's ruling seems out of order.

You can read the whole story here

source: AP

Bush Admin Staging Events

The moderate vopice has a round-up of coverage over the Bush admin staging an event to look like an honest give and take when it was all orchestrated, and lying about it.

Staged Bush Military Photo Op Caught By Reporters: The Nose Grows?

And so we see even more of this administration's credibility vanish. Yes, run-throughs may not be unusual at White House events. Advance work is par for the course.

But the administration's defenders apparently forget that earlier in the day the press was told this would be unscripted, with no screening. That's flatly stated in the reporters' questions and in the video CNN report you hopefully watched above.

So, unless the reporters at the White House briefing had some evil, coordinated agenda, the White House...misspoke...and due to a satellite feed everyone saw the...misstatement. Why does this matter? You look at polls and the controversies this administration is becoming enmeshed in and there is one common denominator: credibility.

I just saw this and may not have all the facts straight, but I find it very troubling at a glance. It really goes to honesty and credibility, and this strains it well past the point of tolerance for me. It's extraordinarily disrespectful of the America people.

Who's afraid of John Boehner

The New Republic touts Congressman John Boehner (Ohio, 8th district) (pronounced "bAIn-er") as the next majority leader. Boehner is a deficit hawk ("a harsh critic of Congressional pork, he didn't ask for any pet projects in Congress's recent earmark-laden $286 million transportation bill"), and since 1997 "has reinvented himself as something of a studious bipartisan legislator...and was one of just eight House members to vote against the measure."

The article concludes:

He might well crack down hard on federal spending--something DeLay, who knows well the electoral value of pork and other budget goodies like prescription drug subsidies, talked about far more than he actually did. Boehner is also a much smoother public spokesman than any other current Republican leader--a sharp dresser with a reasonable Midwestern manner. He's probably a better salesman for Republican policies in middle America than any of his potential rivals. It's another reason why House Democrats can't be satisfied with getting rid of Tom DeLay. They need to get rid of the Republican majority.

Black/Gay Equality and the Republican Party

A few days ago our own Abel said this:

For those of us who have anticipated the battle for the soul of the Republican Party, it looks as if the war might begin sooner than we thought. Gay Rights--or more appropriately opposing gay rights--have replaced abortion as the dominant social issue of the Christian conservative movement. Many GOP Senators have used these two issues to rise to prominence, particularly Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn. Neither of these Senators appeared to be ready to jump on the Meirs ship yesterday, and today it looks as if they may have found what they are looking for.

In response I wrote this, which has led to an interesting conversation between Dennis, The Moderate Republican, and Shay from Booker Rising. For context alone, Dennis is a black/gay Republican minister from Minnesota and Booker Rising is a blog for black centrists. You can read the posts that followed at each site here, here, here, and here.

This is a discussion/debate that not only needs to happen among moderate Republicans, but centrists from both parties. How do we tackle the issue of gay rights in a way that firmly expresses our point of view, without alienating certain groups or constituencies, or should that even be a concern? This question plagued John Kerry and, to a lesser extent, George W. Bush throughout the last election. Neither passed with flying colors, IMO.

Before commenting, I encourage you to read some of the stuff from Shay and Dennis, whose view points as black centrists are key to this discussion.

Friday Open Thread

For all those things that just don't fit, or whatever strikes your fancy (within the bounds of voluntary decorum).

A Request....

...of our thread-originating bloggers. Please keep an eye on your threads, and delete out any spam appearing in them. We are apparently getting hit much sooner than we used to be, with spam showing up in only four or five days, and in quantity.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled arguments, debates, and critical examinations of our Peculiar Institutions and Diverse Culture.

Happy 230th Birthday!

To the United States Navy.

Mortgage Interest Deduction Changes on WHAT table?

One story making the rounds today suggests that a recently commissioned bipartisan panel report puts changes to the mortgage interest tax deduction on the table.

Those breaks are heavily skewed toward high-income tax payers, said panel member James Michael Poterba, associate head of the economics department at MIT.

The top 2.2 percent of tax returns claim 22 percent of the benefits from the mortgage-interest deduction, he noted.

And the deduction disproportionately benefits homeowners who itemize their deductions. In 2002, of the 130 million federal tax returns filed, only 46 million itemized. Of those, 37 million claimed the mortgage-interest deduction. (Those who don't itemize just take the standard deduction, which they would get even if they didn't own a home.

Leaving the merits of such tweaks aside, I see a minimum of 37 million reasons why this idea won't stay on the table long. And if I presume that one third to one half of the 37 million returns are joint returns, we're up to 50 million reasons.

And if we don't leave the merits aside, we're left contemplating the likelihood that a GOP-majority Congress would risk being seen as willing to increase one portion of the tax burden on high-income earners, presuming that most or all of them would sit still for it in return for a concurrent downtick on the alternative minimum tax.

I doubt this report fosters movement. My guess is that the democrats will want to just tweak the AMT so that it affects fewer upper/middle class income earners, and the GOP will stick with wanting to abolish it. I'd bet no more than a stopgap uptweak of the income level for AMT kick-in occurs. Which is not that bad, really.

Past Rhetoric to Headcount Math

The further right's backlash against the Miers nomination has focused to some extent on the idea that conservatives deserve their in-your-face outspoken rockribbed conservative jurist. But would such a nominee have the voted needed?

Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe says no:

In criticizing Miers, many social conservatives hankered for another woman, Texas appeals court Judge Edith Jones, an open critic of the Roe v. Wade decision that granted abortion rights.

Last year, in the case of McCorvey v. Hill, which sought to reopen Roe v. Wade, Jones wrote: ''That the [Supreme] court's constitutional decisionmaking leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication."

Strong words, and Jones, 56, is well known both for her legal acumen and her willingness to take uncompromising stands. But she would run into a buzz saw in the Senate.

Democrats have shown uncharacteristic unity in blocking openly right-wing judicial nominees, and Jones' record is as conservative as any. A Jones nomination would almost certainly be opposed by all 44 Democrats and Independent James Jeffords of Vermont, who usually votes with the Democrats.

In addition, Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania have all urged Bush to choose a moderate Supreme Court nominee, and would feel betrayed by the choice of Jones.

This is all FWIW. I can't vouch for Canellos having an objective perspective. The interesting question to me relates to the headcount math. Any verifiable staunchly conservative jurist can count on 45 democratic senatorial NOs __AND__ probably a filibuster if necessary. Only 6 moderate Republicans from moderate states would need to swap sides to shoot down a neo-Borkian. So I think all the anti-Miers GOPers need to re-consider whether or not their team actually has the necessary juice to deliver what GOPers think they deserve.

I'm sure the most ardent ones will argue that moderate GOP senators owe the party loyalty on such an important issue. The problem with this idea is that senators, know who they owe first. I seriously doubt whether such senators feel they owe more to some staunchly conservative base than they do to their own constiuents, who may well not be down AT ALL with a very conservative jurist.

So how many more senatorial seats can the GOP reasonably expect to capture? Living next to RI as I do, I know that many GOPers hanker to take out moderates like Chaffee, but the idea that a rock-ribber winning in the primaries would have a shot in the general election feels like fantasy to me. Could all this be evidence that the GOP is running into the glass ceiling of centrism, that they can't get much further pushing a consevative social agenda at the behest of a big part of their base, because they've already gotten the vote of everyone who might be down with that? I think this point is approaching...the kicking and screaming might be a sign.

Good News From Iraq, Part something or other

Iraqis Reach Deal on the Constitution

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi leaders reached a breakthrough deal on last minute changes in the constitution Tuesday, and at least one Sunni Arab party said it would reverse its rejection of the document and urge its supporters to approve it in next weekend's referendum...

...A top Sunni negotiator, Ayad al-Samarraie of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that if the current parliament approves the measure, "we will stop the campaign rejecting the constitution and we will call on Sunni Arabs to vote yes."

UPDATED STORY: Iraqis Reach Breakthrough Deal on Charter

New Centrist Blog

Welcome The Skeptical Centrist, whose skepticism seems to extend to the topic of religion.

Progressive Insurrection

Dennis Sanders calls for one, in the T.R. sense, over the The Yellow Line. I agree, but I'm agraid the word "progressive" has been permanently taken over by the left, and a new word, e.g. bullmoosery, is needed.

Acerbic Heller

T.R. Heller is no relation to me.

Theodore Roosevelt Heller, 88, loving father of Charles (Joann) Heller; dear brother of the late Sonya (the late Jack) Steinberg. Ted was discharged from the U.S. Army during WWII due to service related injuries, and then forced his way back into the Illinois National Guard insisting no one tells him when to serve his country. Graveside services Tuesday 11 a.m. at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery (Ziditshover section), 1700 S. Harlem Ave., Chicago. In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans.

Centrist Revolution

David Brooks writes in today's NYT's:

"After a while, you get sick of the DeLays of the right and the Deans of the left. After a while, you tire of the current Republicans, who lack a coherent governing philosophy, and the current Democrats, who are completely bereft of ideas. After a while you begin to wonder: Did I really get engaged in politics so I could spend months arguing about the confirmation of Harriet Miers, the John Major of American jurisprudence?

And when you begin thinking this way, you find yourself emotionally disengaging from the exhausted clans that dominate the present. You find yourself going back to basics and considering the fundamental questions: What visions originally excited me about politics and government? If it were completely up to me, where would I plant my flag?

Here's where I would plant mine.

I believe in the lost tradition of American politics, the tradition of Hamilton, Lincoln and the Bull Moose. In other words, I believe that social mobility is the core of the American experience. I believe that society should be structured so that as many boys and girls as possible can work, and rise the way young Hamilton and Lincoln did...

I know, having learned it from Lincoln and Roosevelt, that individual initiative should always be tied to national union. I know we need a national service program to bind our segmented youth through citizenship. I know we need to protect the natural heritage that defines us. I know America has to persevere in its exceptional mission to promote freedom, and the effort to promote democracy in the Arab world is one of the most difficult and noble endeavors any great power has undertaken.

When I cut myself loose from the push and shove of today's weary political titans, and go back to basics, I find myself strangely invigorated.

It's time for an insurrection."

Brooks really hits it home for me. I once worked in Republican politics and for elected officials and was involved in campaigns one way or another for over ten years... Recently, I moved home from Washington D.C. to the Pacific Northwest... I promised myself, upon my return, that I wasn't going to get involved in politics again. I had grown weary of my options, of the petty partisan bickering over policy ideas that lack substance, of not feeling like I had a place in either party... No longer a conservative, not able to stomach liberalism.

My promise to myself didn't last long... I am just as involved in politics now as when I left, but on a different scale… I started this blog, and am working for local initiatives and/or candidates and staying away from the national politics that left me so bitter about the current state of our country. In a way, like Brooks, I have gone back to the basics, back to what interested me in politics in the first place.

I suppose I just can't give up because I believe in what David Brooks has written, I believe in the Bull Moose, the Charging RINO, the Mind of Chris Battles, the Boi from Troy, Greg's Opinion, the Centrist Coalition, and the rest of you out there... I know there are millions of American's who feel as we do, who are just waiting for one of the two political parties to pull it's head out of it's ass. Waiting for our hero, the one candidate who will rise above it all. Whether it be McCain, Giuliani, Bayh, or Clinton... Sometime, somewhere, somebody has to lead, someone has stoke the hopes and dreams of the political center, the majority of the American electorate that has all but been forgotten by those currently in charge. It is way past time.

So I ask: where would you plant your flag?

Hat tip to the Moose.

Cross-posted at West Sound in the Center.

We interrupt our regular partisan programming for this amendment

George W. Bush campaigned on being a "uniter, not a divider". This past week he achieved that by getting 90 Senators (46 Republicans and 43 Democrats) to define and limit interrogation techniques (read "torture") via an amendment to a military spending bill.

The author of the amendment, John McCain stated

what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies.

Simple, elegant reason.

The administration smartly responded by threatening a veto, stating

the measure would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bringing terrorists to justice."

I've heard the arguments about how this war on terrorism is a "new war". I've also heard the Geneva convention doesn't apply to these non-soldiers. But its very difficult to deny the simplicity and dignity of McCain's amendment. We are better than that. Apparently the vast majority of Senators on both sides of the aisle agree.

Nicaragua

It's not often at all that I find myself agreeing with New York Times editorials.

This is one of those rare times. The Sandinistas are threatening to derail a shaky democracy and return the county to dictatorship.

Chavez of Venezuala and Castro of Cuba stand ready to facilitate the resurgent Sandinistas. A return to thugocracy in Nicaragua is in no one's best interest, other than that of the thugs. NYT says "more [American help] is needed." Amen! But what kind, and how much? And how, in these times, can helping a shaky democracy be sold to the American people?

The Politics Of Polarization

Check out the Third Way report on the Democratic Party entitled The Politics of Polarization. I'm reading it now.

Some excerpts

First, our politics is more polarized than the people themselves. Thus, a system of polarized parties does not provide a natural home for the plurality of Americans who define themselves as moderates. Indeed, it
leaves them feeling frustrated, unrepresented, and alienated from political life.
Second, this polarization creates substantial distance between the political parties (and governmental institutions) and the people. Many Americans do not want to choose between a vigorous economy and a strong safety net, between individual liberty and national security, between social tolerance and moral tradition, or between military strength and international cooperation, and they resent a politics that forces them to do so.
...
But one thing is clear: the polarization of the parties has created an opportunity for a political leader — from either the center-right or the center-left — to capture the hearts and the votes of the vast legion of moderate voters who are not comfortable calling either party “home.”
...
We found religious faith to be the overriding factor behind the great sorting- out. The impact of church attendance on voting behavior has increased significantly. Moreover, traditionalism and modernism are now more important markers of political orientation than is broad religious affiliation.
...
It is also a matter of voters
actually switching party allegiance.
Today, fully 38 percent of self-identified
Republicans report that they once thought
of themselves as Democrats. By contrast,
only 22 percent of current Democrats
(primarily liberals) once thought of
themselves as Republicans.

There's also a lot of data and charts.

Bork calls Miers nomination a 'disaster'

The nomination of Harriet Miers continues to unravel.

Robert Bork talking to Tucker Carlson tonight:

TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

JUDGE ROBERT BORK: Not a bit. I think it’s a disaster on every level...[This is] a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.

CARLSON: What about conservatives in Washington. I no longer live there, so I don’t have quite my finger on the pulse of it. But what’s your sense of how Bush’s supporters feel about Harriet Miers?

BORK: Well, those who are involved in the process have some reason to stick with the White House — not because they believe what the White House has done is wise, but they can’t jump overboard with this decision. But everybody else I’ve talked to ranges between disapproval and outrage.

Even some Social Conservatives are jumping ship; Ned Ryun is already overboard, and James Dobson seems to be getting ready to follow. Here's Ryun:

I, along with other young conservatives, didn’t sweat blood last fall to elect this President for him to nominate, at best, a second-rate nominee who I doubt very strongly will be a conservative justice...I hope that Republican Senators will realize that they do have a significant role to play, and that it is not simply acquiescing to the President and the White House over this nomination. I hope that conservatives will wake up and realize that too much is at stake to allow this nomination to proceed unopposed. I hope that conservatives will call the White House and their Senators and insist that Bush retract the Miers’ nomination and send a better qualified nominee to the Senate.

Even the Wall Street Journal has come out openly against:

[H]aving spent last evening communing here with some 1,000 conservatives at National Review's 50th anniversary dinner, we see a political disaster in the making.

We talked to quite a few people, and we heard not a single kind word about the nomination from anyone who wasn't on the White House staff...The White House seems genuinely befuddled by the intensity of conservative opposition...The White House position seems to be that Bush gave the Supreme Court an excellent leader in Chief Justice John Roberts (on this point, of course, we agree wholeheartedly), and that what the president was seeking in his second pick was not someone with "sharp elbows" but a reliable "conservative" vote. This is similar to the left's description of Clarence Thomas as a mere follower of Antonin Scalia. If the White House adopting this invidious caricature as its ideal, conservatives have every reason to be angry.

Conventional wisdom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for confirmation. We're not so sure. From what we saw last night, the right is furious at President Bush...And while he can laugh off the Angry Left, which would never support him no matter what he did, the Angry Right is a force he'd be a fool to misunderestimate.

Finally, here is a short list of people who are "out" against Miers: Bork, Schlafly, Steyn, Noonan, Krauthammer, Will, Frum, Norquist, Weyrich, Coulter, Levin, Bauer, Malkin, Goldberg, Kristol, Savage, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Novak, Buchanan, the Eagle Forum, Operation Rescue, the National Review, the Cato Institute…Is there actually anyone, apart from the WH payroll, Hugh Hewitt, Beldar and members of the Democratic party, who supports Harriet Miers, and would the last rat to abandon this fast-sinking ship please switch off the lights?

This Friday's Open Thread

Thoughts on ham, holiday ham, evergreens and ham, Harriet Miers, Vincent D'Onofrio, your favorite team, the price of gas and the price of tea in China, are all welcome. All odes are especially welcome.

Sour Krauthammer

When conservatives like Charles Krauthammer are calling on President Bush to withdraw the Miers nomination, it will be easy for Democrats (aside from Harry Reid) to oppose her, and with a handful of Republicans joining them, the nomination could easily go down.

There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous.

It will be argued that this criticism is elitist. But this is not about the Ivy League. The issue is not the venue of Miers's constitutional scholarship, experience and engagement. The issue is their nonexistence.

The only question for Democrats is if they should go for the easy KO, and if that would allow the President a do-over which would result in a more forceful and distinguished conservative nominee.

Deck The Rhetorical Halls Open Prediction Thread

Last Sunday, I noticed that Lowe's had already begun decking their halls of commerce with heaping piles of Christmas/holiday fare. When I worked in retail at a younger age, Thanksgiving was a solid firewall against this. But now that the pent-up flood of Christmas-driven, profit-motivated merchandising has broken the Pilgrim dam, it's streamed right over Halloween and washed onto the shores of the first week of October. Yikes!

Noticing this was bad enough, but it had to be compounded by my getting accosted by someone who had apparently fired out of Sunday morning service full of the fuel of the power of the lord. This guy was bent on convincing me that all the decorations were secular because [I paraphrase here] the politically correct had driven the Christ out of Christmas.I felt engagement to be a bad strategy given my primary goal, that of quickly buying some bags of cement (before the stores filled with released churchgoers-I was too late). So I largely held my tongue, but I had my doubts that any marketeer would eschew the selling of giant inflatable Jesuses if there were money to be made. Not how markets work.

Anyway, that inspired in me the notion that now was the time to get ahead of the curve in predicting holiday and winter-related events as driven by the partisan wings. As we noticed last year, some of these are what media insiders refer to as evergreens, meaning they will work any time and stay relevant. So this is an open thread for winter and holiday predictions, and for identifying holiday evergreens. I'll save my predictions for the comments.

Comments closed due to spam.

Bush Dusts Off Bully Pulpit

Bush vows to stay course in Iraq

WASHINGTON - President Bush accused Islamic militants on Thursday of seeking to “enslave whole nations and intimidate the world” and charged they have made Iraq their main front.

“The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,” Bush said. The president has been stepping up his defense of his Iraq policy in the face of declining public support for the war and a crucial test in Iraq with the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum.

If you believe in the effort to democratize Iraq subsequent to its invasion (even if on questionable or even false pretenses), and hope this effort semi-succeeds, then you're like me. And you've been hoping the President would start making the case for it more often and more forcefully. This is bound to inflame public opinion in some quarters, but I think it has to be done for the sake of momentum, and to help ready the people should substantive individual sacrifices (beyond those of the fallen and their loved ones) be asked for. I hope this is not a one time thing, and that Bush has indeed seen the necessity and the power of regular use of the bully pulpit. Time will tell. Bush's actions as President thus far give us little reason to think he'll take this tack, as it requires spending substantial time far outside his personal comfort zone.

Though it may do no good, I'm going to point out here that this post has not been started out of any sense of pro-war triumphalism, and hope it does not elicit the need in anti-war visitors to recite their litany of anti-war and anti-Bush sentiments. I hope this PR foray succeeds in shoring up public support for an efffort that I think is worthwhile and that CAN succeed, even if imperfectly. By now, I think we all know both that visitors' mileage varies widely, and the ways in which it varies. It has already been re-hashed ad nauseum. If you feel the need, so be it. To what purpose is another question.

Ham Sandwich, Redux

Ronnie Earle got a new grand jury just seated to "re-indict" Tom DeLay on new charges of money laundering and conspiracy to same. This happened within hours of DeLay's attorney filing for dismissal of the original indictment on ex post facto grounds.

AP is now breaking the story that Earle became visibly upset when the original* grand jury refused to indict on the same charges due to a lack of evidence.

The sources, who only commented anonymously because of grand jury secrecy, said Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle became visibly angry when the grand jurors last week signed a document declining to indict, known as a "no bill."

One source said the sole evidence Earle presented was a DeLay interview with the prosecutor, in which DeLay said he was generally aware of activities of his associates. He is charged in an alleged money laundering scheme to funnel corporate money to Texas legislative candidates in violation of state law.

The source said that Earle tried to convince the jurors that if DeLay "didn't say, 'Stop it,' he gave his tacit approval."

The mood was unpleasant," another source said, describing Earle's reaction.

"We have inquired carefully into the case" and "failed to find a bill of indictment against him," the grand jury said.

Hold the mayo.

UPDATE: DeLay's defense team has alleged prosecutorial misconduct on Earle's part in their latest filings.

DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin said prosecutor Ronnie Earle "and his staff engaged in an extraordinarily irregular and desperate attempt to contrive a viable charge and get a substitute indictment of Tom DeLay before the expiration of the statute of limitations."

Seems like an accurate description. Is anyone surprised?

(*--Correction: I stated above that Earle's anger was from the original grand jury failing to indict on money laundering. The grand jury that refused to indict was actually the second grand jury involved in the last week or so, not the original grand jury that issued the campaign finance indictment, or the third brand new grand jury that issued the money laundering indictment this Monday. When the second grand jury refused to return a true bill on Friday, Earle found another. The statute on the last "overt act" ran out on Tuesday.)

Buffaloed

The Moderate Voice is featured in a piece in the Buffalo News

There are bloggers representing many different varieties of liberalism and conservatism. Most are preaching to their ideological choir - not that there's anything wrong with that. Partisanship sells, as anyone who scans the publishing world's nonfiction best-seller lists is well aware.

Chrisse Hynde once sang that "in the middle of the road you see the darndest things." That could be the motto of Joe Gandelman, a former journalist in San Diego, who heads TheModerateVoice.com, a thoughtful blog planted firmly in the political center.

"This doesn't mean that . . . I don't take a strong stand," Gandelman explained in an e-mail interview. "I do and throughout American history centrists and moderates have taken positions, often strong ones."

When was Chrisse Hynde ever in the middle of the road? I don't know. But congrats to Joe on being big in Buffalo.

And the Nominee Is ...

Dick Cheney.

Well okay no, but she is his 2005 equivalent. Back in 2000, George W. Bush put Dick Cheney in charge of finding his vice-presidential nominee. We all know how that turned out. He has taken a similar route this morning, nominating his White House counsel, 60 year-old Harriet Miers, to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

This nomination is hard to respond to. We know very, very little about Ms. Miers’ personal views on just about anything. Her resume, outlined here in a November 2004 New York Times profile, is nowhere near as impressive as that of John Roberts (although admittedly he did set the bar tremendously high). She has kept a very low profile in Washington since 2001.

I will certainly make no overall judgment about Miers’ nomination until I know more about her and her views. The Senate will have a tougher nut to crack with this one … and they thought Roberts had a short paper trail! I am somewhat troubled by her comparably undistinguished political and legal record, and more than a little concerned that the president would choose her amid continuing charges of appointing less-than-qualified loyalists to positions of high responsibility (a la Brownie).

Those worries aired, I have not seen anything yet that immediately disqualifies her categorically in my eyes. She certainly has not been the kind of ideological warrior that many on the right were hoping would be nominated this morning. The angst among posters at RedState and The Corner is palpable. But, as I said, we have little knowledge whatsoever about her positions.

I really just don’t know. Much remains to be learned, but in the end this morning my initial reaction, just as it was with Roberts, is that it could be much worse. Unlike with Roberts, however, I don’t have the feeling that it couldn’t have been significantly better.

Finally, on a cynical note, I wonder if Miers is not a sacrificial lamb designed to draw fire on qualification grounds … i.e. if Democrats oppose her and sink the nomination, Bush then turns around and nominates a very qualified, but very ideological, alternative. I don’t think this scenario is likely, but wanted to just mention the possibility.

We’ll know much more in the very near future. As they say, stay tuned.

[Crossposted at Charging RINO.]

How to make Republicans: The extremism of the anti-war movement

Last week, I wrote two posts on last weekend's anti-war rally in Washington. In the first one, I withheld commentary but declared that "it's good to see such political passion every now and then". In the second one, I noted, via Christopher Hitchens, that the rally was organized by two extremist groups, one of which, International ANSWER, has expressed support for some of the most awful regimes on the planet (including those of Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Slobodan Milosevic): "It's truly shameful," I concluded, "that what was a vocal (and perhaps justifiable) protest against a war that was more or less botched from the get-go was in fact organized by such loathsome groups."

Those of you who have read The Reaction (regularly or irregularly) or have read some of my posts here at Centerfield know my views on the Iraq War: Like many other liberal-moderate hawks, I was for it at the outset, given what I knew at the time, but I have since been a vocal critic of the occupation and of President Bush's leadership (or lack thereof). However, I think that the job needs to be finished -- that is, Iraq needs to be stabilized -- before any significant withdrawal of U.S. forces occurs, lest Iraq descend into chaos.

I sympathize with the concerns of many of the protesters who showed up in Washington and elsewhere last weekend. My view is that the job needs to be done better, not halted immediately, but there is indeed something to be said for the expression of such political passion -- sometimes I worry that there isn't nearly enough of it now that political activism has been largely co-opted by inside-the-beltway lobbyists and money-driven groups operating on the internet. But the problem isn't just that the demonstration in Washington was organized by sympathizers of totalitarianism, it's that the anti-war movement, such as there even is one to speak of, has been polluted by extremists far outside the mainstream of American society, many of whom seem to be using the anti-war movement as a platform for the expression of unrelated concerns.

Thus, as Lawrence Kaplan notes in The New Republic, writing about the event in Washington, "[f]ringe issues... dominate[d] the day. Where the Vietnam antiwar movement focused directly on the war, with parts of it evolving over time into a broader indictment of 'the system,' [Saturday's] march walk[ed] backward, addressing a litany of pet causes before it even [got] to Iraq." And it didn't help that those fringe issues typically anti-Israeli (and, one suspects, anti-Semitic) sentiments. To be fair, Kaplan mentions that some of the protesters found this fringe element quite disturbing... and meddlesome. How do you focus on the Iraq War when there are loud voices protesting everything America is doing around the world and right at home, indeed, when there are such voices proclaiming every left-wing cause imaginable? I can sympathize with the concerns of the genuine anti-war protesters, but not with the rabid anti-Americanism that showed up last weekend and threatened to drown out the real issue -- which, in case you've forgotten, is Iraq.

Kaplan again: "Part thirty-fifth college reunion and part flea market for the disaffected, where the sheer number of grievances on offer overwhelmed the only one that counted, what Washington endured this weekend wasn't exactly an antiwar march. It was anti-everything: Israel, the U.S. military, capitalism, colonialism, Wal-Mart. If anything, the march created the impression of a country so far removed from the war in Iraq that even the antiwar movement can't be bothered to demonstrate against it."

Which is a shame. There is something to be said against this war, and there may even be something to be said for bringing the troops home sooner rather than later, even if I myself don't agree with that. But the anti-war movement, hollow or not, doesn't do itself any favours by allowing itself to be taken over by such extremism -- one big reason why many prominent Democrats, most of whom have no love for the war or for the White House that started it, avoided the event entirely. As long as it seems to be little more than a ragtag expression of bitter anti-Americanism, it will alienate many (like me) who sympathize with it and who might actually support it (probably not me). Pro-war conservatives and Republicans will always be against it, but many of the rest of us will simply be turned against it. Some of us may even be pushed into the hardened pro-war camp (or at least further away from the anti-war one) either out of spite or out of a reluctance to be associated in any way with such extremism. After all, patriotism matters to most Americans.

If you want more evidence of the extremism of last week's demonstrations, here are some photos from San Francisco. As you'll see, President Bush is characterized as Satan, a psychotic murderer, a wanker, a mad cowboy, a dictator (Hitler), a fascist, a war criminal, and a Nazi.

No, such idiocy won't turn me into a thoughtless supporter of Bush's conduct of the war/occupation, but as a moderate on Iraq I find myself quite repelled by such sentiments, and it wouldn't surprise me if they repelled others right into the arms of the anti-war movement's opponents. For which the anti-war movement would have nothing to blame but itself.

What About Postal Workers?

OK, bad joke.

Proposed law: Companies can't keep employees from bringing guns to work

Not really a thread about the merits of the law (which would allow employees to have legal firearms locked in their vehicles in the parking lot, not racked on top of their desks) but one going back to my fa