Centerfield

The Face of the Anti-War Left

Storm the White House

It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators....The Administration is Criminal and if they will not step down, we must storm in, show them how many of us do not accept a criminal government. How can we stand by and watch them kill our brothers, sisters, journalists and friends for their dollars?

...The World Criminal Courts need to incarcerate Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for admitted crimes and known crimes of international scope. The Political Cooperative will put a new, temporary government in place that is comprised of people from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and all the organizations that have finally made us aware of the truth of the savage practices and illegal policies of our government in assassinating our own officials as well as people throughout the world who oppose their criminal activity.

For the GOP and the White House, this is the Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Open Thread

Just because.

Just Say No to Republican Adoption

Ron Reports:

State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children. According to Hagan, "credible research'' shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities." Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents -- just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood's (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting. Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional "harm" when they are adopted by gay couples.

As somebody who was raised by Republicans and understands the scars that can leave, I fully support this legislation. Kicking poor people, forced family trips to the shooting range, not allowed to date until I was 18, no non-white friends, and old Walton re-runs... It was awful I tell you, just awful. For the children, we cannot allow these people to adopt.

Coast Guard Nellies

Nervous nellies like me and the Coast Guard have concerns about Al Qaeda infiltration of the ports company.

Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration that it was unable to determine whether a United Arab Emirates-owned company might support terrorist operations, a Senate panel said Monday. The surprise disclosure came during a hearing on Dubai-owned DP World's plans to take over significant operations at six leading U.S. ports. The port operations are now handled by London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company.

It seems to me that the difference between my perspective and others on this blog is the starting point. I don't start from the idea that DP is innocent until proved guilty, that free trade is sacred, and that we have a moral duty to allow DP to run our ports as long as they pay cash.

I start from the question, why do we need this? Why is it good for us? Is the good (keeping foreign investors confidence up so they'll finance our deficit) so important that we take even a small risk on who runs our ports?

Dubai Withdraws

In the face of the rapid and prescient response of vigilant Americans, the nation of Dubai today withdrew from its plan to manage operations at 7 American ports.

Monday, February 27, 2006; Posted: 10:38 a.m. EST (15:38 GMT) (CNN) --President Ayvol Towled of the UAE admitted that "the whole United Arab Emirates has been run and populated by Al Quaeda stooges from day 1. But you're all too smart for us, so we give up."

This is a stunning victory for America's most stalwart anti-terrorists, and righteous proof that arabs can't be trusted. I can't ever remember being so wrong. After this, only an al-quaeda stooge would dare call these people xenophobes. They're HEROES!! I just hope and pray they let me stay here in America. I've been such an unwitting dupe!

The Race Begins: McCain Rips Hillary on Ports

Here is the full article.

The near-hysteria about this is not warranted, particularly in light of the other major crises that we're facing throughout the world," McCain told ABC's "This Week."

The Arizona Republican criticized Mrs. Clinton for urging that all foreign operation of U.S. ports be banned, warning that if she gets her way, "We've got a lot of disinvestment to do."

"Does that mean the British are not allowed?" McCain posited, before reminding that convicted al Qaeda shoe bomber Richard Reid "was British, as you know."

"I think obviously this has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis," he added, rejecting Mrs. Clinton's blanket ban.

McCain said that the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai Ports World, is "freer than China," reminding that "700 [U.S.] warships have visited Dubai."

Round one to the Senator from Arizona... He shows again why I would walk across glass for him. If both were to get the nomination, Hill would need to do better than she has this week looking Presidential next to McCain.

This argument that we should have no foreign contracts to run American ports is thoughtless, ignorant, politically motivated, and there is just no other way to put it. Does this mean that we should break our deals with, for instance, the Singapore run company that operates ports in Seattle and Oakland, or the countless number of ports that are run by Chinese companies, both countries that are less free than Dubai? Just how many trade agreements are Hill and the others jumping on the hysteria band wagon willing to break, or do they even realize the consequences of what they are proposing, or care for that matter?

I find it absolutely hilarious that the some of those who were foaming at the mouth regarding George W. Bush hurting our relationship with the international community and the rest of the world hating Americans, are actually insinuating that we break deals with other countries without providing evidence that the work they are doing remotely threatens are national security, or that we are not getting what we paid for. Do they not understand that the rest of the word, as Fareed Zakaria pointed out this morning, sees the Dubai situation as blatant American racism?

They were playing politics before when they pretended to actually care about diplomacy and they are playing politics now. Things are looking bleak when a Clinton comes out against free trade and embraces isolationism.

Anyone up for a safari?

We tend to thing of world events in the rhetoric of left, right or center, but there are other views.
Here is a link to a website that definitely has a unique view . They have an editorial about the Golden Mosque bombing. He makes the argument (actually a pretty good argument) that nobody in their right mind would blow up the dome.

It's a whole other subculture, so prepare to be shocked by his assertions.

Post Soviet agriculture in Cuba

Here, is an interesting article about how a society deals with the collapse of its agricultural capabilities. As many of the old soviet satellite states are finding out, subsidized oil and gas is really nice, and losing your meal ticket really sucks. The article probably had to make it through the Cuban censors, so take the rosy side with a grain of salt. Even so, I find it an encouraging scenario. As we sit down to our Sunday dinners, look at your food's label and see where it comes from. Then think about what you would have to do, to grow you own.

Some quotes: “Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. “

“This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds. “

“With meat scarce and fresh local vegetables in abundance since 1995, Cubans now eat a healthy, low-fat, nearly vegetarian, diet. They also have a healthier outdoor lifestyle and walking and bicycling have become much more common. “

Conclusion: Loss of oil imports is healthy, once you get over the whole starvation thing.
(Next on Oprah: The Peak Oil Diet)

Polar Opposites: Military and Universities

Will Marshall of the DLC has an interesting piece polarized both military officers and university faculty are from the average American

According to 2004 exit polls, 34 percent of the voters in the presidential election were conservative, 45 percent moderate, and 21 percent liberal. But an Annenberg School study in the same year found that, in the military, 40 percent of the officers say they are conservative, 40 percent moderate, and just 7 percent liberal. Only 15 percent of the officers were Democrats, while 47 percent were Republicans and 31 percent independents. If fighters tilt right, thinkers lean even further to the left. According to a national survey of college faculty, almost three-quarters professed left-of-center views, while only 15 percent identified themselves as conservatives. Only 11 percent owned up to being Republicans. In the humanities and social science departments, Democratic professors outnumbered Republicans by 7-1.

Given the prominence of national security issues in today's debate, conservatives clearly get the better of this deal politically. It's too bad that the two groups don't mix more. At the Kennedy School at Harvard, where I got a master's degree, there were a number of military officers taking courses. But I'd say that's a rarity in most college environments.

More Florida Computerized Voting Anomalies

Florida has been shown to have more e-vote consistency problems (via slashdot).

Of course, what's needed here are backup printed ballots, that are randomly checked on the precinct level, and used in case of any inconsistencies being spotted. We read of election workers often ignoring e-vote glitches, presumably because they have no backup to check. Would this have happened?

This isn't just about fraud - all human-made complex systems (which software is) have bugs. The only way we can work those bugs out is by having a testing regime whenever they're used, and having a way to fall back on other systems, like hand-counting machine-countable ballots. There's a long-time mailing list on the subject of inappropriate overtrust of computer systems, RISKS. Here's a pointer to search results for elections.

It is, by the way, possible to write provably true software. It's at least an order of magnitude harder than normal software development, and of course I have yet to read of any e-vote vendor saying a word about this possibility.

Another UAE port angle

Last week, plans were announced to develop a spaceport in the UAE. Interesting slashdot thread here. The same company announced plans to develop a spaceport in Singapore as well.

H2O: It's not just for drinking

Believe it or not, the USA has one of the largest reserves on the planet of a highly prized liquid resource. Fresh Water! (I'm talking about the Great Lakes by the way.) Interesting enough, water is also a major part of energy production.

I was over on theoildrum.com , and on one of their threads a commenter said:

“...My company is currently suspending drilling operations in Oklahoma due to lack of available water. State, municipal and private water owners have all told us that they will no longer sell water to us. We are experiencing similar problems in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, but not to the degree we have encountered in Oklahoma.
So what we have here in Oklahoma is one resources scarcity(water) precluding the extraction of another (petroleum) declining resource.....”

I knew they used water in oil and gas drilling, but evidently they use substantial quantities.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if the reason water was withheld from the drilling company was because it was a scarce resource, or because their operations caused problems for locals. I have previously read about problems with natural gas drilling operations bad habits. Evidently they pressurize the bore holes to fracture the rock and let the gas seep out. If you have a nearby water well, the water can become undrinkable, or your equipment could be violently expelled from the ground.

Here is a graph of natural gas production in the USA

Water is also a problem when it comes to alternative fuel production. Large quantities of water are used during the creation of ethanol and during the Fischer-Tropsch coal to gasoline process. Large amounts are also used in the extracting of oil from oil shale and tar sand. The quality of effluent from these processes is also a problem. If you're in an area where water is scarce, dumping polluted water is not going to make you popular.

Then there was the little problem France had with its nuclear power plants. Seems that a recent drought endangered their ability to produce power. Everyone calls it “nuclear” power but it's steam that makes the turbines spin. No water means no steam. No steam means no power.

I was raised in the northeast, and spent the second half of my life in the south. To little water was never really a problem for me. In both cases I always lived the proverbial stones throw from a major lake or river. Every decade or so there were some dry years, but I never went thirsty. In fact, rainfall rates in Alabama are occasionally measured in inches per hour. There is a reason the TVA built so many dams around here, and the road side ditches are 5 foot deep.

That's not the story in a lot of other places, water rights are the stuff of hot debate. An that debate is probably going to get hotter. The Colorado River, for instance, no longer runs to the sea. Heavy use of the river as an irrigation source has desiccated the lower course of the river. The Rio Grande is also in danger of becoming extinct. While climate change predictions say evaporation of soil moisture should increase in already dry areas. That's not a good thing. Population growth is already putting pressure on existing water resources in some Western and Midwestern states, as home owners, agriculture and industry compete for water. As population grows, more people means more water requirements.

More Centrist Blogs

I've found a few more centrist blogs:

Midtopia

Virginia Centrist

American Centrist

Let them know what you think of them!

Austin Centrists

The Austin Centrist is a good-looking new blog by some friends of the Centrist Coalition. Welcome to the centrist blogosphere.

Democracy Isn't Simple

The Arabic press is asking Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on why the administration is pushing Middle Eastern leaders to withhold funding to the Hamas controlled government.

Here is the article.

QUESTION:

"How is it possible to harmonize the U.S. position as a nation supporting freedom of expression and the right of people to practice democracy with your efforts to curb the will of Hamas and put pressures on other countries in this regard?

"Why don't you give Hamas a chance to express the will of people?"

ANSWER:

"For the United States, Hamas is a terrorist organization. We cannot give funding to a terrorist organization. It's really that simple."

But it isn't that simple, and she knows it.

Some argued that Bush's sudden shift to the argument that Iraq was necessary because it would create a light of Democracy in the Middle East, was simply an attempt to move on to the next justification after the first one failed. Rice's comments certainly lend credibility to that argument.

Did they think it was going to all be rainbows and ponies? Hamas is not anymore simply a terrorist organization; they are the political party in control of an elected democratic government. That means, yes, they are at the table and we have to deal with them. Cutting funding because we do not like whom the Palestinian people chose is wrong. Advocating democracy and then making efforts to thwart the will of the Palestinian people before the new government has had an opportunity to govern is wrong.

I am not granting anyone or anything a free pass. This is an organization with a violent past, no doubt, but so was Sinn Fein. If Hamas threatens our national security as the leaders of the Palestinian government then we should be doing more besides blocking outside funding. In the mean time they deserve to be treated with diplomatic courtesy. As Bush and Co. tell us all of the time, they did after all win the election.

Our Centrist Friends in Congress

National Journal recently took the 2005 voting record of Members of Congress, came up with a composite liberal and conservative score, and listed those who were in the middle.

Here it is.

Most Centrist House Members:

Republican - Rep. Jeff Flake, AZ
Democrat - Rep. Bud Cramer, AL

Most Centrist Senate Members:

Republican - Senator Gordon Smith, OR
Democrat - Senator Ben Nelson, NE

I am most stunned by Jeff Flake, who I always considered to be a conservative that I like on budget issues. This makes him even more impressive in my eyes. I don't know much about Cramer, but have always been a fan of Nelson and Smith. The Senate list isn't news, but I think you will be surprised by how large the House list is.

This is a little too black and white, and labeling who is and who is not a centrist may be a futile effort, but none the less, it is worth taking a look at.

Hat-tip to Moderate Voters.

Maybe Silence IS Golden!

Boycott backfires: South Park gets record audience

An appeal from the Catholic Church for New Zealanders to boycott an episode of South Park has resulted in a record audience there for the controversial cartoon.

The "Bloody Mary" episode of South Park drew more than six times the normal audience, New Zealand broadcaster TV Works announced Thursday.

I wonder how much they charge to issue a website boycott. I'm in for $5.

If not an evolving concept of decency, what about expanding concepts of science?

I offer two related areas for discussion today, both turning on the litigation surrounding the Federal Partial-birth Abortion Act (FPBAA), 117 Stat. 1201.

One of the things that I find most baffling about the litigation is the strange unwillingness on the part of liberals to kick a conservative when he's down. Last month, when the Ninth Circuit handed down Planned Parenthood v. Gonzales, I complained that the point had been missed:

In reaffirming the Circuit Court's verdict, the panel entirely fails to even consider the question on which any action against FPBAA should turn: did Congress have the authority to enact this statute in the first place? Answer that question in the negative, and the entirety of the litigation thusfar is nullified; it becomes irrelevant whether the act places an undue burden, it becomes irrelevant whether the statute's terms are "unconstitutionally vague," and it becomes irrelevant whether it includes a health exception.

The Ninth Circuit was not alone in reaching its conclusions; on the same day that the Ninth Circuit handed down Planned Parenthood v. Gonzales, the Second Circuit weighed in (National Abortion Federation v. Gonzales), and shortly thereafter, the Eighth Circuit (Carhart v. Gonzales) got in on the game, too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted cert in Carhart (not to be confused with Stenberg v. Carhart, about which you're going to read a lot in connection with this case, although not from me).

Yet one reads searches these three Courts of Appeals opinions in vain for the "F" word: federalism. It wasn't brought before the Courts in the challenges, and it wasn't raised sua sponte, even by the Ninth Circuit. Something strikes me as being odd in all this; come on, liberals - kick us conservatives where it hurts! The FPBAA is a free shot! We evil FedSoc types keep going on about the limits of the commerce clause power, about states rights, about federalism; well, here's your chance to ask us to prove it! Why not litigate on the premise that this law is ultra vires (which, after all, it is)? Why give Mean 'ol Nino an easy getout, a way to uphold the law by merely ruling on the specific challenge before him? Surely, this isn't just because liberals are afraid of what it would mean to get on the federalism boat. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out yesterday, liberals have (arguably) suddenly become fairweather friends of originalism now that it suits their purpose (over the NSA program, and, of course, in general where the second amendment is concerned), and once this moment passes and it ceases to be in their interest to have a frozen Constitution, they will once again demand its defrosting. If liberals are willing to jump off the boat and swim for shore in other areas, why would federalism be any different? Or am I just missing the point - regular readers will know that I'm reluctant to discuss whether a law is a good idea on a normative level until we've established whether or not its Constitutional in the first place, but liberals are not exactly known for their respect of the structural (as opposed to rights-bearing) sections of the Constitution, so perhaps they simply regard it as normal to approach this (as it appears to me) backwards?

So that's my first question for discussion today.

The second question is related, but a little more esoteric, a little more theoretical. At SCOTUSblog, I averred that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't give Congress a free pass to regulate abortion:

On another blog a couple of days ago, someone (obviously pro-life) pointed out that the Constitution doesn't mention abortion or unborn children, but on the other hand, nor does it mention African Americans, Gypsies, Jews or Hispanics, and no-one would argue that they aren't protected. I sympathize, but the argument is just flat-out dumb. The Constitution may not mention any of those groups, but nor does it mention caucasians. The term used is "persons," and that term is expansive enough to cover anyone considered a person at the time of ratification, so In order to say that the unborn are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, you must either a) demonstrate that the unborn were considered persons in 1868, or b) abandon originalism in favor of something else.

In rebuttal, another commenter, Ben Kennedy, wrote:

I believe that it is not difficult to contruct the case that the term "person" used around 1868 could include the unborn. Blackstone writes,

"The right of personal security consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation. Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of the law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb ... An infant in ventre as mere, or in the mother’s womb, is supposed in law to be born for many purposes. It is capable of having a legacy, or a surrender of copyhold estate, made to it. It may have a guardian assigned to it; and it is enabled to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterwards by such limitation, as if it were then actually born. And in this point the civil law agrees with ours."

What Blackstone didn't know was that a fetus "stirs" 22 days after conception when the heart starts beating.

Wow! How convenient would that be! I'm not sure how to feel about that. Aren't I in favor of a static constitution? Isn't this an evolutionary content argument? And don't I think all that "evolving standards of decency" mush is pretty risible stuff? Aren't I stuck with reject this?

But hang on a moment - is this an evolving content argument? Is this really the "evolving standards of decency"?

If I might rephrase Ben's point: if fœtal personhood was understood to occur at the time of quickening in 1868, and since that time, science has demonstrated that quickening in fact takes place earlier during pregnancy, does that change the balance of probabilities that the original meaning of persons extended to the unborn? I don't know the answer to that, but it's certainly an interesting point. I have to say that I remain sceptical, though, since this theory of quickening as the start of personhood goes back at least as far as Blackstone, yet laws criminalizing abortion in England and the United States did not begin to appear until decades after Blackstone, in the early 19th Century.

But in any instance, and this is my second question for discussion in this post: It's an intriguing point, though. Arguendo, if the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment could clearly be shown to be accepting of fœtal personhood at, say, six months, on the premise that this is when "quickening" takes place, and that this confers Congress power to regulate abortion after this time, but in the years since 1868, we have determined that quickening actually takes place earlier (this is totally wrong, but let's say it takes place at one month), does that mean that the original understanding permits Congress to regulate abortion after six months (the original understanding of the timeframe), or after one month (the original understanding of the event)? That isn't, after all, an evolving concept of decency, but the expansion of scientific knowledge; it is a factual, not subjective, inquiry. I've argued before that, even absent evolving content, the Eighth Amendment does prohibit certain punishments, even if they did not exist at the time of ratification (that is, even if it is not a "living constitution" in the sense that it grows and morphs, it is alive in the sense that it continues to apply to new and unforeseen circumstances; Roe may be invalid, but Kyllo is not, and don't even get me started on Trop); hence, I don't know what to think about this point.

So has Ben proved me wrong? Has he made a successful (albeit rather novel) originalist case for Congressional regulation of abortion? Or is this just a little too much like that marvellously seductive "evolving content" stuff that I disparage at every opportunity.

Two different - and quite broad - areas for discussion there.

Friday Open Thread

So I'll have something to read when I get home at midnight.

UAE Agrees to Delay

"The reaction in the United States has occurred in no other country in the world... We need to understand the concerns of the people in the U.S. who are worried about this transaction and make sure that they are addressed to the benefit of all parties. Security is everybody's business."

The article is here.

Not exactly the actions of a government hoping to sneak terrorist through our ports. This is a huge favor to Bush that in my eyes they should not have had to grant. None the less, this gives the President an opportunity to do what he has been lackluster at to date, which is to defend his own policies. I hope this debate is open, that both sides honestly consider all of the facts, the administration is forthcoming with information, and that partisanship is laid aside. Furthermore, I hope Karl Rove does not use this as an opportunity to back out of a sticky political situation. I am not holding my breath on any of the above.

This should be considered as a good faith effort by the Dubai government. It would be a diplomatic mistake to fumble the ball now.

On a different note, a commenter was concerned that because I deleted comments that contained profanity and what I thought to be borderline racist statements from one of my earlier entries, that this article would not get shared. It is from Front Page Magazine, a right wing publication, and outlines a connection between Hamas and the UAE. I disagree with the article's premise and I stand by my statement that opponents of the deal have yet to offer any substantive argument that it threatens our security. Guilt by association and nationality alone are not reason enough to break our word.

I believe, for instance, the nation of China has committed atrocities against its own people, especially women and other peace loving nations such as Tibet. However, I believe the best way to end those atrocities is to introduce free markets to the Chinese people and the evidence has shown this to be the case. That is the policy of this country and has been under President's from both parties. Middle Eastern nations or companies who may or did once have ties to terrorist organizations, and I consider Hamas to be indeed a terrorist organization, should not be treated any differently. You cannot change the world through isolationism. History is our greatest lesson of that fact.

Protests Requested

Unlike the cartoons of notorious memory, the destruction of the domed Askariya shrine in Samarra is something that should incite worldwide protests--hopefully non-violent.

The thing about intellectual expression like cartoons is that having more ideas does not take anything away from anyone. If you don't like them, ignore them. But the destruction of physical property, while not as horrific as the taking of human life, does take away the enjoyment of the rightful owner.

This is something that the whole world, including the Muslim world, should protest. But because the perpetrators were not Westerners (unless you believe the demented president of Iran) I doubt that it will stir up the same emotion in the Muslim world.

Dangerstein

Dan Gerstein, a former advisor to Joe Lieberman, now has a blog. Here is his revealing post introducing the blog, and here is a recent post discussing the values analysis of the Democratic Party by American Environics.

We look forward to Dan's insight, and will add Dangerous Thoughts to the centrist blogroll.

Carter Backs Bush on Dubai

Pat pointed out in a previous comment section that former President Jimmy Carter supports President Bush regarding the Dubai deal. Since this issue has brought a flood of welcomed outside attention to Centerfield, and since Carter is breaking from his party to support an administration he has been very critical of, I feel this is deserving of a separate entry.

Here is the article.

Carter says:

"The overall threat to the United States and security, I don't think it's exists...

"My belief is that the president and his secretary of state, the Defense Department and others have adequately cleared the Dubai government or organization to manage their ports... I don't think there's any particular threat to our security."

"I've been to Dubai, and I've seen the remarkable port facilities they have there, perhaps the best in the world."

My view of Jimmy Carter is that he is an incredible human being who had difficulty separating idealism from reality as President. However, one area that I believe he was leaps and bounds above the current President is mediation and negotiation. I have been critical of statements such as "axis of evil," "evildoers," "they are with us or against us," and "bring it on" because I firmly believe that you cannot mediate peace and start by punching the party across the table in the mouth. Carter understands this, has received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as an international mediator, and has been called on by many world leaders to step into hot button policy disputes.

One reason the President gave for supporting the Dubai deal was our relationship with the Middle East. This is a shift in how this administration has historically approached foreign relations, it wasn't too long ago that they refused to allocate any Iraq contracts to France because of their position on the war. It is a good one and we should not only support it but encourage this type of behavior in the future. It is disheartening to me is that those who claimed in the 2004 election we needed Presidential leadership that recognizes the importance of world diplomacy, are now running from that position for what one can only conclude are political purposes.

For those of you who disagree, show me concrete reasons why the deal is a threat to our security? What countries have had contracts with the Dubai government and been the victim of a terrorist attack because of it? What specific evidence is there that this makes our ports more vulnerable? The fact that the 9/11 bombers were Arabic, isn't good enough for me.

Then they came for the bloggers

Michelle Malkin has been experiencing a denial of service attack from the Middle East today. Her site has been down all day, coming back up only intermittently. Michelle has been a vocal defender of free speech, and the zealots are now attacking her for it. Until her site is up again, she is posting over at PajamasMedia. She had previously posted on a wave of cyber-terrorism being used to attack many sites which linked to the cartoons.

This is intolerable. Muslim fanatics on the other side of the globe are now reaching across the ocean to electronically stifle our freedom of speech. Once the FBI identifies where the attackers are coming from and provides that information to the attackers' home governments, there better be some strong prosecutions of those cyber-thugs.

Please Come to Boston for the Springtime

South Dakota Senate passes abortion ban bill

Legislation meant to prompt a national legal battle targeting Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, was approved Wednesday by the South Dakota Senate, moving the bill a step closer to final passage.

The measure, which would ban nearly all abortions in the state, now returns to the House, which passed a different version earlier. The House must decide whether to accept changes made by the Senate, which passed its version 23-12.

"It is the time for the South Dakota Legislature to deal with this issue and protect the lives and rights of unborn children," said Democratic Sen. Julie Bartling, the bill's main sponsor.

The bill, carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison, would make it a felony for doctors or others to perform abortions.

On behalf of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, I'd like to let all potential political refugees from the state of South Dakota know that they are welcome here in Masachusetts, should push indeed come to shove. If you believe that the choice to carry a pregnancy to full term is best made by the prospective parents or in concert with the family in cases that involve prospective parents who are minors, come join us evil libruls.

If you decide to come here, you may be surprised to find that, no, the streets are not paved with dead fetuses. Yes we do have churches. Lots of 'em. All kinds. Most are even full on Sundays. And no, most of the people actually don't have horns or hate America. Although I have heard ugly rumors about the people from Cambridge.

We do our best to welcome all kinds here in Massachusetts. But I must confess that I am hoping that those South Dakotans who believe the state should make this decision the exact same way for all pregnant women will stay on their side of the Great Lakes.

UPDATE from CNN:PIERRE, South Dakota (AP) -- State lawmakers voted Friday to ban nearly all abortions in South Dakota and sent the measure to the governor, who said he is inclined to sign it.

The AOL Blogpulse invasion.

In the cold light of dawn, I not sure what to make of the AOL invasion. On one hand, the number of people who read our "stuff" just went up an order of magnitude, on the other hand it's like herding a cattle stampede through your neighbor's den. Won't it be polite to at least tell him beforehand? I'm sitting there in my underwear, eating Cheetos, when all of a sudden a bunch of strangers show up and start screaming.

True, it is easier to get forgiveness rather than permission, but I'm feeling a little violated (and secretly a little honored) by the attention. With some advance notice we could at least put some rules of conduct at the end of the original post. Heck, if I thought more than thirty people would end up reading a post, I would try and be more circumspect with my words (note the word "try").

One of the reasons I sought out Centerfield was because it was a smaller community that wasn't overwhelmed by screaming wing nuts. It's not like I showed up here by accident. I spent several weeks' googling words like "independent", "centrist" and "nonpartisan". Then I monitored several sites before jumping in.

They only seem to link to us when we post about the "Raging Hormone Story of the Day". I would guess if we were really boring and non-controversial they would stop linking.

Update: AOL news service has linked to us several times here is an example, it resulted in a torrent of drivebys.

Myrick to W: Hell No!

Red State points out this letter from North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Sue Myrick, to President Bush, which contains one line:

In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just no - BUT HELL NO!

I am sufficiently jaded and don't expect much from the Congress "critters" of either party anymore, but I DO expect that when explaining their position to the leader of the free world they at least take the time to, I don't know, present actual facts. I am not asking for much, maybe a sentence or two or even a paragraph is all I expect from a group of elected officials that make six figures. The fact that those opposed to the deal completely have failed to explain why, other than generally passing it off as a threat to our security, only makes it more obvious that their motive is nothing more than their own ambition.

I am also not naive enough to expect that elected members of the people's house wouldn't use public funds to run for higher office, Sue wants to be Governor of North Carolina for instance, but would at least appreciate that they avoid placing blatant attempts at political pandering on letter head that my frigging tax dollars paid for.

What an embarrassment to the great state of North Carolina.

I love free speech

LSU, my alma mater and current employer, has for decades maintained a tradition known as "Free Speech Alley". Every Wednesday, anybody with something to say gets up to say it at a particular spot in front of the popular and crowded student union. There's a moderator of sorts who does nothing more than keep things orderly so only one person has the bench at a time. It's open to anybody, and let me tell you, anybody comes. In addition to the regular Wednesday quasi-organized show, the spot itself tends to attract a regular crowd of preachers, pontificators, and product purveyors.

Today, there was a band playing Mardi Gras music for background. At one end of the line of tables piled with literature was a lone Muslim student explaining more about the Prophet. There was a well-dressed group of students promoting the Methodists at another table. A young child with the group of Christians carrying banners of bible verses handed me a small comic book showing a man being judged by God and found wanting, with a Capra-esque coda showing what would happen if he repented instead of continuing to wilfully sin. A couple of the preacher-types were shouting at passerby, but not in an overly obnoxious way (and everybody knows to be ready for that sort of thing on Wednesdays in that spot), plus he was mostly drowned out by the Mardi Gras music. A pretty female student was handing out free samples of a popular scent. There was even a table for the AHA organization of "Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics", completely with guides to the non-spiritual life.

This happens every week. And there are no fights, no riots, no violence of any kind. Students talk back at the preachers and anybody else they disagree with, and there are always quiet religious types who try to speak quietly and privately with interested students in a sincere desire to help them. I love this country. And I love the college campus.

John Edwards' Cause

A few months ago I wrote this. Since that time I have been following the travels of the former Democratic nominee for Vice President.

Recently he wrote this in the Boston Globe:

Thirty million American workers, 1 out of every 4, make less than $8.70 an hour. These workers, even the ones who work full time year-round, do not earn enough to lift a family of four out of poverty. While whole industries are exporting high-wage jobs to other nations, American workers have been left with jobs that don't pay enough to cover their rent, healthcare, or school books for their children. In this global economy, the service industry jobs that are staying here are not the jobs with the best pay and benefits.

This is both a shame and a challenge -- a shame because America has always honored the ethic of hard work -- yet millions of Americans are struggling at two or three jobs and still finding the middle class out of reach. It's a challenge because we have a moral responsibility to help those who are doing everything they can to get by, but are still stuck at jobs with poverty wages.

I agree.

Edwards, as the Director of UNC Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, has recently launched this organization aimed at fighting what he says are the extremely poor working conditions of hotel employees.

He says in the Globe article:

Consider the hotel industry, which employs more than 1.3 million people in this country. The consulting firm Ernst & Young, in its outlook on the hotel and lodging industry, says: ''The Good Times Continue to Roll." But good times for whom? Profits have risen to pre-9/11 levels, yet the average wage for a housekeeper is below the poverty line. Hotel chains are finding the money to invest in their image, their grounds, and their rooms, while wages for hotel workers remain far too low. Hotel chains are investing more in imported cotton sheets, yet relatively less in wages for workers.

I don't know much in the way of what Edwards is proposing to do about poverty, but I got to admit as a former government employee, someone who has worked in the past as an aide to elected officials, and most importantly a Christian, I certainly am heartened by the man's sense of priority. Edwards' focus on issues that impact those in our society who have all but been forgotten by the mainstream electorate, can only be good for Amerian politics, or if anything, good for our soul.

Republicans and Good Government Redux

I couldn't resist a follow up post to look at two key "set ups" to Katrina and FEMA.

1) The creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Note in the administration's proposal FEMA is subserviant to protecting us fropm terrorist attack

The Department would oversee federal government assistance in the domestic disaster preparedness training of first responders and would coordinate the government's disaster response efforts. FEMA would become a central component of the Department of Homeland Security, and the new Department would administer the grant programs for firefighters, police, and emergency personnel currently managed by FEMA, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department would also manage such critical response assets as the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (Department of Energy) and the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (Health and Human Services). Finally, the Department would integrate the federal interagency emergency response plans into a single, comprehensive, government-wide plan, and ensure that all response personnel have the equipment and capability to communicate with each other as necessary.

and

To fulfill these missions, the Department of Homeland Security would build upon the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as one of its key components. It would continue FEMA's efforts to reduce the loss of life and property and to protect our nation's institutions from all types of hazards through a comprehensive, risk-based, all-hazards emergency management program of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. And it will continue to change the emergency management culture from one that reacts to terrorism and other disasters, to one that proactively helps communities and citizens avoid becoming victims.

Looks like the reverse happened
2)Michael Chertoff, the right man for the job. Did we get what we asked for? With all the heat Chertoff has been getting its easy to forget the great bipartisan support and easy confirmation he got back a year ago. This excerpt from an NPR story

The tone set in that exchange remained throughout the hearing. It wasn't in the least contentious, as were the hearings for Secretary of State Rice and Attorney General nominee Gonzales. Most of the questions focused on actions the Department of Homeland Security might take to better protect America

Note the last sentence "Better protect America". Or how about this quote in USA today from the loyal opposition regarding Mr Chertoff.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a frequent critic of the Bush administration, called Chertoff a good choice for the job.
"Judge Mike Chertoff has the résumé to be an excellent Homeland Security secretary, given his law enforcement background and understanding of New York's and America's neglected homeland security needs," Schumer said.

So what can we expect from a security department in responding to a natural disaster?

Posted by c3 at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)

Can We Discriminate Against The UAE?

Joe Gandelman covers the uproar over the news that a company based in the Persian Gulf may gain control over U.S. ports. Members of Congress in both parties are apoplectic, but President Bush has threatened to veto any congressional attempt to overturn the deal.

Some people dance around the core issue by arguing that foreign companies shouldn't control American ports, given that ports may be a key entry point for terrorists. But no one complained about the current British owner which is the seller in the deal.

Clearly, the uproar is because the prospective buyers are Arab Muslims. I doubt there would be an uproar if the buyer was an Arab Christian, and think the objections would be muted if the buyer was an Indonesian Muslim. But Arab Muslims were the ethnic group behind 9/11, so it's no surprise that Americans might be queasy about trusting other Arab Muslims with the keys to our back door.

So, can we discriminate against people just because they are Arab Muslms? Not if they are American citizens. That would violate the 14th Amendment. But can we discriminate among and against certain people who are overseas?

I think so. It may offend the principles of multiculturalism, but those are not enshrined in American law, or even international law, as far as I know.

Even if we can, should we discriminate against citizens of the UAE? President Bush thinks it would offend a country that has been our friend. I can certainly see how the UAE government would be offended, but as for the people in the street, I doubt it would have as much impact as cartoons or invasions.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I kind of think a little honesty might help our relationship with the Muslim world. We are not at war with terror in general, but specificially with a group made up exclusively of Muslims. This means that we must do due diligence when admitting Muslims to our country, and exclude those who were have a reasonble reason to believe have hostile intentions. We are also leery of having foreign Muslims in control of those facilities most crucial to our personal security.

Would the emirs of the UAE hire Israeli bodyguards?

Don't Let 'Em Near The Kids!

Sixteen states are poised to enter the next round in the never-ending "culture war" in 2006, with initiatives pending that would implement a constitutional ban on adoptions by gays. (Ohio, Georgia, and Kentucky jumped on board with 2004 Amendments that implemented bans.) When you've already used up your gay marriage card to turn out the vote in 2004, the pickings get slim, so why not just expand on a strategy that has proven successful in the past?

For many in the extreme right, banning adoptions by gays gels quite nicely with their repeated accusations that "radical homosexuals are trying to recruit YOUR children." Quite simply, their argument (with the rhetoric peeled aside) is that by adopting, gay couples are bypassing protective parents and recruiting by bringing orphans directly into their homes. While the very concept of "recruiting" may be laughable to some, there are many who are quite willing to buy into the concept--most often because of a level of fearful discomfort and unfamiliarness with gays, not because of widespread homophobia.

The problem with this type of legislation is that it targets a very specific class by forcing them to disclose something that should be considered a fundamental right of privacy--their sexual preference. Banning gay marriage may be one thing, but specifically telling gays that they cannot adopt children simply because they are gay is mind boggling. Putting aside the issue of scores of children in desperate need of a parent in their lives, this ban ignores the glaringly obvious fact that gays can simply bypass the ban thru the use of a sperm donor or surrogate. Of course, in the case of the couple, there are legal issues with both partners being legal parents, but setting that aside for the moment, you have to wonder what comes next. Will 2008 see an effort to completely remove children from the homes of gays, even if the child happens to be the natural child of that individual? While it may seem far fetched to some, there are many who wonder if it's really coming to that. (And don't think for one moment that there isn't an element on the extreme right that would not be willing to do just that.)

The backers of these amendments are constantly talking of the need of a child to be in a 2 parent (mother & father, of course) family. But, what about those children that are in just that with an alchoholic father or a mother whose social life consumes her existence? Will we ban chemically dependent individuals from having children? Socially unstable individuals? If the far right spent as much time working to actually improve marriages and families as they spend trying to protect their exclusive right to enter into and exit them, one wonders how dramatic the effects would be on juvenile crime and the divorce rate.

If a fine is good...

...then a fine AND a tax must be better:

New laws allow some states to tax drivers annually -- even if they live in another state -- simply because they received a speeding ticket. One Connecticut motorist, who asked that his name not be used, discovered this after driving in October in Niagara Falls, New York. Despite being caught in what he considered a brazen speed trap -- the speed limit was 45 MPH where he was caught, but 55 MPH at the same location in the opposite direction -- he accepted the $155 fine for driving 72 MPH thinking by paying the matter would be settled.

Last week, however, the state of New York notified him that it now considers him an "at risk" driver and therefore he must either pay the state an annual $100 tax or a lump sum of $300.

Silly me, thinking that the fine was the penalty for being a bad driver. You know what this smells like to me, though? Taxation without representation.

That outrage aside, I am deeply troubled by the extent to which various levels of government are coming to view the people as revenue sources. Police departments keep confiscated drug assets, have quotas for handing out tickets, towns install revenue-enhancing intersection cameras. Where will it end when it comes to sacrificing liberties piece by piece on the altar of public safety? When various levels of government have conflicts of interest due to budget struggles and public safety is the plausible rationale for a little bit more nickeling and diming, I am not optimistic.

Pursuant to "What is a religion?"

Supreme Court OKs Hallucinogenic Tea

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God. Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.

The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.

Remember when we were talking about "what's a religion?" briefly last week? Well, that question just got more urgent. If people get to do certain things under the umbrella of free religious practice that are otherwise prohibited, that puts the court, the government, and the people in the awkward position of developing fair and unbiased criteria for determining which sorts of organizations are religions and which are not. I'm sure they've already been doing such things in some way already, but this decision suggests the area could become a legal battleground over time. It's a loophole, state-approved. So stay tuned.

Partisans Of The Radical Center

Through Mark Jurkowitz in the Phoenix, I learned that the editors who resigned from the New York Press when it refused to print the Muhammed cartoons are associated with an online magazine

Siegel and Marchman are founding editors of the neocon-influenced New Partisan blog, which describes its ideology as “partisans of the radical center ... socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

I thank Jurkowitz for the heads-up, but I think New Partisan is more of an online magazine that a blog. To call it "neocon-influenced" may also confuse some. The influence is more of the old New York intellectual circles before many of them went neocon.

It is also open to submissions, and I would encourage all of us to try to write some long essays and submit the pieces to them. There are very few magazines for centrists, aside from The New Republic and The Atlantic, both august publications not easy to break into. The right and the left both have farm teams that allow writers to grow. Perhaps we can join together with New Partisan to build the influence of the center.

Ok! What did you do with the real George Bush!

Green car congress is reporting on a speech by W that sounds like something I would write.
Which is an extraordinarily scary thing. Plug-in hybrids, nuclear power.....

“The administration has also launched what’s called Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative. It’s a $1.1 billion partnership between the government and industry to facilitate new plant orders. “

“Plug-in hybrids are a really important part of the strategy I’ve announced, and we’re going to provide $31 million to speed up research on these advanced technologies—this is a 27% increase over current funding levels. “

" Businesses that rely upon natural gas feedstocks have found that in order to stay in business they've got to move their plants closer to where vast quantities of natural gas are being discovered -- and that's not here in the United States, that's elsewhere."

"Oil prices rise sharply when demand is greater than supply. And when they do, it strains your budgets. It hurts our families, it hurts our small entrepreneurs. It's like a hidden tax. And so we're vulnerable to high prices of oil, and we're vulnerable to sudden disruptions of oil. What I'm telling you is oil -- the dependence upon oil is a national security problem, and an economic security problem. "

Be still my quivering heart. Looks like someone got that peak oil religion.
Or he's just faking it till gas prices crash.

Here is the Green car congress summary.
Here is the really long original speech.

Unhealthy Extremes

Too good NOT to post here.

Extreme Makeover
Scientific evidence that political anger is dangerous

It may or may not be that extreme politics is by itself what makes a person angry and uncompassionate; but it certainly cannot be improving the situation. After all, the partisan political machine today is geared toward the destruction of opponents--to convince us that the other side is not just misguided, but evil. Mounting evidence that adherence to extreme political attitudes correlates with a fundamental lack of compassion is not encouraging for the future of our civic culture, as long as rage is used as a political device.

Hey, it's short. So read the whole thing.

Get 'em while they're young

Nothing like childhood indoctrination to guarantee a new generation of highly partisan ideologues. And, some profits go to party candidates! I oppose using children's books for political indoctrination.

This somewhat new indoctrination book basically says: "My party believes in good things like sharing and feeding people and educating everybody." (Hint, hint, that other evil party doesn't like those things.)

The good news and the bad news

"Our natural majority in the country is a very reform majority. It's the taxpaying majority. It's the people who do not trust Washington, do not like seeing their money wasted, are not impressed with pork--if anything, they're irritated by it. And either the House and Senate Republicans are going to move substantially in the next few months or they're going to run a very real risk of losing the fall election."

Thusly spake Newt Gingrich, recently. Newt, of course, has not only an ideological but a practical reason for preserving Republican Congressional majorities - although he has been coy on the subject, his book last year is widely regarded as a declaration of his candidacy for the White House in 2008.

I actually want Newt to run in 2008; I'm not saying I want him to win, but I want him to run. I think he has interesting ideas, and I think the GOP should listen to and address them (the same goes, in my view, for Olympia Snowe, who's about his polar opposite in the GOP). My main concern, though, is that nominating Newt would force yet another polarizing election, not because of who Gingrich is now, but because of who he was in the 1990s. In a way, that's kind of sad, because Newt has many of the characteristics that I want in a President. He thinks big and broad; he's optimistic and forward-looking; he's rooted in strong philosophical commitments, but he's creative and pragmatic in finding solutions (having sacred cows is a good thing, but a willingness, grudging or otherwise, to slaughter them when faced with starvation is also important - as Justice Jackson noted, the Constitution is not a suicide pact); he's always thinking of ideas and looking for solutions; he tackles issues aggressively and head-on. If Roger Waters was a right-wing politician instead of a left-wing musician, he'd be Newt Gingrich (believe it or not, that's a compliment).

But on the other hand, he's a hugely polarizing figure, and with the Democrats showing as likely as not to nominate Hillary Clinton, such a matchup would inevitably become another partisan dust-up, another 51-49 election. Ironically enough, both Newt and Hillary have moved on from the very personas that make them so divisive; Clinton is not nearly so cold nor so liberal as she is portrayed, and Gingrich is far less the bomb-throwing counterrevolutionary he was in the mid-1990s. None-the-less, I would worry that in politics, sad as this may be, who you are counts as much as what your ideas are, and I'm just not convinced that another close, divisive election - even if fought over two candidates who really don't reflect such a split - is what the doctor ordered.

The Anti-Sheehans

In Minnesota, Progress For America* is airing two ads that highlight Iraqi war veterans and the parents of American soldiers killed in Iraq. These ads are the "flip side" of the Cindy Sheehan approach, featuring veterans and Gold Star Families who support the war in Iraq.

And the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is trying mightily to get them pulled from the airwaves.

Last summer, an ABC affiliate Salt Lake City TV station refused to run issue ads from Sheehan's group, Gold Star Families for Peace, saying that the ads "could very well be offensive to our community in Utah, which has contributed more than its fair share of fighting soldiers and suffered significant loss of life in this Iraq war." While the ad itself is not available for viewing, a transcript can be found here.

Similar GSMFP ads ran in the Waco area for several weeks during the Sheehan Summer campout, and two other stations in Salt Lake City accepted and ran the GSMFP ads, including the Fox affiliate and the LDS-church-owned NBC affiliate.

Feel free to throw in your two bit's worth on free speech and hypocrisy.

[*--PFA is a conservative 527 group, in case you had any doubt at all.]

Republicans and a well-run government

I wasn't a Republican when Ronald Reagan was president so maybe that's why I didn't like his statement to the effect that government "was the problem". Even now as a registered Republican (and former federal employee trying to do some good to a needy population) I struggle with the essential conservative mantra that government IS the problem (as opposed to government can be a problem).

This has been on my mind much lately with the Katrina inquiries.

Clearly government WAS a problem and at all levels. But I'm still not clear how conservatives view this. Is it a) proof of the basic tenet "government is the problem" or is it b) a challenge for Republicans to do government smaller AND better.

I did a cursory webs search and of course got a lot of fodder for Dem Bush-bashing such as here and here. The latter quotes Hunter Thompson

Republicans are miserable at running the government because they have nothing but contempt for government.
They love business. The bigger the better. And maybe some of them are good at running big and small businesses.
But how can they be good at running something they hate?
Democrats, of course, love government. To a fault. We study government, go to school to learn more about governing and dream at night about making government better. (Pathetic, isn’t it?)
Democrats take seriously the job of running government. Republicans don’t, and they’re lousy at it.

There are many other partisan posts.

So, are Republicans supposed to be running a "better" government? At what point does "less" government become "poorer" government? As a moderate Republican these are important questions. And lest we think this is only an opportunity for Democratic Bush-bashing I leave with this exerpt from that liberal rag the Wahington Times

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."
Congress has passed two hurricane relief bills totaling $62.3 billion, all of which will be added to the deficit.
Republican leaders have been under pressure from conservative members and outside watchdog groups to find ways to pay for the Katrina relief. Some Republicans wanted to offer an amendment, including cuts, to pay for hurricane spending but were denied the chance under procedural rules.
"This is hardly a well-oiled machine," said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. "There's a lot of fat to trim. ... I wonder if we've been serving in the same Congress."

State by State Approval poll.

This is kind of neat. It's a state by state poll of Bush's approval.

If the election were held today he would only win 7 states.

Three of the more interesting results are:
Ohio Approve 37% Disapprove 60%
Florida Approve 42% Disapprove 55%
Tennessee Approve 46% Disapprove 52%

And while we are at it, here is a cool tool: Blogpulse shows how much activity a word or phrase has in the blogsphere. Here is the results for oil, climate and global warming.

Cartoon Pogrom

Up till now, rioters have been killed by security police. Now, rioters have killed innocents

Nigerian Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked Christians and burned churches on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in the deadliest confrontation yet in the whirlwind of Muslim anger over the drawings. It was the first major protest to erupt over the issue in Africa's most populous nation. An Associated Press reporter saw mobs of Muslim protesters swarm through the city center with machetes, sticks and iron rods. One group threw a tire around a man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze.

It does seem like it took a little longer for the anger to spread to sub-Saharan Africa, which is presumably less connected to global media. There have now been riots from Indonesia to Nigeria, which pretty much covers the entire swath of Muslim-majority settlement in the world.

Update: The Danish editor who published the cartoons, Flemming Rose, makes a persuasive case for why it was appropriate to do so.

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

Is Islam totalitarian? Not in the centralized form of the Soviet Union, but I believe it is accurate to describe Islam, and the tradition I was raised in--Orthodox Judaism--as totalistic systems which require constant obedience. Like Judaism, Islam does not have a single centralized authority to define what most be obeyed, but the traditions are quite specific and worked out. Neither tradition is philosophically accepting of freedom. For Orthodox Jews, the word for those Jews are are not religious is "frei" meaning "free" i.e. free from submission to God's will. Islam, which was derived from Judaism, seems to have a similar outlook.

Missing middle?

Where The Missing Middle Went

There is a lot to chew on in this article for the average Centerfield reader.

Taking a bullet for the constitution.

When the founding fathers created the constitution they envisioned a system of checks an balances between the three branches of government. For the most part this worked, but the ensuing centuries has shown some serious flaws. In a strange way, time an circumstances have created an additional side branch that doesn't really have any inherent constitutional power, but does have an enormous responsibility.

The huge federal bureaucracy that controls law enforcement, entitlements and the military was not fully foreseen by the constitution's signers. It has ballooned in times of crisis, festered in secrecy and become a double edged sword. Yes, it is part of the administrative branch, but when elected officials order it to do bad things it really has no power to object. Like a submissive child in a dysfunctional family, it does the dirty work of the father regardless of whether it agrees as an institution or as an individual.

There is something inherently wrong with this system. Whether it's an FBI agent before 9/11, a Contract manager objecting to no-bid Iraq contracts, NSA wiretaps or a career military talking about “able danger”, we should not be forced to sacrifice our careers and livelihood because someone else is corrupt and/or power mad. I'm not just talking about this particular administration. Regardless of who sits in the oval office they always seem to get around to abusing their power. In the end, it is the civil servant who has to sit by and watch. Then you go home at night and think “Do I forfeit a lifetime of work to stop this? Especially when my action probably will have no effect?” That is an unreasonable amount of sacrifice to ask. Particularly when it is only towards the end of a career that such decisions seem to appear.

Before anyone asks: No I have not witnessed a crime. I have witnessed some really stupid decisions being make that obviously would (and did) cause major problems. I've also watched the recent parade of career employees being forced out of their jobs and though, “there but for the grace of god go I”. It is inherently wrong that such a large group of people doesn't really have a way to effectively stop abuse.

Please, don't mentions the usual assortment of ombudsmen, union reps, internal affairs and inspector generals. I had a chance to watch them work a couple of years ago. What a circus! They know which side their bread is buttered on. The job description must include phrased like “ability to look the other way” and “Must possess skills at avoiding political tripwires.”

I halfway jokingly suggested, a while back, that a special prosecutor from the opposite party should be appointed at the start of every administration. Just administer the oath of office to the president and start the investigation. Because the system as it stands now is the real joke.

Friday Windbag...

Half open thread....speak now. Arts, movies, books. Celebrate Offend Everyone Day. Weekend plans. Good personal news. tell us about your favorite new toy. Whatever.

Instead of starting another thread, I'm going to pose one I wondered about, an adjunct to the dead Gore horse we've beaten so thoroughly and so mercilessly. I noticed that this was a real blogland barn-burner that didn't raise a peep in the MSM. Is it because the liberal media is protecting Gore, or because he's been filed as yesterday's news, or what? Watch out for saying something that tells us more about you than about Gore or the media though....: -)

The scramble for energy

Stories of coal mine accidents started hitting the news awhile back. I was raised in coal country so I pay attention to such things. My first thought was, "Its been a while since a coal accident made the national news". After a couple more stories about mine safety hit the papers, several separate thoughts slammed together and formed a pattern.

The local utility company increased the price of natural gas about 40 percent. There is a shortage of coal cars in the railroad industry and a plethora of coal mining safety stories in the news. I also know that some pharmaceutical plants can use coal, gas or electricity to operate.

It would appear that the shift to coal has begun and the pressure to produce more coal is causing more accidents. Not that surprising. For each volume of coal mined a certain amount of accidents are going to occur. If you were to double the volume you would get double the accidents. Next time you leave a light burning in an empty room remember that. The chain that gives you electricity is long and occasionally bloody.

Coal accidents are tragic, nuclear accidents are scary. After decades of quiet I am starting to hear and see problems in the nuclear industry. Some of the problems are extraordinarily serious and some merely alarming . When I talk to the people actually working in the nuclear plants the story is of ever increasing financial pressure from the corporate office. That is not a good think. Nuclear power can be very safe, but only if you let the engineers and scientists do their jobs. I'm really not happy with this trend.

By the way, the latest projection for Canadian natural gas is 8 years . If you heat your house with gas you may want to think about alternatives. If you weren't aware of it, U.S. oil production peaked in the 70's, and unlike natural gas it was relatively easy to switch to foreign sources. That's not really as easy a thing to do with natural gas. LNG terminals are very controversial.

For more information on natural gas here are two links from theoildrum and a surprising one from kos. The Kos one has some very good graphs. Just scroll down.

Polarization - It's Real

James Q. Wilson disputes Morris Fiorina's thesis that political polarization is a myth.

New Abu Ghraib Photos

I saw them earlier today on Salon.com, but Salon is now being hammered by so much traffic that I can't bring it up any more.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article on it.

Salon was not the first to publish them (that was an Australian media source) but the explanation by Mark Benjamin about why its necessary to publish them (the public's right to know) makes no sense obvious sense when compared to not publishing the cartoons of Muhammed.

Mike Bloomberg, Independent Candidate for President?

Ron reports:

Add another potential name to the 2008 White House contest, but it is way too early to tell if he'll really run and under what party banner. Liberal New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (R) -- a billionaire publishing tycoon reelected in a landslide last year -- is reportedly considering making a Presidential run in 2008. According to the New York Observer, Bloomberg political advisor and Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey is promoting the idea -- even if Bloomberg seems uninterested in the race. One advisor told the newspaper the only way Bloomberg would ever again run for office would be to run for President. And, if he runs, the newspaper reports he would run as either an Independent or a Democrat. Bloomberg is, after all, a former Democrat. According to the newspaper, Sheekey is trying to drum up support to convince Bloomberg to change his mind and jump into the race -- as he is also credited with being the driving force that convinced Bloomberg to seek a second term as Mayor.

Hizzoner has received credit for doing a good job in New York and recently won re-election by a whopping margin. He doesn't have a chance in hell at winning the nomination of his own party, as he is really a pro-business Democrat, and I doubt liberal activists would forgive him for switching to the dark side. The thing about Bloomberg is that he has got the money to run as independent, a route I would strongly encourage as one of his fans.

Because of the polarized nature of partisan politics and the apparent discontent from average American's regarding both of the major parties, I think an independent candidacy for President is not completely out of the realm of possibilities... An uphill battle, no doubt, but one that I think could be beneficial for the country. I hope Bloomberg seriously considers running. The vast majority of the American electorate who doesn't feel represented by hard right Republicans or left, anti-war Democrats, deserve to have a third option. It's time.

Cheney: "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger"

While I continue to believe that this is a non-story ("citizen involved in hunting accident") being exploited for political purposes, it is perhaps worth noting that Cheney has claimed responsibility:

"Ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney said in a hastily arranged White House interview with Fox News Channel anchor Brit Hume. "And you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line. And there's no -- it was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget."

Also, although it has since been corrected in comments, I really feel that Bob's post from Tuesday needs explicitly correcting on the frontpage. Bob averred that Cheney "shot Whittington at 6:30 pm. That's insane! Sunset this time of year in the south is 5:30 pm. What kind of person does a 180 in the darkness and blasts away? This is not normal behavior." However, the timeline that Bob's comment was premised on gave times in EST; the local time in Texas was 5:30, which (as Bob acknowledged in the comments to his post) is almost an hour before sunset.

The future of the electoral college

I was intrigued to read a new paper in Berkeley Elctronic Press' journal The Forum called Where the Votes are: The Electoral Geography of the Coming Democratic Majority by Todd Estes, which posits where the votes are going to be found for the Democratic Party's emerging electoral majority (I know what you're thinking: did the emerging democratic majority see its shadow in 2000, giving us six more elections of Republican Presidents?). Todd's paper immediatley made me think of a paper from last year by William Frey, The Electoral College Moves to the Sun Belt, because it undercuts its own premise: even if it applied to 2008, it doesn't take account of the reapportionment that will follow the 2010 census, with small - but potentially important - consequences for his model. I discuss precisely that in:

• Electoral tectonics for statisticians: a reply to Todd Estes (PDF warning)

(Technically it's less of a reply to Todd and more of a comment on his paper, but what's the functional difference really).

The point I offer is actually only a very minor caveat; if the Dems can win Ohio or Florida, it's game over, in 2008's electoral college or any other. But in a close race, its practical effect is to narrow the options of an electoral strategist. In any instance, Todd's paper is certainly worth a read, and mine may or may not be. ;)

Giuliani Looks Best

Dick Morris has an interesting analysis of the potential 2008 candidates, comparing their popularity within their party with their population among independents. Giuliani comes out best in being both popular within his own party and reasonably popular among independents. Hillary Clinton and John McCain are too popular, or not popular enough, among partisans. Gore has relatively weak support both among partisans and among independents.

Yet another Cheney thread. Kinda!

I don't really want to start another shooting thread but this was kind of interesting.

I have lunch every week with a bunch of conservative (although not partisan) Baptist friends. Now that the whole "See Dick Shoot" episode has turned from joke to political pot boiler, I was interested in hearing what they had to say. I decided early not to prompt them, because I wanted an unbiased response. The conversation usually turns to politics, so I suspected I would not have to start the subject in question.

It started with the standard Cheney jokes, moved on to the concern for Whittington then ended up in a strange place. Putting the blame squarely on Cheney and questioning his competency to hold his current office. My jaw kind of dropped open.

I've never like the Bush/Cheney team, but these guys all voted for him and have defended him threw the Iraq war, torture and the WOT. They are very very anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. With one blast of the VP's shotgun he seems to have lost their confidence.

Now I use the word confidence because they still want their anti-gay/abortion agenda to be pursued. And still think Bush is the best chance of getting it done. They just don't feel comfortable with (in their opinion) a man of Cheney's temperament in the VP slot. The other phrase they used was "It makes you wonder about this administration".

Fables in Diplomacy

Once upon a time, long long ago, in the days before diplomacy, a politician named Mr Blabbityblah from Righteoustania visited Dirkadirkastan. When he got off the plane, he was greeted by his royal highess, King Threeface.

The king asked Blabbityblah to say a few words to his people. "They're unhappy about your new policies, and feel they treat our people far worse than they deserve. I think it would go well both for you and for me if you could say a few kind words. If you show that you at least understand how they feel, they may like your country a little bit better."

Blabbityblah agreed that this was worth trying, so he told the gathered Dirkadirkastanians that not all Righteoustanians agreed with the policy.

"In Righteoustania," Blabbityblah said, "we have a saying. One bad apple does not spoil the whole bunch. I know that the Dirkadirkastanians are a good people. They have been our friends for a long time, and we have both benefitted. You can trust that should I become the leader of Righteoustania, I will not forget that one bad apple does not spoil the whole bunch."

Blabbityblah smiled and bowed in the customary Dirkadirkastanian way of showing respect. "Ich ein Dirkadirkastanian," Blabbityblah said. The crowd went wild. "Perhaps these Righteoustanians are not ALL so bad," the people murmured."

Later in private, Mr Blabbityblah and King Threeface discussed ways to deal with the dangerous Dirkadirkastanians who were a serious threat to both Righteoustania and Dirkadirkastan.

But diplomacy was born that day. Its first principle? When in Dirkadirkastan, do as Blabbityblah. True story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or the guilty. :-)

The Lonely Watch

Harvard students print Danish cartoons

A conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has become one of the few media outlets in the country to show inflammatory Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, angering students on campus and prompting a forum to discuss the controversy.

The four cartoons appeared in the Feb. 8 issues of The Harvard Salient, a conservative, biweekly newspaper, under the headline, ''A pox (err, jihad) on free expression." The student editors called the cartoons, including a sketch of Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban, ''relatively innocuous."

...

Travis R. Kavulla, a junior and the editor of the paper, said the student journalists meant no disrespect to Muslims, and had hoped instead to provoke a debate on campus. ''Now that [the cartoons] have provoked such a firestorm around the world, it's a shame that the mainstream media isn't publishing them because many people don't understand what they look like," he said.

I agree that it's a shame that major publications have chosen in this case not to provide their readers with relevant content. Apparently the public's right to know is a variable, not a constant. Who'd a thunk it, based on past media use of this principle as righteous justification for publishing all sorts of things many found odious?

Free speech. Far from universally appreciated, even here in America. A lefty sin? A righty sin? Look around. You be the judge. My experience is that among partisans, appreciation for free speech inversely correlates with whoever's ox is getting gored. YMMV.

What Do Al Gore and Two B-List Hollywood Actors Have in Common?

If you guessed that they've engaged in rabid anti-Americanism, and have undoubtedly contributed to the inflammation of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, you'd be right. I've always respected Al Gore, but his comments in Saudi Arabia were, for the lack of a wittier expression, over the line. For the purposes of context and accuracy, here's what he said, courtesy of the Calgary Sun-Times:

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore told an audience yesterday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. He said the administration of President George W. Bush was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jidda Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Here's the thing. Even if one submits the idea that some Arabs were mistreated post-9/11, it is utterly false to accuse the U.S of indiscriminate roundups. Were mistakes made? Sure. Was there a lot of anti-Arab sentiment in certain quarters? Sure. But Gore made it seem like we just rounded up all the brown people we could find. The fact is, it didn't happen. I'm sure many on the far-right probably hoped it would happen, but at the end of the day, our response was pretty restrained.

Let's not forget that Muslims and Arabs in America are the freest on the Earth. I'm left wondering how many people realize that Muslims have more religious freedom to be Muslims here, than in Saudi Arabia. Not only is Saudi Arabia a sweeping theocracy, one cannot question the government. In fact, if the Islam you happen to practice is the wrong one, three guesses as to what happens. If Gore wanted to open a dialogue on U.S-Saudi relations, then he should rebuke the Saudis for their theocratic ways, and openly show how the U.S is not only better, but the best, in terms of human rights and religious liberty.

Never mind the fact that he said this in Saudi frickin Arabia!

Of course Gore's behavior seems like small stuff compared to what certain American actors have gotten themselves into, with a Turkish film that is nakedly anti-American, and anti-Semitic. In a new Turkish movie, called Valley of the Wolves Iraq, is the most expensive Turkish movie ever. In the film, American soldiers are brutal murderers, and B-list actor Gary Busry plays a Jewish doctor, who steals the organs of Iraqis, and sells them to wealthy buyers in New York and Tel Aviv. This of course gives credence to the damnable blood libel against Jews, that Jews steal the organs of Arabs. Billy Zane stars in the film as well.

Aside from trying to make some cash to salvage their washed up careers, what would possess these two idiots to do such a thing? Even if it was for the money, how desperate do you have to be to engage in such filth? Busey's supposed to be a Christian, for God's sake! AS far the larger impact on Hollywood goes, the one saving grace is that these are two B-List actors, and no major Hollywood actors or producers have touched this steaming pile of anti-Semitic dung. I thought Busey was cool. I'd say a boycott's on the way, but I suspect that the majority of Americans' commitment to good cinema will take care of that.

Story is here.

More Cheney

Jeff Greenfield.

(CNN) -- What did you see when you saw the story about Vice-President Cheney's hunting accident?

If you were a comedy writer, you saw definitive proof of the existence of God.

If you hold the Bush Administration in minimum high regard, you saw enough metaphors to power a Ph.D. thesis: a reckless, inept use of force directed at the wrong target, compounded by a cover-up.

If you support the administration, you saw the press in full hysteria, "going nuts" (as a FOX News personality put it), by pounding White House spokesman Scott McClellan on the 20-plus hour delay in making the news public. . .

What's so striking, I think, is how a story like this becomes an instant Rorschach test, with political predispositions substituting for inkblots. We know the meaning of this incident because we know how we feel about the vice president, or the administration, or the war in Iraq, or the press -- and therefore, we know how to judge the event.

The exact same thing happened after Katrina. Among diehards on each side, conclusions come first and as the facts come out they are embraced or discarded based on whether or not they support those conclusions. What I find disheartening is that otherwise very smart people are not immune from this phenomenon.

Cheney's shotgun pellets continue to do damage.

Well, the jokes are starting to die down, but the controversy continues.

Question #1: What happens if this guy dies?

Question #2: Who fires a shotgun after sundown?

According to this timeline he shot Whittington at 6:30 pm. That's insane! Sunset this time of year in the south is 5:30 pm. What kind of person does a 180 in the darkness and blasts away? This is not normal behavior.

Update: The timeline is for Eastern Time (ET), not Central(CT). For the day in question, Corpus Christi sunset is about 6:18 pm and in Kingsville its 6:21pm (CT). For the 5:30 pm (CT) shot it would have still been light. In fact, that would put the sun right in Cheney's eyes as he tracked the bird into the west an fired. Is this really any better than firing into the dark?

Please mentally exchange the old the scenario of "What kind of person does a 180 in the darkness and blasts away?" with "What kind of person does a 90 degree turn into the blinding sun and blasts away?"

Let me explain how Washington really works, Mr. Hackett

Completely disgusted by the national leadership of the Democratic Party, Paul Hackett gave up his quest to challenge Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) yesterday. Not only did he leave the Senate race, this former "rising star" also announced he was leaving politics.

Before you start asking "Wasn't this?", "Isn't this?", I'll just spare you the trouble--Yup, this is one and the same. This is Paul Hackett, the much celebrated Iraq War vet who came home to run in an overwhelmingly Republican Congressional District and nearly won the race. This is the Paul Hackett, the "new face" of the Democratic Party. Embraced by the bloggers, lauded by the New York Times, and toasted by party leadership, Hackett was touted as the future of the party. No doubt overwhelmed, and mostly likely thrilled with the endless words of praise, Hackett was all to willing to latch onto Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid's dream of a Democratic Senate Majority. At their urging, he jumped into the race against DeWine at a time when the Republican Party of Ohio was in shambles. With the backing of the Senate Minority Leader and the head of the DSCC, what could possibly stand in his way?

Well, as we all know, promises from (most) politicians mean nothing. In the last several weeks, Hackett was urged to withdraw from the Senate race to make room for Rep. Brown (D-OH). "Just switch back to the House race," he was urged, "You'll be a shoe-in." National Democrats, it seems, had now determined that Brown had a better chance of unseating DeWine. While that may be a possibility, the real concern was Hackett. According to today's NYT, Democratic leaders were terrified of the very thing that made Hackett so popular--his "straight talk."

In all fairness, Hackett has certainly crossed the "decorum" line more than once, using an expletive to describe the President and comparing GOP Religious Right leaders to bin Laden. While that may be somewhat regrettable, it's not like he's the first person to go down that road. Harry Reid himself has referred to Bush as an "idiot"--hardly a compliment--and numerous Democratic leaders have made the analogy between the far right and the Taliban (or Iran, etc.) Because of that, it's certainly a stretch to say these two comments are what made Schumer and Reid skittish. Paul Hackett was a straight shooter. Like it or not, he was going to tell the voters what he thought of something, and as we all know, that's not a quality that will endear one to the powers that be.

In the last several weeks, Hackett discovered that the very same people who had pushed his candidacy were now phoning his donors to advise them against further support. Refusing to go back on his promise that he wouldn't enter the Congressional race, he pulled out of it all yesterday, another embittered casualty of a system more concerned with control than service.

This is just too bizarre!

There is a competitive network of IED builders in Iraq that operate over the internet.

"Cells advertise their technical skills on the Internet, posting streaming video of IED attacks to jihadist web sites. The most highly skilled IED cells operate as a package and hire themselves out to the larger insurgent networks on a contract basis, changing affiliations for more money. "

Reminder for Menfolk...

Men, if you haven't done so already, don't forget to buy your ticket to stay in the big bed. Today is Valentine's Day, and I'm pretty sure there's a candy/card minimum.

Now if you think you can pull off "Baby, with me, every day is Valentine's Day," then go for it. But take a look in the mirror first before you make that plan A.

Or do you think you can pull off the Valentine's Day Scrooge routine? That's the one where you say, oh it was invented by Hallmark, it's all a big scam, what's romantic about setting aside one day to feel love on cue, love's supposed to be spontaneous...yadda-yadda-yadda.... Caveat emptor on that one, gents. If you think love is about being right, you might end up "flying luft-handsa."

Some Good Economic News

Despite some annoying obligatory anti-Europeanism, TCS has a couple of interesting articles about the economy. The first is about US leisure time going up, and why.

The second is about the fact that the rise in globalized workforce has not resulted in reduced US wages, because US jobs continue to be about making more and more valuable stuff.

Headlines

Forget the story and have fun with the basics--the headlines! Some are better with snarky irrelevant commentary. Some are precious by themselves. Such as the recent headline, CARTOON PROTESTERS DIRECT ANGER AT U.S.

Some more......

Money really doesn't buy happiness, study finds

Maybe not, but it does allow you to lease with a long-term option.

Group Eyes Alaska Boycott Over Wolf Ruling

That'll scare 'em! Seriously, how do you boycott Alaska?

Maui May Be Running Out of Sand

All right, now we approach disaster.

Schools Hope Snowshoes Get Kids Moving

Cattle prods work better.

Program Says Shark Attacks Down Worldwide

It was time for some good news.

--------------------------------------------------

Go ahead, give it a try! BONUS: Best Cheney/hunting headline/snark one-liner gets the first beer free IF I ever come to your town. (After the first, you're on your own.)

...of cartoons and looney tunes

Cathy Young gets to the heart of the schizophrenic elephant in the room during this debate about cartoons:

In a New York Times column, David Brooks contrasts the Islamic extremists' attitudes with ours: The West, with its ''legacy of Socrates and the agora" and its ''progressive and rational" mindset, is open to a multiplicity of arguments, perspectives, and ''unpleasant facts," while radical Muslims cling to ''pre-Enlightenment" dogmatism and shrink from the ''chaos of our conversation."

Yet Brooks overlooks the fact that a large segment of the population in the West, and especially in the United States, rejects the progressive, rational mindset and embraces pre-Enlightenment values as well. Fundamentalist Christians, traditionalist Catholics and ultra-Orthodox Jews do not, with very few exceptions, call for violence in response to heresy; that is a key distinction. But they too often equate criticism (let alone mockery) of their beliefs with ''religious bigotry" or ''hate speech." And they, too, often seek not simply to protest but to shut down offensive speech.

I'm glad someone else is pointing out America's decided lack of unanimity on privileging the first amendment over respect for religion. This really is a battle of conflicting ideals, and those most supportive of free speech are well-served by noticing that such battles have not become extinct here in the much-exalted halls of western liberty.

Please take the time to read the whole thing. if you do, you might save yourself from repeating the standard "but we're better because we aren't killing heretics" response which really isn't on point here. Young is not equating us with them. She's making a comparison which helps us understand the ways in which we are and aren't different. Always useful, IMO.

The Democracy-Peace nexus

Many people think that peace in the Middle East depends on the actions that the governments take towards each other. Subcategories of this belief are the notion that peace depends on Israel making some critical concessions to the Palestinians or the Palestinian government doing just enough to crack down on terror.

However, more fundamental than any of this is the freedom of the people in the region to advocate for peaceful accomodation of the other side. On the Israeli, this is already the case with groups like B'tselem and Gush Shalom pushing the boundaries of reasonable accomodation to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, this has not been the case on the Palestinian side. I would maintain that more than any concession that either side could make, peace will be at hand when a group of Palestinians would be free to demonstrate in the streets of Ramallah or Nablus, referring to the Israeli victims of Palestinian terror the way B'tselem refers to Palestinian victims of the Israeli military, free from fear of repercussions from both their government and their neighbors.

While almost no one advocates such a position, the closest being Natan Sharansky, the reality is that Palestinian concession with serious follow through will never happen as long as they remain a taboo for public discussion. This is the link between freedom and peace.

UPDATE: To better reflect the intended topic, I've changed the title. It was originally "When peace will be at hand"

Cheney shoots man on Texas Quayle hunting trip.

Cheney was hunting Dan Quayle? That seems unduly vicious!

Although this does prove what Charlton Heston always said:
"Soylent green is made out of PEOPLE!!!!"

“Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was “alert and doing fine” in a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday after he was shot by Cheney on a ranch in south Texas,”

If he'd managed to shoot the right guy, would he have served him with potatoes?
I'll bet this was one of those exotic safari ranches where you hunt homeless guys.
With Haliburton's profits so high this year, Cheney probably decided to go for the deluxe package.

Update: Evidently a ruckus broke out when the Vice President insisted on “field dressing” Mr. Whittington. It took three secret service agents to restrain the Vice President. Several bystanders heard Mr Cheney say, “He's mine damn it! I shot him and now he's mine!”

Update #2: Later reports show that Mr Cheney rode in the ambulance with Mr Whittington. When they arrived at the hospital, attends found Mr. Whittington with an apple in his mouth and his body smeared with barbecue sauce. The vice president insisted the apple helped his friend deal with the pain, and the sauce was a good antiseptic. However, the vice president could not explain why he was wearing a large apron with the words “Kiss Me, I'm the Cook” printed on it.

The Pogrom Mentality

The desire to take revenge on an entire group for a crime committed by one of their members is the mentality that leads to pogroms. Now, Danes are at risk of an anti-Dane pogrom, and being asked to leave Indonesia.

In Copenhagen, the foreign ministry urged all Danes on Saturday to leave Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, as soon as possible.

"Concrete information indicates that an extremist group wishes to actively seek out Danes in protest for the publication of the Prophet Mohammad cartoons," it said. The threat is greatest in eastern Java but "it is feared that it can spread to the rest of the country, including Bali," it added.

Links About the ID Wedge Strategy

Here are a couple of links to interesting articles about the brewing up of the Intelligent Design strategy. IMHO, ID's run out of gas, but it's an interesting thing to read about.

Could a centrist organization use some of these same ideas? Which of them shold be avoided?

Hat tip: Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns and Money

Hitch up your wagons!

It's time to beat that dead horse.

I just can't seem to stop look backwards and forwards. I was reading the Bull Moose's lament on why neither party will move to the middle, and who will win in November. His take is “the party of security, reform and innovation (in that order) will control the future.” I'm not sure I agree. I'm also not sure I disagree. Looking back over the last couple of years it has been the unexpected (at least to the general public) events that have defined politics. The twin towers, Iraq's civil war, Katrina, and oil prices have pretty much taken all other agenda and dumped them on the floor. As I have opined ad nauseam, I don't see the shocks stopping any time soon.

Compared to the items listed above, Social security reform, a balanced budget and health care reform are easy. When public pressure gets high enough, a compromise will be struck, everyone will be a little unhappy, but there will be a solution. That's not really a viable option with Muslim extremists, climate, oil and Iraq. Heck, at at this point, compared to the other difficulties Iraq seems like the easy problem. Eventually we will either be bankrupted by the war, the rebels will come to the table or we will just leave. Problem solved!

We don't really have those nice options with Muslim extremists, climate and oil. Iraq will be done (one way or the other) within a decade IMHO. For the other three items, a decade means things are just warming up (no climate pun intended). I would say the next easiest problem is oil. Which doesn't mean it going to be easy. Just that it easier than Muslim extremists and climate.

A road map for what's going to happen with oil can be found here(Big PDF warning). The Hirsch report was commissioned by the DOE under Bush. I would sum it up by as follows: It's going to take a decade of serious effort to keep things from going to hell. Quit screwing around and get started.

They used a lot more words and were much more diplomatic, but I don't have to. On a previous thread I had said that the estimates of oil reserves are a joke. Turns out Hirsch and company agree.

“1. When world oil peaking will occur is not known with certainty. A fundamental
problem in predicting oil peaking is the poor quality of and possible political
biases in world oil reserves data. Some experts believe peaking may occur soon. This study indicates that “soon” is within 20 years.”

Not really a lot of good news but a least there is a reasonable chance for success if we get off our butts.

That leaves us with Muslim extremists and climate. In my humble opinion we'd have a better chance negotiating with the weather than the extremists. Like the communist before them the Muslim extremists are not interested in a group hug. Their single minded obsession with world domination will never change. Strangely enough, solving the oil problem may make them evaporate. There isn't a single non Muslim country that WANTS to have a trading relationship with the Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis........ They just have the “go juice” we need. Find a viable alternative and the nasty little brutes will crumble. After all the soviet union didn't fall on the field of battle. They went bankrupted.

That leaves the weather. There is no “solution” to this. We can stop making the situation worse, but we can't turn back the clock. We will simply have to adapt to the new reality. You can pray for a super volcano to erupt and reduce the amount of solar radiation, but that seems counter productive. Massive volcanic eruptions tend to be kind of messy and destructive. There is always divine intervention, but I'm an agnostic/atheist so that really doesn't work for me.

On a positive note, it's always possible that all the climatologist are wrong. Just pulling a number out of the air I'd only give that a 20% chance of being true. But hey, it's better than nothing!

Globalized Islam

While I don't agree with a lot of his perspective, this column in a Pakistani paper has some intelligent observations about changes in the Muslim world.

The other aspect of the demonstrations that ought to be studied seriously is how well developed the global Islamist media machine has grown. Over the decades, Islamist groups have learnt the power of the media. Orchestrated media-directed protests, such as we have seen, show just how well integrated this parallel universe has become. Also, the time between the spark that ignites the crisis and the reaction to the crisis has grown shorter. Within 72 hours of the cartoon controversy re-emerging, the Muslim response was seen and heard from London to Indonesia.

But orchestrated protests, mediated and reproduced via the media, can become ritualistic, predictable and thus easy to manipulate. Indeed, one cannot help feeling that the entire crisis has been manipulated on both sides by conservative elements that wish to see the Muslim and Western worlds grow further apart.

There is a real danger therefore in the absence of circuit-breaking mechanisms — in the form of level-headed commentators and dialogue agents who can prevent such crises from spinning totally out of control — of incidents, real or imagined, being spun by media-savvy demagogues who want to create controversies for the sake of publicity. For voices of reason capable of calming the nerves were clearly absent. Muslim intellectuals ought to have stepped in and cautioned the angry young men of the Muslim street before they started doing stupid things.

The worldwide outrage produced by cartoons is not proportionate to the offense. There clearly is an amplification process going on that is potentially quite dangerous.

Interesting article in the Asia Times.

Here are some quotes:

“China's decision to vote against Iran at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting this month - resulting in Iran's referral to the Security Council - did not come as a big surprise to Tehran, since for more than two years top Chinese officials have been visiting Iran and in no unmistakable tone conveying the message that China would not sacrifice its huge trade interests with the West, the US in particular, over Iran. “

“Hence the US might turn to alternative trade incentives, perhaps even an India-style promise of civil nuclear cooperation, since China is keen on a major push with several new nuclear reactors. “

We may have more leverage in this situation than I thought. I read recently that China was hot to buy a large quantity of nuclear reactor. They want 25 new ones by 2020 and seem to be favoring a design by Pittsburgh based Westinghouse (recently purchased by Toshiba).

Lots more talk in the article about how vulnerable china feels. Check out the link.

The Other Friday Open Thread

Because I wanted to test my new laptop while slurping caffeine at Border's.

Hitchens, Inspired

The Case for Mocking Religion

The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings.

An erudite tour de force, IMO. YMMV. It's bound to, and will. Excerpted only briefly so that you'll read the whole thing.

Marveling at the Pattern

Every once in a while, I just like to sit back and marvel at the interconnection of all things. I was cruising the net a couple of days ago and ran across this article. It makes a rather unique comparison between the civil war and our current energy crisis. I hadn't really thought of it, but slaves were an alternative energy source.

Reading it got me thinking about how we arrived at our current situation. Cartoon riots, oil wars, GWOT , the rise of and corruption of the current incarnation of the republican party. Who would have though in the fall of 2000 we would be here. When Bush and Gore ran for the oval office my first thought was, “yuck”. What a horrible choice! Two clueless men of privilege, completely out of touch with the common man. I ended up voting green party just as a protest vote (I live in a very red state, so who I voted for didn't really matter).

Some on this site may be shocked at the next little bit.

If I had been forced to chose one, I probably would have voted for Bush. My reasoning would have been a need for fiscal conservatism, a dislike of liberal moves to ban firearms and a belief that affirmative action has become an abusive system. Eight years of Clinton needed a counter force to move things back to the center.

Now as I look back, I think that W was the absolute worst man to have in the White House. Because beneath the relative calm a pattern was coalescing, and it was a very bad pattern. It wasn't a thread as much as a swirling mass of chaos from which a pattern suddenly appears.

Who would have though that the training we gave to some Muslim guerrillas in Afghanistan would come back to bite us so baldly. Who would have thought that FDR's agreement with a Saudi king would finance a crazed version of Islam, an turn the son of a businessman into the bane of oil loving peoples all over the planet. That our support for a blood thirsty Iraqi dictator would go so wrong that we actually made the situation worse. It was the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia (defending it from Iraq) that caused Al qaeda to start laying plans for 9/11. What a mess!

As time goes on I'm not willing to believe in large 9/11 conspiracies involving Dick Cheney and Israel. (Come to think of it, I never did believe them, but a coworker was going on about them yesterday.) Self absorbed hubris, incompetence, and clueless? Yes, that was all there, but not a conspiracy. They were just politicians and bureaucrats behaving like normal. The bureaucrats didn't want to ruffle any feathers, and the politicians wanted to savior that juicy plum, torn from the hand of their rivals. Al qaeda? Who the hell are they?

It is my guess that Gore probably would have had a significantly better chance of stopping 9/11. Not because he was a great intellect (he's not), but because he already owned the problem. He'd been involved in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings and the Cole investigation, an probably realized there was a really dangerous enemy. I doesn't make him the better man than W. He just happened to have continuity with previous events. That's a really important factor.

A similar thread can be weaved with Iraq. In hindsight, leaving the final decision to invade Iraq to a man who's father was almost assassinated by Saddam, doesn't seem like a good idea. People with vendettas do not think clearly. Although I always argue on the anti invasion side when it comes to Iraq, I could come up with some really good reasons to invade, but not while we were still fighting in Afghanistan!

The pattern is just so beautiful and so deadly! That two stubborn oil men would be in charge of the country at a time when climate change threatens the planet and we really need to switch to something other than oil. It's enough to make you start laughing (or crying) hysterically. There are so many challenges and so many conflicts that need to be resolved, but what was the last election decided on?

That the democratic challenger was a dweeb and a dislike of gay rights!

It's times like this, that make me want to live naked in the forest, subsisting on roots and berries.

Brown Blames Homeland Security for FEMA's Katrina Failures

Brown: Homeland Security policies doomed FEMA

There was a cultural clash which didn't recognize the absolute inherent science of preparing for disaster, responding to it, mitigating against future disasters and recovering from disaster," he said during an opening statement before a Senate panel looking into the government's response to the hurricane.

"And any time you break that cycle of preparing, responding, recovering and mitigating you are doomed to failure. The policies and decisions that were implemented by DHS put FEMA on a path to failure."

Has this guy been talking to James Brolin? Do they have a new flavor of arse covering here? There's a scene in Traffic where Brolin, the outgoing drug czar, tells the new drug czar Michael Douglas the following tale:

You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor. He said - "When you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter, and you'll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can't get out of, open the second letter". Soon enough, he gets into a tight situation, and he opens the first letter. It says - "Blame it all on me". So he blames it all on the old guy, and it worked like a charm. When he got himself into a second situation, he opened the second letter. It said - "Sit down, and write two letters".

Football coaches and baseball managers use these letters, by the way.

The Democratic Party Culture of Corruption

AP: Reid Aided Ambramoff Clients, Records Show

I don't really think that only Democrats are corrupt, or that they are all corrupt for that matter. I am trying to show why pinning scandal on any party or ideology is absolutely ridiculous and nothing more than political maneuvering that flies in the face of reality and common sense. If the Democrats had the majority and Reid were their leader, they would be in the same position that the Republican Party is in now. That is how it works... You win power, some bad apples take it for granted or the other side is successful at character assasination, and then they win power. Self righteous ideologues, who claim moral superiority on either side, conveniently forget or outright ignore historical precedence. Furthermore, they are part of the problem because they blatantly disregard what is a systemic issue that is caused by not one, but both sides.

WARNING: Any argument that Reid is the only one, or that only Republicans are influenced by dirty lobbyists, will be met with hysterical laughter.

Hat-tip to Crank.

Friday Open Thread

Because I'm temporally challenged.

The Democrat's Obstacles

Are the Democrats falling short in their 2006 campaign? The Moderate Voice has an excellent rundown on their problems. Fundamentally, the Democrats are much more split than the Republicans, and this prevents them from coming up with coherent positions that they all really believe in and can communicate.

This Year's Bowls Show BCS' Strength

I thought this year's bowls showed the strength of the BCS, because IMHO the Orange Bowl this year was as good a game as you see (disclaimer: Longhorn fan writing). Every unit on both teams was absolutely fantastic, and utterly with-it. Now, for me, the Superbowl wasn't so great. IMHO, it was more like what a 2nd round playoff game should be. No way do I think we saw the NFL's best two teams. The Steelers probably were the right pick, but IMHO NOT the Seahawks. But even the Steelers had merely good offense - their unbelievable D made up for it.

As I argued here, choosing best teams based on a team's entire season is much likelier, statistically, to get around the problem that a great team can lose to a bad team on a bad day.

Now, THIS is Government Waste...

The Government Junkets You Fund

You'll be happy to know that the government junkets your tax dollars have funded include:

-- A Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) trip to the resort town of Los Cabos, Mexico, for a conference on American real estate and urban areas.

-- Another HUD outing to Honolulu -- for the Sacramento, Calif., Home Ownership Fair.

-- A Department of State expedition to Vienna, Austria, to partake in "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Train the Trainer" workshops.

-- A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jaunt by 236 employees to an AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain. Price tag: $3.6 million.

-- A total of 59 HHS conferences around the world with delegations of more than 100 -- including over 1,000 attendees to sunny Orlando, Fla. Employed by HHS? You're going to Disney World!

Media Cowardice

"CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam." There are two explanations for CNN's refusal to show these cartoons. Either they are intimidated by Muslim violence, or they have no respect for non-Muslim religions such as Christianity. Given their previous history of lying to viewers for fear of tyrannical dictators, I'm leaning towards intimidated. However, the fact that they are perfectly willing to air photos which are highly offensive to Christians gives evidence of disrespect.

The lesson to be drawn from CNN's actions? Protest offensive art by threatening to withdraw taxpayer funding, and CNN will publish the offensive images while suggesting you are a thin-skinned religious zealot. Protest offensive art by burning embassies, rioting, and making death threats, and CNN will refrain from publishing the offensive images while announcing its respect of your religion.

Cartoon courtesy of Cox & Forkum

Update: More hypocrisy, from the New York Times. It won't run the cartoons that Muslims are protesting, but it will run an offensive painting of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung, while equating the extremist Muslim violence over the cartoons to fighting against taxpayer funding of offensive art and letters to the editor from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling the latter "political hypocrisy".

Iranian oil and nuclear power.

Slowly creeping into my consciousness is a really unpopular thought. Iran needs nuclear power. Yes, their president gives all the appearance of being an insane religious zealot. Yes, they support terror groups. Yes, they want the bomb, but their oil production seems to have reached a plateau. Long view, Short view(xls), Last two months

From their perspective this has to be a terrifying prospect. Tortured by the shah and his western supporter, attacked by Iraq, isolated from the west, saddled with belligerent superstitious leaders, surrounded by an American occupation and now the main source of revenue is getting ready to slowly dry up. So they need a new source for domestic electricity production. Small wonder they are giving everyone the finger. True, they are shooting themselves in the foot by their tactics, but that doesn't mean they don't need the nuclear power plants.

It's a bizarre Alice and the looking glass version of our own energy problems. As both governments juggle a violent east/west culture clash, domestic religious "values", natural disasters and economic issues, as a slowly ticking oil time bomb sits in the background.

In what is probably one of the strangest coincidences of modern history, W and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad probably pray for same thing at night, the destruction of their enemies and "don't let the oil run out on my watch".

Now if I can just find that darn white rabbit :-}

Rome Rose Because it Was a Republic, Fell Because It Was an Empire

I seem to be on a historical tear just now.

I've read and heard plenty of statements that Rome's rise was accelerated by its becoming an Empire. Well, to me the opposite is true: the fall of Rome began as the Republic fell. Rome grew from a city to a superpower and prospered for almost 500 years under the Republic. One has to give the Caesars credit - for 100 years, the Empire was able to advance militarily, worked to preserve Republican appearances, encouraged culture, preserved customs of tolerance toward the conquered, and generally kept the collapse slow. 500 vs 100. After that, though, the Empire shrank and was headed more clearly downwards.

Over time, troubles grew. Some were caused by succession such as the increasingly corrupt deals the Praetorian guards got and going increasingly into debt to finance successions and revolts were causing severe problems. Also, the Empire became increasingly despotic over time - persecutions of Christians started in 250, and in 300, Diocletian killed the last shreds of the Republican form and made it a conventional empire. Constantius made it illegal to not be Christian, and started persecution of non-Christians.

By 1,000 years later, the Empire had become geographically small, er, Byzantine, and theocratic.

I see the early Empire successfully hiving off the strong base that the Republic established - good military and other technology, a good economy, great culture. But, except for one or two freak things like Greek Fire, the innovations all came in from outside during the Empire's long existence, the economy was all over the place but mostly probably shrunk, the population fell, and the culture faded. IMHO, Pliny, in that hundred year grace period, is the sole voice that stands on his own, as opposed to from historical importance, and what's the tale that earns him his place? The sad fall of the Republic. The other Lives are rather less compelling.

Centrism, The Philosophy

With his usual eloquent and incisive clarity, Tutakai knocks one out of the park.

When I argue that moderates' unique contribution is a pragmatist willingness to resist dogmatism and adopt good ideas from both left and right, I'm suggesting that such willingness is necessary to prevent a complete takeover of politics by dogma-driven iconoclasm. Critics from left and right are often wont to condemn moderate politics as unprincipled for the simple reason that they confuse dogma with principles. Critical skepticism is a principle. Pragmatism is a principle. Intellectual rigor is a principle. And, in the end, seeking a difficult sythesis between left and right is a princpled activity.

UPDATE: Some insist on misreading that very clear language, so I've done some highlighting. And here's some more thoughts in the same vein, from the Tutakai 2005 year-end post:

It is in the nature of moderate politics to recognize some valid principles from both sides. From conservatives, we inherent a strong realism and a skepticism towards utopian projects from socialism through libertarianism. From liberals, we are inspired by a desire to redress social ills, fighting poverty and intolerance that leads to violence. Our own contribution is a strong pragmatism, the fulcrum upon which we balance the contributions from conservatives and liberals and translate them into meaningful policies that value effectiveness over ideological purity.

Will Boehner lead?

Jeremy has some good question in regards to Majority Leader John Boehner's appearance on Meet the Press last weekend:

John Boehner has much to prove about his abilities to lead the GOP caucus in the House of Representatives back from the brink. His comments yesterday on the talk shows about his commitment to serious reform of lobbying and earmarking practices left a great deal to be desired.

Boehner said he "has doubts about" a blanket-ban on lobbyist-funded travel in favor of simply tightening disclosure rules. Why not do both? As for earmarks, Boehner remarked "we need to reduce the number, but I don't know that it's appropriate to eliminate all of them." Once again, why not? And who decides which get "reduced" away?

I, like Jeremy, wasn't blow away by Boehner's performance. My first reaction was that he certainly knew how to articulate an argument well, much better than most of the other Republican leaders we see on television. My other reaction was that Boehner really had no intention of changing anything in regards to lobbyists, private travel, earmarks etc.

On earmarks:

I think there is a good argument for lessening and not completely getting rid of earmarks, and I think Boehner is right to point out that the issue isn't the earmark in and of itself but the process that is used to approve them. Boehner seems to believe that there should be checks and balances that ensure earmarks are in the federal interest. Alright, but who is responsible for providing that check and balance, like Jeremy asks? If it is Members of Congress, either one of the leaders or by committee and not an outside entity, than the rules need to be strict and clear. If the rules are not transparent we will have little more than the same system we already have that encourages the use of earmarks as an incentive to get votes for legislation.

What are the circumstances an earmark can be attached to a bill? How can you prove that an earmark is in the federal interest? How do you ensure that earmarks aren't used for political purposes? These are all questions that need to be clearly defined, and if that is not possible, than Jeremy is right, they should be done away with completely.

On travel:

Boehner's performance was a bit comical regarding private travel. He first pointed out that travel can benefit a Member's (of Congress) world view, which I think is fair enough. He then proceeded to argue that various organizations hold conferences and meetings in some of the most glamorous places in the world, and if a Member of Congress is asked to give a speech, he or she should determine whether or not to go based on federal interest, of course. If it just so happens the event is held at an Arnold Palmer golf resort, than hey, what are you going to do about it?

This is where I was troubled because Boehner's argument showed, IMO, that he doesn't get that when it comes to elected officials, even the slightest hint of corruption is inappropriate. Sure, maybe some Members of Congress don't abuse privately funded trips and only take them for the right reasons, but that isn't the problem. The issue here is that the American people need to know that their Member of Congress votes on their behalf and not because Phillip Morris invited them to the company retreat in the Bahamas. There is not a clear way to do that, or at least one hasn't been presented, and at the same time allow for privately funded trips by lobbyists.

When I worked for state and local elected officials we handled this issue by designating a travel budget for each member. There were guidelines for what that budget could be used for and each trip was to be reported and available to the public at all times. We used to say, don't let the boss take a trip that you cannot explain to the Seattle Times... The particular elected official I worked for saw the world, gave speeches, met with important business leaders, etc., sometimes on her own dime and sometimes using the travel budget that was allocated to our district. There were instances when we had to explain travel decisions, but because the process created outside of the elected body was strict in nature, we were always able to explain who, what, when, where, and why without controversy.

Boehner's call for full disclosure, while correct, isn't enough to curb the well deserved criticisms of Republican leadership in this area. More is needed indeed.

McCain Rips Obama

Blanton brings attention to a letter from John McCain to the holier than now Senator from Illinois.

McCain to Obama (an excerpt):

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

I for one am sick and tired of Barack Obama and his rock star attitude. I am completely put off by the actions of someone who denounces the current campaign finance system only to then run around the country speaking at $1,000 a plate dinners, using fair competition as an excuse, then showing up on Meet the Press to lecture Republicans about ethics. I don't care how good his speech was at the Democratic National Convention, he is a liberal ideologue and party activist whose true colors were exposed this last week when he turned his back on a promise to Senator McCain. Obama hasn't shown me anything but a pretty face on television.

This needed to be done. Good for John McCain. We need more straight talk and honesty from our leaders and we need leaders who walk the talk. It is our only hope for change.

Who is a al-Zarqawi's greatest enemy?

Turns out it's Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. The Christian science monitor is reporting that :

"In Anbar Province, an insurgent hotbed that borders Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, US and Iraqi officials say they have a new ally against the Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists: local tribal leaders like Jadaan and home-grown Iraqi insurgents.
"The local insurgents have become part of the solution and not part of the problem," US Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters at a press conference last week."

Life is very strange. Our greatest chance for success in Iraq is if Zarqawi keeps killing civilians. Check out the link

The Long-Term View

Maybe it's just me, but if these NSA hearings are to have any effect at all, we're going to have to come to a consensus. I'd like to think that all of us, regardless of party, want to fight an effective terror war, and give the President broad and flexible powers. I'd also like to think that we can all agree that protecting civil liberties is a real concern, and not just some hypothetical nuisance cooked up by academics and lawyers. I've been watching the hearings, and there seems to be a back-and-forth on the specifics of Presidential authority. Gonzales insists that the President had, and still has implicit authority from Congress with regards to the warantless taps.

This argument doesn't wash, is at best debatable, and could be used to justify even broader powers. Never mind that fact that the FISA rules seem pretty clear, in my view. It seems to me that any attempts to debate this argument are treated like personal attacks, and Gonzales goes on the defensive. It's assumed by some that those who question this program somehow don't want us to fight an effective terror war. It's assumed as fact the previous Administrations have used the same powers. These issues need to be debated on the merits, honestly and openly. Why does Gonzales seem so defensive regarding past statements?

Why don't we just agree that the President's authority in this area is suspect, debate what FISA safeguards are or need to be in place, and work it out? Why can't we just go to FISA with this, if only for the sake of public confidence? I know some people want to impeach over this, but that's an extreme position, just as extreme as the position that the President has theoretically unlimited powers, and those who challenge that are hurting the war effort.

The question of the hypothetical keeps coming up. However, American citizens may have been wiretapped, they may have been illegal, and let's not neglect the long term. What about future Presidents? This is going to be a long war. This may be a losing issue politically for the Dems, but there are larger principles at work here.

Porkbusters

The Porkbusters project founded by Glenn Reynolds and NZ Bear is a seriously good idea. But there's some glaring problems with the implementation. The "self-reporting" of pork by just anyone is leading to some highly questionable information, reported as "pork."

In the interest of seeing what specific bacon-like appropriations my own Congresscritters were bringing home, I went browsing in the "blogger reported pork" section of the site. This section breaks down all blogger-reported pork by state. What I found was that, apparently, ANY federal funding coming to the state of Kansas is "pork," even if the funding has never existed or even been proposed. And funding that does exist was reported as "pork" simply because the person reporting it didn't care for the usage of the funding.

EXAMPLE: One of the entries (an anonymous submission) proclaims pork of $500,000,000 for the "Cosmosphere Enhancement Program." Now, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum is a fine institution. It has some of the finest aeronautical and space-related exhibits to be found anywhere, including aircraft, rockets, actual manned space vehicles both American and Russian, and thousands of space artifacts. It's the "go to" museum for the restoration of space artifacts, including Gemini and Apollo capsules. But the total budget of the Cosmosphere is about $5 million a year, and if they were lined up to get 100 times that in special funding, you'd think someone local would have noticed!

Another entry states, "PORK PROJECTS: Please enlighten me with respect to need and value of the selected "pork" projects listed below. What is reason that each selected project has been funded with my tax dollars and what..." (It cuts off there.) What follows is a list of every single federal expenditure destined for local projects in Kansas from the budgets of the VA, HUD, Transportation, and Health and Human Services that the (once again, anonymous) reporter doesn't like. The claimed total is $534 million--I did not waste time checking the math. Now, some of those expenditures may indeed be wasteful, and the spending of federal funding to support local projects may indeed not fall into some libertarian/conservative ideal of "limited government," but are ALL of them pork?

The site aggregates all of these questionable (and oft-anonymous) entries together to reach a sum total of $1,037,275,000 in total "pork" for Kansas. By comparison, the seriously anti-pork group Citizens Against Government Waste came up with only $115,183,000 in pork, one-ninth the amount reported by the Porkbusters site.

Porkbusters is a truly great idea, but the reporting section needs considerable tweaking and verification efforts to be taken seriously.

He Wants Ideologues

Dan Henninger via Ed Driscoll

People who crave the middle are simply going to be disappointed in 2008. The Democrats have abolished the middle, and the Republican middle has discredited itself. There is a reason John McCain markets himself as more right than center; he knows ideology matters just now. So do George Allen, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback and the rest.

How Hillary Clinton triangulates in the current atmosphere is the Rubik's Cube of our time. But for the Web Democrats and GOP refugees from the Congress they thought they controlled, the puzzling is over. They're looking for candidates "who represent my ideas." Ideologues.

He may be right about the people who control the nominations. Independents are just too independent from each other to be politically effective.

An Intriguing WWI Battleship story

Robert Farley, an occasional battleship and military blogger is telling an intriguing battleship tale of WWI over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Though I do have a nit-pick: he says Turkey went over to the bad guys because the British stole their battleships; Churchill offers the not unconvincing defense that Turkey had already signed a secret treaty with Germany promising to do exactly that. But it is pretty likely that that would've pushed Turkey off the edge if they'd been there, Did Churchill grab the ships because he had some intelligence, or just because he could and the British saw Turkey as inferior?

A Blogger is Going to Disneyland

Congratulations to Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers!

I thought the officiating was awful if not bias, the communication between Hasselbeck and Holmgren was amateur, and overall both teams under performed. That doesn't change the fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers had the greatest run to the World Championship in the history of the NFL.

Here is to a Patriots - Seahawks Super Bowl next year.

Go Hawks!

What are we fighting for?

An I mean that literally! I've been trying to come up with a new catch phrase for this religious cultural conflict we are currently engaged in. I really don't like WOT, it seems to ignore the real problem and substitute another. Are we talking about the Irish Republican Army? After all, they are a terrorist organization. Let's not go looking for more trouble than we already have!

It's not a hot war and it's not a cold war, its a ????? war.
Tepid war? Superheated war? Slow boil war? War on ignorance? Slow war? Long Emergency? Clash of civilizations? The oil wars?

War against Islamic fascism? To wordy, an fascism just doesn't have the tang it use to. Its like a used up battery, it just doesn't have any juice.

War against the Arabs? The Indonesian bombing victims would take issue with that.

War against Islam? Well, the Canadian Muslims were upset about the Mohammad cartoons, but all they did was organize a letter writing campaign. (Besides, I blamed Canada last week.)

War against intolerance? Probably the best yet! But considering the partisan bickering in this country, and the rise of the religious right, I'm not sure it a good idea to bring that subject up. On the other hand it might work as an issue for the democrats. They could use it to counter the whole “religious right”phenomenon and the Muslims at the same time.

I'm afraid I've run out of ideas.
Maybe I should re-phrase the question: Who are we fighting?
Al qaeda? Yes, but they are just a component of a larger problem. The people who burnt down the Danish embassy probably never met an Al qaeda member.

I guess it comes down to Muslim fundamentalists. The war against Muslim Fundamentalism? Well that doesn't roll off the tongue easily. An the non-fundamentalist Muslims will not be happy. Considering that the moderate Muslims are our best weapon against the fundamentalists, annoying the moderates seems like a really bad idea.

You may think I'm being petty and trite (and you'd be partially right), but it's important to get the catch phrases correct. It helps a society understand the nature of the conflict. It helps in creating an opposing force to the threat. Every war needs a battle cry. "Remember 9/11" worked for a while, but then Iraq happen and it's become a somewhat partisan phrase. Beside a whole lot of people hate us who had nothing to do with 9/11.

Thoughts on the Decay of Civilization

You know, I recognize that the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, that started in Denmark, and have outraged Muslims worldwide are crude, indecent, and offensive. One has to wonder though, when does it stop? There is no excuse for extremist violence. It is wholly unacceptable to attempt to silence free expression through death threats and real violence. Keep in mind that I'm not defending these cartoons, but if their intent was to make a statement against the intolerance of radical Islam, then it seems that the radicals have only proved them right. What really bothers me about this is that a lot of leaders, particularly European ones, seem more concerned with apologizing for the cartoons, than comdemning the violence. Muslims leaders plead for their fellow Muslims to be reasonable, but it seems that their calls for peace are not as full of energy as their outrage over these cartoons.

Last I checked, free speech still counts for something, and that includes offensive speech. The West should not apologize for free expression. Again, I'm not defending these images, but violence cannot be the acceptable response here. While I'm sure the caricature of Muhammad is offensive to all Muslims, you'd think Muslims would be equally offended by the extremists that have corrupted their faith. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have never seen a reaction approaching anything like this, over the numerous anti-Semitic stuff spread worldwide.

I hate to rant, but it bothers me when people begin to sanction the subjugation of free speech and thought under fear and violence. If sense is to have any dominion at all in our society, we must forcibly condemn, and compel all civilized people of all religions to condemn this violent mania.

OK, I'll dismount from my high horse, now.

The story is here, BTW.

Super Bowl Thread

It's here. It won't be back for a year. Enjoy!

Who runs the federal government?

In the time I've worked in the federal government I've notice something that won't surprise most centrist: The federal government is dysfunctional.

The dysfunction comes from the corrupting power of money but also from the nature of peoples personalities. Since my entire professional life has been spent in the federal government I can only speak about it and not private industry.

I would put almost no blame on the bottom rung of the ladder. The common worker just wants a paycheck, and will do what is required to get it. To maintain sanity as a simple federal worker is not easy. You have to develop the ability to accept that entire workdays are lost to massaging a huge mindless bureaucracy, and that sometime you job is meaningless. To do this without going insane takes a lot of will power. The federal system will slowly crush you if you have the wrong mindset. There is good reason for the whole “going postal” phenomenon.

IMHO the problems in the federal government are rooted in four management/professional personality types: Civil Servant, Timid, Alpha wolf and Corrupt.

I consider myself to be a Civil Servant. My job is to serve the Constitution and the American people to the best of my abilities. There are a lot of people like me in federal service. We take pride in getting the job done right. There are others like me posting on this site, but we are not alone in the federal government.

The "Corrupt" person is the easiest to understand. They are just criminals. They accept bribes and sell insiders information to contractors. I've never had direct contact with this type, they tend to be politically connected, so reporting one is a great way of getting yourself fired. I would include most political appointees in this category. They are just here for the money.

The "Timid" type are also pretty easy to understand. In fact, I feel myself evolving into this type. I've just gotten tired of fighting with the Alpha wolves and the Corrupt. You follow regulations, avert your eyes and try to make it till retirement. Unless its a show stopping emergency or has political consequences, just ignore it.

The "Alpha Wolf" are the real monsters of federal service. Although nominally concerned with money, their real obsession is power and empire at any cost. The organizations mission is a very distance secondary concern. I've had a lot of contact with this type. Common characteristics are low self esteem, a lack of understanding of the subject mater and a willingness to punish the innocent. They tolerate absolutely no questions about their decisions, they never admit being wrong, and all decisions are made to enhance their standing. Bold face lies are their staple. They are very good at politics. However their most outstanding characteristic is relentlessness. Once they identify you as prey they will never give up.

Don't get the impression that an Alpha Wolf is unstoppable. I just won major victories against two of them this year. But they are nasty pieces of work and the stress of fighting them is slowly destroying what little health and vigor I have left.

I guess what prompted me to write this are a series of disturbances in the federal government, FEMA/Katrina, the NSA scandal and the Lobby scandal. I wanted to say that the federal government shouldn't be viewed as a paragon of virtue. There is a never ending fight against very evil people going on in federal service. Trusting some anonymous bureaucrat with your life and liberty is not a wise move, since you never know what type you are talking with, till it's to late.

New Centrist Coalition Blog

I met John Kerry today, and my writeup makes a good first report on the new Centrist Coalition blog I've created About Democrats. Kerry dropped by the same Massachusetts Democratic caucus that I happened to cover in my new career as a cub reporter.

The purpose of this new blog is to focus on centrism within the Democratic Party. It's not going to be a rah-rah blog, but rather one with some journalistic distance and actual reporting.

Orygunal Sin

Our friendly nemisis, Carla, has produced a post called St Jack and the Bullies in the Pulpit--or why centrism doesn't exist, part 1247, in which she writes

What passes for centrism nowadays is what used to be considered the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

She's also started a blog focused on the state between Washington and California called Loaded Orygun

My only response is that while centrists who consider themselves Democrats and centrists who consider themselves Republicans have some things in common, the Republican centrists distinctly to the right of the Democrat centrists in almost all cases.

A Call For Democracy

Todd Smyth has produced a beautifully-llustrated manifesto entitled The Problem is Big Money in Politics. Check it out!

Well, that didn't take long!

The Washington Post reports: “House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has begun shifting his party toward an alternative lobbying reform package that stresses disclosure of lobbying contacts rather than the virtual ban on gifts and privately funded trips proposed last month by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).”

A politician voting to give up a free lunch, is kind of like a snake swallowing its tail. In the real world, it just don't happen.

Is it just me, or is the lead time for political back pedaling getting smaller. It use to take months for politicians to obfuscate, now it's the very next day. Shouldn't be long before they start giving back to back interviews to clarify that they really didn't mean what they just said.

I blame the blogs ;-}

Lethal injection - fine, flawed or unconstitutionally flawed?

One of Justice Alito's first actions after his swearing in was to vote to uphold a stay of execution in Missouri, prompting a hysterical overreaction in some quarters, and at least raised eyebrows in others (not least in the chambers of Justices Scalia, Thomas and of our Fearless Leader, all of whom voted to vacate the stay). The surrounding environment is that the Court has granted cert in a Florida case which raises the question of, not whether lethal injection is unconstitutional, but how the condemned man should challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection; the Court refused to vacate a stay in a similar-sounding challenge from Indiana (see discussion here). Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog rounds up the situation here.

I'm posting this mainly because I'm curious to hear what Centerfield readers think about all this, but if I may, I'd like to confine the debate a little, to avoid a general discussion of capital punishment, that is, to try and focus on methods in general and lethal injection in particular. My own view after the jump.

In a nutshell, my view is as follows.

The death penalty, as a class of punishments, is not unconstitutional, but some methods of executing a person may be, Just because the Originalist does not believe that the Eighth Amendment has evolving content does not mean that s/he does not believe that it has anything to say about how an execution is carried out (while it does not exclude the death penalty, it is a fair reading, I think, to suggest that the Eighth Amendment prescribes a substantive restriction on how someone can be executed, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments prescribe a procedural restriction on how someone must be found guilty and sentenced to death).

The question then becomes, how do we determine which methods are cruel and unusual, and do any of the problems with the lethal injection protocols rise to that level? In my view, the answer is to treat the Eighth Amendment no differently than we would treat, say, Fourth Amendment claims arising under new technologies that did not exist in 1791. Or, with a touch more or the macabre, the questions to ask are: what is the mechanism of death, and can it be analogized to a similar mechanism that was available when the Eighth Amendment was ratified?

The logic flows fairly easily from here. If a man is sentenced to death, that is not cruel and unusual punishment in or of itself. (If a man sits on death row for twenty years because he keeps filing frivolous habeaus corpus petitions, is that cruel and unusual punishment? No.) If he is sentenced to death by hanging, or by firing squad, is that cruel and unusual? Of course not, because those were two of the most common methods of execution in the colonies and early (1776-1791) republic. However, I think all will agree that if we sentenced a man to die in boiling oil, that would violate the Eighth Amendment, because that practise had been abandoned in England for centuries before the colonies were even founded, and had never been practised here.

Let's get more controversial. How about a method of execution that was used for over century in this country: I think a pretty good case could be made that the electric chair might be unconstitutional, within the original understanding of the eighth amendment, because although the punishment itself did not exist in 1791, the mechanism of death most closely resembles a punishment which AFAIK was considered cruel and unusual by 1791 in America, viz. burning alive. I’m not advocating that as a correct answer, just saying it’s a likely result, and at least, a method of answering the question. What about another form of execution, Saddam Hussein’s favorite: feed a man into an industrial shredder, slowly, and feet first? Is that cruel and unusual? Industrial shredders didn’t exist in 1791, so what’s an originalist to do? Obviously it would be cruel and unusual by the “evolving standards of decency,” so we know that a liberal judge would strike down such a punishment, but what’s an originalist to do? Well, I would try to analogize the mechanism of death, and ask if that mechanism - carried out by non-mechanized means - would be cruel and unusual in 1791. Was the slow dismembering and disanguination of a man widely practised in the colonies? No? How about occaisionally? Not so much? Well, if it was cruel and unusual to rip a man apart in 1791 by hand, why would the industrial revolution have changed that? I think we can see that feeding a man into an industrial shredder, slowly, and feet first is cruel and unusual even if the device didn’t exist in 1791, and even if one doesn't accept that the Eighth Amendment must be treated in light of contemporary standards, or given more amorphous evolving content.

So we turn to lethal injection. The afore-mentioned Tom Goldstein is counsel for a case on its way to the Supreme Court which challenges Tennessee's lethal injection protocol. As I understand it, the crux of the argument for it being cruel and unusual (I'm not going to deal with the due process question) is because the component of the protocol which knocks the prisoner out can, for several reasons, wear off during the administration of the other two components, and resultantly, the prisoner may awaken and discover himself suffocating (page 6) (refer also to this article). There are other arguments presented, I realize, but this seems to me to be the focus.

If so, firstly, and this is one of the things I want to put out there for discussion: could the issue not be equally resolved not by removing the pavulon component, but by increasing the strength of the sedative? As far as I know, it is very rare for patients to awaken halfway through open-heart surgery, so medical science seems to have figured out how to put people under and keep them there. If the sedative component can be strengthened considerably (it isn't as if overdose is a great concern in this setting, one would think), doesn't that obviate the concern as to suffering?

But to return to the Eighth Amendment question, on the premise outlined above, I would want to know, since we deal here with a practise that didn't exist when the Eighth Amendment was ratified, what is the mechanism of death, and can it be analogized to a punishment that did exist when the Eighth Amendment was ratified? It seems to me that the question presented by the protocol anathesiology challenge is, "is a punishment where a man suffocates cruel and unusual and thus unconstitutional"? Hanging was broadly practised in the colonies and post-revolutionary America, and while the goal was obviously to induce death by breaking the neck, it was an accepted risk (and common occurrence) that the neck would not break, and the condemned would suffocate. If there was a punishment widely used in 1791 which was not intended to - but often did - cause death by suffocation, and it was not then considered unconstitutional (nor at any point until its last use on American shores, in 1996), is there any reason to think (absent claims of evolving content, such as "[petitioner] argues that the lethal injection protocol is inconsistent with contemporary standards of decency," page 9, emphasis added) that a punishment that is not intended to - but possibly sometimes might - cause death by suffocation has now become unconstitutional?

Personally, I think the whole issue could be most easily resolved within the Constitution by states abolishing the death penalty. I'd consider voting for that; it raises more questions and problems than it's worth, and it has only questionable deterrent effect. However, if we're not going to do that, then in my view, certainly the protocol should be challenged - just not necessarily in the Courts. On a normative level, I think execution, if it's to be carried out, should be as humane as fairly possible, not because we forgive the prisoner, or because they deserve to be treated better, but because we as a society are better than they are. But none of this, in my view, raises the strong normative objections to this protocol's shortcomings to the level of being unconstitutional.

Booze: What Miracles Can't It Do??

Alcohol Saves the Planet

Good summary from Ron Bailey over at Reason:

For years, scientists have been fighting over whether making ethanol from crops uses more energy than it produces. On negative side stand Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel and University of California-Berkeley environmental engineer Tad Patzek. They published a study last July that found that producing ethanol using crops used 29 to 57 percent more fossil fuel energy than it saved.

Last week, the Energy and Resources Group at UC-Berkeley headed by Alex Farrell published an analysis in Science of six energy balance studies on producing ethanol, including the Pimentel and Patzek study, and came to the opposite conclusion. The Berkeley team found that current methods of producing ethanol from crops, chiefly corn, generate about 20 percent more energy than they use. Farrell argues that the Pimentel and Patzek study included out-of-date information and did not count the co-products such as animal feed that result from ethanol production. Stay tuned—this spat among ecologists and environmental engineers is far from over.

Whole lot O' questions left to answer. Lots of choices still to make. The whole thing's worth reading...

Friday Open Thread

It's here. Live with it.

GAO points Katrina's bony finger at Chertoff

Kind of a predictable outcome from the GAO. If Homeland security was created to deal with a catastrophic 9/11+ (nuclear?) type attack, why was Katrina such a problem?

I keep thinking of the higher ups in my own chain of command. How can you make a normally clueless politician understand what's coming? The ones I have had to deal with are just so timid and so incapable of mustering enough imagination to understanding an approaching train wreck. The only thing that can drag them from their self absorbed world of three martini lunches is a disaster.

Hmmmm! Maybe it's time to pop another blood pressure pill.

Majority Leader John Boehner

The House Republican Conference just elected Congressman John Boehner as Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. I endorsed John Shadegg but see some good in Boehner who earned the support of most Republican moderates.

Boehner is known as a pragmatic conservative and a deal maker, qualities that will make him an effective Majority Leader. Furthermore, I think he has the political savy to understand that voters are unhappy with the current direction Republican leadership is taking the Congress... Paying lip service to reform will not be enough.

Democrats will no doubt begin to attack Boehner's K Street connections, the one reasoned I believed Shadegg to be a better candidate, but because of his demeanor, telegenic looks, and his pragmatic approach to public policy, I do not think the new Majority Leader will be as easy to knock around as Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich. Boehner is a younger, more exciting version of Speaker Hastert, and like Hastert he will be able to stay under the radar and get things done. Unlike Hastert, Boehner will be able to present a positive, fresh face for the party when he is called on to do so.

I certainly am pleased most House Republicans understood that promoting current leadership wasn't the best move.

UPDATE:

A Plank reader and staffer to a senior Democratic congressman comments on the leadership race outcome:

Blunt was status quo, we can run against status quo. Shadegg would have been a fresh face, would have gotten rid of ear marks, and would have taken them back to their roots but at the same time would have killed their moderates and helped to put four seats in Pennsylvania, two seats in Connecticut, and two in NJ into more vulnerability. Boehner gives the appearance of reform for GOP vulnerables to run on, provides a new face that can't be demonized by Dems (hard to demonize someone as the "Congressman from Sallie Mae", much easier when the Majority Leader is married to a tobacco lobbyist) and is frankly a better legislator than either Blunt or Shadegg. Watch over the next few months as Pelosi goes after him, she will sound increasingly more shrill, and he will get more done.

Let's break that oil habit...Maybe.

"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

"Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

That's the problem with addictions . Things said in an ethanol induced euphoria can really come back to haunt you the next morning. The promises made the night before can cause problems with your current relationship. Who'd have thought that your nationally televised pledge of oil abstinence would upset the local drug dealers? I can almost hear the telephone call to the Saudi king "O'baby you know I didn't mean it. It was just the ethanol talking; you know I still love you."

After a little hair of the dog, to clear up that morning hangover, a new story emerges. "This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says.

Yea, we can't upset the airplane crashing, suicide bombing, terrorist supporting, religious wackos that sell us the all important juice.

We Need Transparency in Electronic Voting

Here in NC, lawmakers are caving in to Diebold, who has refused to comply with our state's new electronic voting certifications, which require furnishing the state with their product's source code. This is outrageous.

A few months ago The Free Press Organization posted an article titled "Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?," which focuses on the extremely different results between the Columbus Dispatch's polling results, traditionally very accurate, and the actual ballot counts, mostly conducted on Diebold's electronic voting systems. There are two possible reactions to this story:

• There is corruption in the electronic voting system.


• The story is a conspiracy theory.

Either reaction severely implicates Diebold. If Diebold is responsible, directly or indirectly, for corrupting the American democratic process that is bad enough. If a conspiracy theory, then it is the unverifiable nature of Diebold's electronic voting architecture that allows such fears to propagate. It's a lose-lose scenario for the company, which must provide transparency and independent accountability in their systems to restore confidence in the electoral process and prevent this argument from even taking place.

Personally, I am very suspicious of Diebold...

• The company originally withdrew as a vendor from North Carolina due to the requirement that they share their software code with the state. The company provides electronic voting services to 20 counties in North Carolina.
• In Florida, computer experts were able to successfully hack Diebold's optical-scan voting machines to affect the outcome of a mock election.
• A Diebold representative mocked the seriousness of this successful hacking by cracking a joke.
• The United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio has filed a class action lawsuit against Diebold for "issuing a series of material misrepresentations to the market which had the effect of artificially inflating the market price" between October 22, 2003 through September 21, 2005.
• There is also a class action lawsuit against the company for insider trading.
• Diebold's CEO, Walden O'Dell, has resigned amid the company's long history of controversy.

I love the idea of electronic voting. I'm all for it, and the majority of service providers are being completely open about their operations. If I could vote online, I would do that and I think it would increase voter turnout immensely, but all voting systems must be transparent. Paper records must be maintained and independent review of the sourcecode is imperative. As a recent New York Times (registration required) editorial put it, "The counting of votes is a public trust. Diebold, whose machines count many votes, has never acted as if it understood this."

Oops!

Since Mitt Romney announced he would not run for re-election, I thought the Democrats had a good chance of winning the governor's race in Massachusetts, which last happened in 1986. But with today's embarassing faux pas, in which the Lt. Governor candidate selected as a running mate by Democrat front-runner Tom Reilly had to withdraw because of delinquent taxes and student loans, the Democrats may be on the road to a failed candidacy. Given that Reilly is Attorney General, an investigative post, it's shocking that he did not do a basic background check before picking a running mate.

This is a second strike against Reilly, who was recently involved in a flap about a phone call he made after a fatal crash that some interpreted as interference with an investigation. I gave Reilly the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Reilly is pretty much a centrist, so I should like him. He's kind of bland, and never made of much of an impression on me. Now, he's starting to make an impression, but not in a favorable direction. Reilly's liberal rival, Deval Patrick, will increasingly be looked at by those who were leaning toward Reilly because of his presumed "electability."

On the Republican side, the incumbent Lt. Governor, Kerry Healey, and millionaire Christy Mihos, are both more moderate than Romney and certainly plausible candidates.

It looks like it will be a very competitive race. This weekend, there will be local caucuses where delegates will be selected to the state Democratic convention. I plan to attend, not as a participant, but as a reporter.