Update

More on the divisions in the Republican Party. After posting this morning, I surfed over to Salon.com, whose lead article today is "House Divided" about the feud between Rep. Tom DeLay and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [link] Once birds-of-a-feather, today they barely speak.

It's an interesting read. And it's nice to be validated every once in a while.

122 Words

That's all that the New York Times devoted to a story that, given the state of the world, I think warranted a little more coverage. Here's the story: Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, in Vernon, Vermont, is missing two highly radioactive spent fuel rods.

Yes, I said "missing". As in, can't find them, misplaced them, lost 'em, must've thrown them out by mistake. In an age of "dirty bombs" and orange alerts, don't you think New Yorkers would want to know more about this than a 122 word AP newsbrief on page A-23, column 2? [link] Things like, how do you lose radioactive material in the first place? What's being done to find them? How do other nuclear power plants handle their spent fuel rods? Is anyone doing an inventory to make sure that we know where all of our fuel rods are? How good is the record keeping at Yucca Mountain (where waste material is being sent for permanent storage)? You know, just a few small questions. We New Yorkers are a nosy bunch, after all.

If you know where the fuel rods are, by the way, I suggest that you call Vermont Yankee (800-368-3749) -- they're still looking for them a month later.

Quick Hit

I've been trying to figure out what I can add about the very public spatting that is going on inside the Republican Party, most recently between John McCain and Dennis Hastert. [link] I think it is this: the public feuding is distracting us because it's good theater.

By this, I mean that the public spectacle is obscuring a larger split among prominent Republicans, and a reawakening of a more moderate element within the party. As evidence, look at the recent Senate vote in which four moderate Republicans (Senators Snowe, Collins, Chafee and McCain) blocked a deal that would extend the Bush tax cuts. Or consider Senators John Warner and Lindsey Graham's dogged inquiries into abuses at Abu Ghraib. Or look at the commencement speech by Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said, among other things, "National security decision-making can rarely be separated from the constraints of the international community, if only because our resources and influence are finite. Our security depends not on clever decision-making about when to go it alone, but on careful maintenance of our relations with other countries that ensures the international community will be with us in a crisis." [link]

If you ask me, these are evidence of the real fractures in the party.

Arguing from Weakness

According to Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachussetts, a 1913 law prohibits the state from issuing marriage licenses to out-of-state applicants if the resulting marriage would be illegal in their home state. The statute was originally enacted to prevent mixed-race marriages.

It seems to me that if your argument rests squarely on an anti-miscegenation statute that had as its purpose a singularly racist goal, your argument is not all that strong.

Searching for Occam's Razor

So my father calls me tonight, and he says he's been thinking about this whole Nick Berg story, and wonders if there isn't more background than meets the eye. (Berg was the American who was brutally executed on video tape in Iraq last week.) Basically, my father's rumination is that the known facts seem to beg for a conspiracy theory to fill in the gaps.

First, according to CNN, there's the seemingly coincidental connection between Berg and Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th Hijacker". Apparently, Berg was riding a bus in Oklahoma, and lent his laptop and email password to the man sitting next to him. By coincidence, the man was a compatriot of Moussaoui's, and gave Berg's email password to Moussaoui, who later used it. Berg was interviewed by the FBI about this connection. [link]

Second, there's the question of how Berg ended up in Iraq. Berg worked as a freelance communications tower repairman, and apparently was in Iraq prospecting for business repairing cellular phone towers. It's not clear how he funded his excursion or whom he was prospecting for business.

Third, there's his more recent questioning by the FBI, who interviewed him three time after he was picked by "Iraqi police" at a checkpoint in Mosul for unspecified reasons. The FBI concluded, again, that Berg was not connected to terrorist activity. Berg's family claims that he was later transferred from Iraqi custody to a military prison, but the Coalition Provisional Authority claims that he was not in US custody. [link]

Fourth, there's the fact that Berg was executed allegedly by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, whom Time Magazine describes as "a Jordanian associate of Osama bin Laden's believed to be the kingpin behind the recent attacks in Iraq." [link] What are the odds that, of all the Americans in Iraq, al-Zarqawi picks up this guy?

And finally, there's the unusual statement by Attorney General John Ashcroft that Berg was not connected to terrorist activity. According to the Attorney General, "the suggestion that Mr. Berg was in some way involved in terrorist activity, or may have been linked in some way, is a suggestion that we do not have any ability to support and we do not believe is a valid one." Contrast this with the way that Cpl. James Yee's case was handled. Yee was the Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of espionage. Yee was charged with espionage, and when that case collapsed, he was charged with adultery and storing pornographic images on his laptop computer. He was later cleared of all charges and allowed to return to his post. The Attorney General did not make any statements concerning Yee's innocence.

It's possible that Berg was the victim of circumstance, and that the various pieces of his story were just odd coincidences, but some of the facts -- and particularly, the Attorney General's statements -- lead as easily to the conclusion that Berg was working for the US in some capacity. Something to think about, for sure.

Following Up

More on George Melloan...

Here is the quote that I was referring to in my last post:

"[At stake] is not just whether Mr. Bush will be re-elected, but whether the war on terror itself will fizzle out like the Vietnam War did 30 years ago. Indeed, some of the characters are involved. John Kerry, who gave Hanoi aid and comfort after his return from the war, is now running for President. Seymour M. Hersh, the reporter who has just revived his career with his Abu Ghraib story in The New Yorker, 35 years ago broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. His work then helped turn Americans against that war."

I thought that more needed to be said about the say-anything culture that appears to be pervading the halls of conversativism.

First, there's the charge that Kerry committed treason when he protested the war he had fought in (see my previous post for details).

Second, there's the verbal gymnastics that Melloan engages in. For example, there's the comparison between the war on terror and the Vietnam War. While he's at it, Melloan might want to compare the war on terror to eating cantaloupe. Why? Because the comparison would be just as apt.

-- The Vietnam War was a war waged against the government of a sovereign nation, while the "war on terror" is a battle against a tactic.

-- Vietnam had defined zones of combat (Vietnam and certain "spillover" areas, such as Laos and Cambodia, but only to the extent that they were aiding the Hanoi government). The war on terror has no defined field of battle; indeed, the Bush Administration has taken the position that the battle field is all around us, everywhere.

-- Vietnam was a proxy war between so-called "great powers" and had very little to do with Vietnam's military, industrial or strategic importance (it had virtually none to the US, USSR or PRC). By contrast, terrorism isn't a proxy for anyone in particular against anyone in particular; as the attacks in Saudi Arabia, Damascus and Indonesia (all Muslim countries) demonstrate, terrorists don't discriminate based on geopolitics. And when you throw in terrorist attacks in Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Spain, India and Pakistan (to name just a few that are not linked to al Qaeda, but rather to indigeneous ethnic separatism), it's hard to say that terrorism is even a single unified force.

To suggest that despite these very large differences, the war on terror and the Vietnam War are the same is, to me, disingenuous, and can only be calculated to tar opponents of the war in Iraq with the same brush that was used on Vietnam opponents -- that somehow, they're less patriotic. [As an aside, ask yourselves which is more patriotic: serving in combat but then protesting that you were asked to do things that were immoral or illegal; or using privilege to avoid combat, failing to show up for the non-combat assignment, and having proxies challenge the validity of awards bestowed on the man who served in combat for his heroic actions?]

Melloan's other misleading verbal stretch is the notion that Seymour Hersh's reporting of My Lai was responsible for turning Americans against the Vietnam War. I don't think I'd be out on a limb if I said that Lt. William Calley's command decisions in My Lai, and the actions by US troops, had something to do with the public revulsion that My Lai engendered. Sure, Hersh's reporting "helped" because without it people might not have known about My Lai, but Melloan purposely allides the reporter and the story, then blames the reporter.

These are just some of the tactics that Melloan uses as part of a larger Republican counter-offensive to change the subject by mustering "outrage at the outrage", to paraphrase Senator Inhofe. Still, it seems to me that Melloan's tactics do a disservice to the legitimate call for perspective in the Abu Ghraib mess, and that responsible Republicans ought to be more strident in saying so.

Channelling George III

If there is any question that Republicans will shamelessly say the most outrageous things, read George Melloan's editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. In it, Melloan accuses John Kerry of treason. Explicitly. As in "Kerry gave Hanoi aid and comfort" during the Vietnam war.

In case you haven't read your Constitution lately, giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy is one of two defined ways in which someone can commit treason (the other is levying war -- that is, actively taking up arms -- against the United States). Considering that treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution, it would seem to follow that any accusation of treason is, or ought to be, a serious accusation, and should not be made for the purpose of partisan advantage.

In fact, the reason that the Framers took pains to define treason in the Constitution is because trumped-up accusations of treason were a favorite tactic of King George's government. At the time, "constructive treason" could be charged for the subjective offense of ''compass[ing] or imagin[ing] the death of our lord the King", which, in practice, meant almost anything. Hurst, in The Law of Treason in the United States -- Selected Essays, described it this way: "The charge of compassing the king's death had been the principal instrument by which 'treason' had been used to suppress a wide range of political opposition, from acts obviously dangerous to order and likely in fact to lead to the king's death to the mere speaking or writing of views restrictive of the royal authority."

This is what the Founders were concerned about. As a number of scholars have noted, "remarks in the ratifying conventions, and contemporaneous public comment make clear that a restrictive concept of the crime was imposed and that ordinary partisan divisions within political society were not to be escalated by the stronger into capital charges of treason, as so often had happened in England." [link]

Clearly, therefore in this country, at least, treason means something different, and something more, than simply dissenting or protesting. And that is why George Melloan's editorial is dangerous and ought to be repudiated by mainstream Republicans. In fact, the acts that he accuses Kerry of -- demonstrably disavowing the honors bestowed by his country for acts he considered morally wrong -- are hardly acts that advocated the violent overthrow of the government or provided actual resources to people plotting such an overthrow. He threw some battle ribbons over a fence, and spoke his mind about what he had seen. Hardly the stuff of treason.

And yet, somehow, Melloan and many Republicans in the Bush Administration seem to hold the view that dissent is tantamount to treason. How else to explain Attorney General Ashcroft's statement that opponents of the Patriot Act who raised the "spectres of lost liberties" only aided terrorists? I guess, to preserve the reign of King George W, they're willing to throw out any principle, including those upon which this country was explicitly founded.

Credit Where Credit is Due

The Toguba Report on abuses by the military contains a horrifying litany of torture inflicted on Iraqi detainees. [link] Commentators have been dissecting the report at length.

I don't have time this morning to post my own thoughts, but I do think that one aspect ought to be noted: at the end of the report, Major General Toguba singled out, by name, certain individuals who had done right when put to the test. We need more of those people, and I think that they deserve as much notice as we can give them. Here's what General Toguba had to say:

The individual Soldiers and Sailors that we observed and believe should be favorably noted include:

a. Master-at-Arms First Class William J. Kimbro, US Navy Dog Handler, knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI personnel at Abu Ghraib.

b. SPC Joseph M. Darby, 372nd MP Company discovered evidence of abuse and turned it over to military law enforcement.

c. 1LT David O. Sutton, 229th MP Company, took immediate action and stopped an abuse, then reported the incident to the chain of command.

I have no doubt that for every soldier who committed these shameful and wanton acts, there are a thousand soldiers who have done the honorable thing when confronted with difficult situations of their own. Thanks to Major General Toguba, at least we know who three of them are.

How Big is the Majority?

According to the New York Times, Republicans in Congress are upset that Democrats are "stalling" legislation. And just what are the Democrats protesting? Apparently, the Republican leadership has frozen Democrats out of participation on conference committees, which are formed to reconcile competing versions of legislation passed in the House and Senate. Conference committees are the place where the real work of Congress is done, since the conferees work out what provisions stay in a bill and what provisions come out.

Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader in the Senate, is incensed: "To think the minority can write a predetermined outcome to every bill that comes through the Senate is pretty presumptuous." [link]

On its face, Frist's and the Republicans' position has a ring of apparent common sense to it -- after all, the Democrats are the minority party, right?

Not so fast.

When you tally the votes in the 2002 House races, Republican candidates collectively gathered 3.4 million more votes than their opponents. In the Senate, it's a little more complex: let's recall that only one-third of the Senate is up for election each election year. In order to measure the overall Republican majority, therefore, we must tally the votes received not just in 2002, but in 2000 and 1998, as well.

Pay attention, because here's where it gets interesting:

The Senate of the 108th Congress consists of 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 1 independent. The 51 Republican Senators collectively received 44,265,695 votes in the most recent election for their seats (1998, 2000 or 2002). If you count Senator Jeffords, who was elected as a Republican, but subsequently became an independent, the total votes for Republican senators is 44,454,828. Now look at the Democrats: the 48 Democratic Senators collectively received 53,425,954 votes -- between 8.9 million and 9.1 million more votes than the Republicans.

So let's do the math, shall we? 8.9 million minus 3.4 million equals 5.5 million more people who voted for Democrats than Republicans.

Putting it all together, it looks like Senator Frist was right: it IS presumptuous for a minority to think it can write a predetermined outcome to every bill that comes through the Senate...

[Note: This post was originally published without sources for the election data. All data was drawn from the Federal Election Commission's website (link)]