Now Entering Laboville

We are thankful for...

2008-11-27T23:34:00.003-05:00

The turkey has been cooked, eaten, and put away for leftovers. Bread was baked, stuffing stuffed, potatoes mashed, squash roasted, onions creamed, pies pecaned and appled and pumpkined. Wine was uncorked, and cider was drunk, and stories were told and laughs were laughed. And then dishes were done, and polished silver was put away for another festive meal, and serving dishes were tucked carefully back into the cabinets until company comes the next time, and linens that so recently were freshly pressed were balled up at the bottom of the stairs, ready to go upstairs to be laundered anew.

We were all thankful for each other, and the meal and the privilege we share to live in a place of abundance, peace and prosperity, a point driven home by events in Darfur, and more recently by events in Mumbai.

We also picked up a stray (one of Tasha's associates at work), which we seem to do with regularity each Thanksgiving, and she fit right in. It made me happy that we could be that kind of family, the one who always has room for one more at the table. It was the way my mother's table was when she was alive, and I think she would have been proud of us today.

I missed her a great deal today. Still, I am thankful for the example that she and my father showed me. It seems to have stood me in good stead all these years later.

Brevity is...wit

2008-11-18T01:16:00.002-05:00

Hemingway wrote what he touted as the world's shortest short story: "Baby shoes for sale; never used." Since then, Wired magazine has periodically sponsored contests for others to match Hemingway. A propos of nothing, the other day, I had an epiphany for a series of political pot-boilers, in six words each.

So, without further ado, my publishing debut:

"Voted for Bush, twice. My bad."

And now, the sequel:

"Did penance. Voted for Barack Obama."

[I hasten to add that the first is a work of fiction. The second is based on the fictional premise of the first novel in the series, although the second sentence is autobiographical.]

That's What I Said!

2008-11-13T18:52:00.009-05:00

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Accordingly, we in Laboville would like to give a hat tip and a sincere thank you to the pranksters who this week mocked up a copy of the New York Times's July 4, 2009 edition, presumably to commemorate Barack Obama's election and the promise of better times ahead. [Link]

Here is what the pranksters published:

And here's the image from my family's 2006 holiday card, drawn by yours truly:

I would like to say, officially, that I am flattered.

Are You Smarter than a Twelfth Grader?

2008-11-12T01:04:00.006-05:00

There are lots of reasons to stay in school, and apparently, the ability to read this blog is one of them. On a lark, I submitted Laboville for a "readability evaluation" courtesy of Juicy Studio. [link]. The evaluation software "reads" a website and applies various algorithms to determine how "readable" it is. The tests measure different factors, but all of them rely to some degree on the number of words in a sentence and the number of syllables in each word.

The result is a number that is both meaningful and meaningless. Meaningful in the sense that it gives some indication whether the language itself is accessible and at what level, but meaningless in the sense that "readability" is about both the language used and the concept being expressed, and these algorithms ignore the second part.

With all of that in mind, here are the results:

On the Gunning-Fog Index, Laboville rates a 12.43, which means you need that number of years of schooling to understand the language used here. By comparison, the Wall Street Journal typically scores around 11, and the Times (London) scores around 14. The Bible comes in at about 6.

On the Flesch Reading Ease scale, Laboville scored a 59.86 out of 100, with 100 being more readable, and 0 being less readable. According to the description accompanying the results, writers should strive for results between 60 and 70, so Laboville is close to the statistically optimal range.

On the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, Laboville rates an 8.93, which means that the average ninth grader should be able to read and understand the text.

Two observations: First, just for the sake of comparison, I tested several Supreme Court decisions for readability, and found that on average, they scored about a 10th Grade reading level on the Gunning-Fog index, and a reading ease score of approximately 59-62. In an admittedly unscientific survey, I found that Justice Scalia scored the highest grade level of the current members of the Court, while Justice Thomas scored the lowest (insert joke here). Yet even there, Justice Scalia tended to score in the 10-11th grade level.

Second, I share Juicy Studio's sense of irony that the word "monosyllabic" has five syllables.

2008-11-11T16:41:00.007-05:00

That was the week that was...

It has now been a week since Barack Obama became our president-elect. Something about the last week of news coverage and punditry brought to mind, perhaps cynically, Tom Lehrer's "National Brotherhood Week." There's something about conservatives, teeth gritted, smiles forced, saying nice things about the President-elect that makes me think that they're doing it only because they know they have to, not because they believe it, and that they're just waiting for the moment when they can snidely say "I told you so." (What it is they told me so about, I'm not altogether sure. It's just a feeling, after all.) Suddenly, I just started humming the song...

Anyway, here are the lyrics. Draw your own conclusions.

National Brotherhood Week (Music and Lyrics by Tom Lehrer)

On the white folks hate the black folks

and the black folks hate the white folks.

To hate all but the right folks

is an old established rule.

But during National Brotherhood Week,

National Brotherhood Week,

Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek-to-cheek.

It's fun to eulogize

the people you despise

as long as you don't let them in your school.

Oh the poor folks hate the rich folks

and the rich folks hate the poor folks.

All of my folks hate all of your folks

It's American as apple pie.

But during National Brotherhood Week,

National Brotherhood Week,

New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans

'cause it's very chic

Stand up and take the hand

of someone you can't stand.

You can tolerate him if you try.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics

and the Catholics hate the Protestants,

And the Hindus hate the Muslims,

And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week,

National Brotherhood Week,

It's national everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood week.

Be nice to people who

are inferior to you.

It's only for a week, so have no fear.

Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

2008-09-11T14:57:00.002-04:00

Remembering 9/11, Part II

This is a post that I wrote on the second anniversary of 9/11. Somehow, in the waning days of the Bush Administration, it felt right to bring it out again.

September 11, 2001 was about the swirling and crawling and stopping of time. Only two points are fixed in my memory: 8:48 a.m., when I heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center; and 10:03, when I experienced the South Tower collapsing three blocks away, and ducked into a sandwich shop to escape the dust. How long I spent waiting for the black cloud to pass, I couldn't tell you. Did Tower 1 collapse while I was holed up or after I had started my escape uptown? I don't know. How long did it take to get home? Same answer. What did I do the rest of my day? No clue.
September 11, 2002 was about defiant normalcy. I came to work and lived as normal a life as I could. It was the best way to show that no, the terrorists hadn't won.
Today, it was about sounds. As I walked down Church Street toward the site of the former WTC, I could hear the monotone naming of the dead. A bell tolled in slow measured beats on Barclay Street, [DONG] rung by a firefighter in polyester dress blues, [DONG] white gloves that were too small [DONG], and a white hat perched precariously on his head. [DONG] The uniform looked slightly tattered, [DONG] like it had been used far too many times this year and last year. [DONG] The man inside the uniform looked slightly tattered too. [DONG]
Though he was strong, though his hands were big and manly, he looked tired, [DONG] as though pulling the rope that led to the clapper that rang the bell to commemorate the dead [DONG] was draining whatever reserves he had left.
We made eye contact as I walked by [DONG], and he held out his hand to me.
"Ring the bell, brother?"
I stopped and looked at him and then at the huge, silvery bell, which was hung from a black scaffold sitting on the ground. I hadn't paid much attention to it as it was ringing but I now saw that it had been polished recently, and whoever had done it had made small sweeping circles on the last pass with the cloth. It would have taken hours at that rate. "Yes," I said.
I took the rope from him. It was thick and scratchy, and heavier than I expected. I gave it a quick tug, self-conscious that I had broken the gonging rhythm. DONG. The clapper moved easily. Satisfied, I raised my right hand to shake the fireman's hand.
"Again," he said.
So I pulled it again. DONG.
"Again." DONG.
I pulled the rope four more times, until my pulls had reset the rhythm of the bell. It was time for me to go.
"Thank you, brother."
The fireman had reclaimed the rope and had made the bell clang again, but was looking me straight in the eye. He looked haunted.
I took his hand, and mumbled, "Thank you." I wished I had something more profound to say. There was something about that look, about the sound of the bell, about the magnitude of the day that seemed to call for it, but I couldn't think of anything.
But I think that the fireman understood, and maybe that was why he had invited me to ring the bell -- after all the memorials and prayers and funerals, he too had run out of things to say. All that was left was to toll the bell, slowly and mournfully and over and over again, for all the world to hear.

2008-09-11T14:42:00.002-04:00

Remembering 9/11, part I

This morning at 9:25 a.m., the NYSE observed a moment of silence on the trading floor. On my way to the trading floor to participate, I had a chance encounter with Oliver Howard, one of the security guards at the Exchange. Ollie was on duty, stationed somewhere else in the NYSE complex today. Now, Ollie is a humble guy, and probably wouldn't tell you this himself, but he is a genuine hero of 9/11. At the time, Ollie was stationed at the Exchange's Division of Enforcement, which was located in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. Ollie was on duty when the tower was struck, and he would say he was just doing his job, but I think it was something more. What did he do? Ollie opened every single office on three floors of the building, making sure people were evacuated, checked every single bathroom, and made sure that one of the staff, an attorney who was a paraplegic, got out of the building safe and alive. Several, maybe dozens of people owe their lives to this man who was just doing his job.

The Monday after the attacks, Dick Grasso hosted a lunch for all of the Division's employees in the Exchange's board room. Ollie, in full dress uniform, got a three minute standing ovation from the 130+ staffers. Later, he was honored by ringing the Opening Bell.

Ollie certainly wasn't the only hero on that day, but what made me want to share him with any readers out there who stumble across this post is the fact that today, seven years on, Ollie was at his post, somewhere else, in his regular uniform, and was genuinely surprised that anyone remembered his heroism. In this political season where we're being inundated by cynical messages about honor and character, Ollie's humility in the face of genuine heroism was a genuinely moving antidote.

2007-07-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

Harry Potter and Primo Levi

Just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

My initial impressions are mixed -- on the one hand, it's a real page turner, and it reaches deeply into the past six books to tie things together, so that the whole book feels through-composed. On the other hand, I found the epilogue to be utterly unnecessary, a tiddly-bump happy ending that some editor somewhere probably insisted upon because "that's what the readers expect", even though Ms. Rowling had done an estimable job in the last chapter planting little seeds of closure that would have grown quite nicely in the readers' imaginations on their own. Indeed, I found the change in tone to be jarring, so much so that it almost felt like the epilogue must have been written by someone other than Ms. Rowling.

But what surprised me most was the overwhelming sense that what I was reading was a fictionalized exploration of Europe's struggle against Hitler. Certainly, there are obvious parallels to Nazism -- one of the central themes of the book is racial purity, and the ways in which the Death Eaters terrorize the so-called "Mudbloods" are eerily reminiscent of the campaigns against the Jews in the 1930s -- there's anti-mixed blood propoganda, Voldemort supporters misuse pseudo-science to score political points, there are public humiliations, mixed-blood wizards and witches are stripped of their wands (rendering them unable do magic), their businesses are closed down, there are show trials where they must (in vain) prove their purity and on and on. The Death Eaters form a sort of Brown Shirt brigade, or perhaps a wizarding version of the SS Guard. Voldemort's supports also seek legitimacy by propping up a puppet government at the Ministry of Magic. Of course, like Vichy France, it's riddled with resisters both organized and not, with the Order of the Phoenix standing in the role of the French resistance. There's even an underground radio station to rally the resisters.

One of the parallels felt more subtle, and so I can't decide if it was intentional or coincidental. I don't want to spoil the plot, but it will suffice to note that for a significant part of the book, Harry, Ron and Hermione hide out from Voldemort and the Death Eaters by camping out in woods and forests around the English countryside. They are on the move constantly, lest they be discovered, and most of the time, they sit around waiting for something to happen (exactly what, they're not sure, and this is part of the dramatic tension), stealing what they need to survive and generally living off their wits.

Of course, this being the wizard world, they travel in style, complete with a tent that is bigger inside than it is outside and things like invisibility cloaks, but even so, I was struck by the parallel in tone to Primo Levi's If Not Now, When?, which recounts the story of Jewish partisans in Eastern Europe during World War II. In that book, the partisans hide out in the woods, steal what they need to survive and generally live off their wits. In both books, the time in the woods, doing nothing, weighs on them, and in the end their lives take on a weird sort of routine despite a world turned upside down. They take turns gathering food, and standing watch for the enemy, and they bicker, love, laugh, cry with the frustration of it all. Their existence is punctuated by moments of sheer terror, as they find themselves in situations that they must bluff or fight their out of or run away from, or die. But mostly they wait around for something to happen, and it is the waiting that weighs on them most heavily.

As Levi so achingly recounts, and Rowling echoes artfully, the partisans get by by reminding themselvs of their vision of an idealized future, a world without the evil that they are forced to confront moment by moment. Their resolve flags sometimes, and is revived by sporadic news from the outside world that reminds them that they're not alone. Each band has a mission -- to reach Italy and freedom, and to destroy Horcruxes, respectively -- and during the long days and even longer nights, they lose and then rediscover their faith in the mission, before finding its underlying meaning. And in the end, the ultimate victory of the cause for which they have been fighting is bittersweet, laden by the burden of the struggle, tinged with the guilt of the survivor.

Amazingly, in each book, the partisans retain their essential humanity even as the world around them seems to shed its own. At key moments, they show empathy for enemy soldiers who have shown some measure of remorse at what they've done or become, and forgive their attackers. But they do not romanticize the enemy, either, and are not afraid to fight or to kill if necessary.

I haven't reread If Not Now, When? recently enough to identify other parallels, but thought this one was worth mentioning. Not bad for a kids' book, huh?

2007-07-19T01:07:00.000-04:00

Spinning the F-word

The Democrats in the Senate attempted to force a vote on a bill (the "Reed-Levin Amendment") that would have required a reduction in troops in Iraq beginning 120 days after enactment of the law. The Republicans blocked Reed-Levin from coming up for a vote, by means of a parliamentary procedure in which they voted against something called "cloture".

Cloture is a term in parliamentary procedure in which the senators agree to end the debate and call for a vote on the bill being debated. When the cloture motion was made, 52 senators voted for cloture, and 47 voted against it. Since a successful cloture motion requires 60 "yea" votes, the cloture motion was defeated despite garnering the support of a majority of the senators. As a result, there was no vote on Reed-Levin.

This is called a "filibuster". Filibusters have a long and illustrious history in the Senate, and have featured prominently in the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and in an episode of "The West Wing", among others. Clearly, they have dramatic potential.

As an aside, I should note that I have nothing against filibusters, although personally, I dislike today's way of doing it. In the old days, in order to mount a filibuster, a senator (or group of senators) had to hold the floor continuously -- that is, keep speaking without sitting down, and without yielding the floor to the opposition -- until the Senate either gave up on calling for a vote on the bill being debated, or successfully voted for cloture. In other words, a filibuster caused the entire Senate to grind to a halt, which gave the filibuster some of its power and effect. Today, there's some kind of gentlemen's agreement that allows the Senate to, in effect, hold several debates at the same time, so that the filibuster doesn't stop other bills from being debated and voted. Hence, the filibuster becomes just another obscure parliamentary tactic, rather than a Hail Mary parliamentary spectacle, the last refuge of a beleagured minority. End of aside.

My point in giving this brief history of filibusters is that, properly explained, they're not hard to understand, and can actually be interesting.

Which brings me to the Democratic Party's inability to spin what happened with Reed-Levin and the media's appalling lack of balance when describing the Republican filibuster of Reed-Levin. Filibusters, you may recall, last made serious headlines when the Democrats in the Senate used the tactic to block the Senate from voting on some of President Bush's judicial nominations. Then, the F-word was all over the news, as the media parroted the Republican talking point -- "Let's just have a straight up-or-down vote" -- and lambasted the Democrats as intransigent children having a temper tantrum. The Republicans at the time were so incensed that the Democrats would use the filibuster this way that they threatened to rewrite the rules of the Senate to effectively do away with the filibuster altogether -- the so-called "Nuclear Option".

That's right, America. We had a knock-down drag-out full-on front page partisan brawl over a parliamentary procedure. And Americans ate it up! I believe that largely as a result of Republican propoganda at that time, most Americans now assume that filibustering is a bad thing.

So what do the Democrats do to spin the Reed-Levin issue? Right. They studiously avoid the word "filibuster".

The DNC's website headline? "Republicans Block Levin-Reed Amendment To Withdraw Troops". And the lede isn't much better: "After an all-night debate on Iraq, Senate Democrats tried today to end a Republican block on a vote on the Levin-Reed amendment..." Boring.

The same is true around the party. Here's Hillary Clinton:

When the Senate votes on motions to allow debate on both the Feingold-Reid and Reed-Levin Amendments, I will vote for cloture on both.

Ho hum...And on and on. Here's Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Reid: Republicans Continue To Block Democrats' Efforts To Change Course In Iraq, Make America More Secure

And Joe Biden:

BIDEN Decries Republican Refusal to Vote on Iraq War on Senate Floor Today

Even Carl Levin, one of the eponymous co-sponsors of the bill, shies away from the F-word both in the headline and in his remarks:

Senate Floor Statement on the Cloture Vote on the Levin-Reed Amendment

...

If the Republican Leader’s procedural roadblock succeeds this morning, we will be denied the opportunity to vote on an issue which just about every American has strong feelings on: whether or not to change course in Iraq by setting a timetable to reduce the number of our troops in Iraq. Because of that procedural roadblock, we will not be voting at 11:00 a.m. on the Levin-Reed amendment but on whether to proceed to the vote on Levin-Reed.

Of course, it stands to reason that if even the Democrats are avoiding the F-word, so will the media. To wit, you'd think that today, the headlines would be screaming about the Republican tantrums and intransigence that prevented Reed-Levin from coming to a vote. But you'd be wrong. The headlines today talked about Republican "blocking tactics" and how a majority of the Senate "rejected" a vote on troop withdrawal. Really. Even C-Span (!) got in on the act, with the headline "Senate Blocks Iraq Withdrawal Timeline, 52-47".

My point here is that the Democrats are doing a horrible job of explaining exactly what's going on. In fact, they're doing such a bad job of it that C-Span even got it all wrong: what actually happened was the 52 senators (mostly Democrats) voted to bring Reed-Levin to a vote, and 47 senators (Republicans and Connecticut for Liebermaniacs) voted not to, not that the Senate affirmatively voted against the withdrawal timeline. Put another way, the Republicans successfully filibustered the bill.

Thankfully, there was one notable, though unsurprising, exception to the mealy-mouthedness of the Democrats: Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and Senate maverick, who used the F-word appropriately and boldly three times in a one-paragraph statement.

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On Republicans Filibustering the Levin-Reed Amendment

July 18, 2007

Today, a majority of the Senate backed binding legislation with a firm end date to redeploy our troops from Iraq. This shows how far we’ve come since August 2005 when I became the first Senator to propose a deadline to bring the mistake in Iraq to an end. If we had enacted my proposal when I first offered it, our troops would be home right now. Although a number of Republicans have finally acknowledged that the President’s Iraq policy is a failure, their filibuster of the Levin-Reed amendment shows they are still failing to back up their words with action. The Levin-Reed amendment is by no means perfect, but its binding provisions to end our extensive military involvement in Iraq are a significant step forward. With their decision to filibuster, the Republicans have prevented the Senate from voting to bring the open-ended mission in Iraq to an end, and have once again ignored the calls of the American people.

Sigh.

2007-07-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

Great Speeches

A propos of nothing, I was reading a book review on Arts & Literature Daily [link] about great speeches in American history [link]. As the book review makes clear, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of oratory in the United States over the years.

Which got me to thinking. I don't know exactly which speeches are included in the volumes being reviewed, but a Google search of "great speeches" yielded several websites purporting to collect great speeches, including a site known as "History Place" [link].

As I read through some of the more recent ones, I was struck by the power of a good speech. Two stuck out, however. The first was President Reagan's speech in Berlin in 1987, the speech in which he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The speech is lucid, well written and powerful. [link] But even this speech, as powerful as it was, pales in comparison to the 1962 speech by President Kennedy on why we chose to go to the Moon.

That speech, fittingly entitled "We Choose to go to the Moon...", is a powerhouse of persuasive oratory that elevates, motivates and elucidates noble ideals, but never departs from simple imagery or clear phrasing.

For example, in order to explain the magnitude of our achievement as humans, and the duty that that imposes on us to reach further, President Kennedy captures, in one paragraph, how exciting it is to live at the edge of such amazing scientific progress. And he does so without bogging down in soporific detail or getting lost in gauzy abstractions:

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

It almost makes you want to jump up and shout, "Who are we to stand in the way of such incredible progress?"

The speech is also notable for making some of the science involved accessible (not an easy task -- after all, it is rocket science). For example, rather than talk about the complexities of calculating trajectories and launch windows, he gives a (if you'll pardon the pun) down to Earth example that neatly sums up the degre of difficulty:

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium [Rice University in Houston] between the 40-yard lines.

Note also the subtle sports imagery, which taps into the America's image of itself as the winner who does the undoable, and makes it look easy to boot.

Kennedy's penchant for plain talk continues when he is talking about a most difficult subject -- how much it will all cost. Note how he deftly defuses the question of cost by putting it into terms we can all understand (and does so with a touch of pointed humor):

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year.

His rhetoric doesn't skirt the hard issue, either -- as much as it's cost so far, it will cost more in the future -- but he contrasts this with an appeal to our nobler ambitions -- to be bold:

Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority...But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

[I should note here that management consultants love this last part of the speech as an excellent example of true leadership that inspires us by setting out a vision statement (to paraphrase, "invent a machine and a process to go to the Moon and come back safely") that focuses the collective effort.]

All in all, I found the speech to be uplifting, honest and a fine example of what rhetoric can be in the hands of a skilled orator.

2007-06-13T07:10:00.000-04:00

Logic Has No Place in Journalism

London's Daily Mail ran an article last week about "nose art", which is the generic description for the images painted on the fuselages of warplanes. [link] As the article notes, nose art had its heyday during World War II, when bombers bore names like the Memphis Belle, and were decorated with images to match.

Apparently, the RAF commanders in Afghanistan think things have gone too far, the pin-up girls painted on the sides of their planes being too raunchy or riske to pass muster. According to the article,

Commanders decided the images were sexist and insisted there was no place for them in the modern armed forces.

There was also concern that they could cause offence in a muslim country where until 2001 all women were forced to wear the head-to-toe burkha in public.

The Daily Mail reports that last tidbit without a hint of irony, and without any follow-up that would suggest that the reporter is engaged in any critical thinking.

Let's be honest here, people.

Is the source of (potential) offense among Afghans really the fact that RAF planes flying there bear caricatures of naked or scantily-clad women that no one on the ground will ever really see?

Or could it be something else that's offending them? Isn't it possible -- you know, maybe, I'm just throwing this out here -- that Afghans might be taking offense because of what these airplanes do, and not how they look? I mean, I'm just saying, but mightn't their offense actually stem from the fact that these planes have an annoying tendency to drop bombs on people -- combatants, yes, but also civilians -- on the ground?

2006-12-18T07:53:00.000-05:00

Bigots and Bullies

Hi, remember me? I used to blog here. I've been away for, well, let's just say it's been a while. So what issue is so compelling, so important, that I would once again take up the keyboard? Buster Bunny, that's what.

For the over-5 set, who may not know who Buster Bunny is or why he's important enough to talk about, let me fill you in. Buster is a rabbit (that much you may have guessed), who's best friends with Arthur, an aardvark who has his own t.v. show on PBS. Big with the kids. Anyway, Buster got a spin-off show, called Postcards from Buster. The premise was that Buster travels around the country meeting real-life kids, and then sharing their stories on t.v. in a combination of live-action and animation. Quite charming, actually.

But then Buster went to Vermont, for a show about making maple syrup. Let me tell you, from first-hand experience, this is Currier-and-Ives stuff, the essence of Americana -- crisp mountains in spring, sap running into buckets, horse-drawn sleighs collecting the bucket loads, the sugar houses on century-old farms, yada yada yada. Except that Buster featured children who are being raised by two lesbians. And so, of course, conservatives and their Republican lackeys went ballistic. The Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, wrote to the President of PBS, and the episode was pulled, toot sweet.

So far, this is old news (the events in question took place in January 2005). But let us not pass over this without quickly recalling Secretary Spellings' bigoted comments: "Many parents", she wrote, "would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode." Note, by the way, that the words "deviant" and "twisted" are omitted from the Secretary's statement, but, I believe, can be fairly inferred from the context.

As an aside, I'd prefer if my young children weren't exposed to the lifestyles of the homeless men we pass each day on our way to the subway. But I don't see the Secretary of Education rallying the conservative faithful to eradicate the scourge of homelessness. I'm left to my own wits to explain to a five-year-old why a grown man is asking him, a kid, for spare change -- and what he can do to really help. See, it turns out, Madame Secretary, that the world isn't always pretty, and part of my job as a parent is to help my kids make sense of that, instead of hiding unpleasant things away and making believe that everything is fine. It's what I signed up for. End of aside.

But here's the part that compelled me to post: after the broo-ha-ha over Buster's visit to Vermont, underwriting support for the entire show dried up. Such is the strangle hold that conservatives have over government and business. But that's not the worst part, to my mind. See, according to a story in today's New York Times [link], it turns out that show had received $5 million from the -- wait for it -- Department of Education, as part of "Ready to Learn" grant program, which calls for programming to "promote cultural diversity". So what did the DoE do to back up the bigotry of the Secretary? Give yourself a point if you said they rewrote the Ready to Learn grant to eliminate the call for cultural diversity. That's right -- in an effort to ensure that our kids don't discover about that girls sometimes do dirty things to girls instead of to boys as god intended (because really, isn't that what the conservatives here are really worried about?), we have eliminated an incentive and a means to teach kids to be tolerant of, and learn from, people who aren't like them.

Which, by the way, is something that kids do innately. It's the intolerance that has to be taught.

2006-08-28T23:06:00.000-04:00

My Campaign Commercial

I have a simple idea for a campaign commercial, and though I lack the time and expertise to actually produce it, I offer the broad outlines here for anyone who wants to actually do it.

It's called "People Die of Republicanism".

The concept is simple. It features sound clips of the President and senior members of his administration saying certain memorable things -- like "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie", and "No one could have anticipated that they'd fly airplanes into buildings" and "No one anticipated the levees would fail". These clips would be juxtaposed with still pictures that the camera would pan across, a la Ken Burns. The pictures would be unflinching -- the idea is to show that the Republican way of governing has very real consequences, that it's not just about abstract ideology, and all that. So the images I would choose would be pictures of dead bodies in the streets of New Orleans, and at the Convention Center and floating in the water. And I would use some of the searing shots of people jumping to their deaths on 9/11 or clinging to the windows at the Trade Center, where you just know they're going to die. Finally, I would superimpose various conservative mantras, like Grover Norquist's quote about drowning the government in the bathtub. At the end, I would fade to black, then put up in white letters, "People die of Republicanism. Isn't it time we tried something else?"

Is that exploiting suffering for political gain? I don't think so, particularly since I'm not exactly advocating that the "something else" be Democrats. I think it's simply saying that when there is one party that controls the federal government, it's reasonable to ask whether the governing party is up to the task of taking care of We the People, in the face of demonstrable evidence that they're not. End of story.

2006-08-21T23:35:00.000-04:00

The Fog of War

I hate to be a drape in the midst of the media frenzy now that JonBenet Ramsey's alleged killer has been found, but as of August 21, 2006, 2,610 Americans have died in Iraq.

8,886 have been wounded and not returned to duty within 72 hours; another 10,625 have been wounded but were returned to duty within 72 hours.

I keep waiting for the media frenzy over *that*.

2006-07-17T23:11:00.000-04:00

Eulogy for My Mother

In Memoriam, Deborah R. Labovitz, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA
October 13, 1942-July 14, 2006

My mother died an untimely death at the young age of 63. Sadly, it was the first time she had been early for anything.

I had always assumed, as good sons do, that my mother was immortal. This was not just an exercise in faith or filial longing, but was based on certain quasi-scientific observations. For one thing, my personal experience with the death of family members seems to have always involved longevity. Grandmom Gi, zichrona livracha, died in her 90s; Greatgrandmom Ida, in her mid-90s also; Grandmom Clara in her 80s; Frank, Gittel’s third husband, also in his eighties. I therefore took for granted - naively, perhaps - that longevity was the natural way of things.

Second, my mother had an indomitable will to live her life in full. I say this not only because she was a constant frenzy of motion, with a schedule to match, but also because she fully intended to live multiple lives. One of her favorite phrases was “in my next life”, which was always a prelude to some idea that she had about what she would do after she was done being a mother, or an occupational therapist or a university administrator, or whatever. There was even a room in our house that was optimistically named the “art room”, because that was the room that my mother always intended as her studio when she finally took up art full time in one of her many lives. After hearing her say “in my next life” often enough, and after seeing how much she could accomplish in the average day of this life, I came to take this “multiple lives” thing seriously. I anxiously awaited what might come next, whether it was resuming her career as a weaver in the loft over the garage in Vermont, or her career as editor of a series of inspirational books about the helping professions, or something else that hadn’t occurred to her yet and that therefore I hadn’t heard about yet.

In any event, given all of this, it was something of a shock, to say the least, to find out, a little over three years ago, that my mother was indeed mortal. She had been having unexplained seizures for a few months, which she approached academically, almost clinically. After long research, she and my father and her doctors considered, and ruled out, diagnoses of things that were mundane, but treatable, then considered and ruled out the more exotic maladies. Finally, the doctors narrowed down her diagnosis to a stage-4 brain tumor, the worst kind. The mortality statistics were pretty grim – according to her doctors, only 2-3% of patients with stage-4 cancers of this type survived more than 9 months.

Others might have heard this news and simply given up, but not Mom. Quite the contrary – “2 to 3 percent” became her watchwords. My mother fully intended to beat the odds, to be part of that "2 to 3 percent". Those of you who knew her probably weren’t surprised to find out that she did beat the odds, for a good long time.

But this was a mixed blessing, since one of the side effects of her treatments was that she lost some of her former vitality. Weakened by the disease, and chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, and two brain surgeries, my mother in some ways ceased to be the person I had grown up with, and became someone else – still my mother, but somehow different.

It’s a flaw of our memories that we tend to remember the recent much more vividly than the more distant, and so there is tendency to think that what was recently has always been. In my mother’s case, this obviously obscures so much of who she was.

For example, it obscures that my mother was an artist, whose creations in pastel, and watercolor, and macramé and weaving adorned the walls of our home and today decorate my office, among other places.

It obscures that she was a master at real life logic puzzles, usually involving train trips by various family members to and from New York and cars left strategically at 30th Street Station or North Philadelphia station for them to transport themselves home. Compared to some of the machinations that she concocted, I fully believe that the Normandy invasion was a piece of cake.

And it obscures that she had a wonderfully distinctive style, too. I always thought, growing up, that she was six feet tall, until I realized, much later, that six inches of that was her unique hairdo and four inches was her ever-present high heels. She was also the only person I knew in Vermont who wore suede pants even when the forecast called for snow – but, I have to admit, she looked fabulous doing so.

On a more serious note, perhaps the best way to remember her is in her own words. It’s not often that someone who dies writes her own eulogy, but two of my mother’s hallmarks were her ability to multitask, and her willingness to take charge of situations to make sure that things got done right. And so, true to form, in the preface to her book, Ordinary Miracles: True Stories About Overcoming Obstacles & Surviving Catastrophes, she not only introduced the book, but also presciently left us some insights into how she might want to be remembered.

The book, she wrote, was about optimism and hope, and the stories contained in it about people courageously overcoming adversity and improving their lives through resourcefulness and creativity. Then she wrote this:

In many ways, this reflects my own personality and the philosophy of my profession of occupational therapy. I believe that every problem has a solution, and we just have not discovered the best one yet for those problems still unsolved; that not only is the glass half-full, but refills are on the way. When people tell me that “those who can keep their heads when all about them are losing theirs just don’t understand the gravity of the situation,” my response is that only those who can keep their heads – and find a ray of hope – can ultimately fix the grave situation. I believe that even if we cannot control the circumstances we are in, we can control our reaction to those circumstances and can turn tragedy into triumph with our own strength and with the help of others.

She also left us some instructions on how we might mourn her. Reflecting on September 11, 2001 she wrote about how, in the face of such a large tragedy, the ordinary work of life seemed somehow trivial. Wrote my mother,

I must admit that the tragedy affected me deeply…It was difficult for me to resume life and work as usual, and particularly challenging to continue to compile and edit [the stories in the book] – stories about individual people who overcame adversity, unconnected to the tragedy. The people and the stories seemed not to reflect the immediacy and immense scope of the disaster.

True to my mother’s personality, however, she believed that the healing process was best facilitated by refusing to sit still:

As an occupational therapist [she wrote], I believe in the power of “doing”. To cope with the tragedy and to contribute to the recovery, I needed to act. So I volunteered my time, donated funds, read articles about the heroes and the victims, and examined the photographs. I attended tributes to heroes and visited street corner and police station and firehouse memorials, and I began collecting more stories…These activities were and continue to be very satisfying and helpful to me.

Finally, she sent a message to us all that even in the face of catastrophe, even when there seems to be a huge gaping hole in our lives that will never heal, that even when thing look their bleakest, we can recover our optimism if only we stop to appreciate the joy and wonder, the hope and rejuvenation that are to be found in the ordinary miracles of life. I’d like to leave you with her words, since I think they best describe what she would want us to feel right now:

Ultimately…it was resuming work on this book with its message of hope that was the most powerful and important activity that helped me begin to heal and to recapture my optimism. I came to realize that these stories, about the large and small miracles of life, about the courage and creativity of individuals, about the ability to recover from disaster, were exactly what I needed to begin my healing process. These stories represent the wonder, joy and hope that makes life worth living. They are the embodiment of life and the future. They make it possible to go on, to hope and to continue to face the future with optimism.

2006-04-02T23:13:00.000-04:00

Common Cause?

A quick quiz -- in what publication did the following statement appear?

The biggest problem is Bush himself, who—though a decent person who might make a good neighbor—suffers from unbridled hubris. His absolute certainty appears to be matched only by his extraordinary ignorance. His refusal to reconsider his own decisions and hold his officials accountable for obvious errors have proved to be a combustible combination.

(a) Mother Jones
(b) The New Yorker
(c) The American Conservative
(d) The New York Review of Books
(e) Tikkun

10 points to those of you who guessed (c). The quote is from Douglas Bandow's review of Bruce Bartlett's book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday 2006). [link] The review is interesting, in part because it reads like something that a frustrated Democrat could have written, and in part because it was written and published by "true" conservatives.

It isn't exactly news that true conservatives, led by Pat Buchanan, among others, have come to dislike President Bush. To quote Bandow's review,

Five years later, the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins. Government is bigger, spending is higher, and Washington is more powerful. The national government has intruded further into state and local concerns. Federal officials have sacrificed civil liberties and constitutional rights while airily demanding that the public trust them not to abuse their power.

The U.S. has engaged in aggressive war to promote democracy and undertaken an expensive foreign-aid program. The administration and its supporters routinely denounce critics as partisans and even traitors. Indeed, the White House defenestrates anyone who acknowledges that reality sometimes conflicts with official fantasies.

In short, it is precisely the sort of government that conservatives once feared would result from liberal control in Washington.

To me, it seems like this is a watershed moment -- when the intellectual base takes to comparing its leadership to the pigs in Animal Farm, it seems to me that the disaffection is potent. And potent disdain is a catalyst for change.

So now for the $64,000 question: can liberals make common cause with disaffected conservatives? Perhaps we can, if we start small and build.

On some issues, I think we can all agree: we all disdain the neocon fantasies of nation-building in the Middle East. and therefore, surely we could make common cause on that issue.

On other issues, the goal should be to show them that regardless of why, we want the same ends, and therefore we can make common cause there, too. Thus, on civil liberties, for example let us stop trying to convince them of our rightness, and instead, sell them on pragmatism. In other words, pitch to conservatives that a vote for the Democrats will ensure a rolling back of government intrusions that offend them and us. Or take No Child Left Behind (please). Democrats dislike the law because it forces schools to make pedagogically questionable decisions in an effort to comply in a time of chronically short budgets. Conservatives ought to dislike it because it extends the federal government into an arena that has historically been the province of local government. Surely we could fashion kind of mutually agreeable compromise?

Finally, on some issues, we should contemplate how we can preserve our values, but consider compromising on what that means. Here, I am talking about big government:: in theory, Democrats ought to get behind the idea that government should do primarily the things that the private sector cannot do efficiently, and should be comfortable with the notion that there are some areas where the government could stand down. President Clinton and Vice President Gore made "reinventing government" a touchstone of that adminstration; surely, we could come up with some smaller government initiatives that we can all agree on?

They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Perhaps the time is right for both sides to stop insisting on ideological purity, and see what we can do together. It seems to me that the stars are strangely aligned for a strategic understanding between moderate Democrats and true conservatives, which might come with substantial electoral support from both sides.

If you can't be with one you love, honey, love the one your with...

2006-02-22T22:46:00.000-05:00

My So-Called Life as a Blogger

If you've read my blog lately, you'll notice that there hasn't been much to read. I'd like to think that this is because I have been too busy to blog (which I have) or had other things to do than blog (which I do), but the real reason, I think, is that I haven't felt like blogging. Some of that is me -- I'll start a post but halfway through, something comes up, or I just lose interest, and the post languishes, abandoned.

But some of it, I feel, is a sense that it's all for naught -- that bloggers can post till our fingers fall off and it just doesn't make a difference. Progressives have always believed that sunshine is the best disinfectant; that if people only knew what was really taking place behind the curtin, they would rise up in moral outrage, demand change, and not rest until things were right. Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair and thousands of activists after them catalyzed momentous changes just by telling the world what they had seen.

I fear, however, that we have reached the limits of moral outrage, or, more accurately, that cynical politicians have finally figured out how to deflect the moral outrage so that even sunshine no longer disinfects. How this has been accomplished has been ably catalogued by others, but none better than Peter Daou, of the Daou Report, who succinctly described the cycle of scandal when the warrantless surveillance scandal first broke. [link] Here's Daou's (frustratingly prescient) paradigm, in his own words:

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democratic leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

I mention Daou's paradigm because I, for one, am tired of replaying step 6 over and over and believing, in vain, that things will change in step 7. It's not working.

Daou correctly places part of the blame on the media, but I think much more emphasis needs to be placed on root of the problem: step 7, where the Democratic leadership loses focus. I sincerely believe that if you solve that problem, it makes steps 8, 9 and 10 much less likely.

What's my proof? Well, consider how the Democrats responded to the Bush administration's Social Security "reform" proposals. When we stood firm when we stayed on-message, when no Democrats gave Republicans cover on the issue, any popular support that the "reforms" had evaporated. [And yes, I am aware that the proposal lives; I just think that the back-door tactic that President Bush used to revivify his proposal in the 2007 budget -- the fact that he had to slip it in when he thought no one was looking -- is further proof that the Democrats were onto something in their tactics.]

But when will Democrats learn from this? Why did the Democrats fold on the extension of the Patriot Act? Why was Paul Hackett forced from his Senate race in Ohio? Where is the Democratic equivalent of the Contract with America? Why is Al Gore the only prominent Democrat willing to take a principled stand, and stick to it? Democrats have a good product to sell, but the sense I get is that the Democratic leadership doesn't believe it's a good product, and so their salesmanship is lackluster, at best. Whatever else you think about Republicans, when they drink the Kool-Aid, they all drink it, and then they all go out and tell you how delicious it is, over and over again, until people forget that drinking it will kill you.

So how do you counter this? Simple: change step 7 -- if the Democrats can maintain message discipline ("Kool-Aid = Death"), we win every time.

So if you're wondering why I haven't been blogging much lately, it's because I don't feel like the Democratic leadership is holding up its end of the bargain in steps 6 and 7. Of course, if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I'm happy to be dissuaded. I just don' t think it's likely.

Your thoughts?

2006-02-09T00:21:00.000-05:00

Not the Usual Carping and Complaining

If you're not from New York, the name Quachaun Brown probably doesn't mean anything to you, so let me tell you about him -- four years old, a big fan of Spider Man, Chuck-E-Cheese and the movie Robots. Happy-go-lucky kid with the ability to remember names told to him even once. Known around the neighborhood for happily and with gusto saying "Hi Hi Hi" out the first floor window of his family's apartment to neighbors and friends.

Oh, and he's dead. Quachaun was killed allegedly by his mother's boyfriend, an 18-year-old named Jose Calderon, after Quachaun apparently knocked over Calderon's 27-inch flat-screen t.v. Calderon is reported to have swung Quachaun around by his ankles, and slammed him into a wall so hard that it fractured the boy's skull. Apparently, he was bleeding from his ears and his rectum, and when Calderon discovered that the boy had bloodied and soiled the sheets in his bed, he beat him some more. Quachaun's mother was not at home over the 36 hours that Calderon was brutally beating her child.

Quachaun, despite his short life, was celebrated by neighbors and friends yesterday, and then was buried in a tiny coffin. His mother, who's in jail on charges of manslaughter in connection with Quachaun's death, decided to stay away from the funeral.

I mention all of this because I have a four year old son myself, who loves Spider Man, Robots, and places like Chuck-E-Cheese, if not the place itself. And my son can be exasperating, as all four year olds can be, and sometimes even breaks things around the house. A few months ago, when Sam was being particularly naughty, I finally blew my stack and yelled at him, loudly. Instantly, he crumbled, chastened by being yelled at to be sure, but also genuinely frightened at this ugly, loud ogre that his father had suddenly transformed into. In that instant, I realized that I was wrong, no matter that he had provoked me -- when all was said and done, I was the grown-up, and he was a terrified little boy. Whatever I was mad at (I can't even remember it now) suddenly no longer mattered. What did matter was reassuring him that I still loved him, and that he was safe. I scooped him up in my arms, hugged him very tightly, and cried, as much because I had lost control of my emotions as because I had terrified my child.

And what's more, although we very quickly made up, that look on his face at the moment that I yelled has stuck with me since then. When I read about Quachaun, that looked flashed into my head -- I can only imagine the t.v. falling over, and Calderon's face twisting into an ogrish mask, and the boy crumbling in terror, just like Sam. Maybe I'm missing some particulars here and there, but I know four-year-olds, and I know, as sure as I know anything, that that's what happened. And then I thought to myself, how could anyone, seeing that look, do anything but hug the boy, reassure him and forget the damn t.v.?

Of course, I realize that's a naive sentiment, and that bad things happen, but god, wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where that was the case?

2006-01-19T01:30:00.000-05:00

But What Do the Experts Know, Anyway?

A quick hit this evening/early morning. The CIA Journal has an interesting article suggesting that overt sources of information (that is, analysis of publicly available information) might be better and more effective for national intelligence purposes than covert, or secret information. [link]

Here is how Stephen Mercado, an analyst in the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology puts it:

We need to rethink the distinction between open sources and secrets. Too many policymakers and intelligence officers mistake secrecy for intelligence and assume that information covertly acquired is superior to that obtained openly. Yet, the distinction between overt and covert sources is less clear than such thinking suggests. Open sources often equal or surpass classified information in monitoring and analyzing such pressing problems as terrorism, proliferation, and counterintelligence. Slighting open source intelligence (OSINT) for secrets, obtained at far greater expense when available at all, is no way to run an intelligence community. Also, we must put to rest the notion that the private sector is the preferred OSINT agent. In the end, I would contend, the Intelligence Community (IC) needs to assign greater resources to open sources.

Mercado's point strikes me as intuitively correct, and, indeed, could well describe the blogosphere, which tends not to break new news, but rather spends its time analyzing information that has already been made publicly available. In the end, much like the CIA process that Mercado is describing, bloggers can (but don't always) add significant value by assembling connections between disparate facts and by identifying trends or explanations that the mainstream media either aren't reporting or aren't paying attention to while they cultivate their "inside sources" hoping to acquire new "secret" information.

In any event, in view of the President's violations of FISA to collect "secret" information, this article made me wonder even more whether the politicians and cronies in charge really know what they're doing?

2006-01-11T23:47:00.000-05:00

What I'm Pondering At the Moment

The New Criterion has an interesting article about demography. [link] The basic thesis is that while we in the Western world are worrying about social justice, pensions and healthcare, demographic trends among Muslims who don't share our "democratic values" call into question the viability of Western countries altogether, with the demographic end being closer than we think. As the article puts it,

If a population “at odds with the modern world” is the fastest-breeding group on the planet—if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions—how safe a bet is the survival of the “modern world”?

I'm not sure I agree with all of the assumptions in the piece, but the thesis is certainly provocative.

One quote, however, did grab my attention, which is why I am pondering the article. It is this:

Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German, and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an “amiable dunce” (in Clark Clifford’s phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts’ position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the USSR itself.

Rhetorically, it's an easy step from this kind of thinking to the author's conclusion, and in that sense, the thesis is compelling. But again, I'm still working it out.

Anyone care to contribute their own thoughts?

2005-12-27T17:58:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush, Loyal Foot Soldier in the War on Christmas

A little late for Bill O'Reilly, but here it is -- evidence that President Bush is a closet liberal, intent on oppressing Christians by denying the role of Christ in Christmas. Herewith, the evidence:

2005-12-21T13:48:00.000-05:00

You say FEE-sah, I say FI-sah

Slate has a disturbing article about the checkered history of NSA spying on U.S. citizens. [link]

One thing that sticks out from the items in the article is that in May 2002, the FISA court, after two decades of granting 10,000 secret warrants, and never denying a single one, took the radical step of actually denying one. Right around this time -- the New York Times report isn't clear exactly when -- the President broke the law by authorizing NSA to go around the FISA court. In other words, when the law got inconvenient, Bush deemed it within his "inherent powers" simply to ignore the law (and the Constitution, for that matter). This isn't an isolated incident -- as the Slate article points out, the President authorized similar violations of other inconvenient laws, including the Geneva Convention, the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. I can't say that it's evidence of a trend, but the data points are nevertheless interesting.

2005-12-21T00:29:00.000-05:00

Surviving the Strike

Well, day 1 of the NYC Transit Strike is history, and I have to say, it wasn't so bad. In fact, I'm embarrassed to say, getting where I needed to go was downright easy.

Sam and I walked two blocks from our house to the garage where we keep our car. From there, it was an easy seven-minute drive, with no traffic to speak of, to a parking lot down the street from Sam's school. Expecting the worst, we had left an hour early; lo and behold, we arrived at school almost exactly an hour early, which just meant I got to spend an extra hour playing with Sam. What a hardship. (And what's more, coming home was a breeze as well -- in fact, it was so good, I got a parking space right in front of the house, so tomorrow should be even easier!)

It'd be expensive to keep doing this all the time, and so for that reason (among others), I hope the strike ends soon, but man-oh-man, a guy could get used to a life like this...

2005-12-21T00:07:00.000-05:00

On coincidences

Abraham Lincoln's speech in Edwardsville, Illinois, quoted in my last post, reads as an almost pitch-perfect counterpoint to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, TIA, FISA, "if you're not with us you're against us" and all of the other offenses against liberty that our President justifies by reference to September 11, 2001. Obviously, the quote turns out to be surprisingly relevant to today's headlines, not least because of Lincoln's later (controversial) decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. That's why I posted it.

But even as I was typing it in, I was struck by the truly random circumstance that brought it to my attention -- I was browsing in Barnes and Noble for a securities law textbook to assign to my graduate students this spring, and saw the "The Law Professor's Handbook", by Madeline Schachter, which is a book I had not heard of before and which was misfiled among the textbooks, else I would not have come across it. As you might guess from the title, the book is about how to teach law classes more effectively, which happened to catch my eye only because I just completed my first semester teaching a new course on Securities Law and Business Crime, and have for a few weeks been doing a sort of mental self-assessment of the semester (preparing to repeat the course in the Spring).

Anyway, the speech is quoted, rather incongruously, in a section about why people decide to teach, despite the fact that the quote has little, if anything to do with teaching.

But here's the weird part, particularly since it so neatly counters the "9/11 changed everything" argument of the Bush administration: As I was typing it into the blog, I happened to notice that that speech was delivered on September 11, 1858.

Cue theme music from The Twilight Zone...

2005-12-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

Inherent Authority

...For more on the President's invocation of "inherent authority" to flagrantly violate the Constitution and his oath of office, let's go to our Illinois correspondent, Abe Lincoln. Abe?

"Thanks, Daniel. What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning embattlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises. Reporting from Edwardsville, Illinois, I'm Abraham Lincoln."

2005-10-27T22:38:00.000-04:00

If You're Such a Believer, I Suggest You Pick Up a Rifle, Son

Alright gang, let's sharpen those #2 pencils - there's going to be a quiz at the end of this post.

According to the Times-Record, of Brunswick, Maine, "On Dec. 1, Alex Cornell du Houx, a 21-year-old Bowdoin College senior from Solon will head to Iraq for approximately 10 months as part of the Alpha 1st Company Battalion of the Marines." [link] Sounds patriotic, no? A young man with an education, volunteering for hazardous duty in service to his country. A public relations boon, right? Wait, it gets better. He's actively involved in his community:

[du Houx is] co-president of Community Service Council, an active volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and the Young Alumni Leadership Program, and a tutor at local schools in the America Counts Tutor Program. He also works at the youth think tank — Youth Empowerment Program.

But that's not all. Because of previous active-duty deployment, he's a year and a half behind his class at Bowdoin, but not bitter. He was running for the local town council, but withdrew because of his pending deployment.

And still, he's not bitter. In fact, he's downright selfless:

"Regardless of my opinions regarding the war in Iraq, it is my duty as a U.S. Marine to serve and I am ready and willing to do my job to its fullest extent."

Surely, a Republican dream soldier, right?

Except that it turns out that du Houx is also president of the Maine College Democrats, and was instrumental in organizing Democrats on college campuses across the state. He has also been active in College Democrats of America.

But wait, there's more: He has also been a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq.

So, to recap, a young man who is dedicated to his community is willing to make huge sacrifices to do his duty to his country, even though he disagrees with what his country is asking him to do.

I promised you a quiz, so here goes:

You're the president of the Bowdoin College Republicans and the national secretary for College Republicans. Do you (a) stay as far away from this story as humanly possible; (b) jump on the patriotism bandwagon and challenge all Democrats to do the right thing just like Mr. du Houx; or (c) make an ass of yourself by calling him a fringe liberal and questioning his motivation?

Okay, pencils down.

For those of you who picked (a) or (b), I'm sorry, but you're just not cut out for leadership in tomorrow's Republican Party. Yes, the correct answer was (c), according to the Times Record:

Daniel Schuberth, a leader of the Bowdoin College Republicans and College Republican national secretary, said, "I applaud Mr. Houx for his service, just as I applaud any other soldier who is brave enough to take up arms in defense of his country. I find it troubling, however, that one of the most vocal opponents of our president, our country and our mission in Iraq has chosen to fight for a cause he claims is wrong. Mr. Houx's rhetoric against the war on terror places him in agreement with the most radical fringes of the Democratic Party, and I am left to question his logic and motivation."

Really, I have no patience for this kind of crap. Mr. Schuberth, you are a rabid partisan moron so blinded by petty spite and so juiced up on red team-blue team bullshit that you've lost the ability to think straight. It scares me that you think you're qualified to run the country. Frankly, I don't question Mr. Houx's motivation -- I applaud his sense of duty and honor -- but I do seriously question yours. If you believe so fervently in the cause, I suggest you pick up a rifle and man a post, son. But if you're not willing to do that, at least stand back and be man enough to keep your yap shut when someone is willing to do the honorable thing.

2005-09-29T07:55:00.000-04:00

Read Free Republic. Learn Something. Who knew?

There is a media theme going around (may have originated with the Democrats, or maybe Republicans are just saying it originated there) that Democrats believe that 2006 will be for them what 1994 was for Republicans -- scandal fatigue will end the Republican domination of Congress.

While I don't usually troll on Free Republic, I caught this observation that I think the Democrats would be wise to consider:

The media quickly forgets that in 1994 the Repubs coalesced around the Contract For America, a plan, a real plan, while the dems did nothing and do nothing but attack, attack, attack.

Interesting theory. And worth asking -- what are the Democrats offering right now except criticisms and attacks? How about ignoring the obvious and talking about what an ethical Congress, undistracted by scandal, could be accomplishing right now?

Just a thought.

2005-09-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

Can you smell it now? Good.

Innocent until proven guilty, yada yada. Tom DeLay's indictment is the big news of the moment, but it would be a mistake to get drawn into arguments about whether DeLay is the victim of a partisan prosecutor. The larger story here is the increasingly noxious stench of corruption among Republicans, which isn't just coming from Tom DeLay.

Salon gives a partial list, with a brief squib about each, but its list is short and selective. [link]. Here, as a public service, is a more comprehensive list of significant Republicans indicted or implicated in a scandal where indictments were issued, all since George W. Bush was selected president in 2000:

Chuck McGee: Former Executive Director, New Hampshire Republican Party. Pleaded guilty to hiring GOP phone-banking operation to jam the phones of the Democratic get-out-the-vote phone bank on Election Day 2002. Sentenced to seven months in jail, fined $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. Apparently lacks real remorse, based on his statement at sentencing: “I made a mistake and I'm prepared to pay for that mistake. I look forward to serving my sentence and [I’ll] be back 2006 when I'll help some more good republicans get elected to office and I appreciate the support of my family and friends." [link]

Allen Raymond: Headed the now-defunct company GOP Marketplace. This is the company hired by New Hampshire Republicans to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks. Pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to make harassing phone calls. Sentenced to five months in jail. [link]

James Tobin: Former New England Political Director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (headed by Majority Leader Bill Frist), and former 2004 campaign chairman for New England. Indicted in federal court on four felonies accusing him of conspiring with McGee and Raymond to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002. In August 2005, numerous news outlets revealed that the Republican National Committee, despite announcing a “zero-tolerance policy” for officials found to engage in vote tampering, has paid at least $722,000 for Tobin’s legal defense. [RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman issued the following statement: “The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position,” [link]

Shaun Hansen: Former co-owner of a defunct telemarketing firm hired by Allen Raymond to jam Democratic phone banks doing get-out-the-vote calls. Indicted on April 4, 2005. [link]

Lawrence Novak: Former Vice-Chairman of the Massachusetts Republic Party. Arrested September 13, 2005. Allegedly offered to launder drug profits for client awaiting trial on federal trafficking charges. Resigned party position the same day after he was arrested. [link]

Ernie Fletcher: Governor of Kentucky. Democratic Attorney General Gregory Stumbo was conducting an investigation into allegations that the Fletcher administration illegally hired, fired, transferred, promoted and demoted civil service workers on the basis of their political affiliation. As a result of the investigation, a special grand jury indicted nine of Fletcher’s aides on 48 misdemeanor and 22 felony charges. In response, Fletcher summarily pardoned all nine, even before any trial or convictions. But the pardon Fletcher signed didn’t stop there: it also summarily pardoned "any and all persons who have committed, or may be accused of committing, any offense up to and including the date hereof, relating in any way to the current merit system investigation." In announcing the pardons, Fletcher compared the severity of misdemeanor and felony charges to “illegal fishing”. [link] [Note that Fletcher’s pardons may come back to haunt him – because the pardons remove the possibility that the pardoned officials could incriminate themselves, they could be compelled to testify against Fletcher in any investigation of the governor, and would not be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment.]

Darrell Brock: Chairman of the Kentucky GOP. Indicted for his role in the Kentucky merit promotion scandal, and then pardoned by Gov. Fletcher. Although Fletcher later suggested that the Kentucky GOP should dismiss Brock, the party ignored his request, and Brock was allowed to keep his post. [link]

George Ryan: Former Governor of Illinois. Currently on trial in U.S. District Court on charges that he fixed state contracts and real estate leases in exchange for favors, gifts and loans. The federal investigation that led to Ryan’s indictment has garnered 73 convictions, including Ryan's campaign organization. [link]

Scott Fawell: Aide to Gov. George Ryan. Pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and will likely testify against Ryan. [link]

Bob Taft: Governor of Ohio. Indicted on four criminal misdemeanor charges that he failed to report a series of golf outings, dinners and other gifts. Taft’s indictment is part of a larger investigation into ethics violations that has rocked the state Republican Party. [link]Pleaded no contest and was fined $4,000. [link]

Tom Noe: Ohio GOP official and Bush Pioneer. Currently under investigation for possible fraud in connection with mismanagement of rare-coin investment fund on behalf of the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation between 1998 and 2004. Also investigated for making possibly illegal contributions to the Bush/Cheney campaign, and for laundering money into Republican campaigns. [link]

John Rowland: Former governor of Connecticut. Pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to steal honest service in connection with $107,000 worth of vacations, work on his cottage and free flights from state contractors and others. [link] Sentenced to one year in prison and four months house arrest. [link]

Edmund Matricardi: Former Republican Party of Virginia Executive Director. Pleaded guilty to one count of felony wire intercept for listening in on a conference call between Democratic legislators and Governor Warner in 2002. Sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to pay $5,000 fine. [link]

Gary Russell Thomson: Former Chairman, Republican Party of Virginia. Pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of aiding and abetting the unauthorized publication of a wire communication, and was sentenced to two years of supervised probation and a $2,000 fine. [link]

Two others are not what I'd call "significant" Republicans, but just two examples of how the corruption isn't just at the top of the party:

Adam Taff: Two-time Republican Congressional candidate from Kansas. Indicted on August 17, 2005 on charges of converting political campaign contributions for his personal use and wire fraud in a deal to buy a home. [link]

Todd Riffle: Former aide to Governor Christie Todd Whitman (R-NJ). Indicted for unlawfully obtaining and/or disclosing personal information from a motor vehicle record and false-swearing. obtained the driver history abstract of gubantorial primary candidate from the state and signed a document saying he was aware that the abstract contained personal information and could not be used for certain purposes. Supplied the information to the candidate’s opponent in the primary. [link]

There are others, but there's only so much room on my blog.

So here's my question: taken together, my own short list includes the Republican party chairmen and/or their deputies in four states, plus Republican governors in four states, and assorted party hacks, all indicted or close to it. Add in, from Salon's list, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, "Duke" Cunningham, Bill Frist, David Safavian and possibly Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and you just have to start shaking your head. So when are (1) the Mainstream Media (2) the Democratic Party and (3) Republican moderates all going to wake up and smell the corruption?

Now would be good...

2005-09-19T07:07:00.000-04:00

Another Quick Hit

Liz, at Spectator Sport, refers to this post, but it deserves as much airtime as it gets, particularly for those of us whom life has blessed with good fortune. The post is a list of what it means to be poor, truly poor, and it lays it out in short unflinching sentences.

I have never been poor, and likely my family will never really know poverty, but that's all the more reason to read what it is to be poor, and try to understand it on a gut level, and then to do what we can to help. Here is the list. [link]

2005-09-19T06:40:00.000-04:00

Quick Hit

Survey USA, a national polling outfit, has been tracking daily changes to President Bush's approval/disapproval rating for the federal government's Hurricane Katrina response. [link] The survey, which has been tracking since August 31, seems to show that the President got no bounce from his speech to the nation last Thursday.

Daily Kos gets the hat tip for pointing me to this [link], but I poked around on the Survey USA interactive poll results, and found some interesting points that Kos didn't cover. For example, it's not news that black respondents have generally given the President very low marks (18% approval among blacks vs. 40% among all groups; 77% disapproval for blacks vs. 56% among all groups). But what explains the results for Hispanic respondents? Starting at 53% on August 31, the President's approval rating among Hispanics pretty steadily declined to 28% by the end of Labor Day weekend, then rebounded to 37% before eroding to 20% by September 11. The next day they spiked to 31%, then plummetted down to 19% the following day. By last Thursday, the numbers spiked again to 50% (31 points in two days!) but have since dropped down to 33%. Not being a statistician, I don't have a good explanation, but found it interesting anyway.

Other factoids -- women give the President lower approval ratings than men; the approval ratings go up the older the respondent is; and the Northeast Region overall approves of the President's performance less than other parts of the country. None of these, by the way, seems particularly surprising to me -- especially the one about the Northeast being out of step (by at least 9-10%) with the rest of the country.

2005-09-12T22:39:00.000-04:00

If You Can't Trust Stars and Stripes, Who Can You Trust?

So here's an interesting snippet. There was a Republican talking point that the media was to blame for the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. According to Michael Chertoff, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers, and recently, President Bush himself, news headlines on the Tuesday after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast misled the government, since the news was reporting that New Orleans had "dodged a bullet." The Wall Street Journal [link], Wonkette [link] and others have ably debunked this, but none that I have seen focused particularly on General Myers.

Here's what the General said, ably repeating the talking point:

The headline, of course, in most of the country's papers on Tuesday were "New Orleans dodged a bullet," or words to that effect. At that time, when those words were in our minds, we started working issues before we were asked...

[snip]

And we started that before the magnitude of this tragedy was even understood by anybody at any level. And so that movement was moving -- working.

The Newseum gives the lie to the General's statement, since it shows dozens of front pages for Tuesday, August 30, 2005, and not one of them says anything remotely like what he said. [link] One newspaper in particular struck me, however, considering that it's Stars and Stripes, the "Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper." Turns out that the enterprising reporters at Stars and Stripes managed to get the story right, on Tuesday morning, no less. Question for General Myers: what part of "Devastation" and "Hurricane Katrina Ravages Gulf Coast" suggest, even remotely, that New Orleans "dodged a bullet"? [And if he couldn't be concerned about Katrina's civilian impact, is it at least safe to assume that he was advised that a military base had to close? Maybe that could have been a clue that no bullets had been dodged...?]

I don't mean to be a stickler, but if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can't read any other actual newspapers out there, is it too much to ask that he at least read the house organ?

2005-09-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

It Just Doesn't Ring True

Yesterday's New York Times had an article about Michael D. Brown, entitled "Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief". [link] In it, Elizabeth Bumiller reports that

One moment of realization [with respect to Brown's potential political liability] occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all.

"He's not a screamer," a senior aide said of the president. But Mr. Bush, angry, directed the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to find out what was going on.

So apparently, the President was "angry" that Brown had not informed his boss, Secretary Chertoff, of key conditions on the ground. Instead, he has to find out from the media about something that has huge human connotations, and therefore huge political connotations, at a time when the press is already excoriating him for being out of touch.

Let us assume for a moment that the events actually occured as described. How then, do you explain Mr. Bush going out of his way to praise Brown very publicly the next day? And why would the President not only praise him, but do so in a way -- using a folksy nickname, "Brownie" -- that had to have been calculated to signal to the world that Brown was a part of the inner circle of trusted Bush folk? There was no reason that he had to do so -- he could very easily have praised FEMA as an agency, or praised the "work that FEMA is doing", or just said nothing about FEMA whatsoever. Instead, he chose to praise Brown. Remember, this is someone responsible for making the President "angry" enough that he assigned his chief of staff -- surely, a very busy man -- to find out what was going on.

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't fit. Either Mr. Bush wasn't really angry on Thursday, and the Bumiller story is fiction, or else he really was angry, but propped Brown up for political reasons. But the latter explanation doesn't make sense, since it seems to be a huge political risk -- clearly, the man isn't doing his job, so why would the President tie his administration's fate to Brown's? Better to let Brown twist, then "reluctantly" fire him as a form of political damage control, right? (Even a moderatle astute Democrat could see that one.)

Since I give the GOP (and Mr. Bush's handlers) alot of credit for political savvy, I can only conclude that what happened was that the President actually wasn't angry on Thursday and genuinely praised Brown on Friday. It was the obliviousness of "My Pet Goat" played out in slow motion all over again. ("Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.")

Which is surely why there erupted a political firestorm that threatened to engulf the President. And like 9/11 all over again, the President's spin doctors are furiously trying to recast him after-the-fact as a take-charge kind of guy. He wasn't hopelessly out of touch, he was misinformed by his underlings (just like he wasn't running scared around the country on Air Force One on 9/11, there were credible threats against him). And as soon as he found out, didn't he assign Andy Card to the case (just like he wasn't out of touch, he was advising Vice President Cheney on shoot-to-kill orders)? Hence an anonymous source tips Bumiller that the President was "angry" at Brown's failure to alert Chertoff to something that millions of us saw live on TV; not surprisingly, Bumiller bites and then regurgitates it without even a logic check, let alone any analysis (the extent of her analysis is "If Mr. Bush was upset with Mr. Brown at that point, he did not show it").

Of course, the problem with the spin is that the dates don't work -- Brown's failures were evident before President Bush's first trip to the region, and so obviously, the President had to be angry before then or risk looking even more out of touch. But then there's that pesky "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" comment. Hardly what you'd expect from the Boss the day after he learned that the complimentee was grossly incompetant.

And Bumiller is in no mood to debunk the timeline, either. Tellingly, after mentioning the "Brownie" comment, her article quickly shifts from Mr. Bush's public embrace of Brownie to how Brownie got hired in the first place (where, conveniently, a Democrat can share in the blame, since Brownie's confirmation hearing, which Senator Joe Lieberman ran, lasted all of 42 minutes). Of course, that leaves unanswered why Mr. Bush, if he was so "angry", felt the need to embrace Brownie.

Any investigative reporters out there want to look into it?

2005-09-09T22:53:00.000-04:00

The Price We Pay (as of September 8, 2005)

According to the Department of Defense, the total number of American military (and affiliated civilian) personnel killed in Iraq since March 2003 is 1,890. 7,549 have been wounded but were able to return to duty within 72 hours, and 6,813 have been wounded but could not return to duty within 72 hours.

In case you're wondering, August was a particular gruesome month in Iraq, with at least one soldier (and usually more) killed each day on 28 of the 31 days of the month (Death took a holiday on only three days last month -- August 17th, 19th and 24th). Each of the soldiers had a name, and most of their pictures have been posted at Military City.com. [link] Here are some of them:

Sergeant 1st Class Charles H. Warren, 36, of Duluth, Georgia. Sergeant Warren was married with two children, Jackson (age 2) and Madeline (age 2 months). His daughter was born while he was in Iraq. Warren worked as a pediatric intensive care nurse in Atlanta, and had served in the National Guard for 16 years. [link]

Army Specialist John Kulick , 35, of Harleysville, Pennsylvania. Specialist Kulick had a daughter, Amanda (age 9). Kulick was a firefighter and assistant fire marshal for Whitpain Township, outside Philadelphia, and had joined the National Guard in September 2003. [link]

Army Staff Sergeant Victoir Lieurance, 35, of Seymour, Tennessee. Staff Sergeant Lieurance was married with four children, ranging in age from 23 months to 12 years. Lieurance worked for the Postal Service. {link]

Army Staff Sergeant Asbury Hawn, 35, of Lebanon, Tennessee. Staff Sergeant Hawn was married with two children, ages 4 and 12. Hahn worked in a Nissan manufacturing plant, and had joined the National Guard after a four-year stint in the U.S. Army. [link]

They will be sorely missed.

[By the way, astute readers will notice that the four servicemen listed here are all in their mid-30s, with young children. This is no accident, since I intentionally selected men not unlike myself to get some perspective on who these people are. Those of you who are under the age of, say, 45, might want to look at the list and see if you see people not unlike yourselves.]

2005-09-05T12:58:00.000-04:00

Let the Shilling Continue

Bill Hemmer on Fox was interviewing a doctor at a shelter in Louisiana just before 1:00 p.m. today. The doctor (a volunteer from Arkansas) is asked "what do you need?" The doctor starts listing the medications that they need, but while the doctor is listing medications that they're short on or have run out of, Hemmer cuts him off and says, "I'm sorry to interrupt, we're going to go now to video tape of the President at the shelter this morning."

It wasn't even live? They couldn't have let the damn doctor finish listing medication that people need to survive. They had to cut in to show a video tape of the President? What the hell is wrong with these people?

2005-09-03T23:52:00.000-04:00

Once More into the Breach

Considering how instrumental Chief Justice Rehnquist was in installing Mr. Bush as President in the first place, it seems downright poetic that his death this evening may end up saving the Bush legacy by deflecting the pundits' attentions away from flatfooted federal disaster planning. Good for Fox News's Sunday morning shows; bad for the rest of us.

2005-09-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

Bullshit.

President Bush said in an ABC interview with Diane Sawyer that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." [link] This is the same President who proudly told Tim Russert that he doesn't read newspapers.

That's a shame, because if he had read the Times-Picayune a while back, he'd have seen that that exact scenario had been anticipated:

"Another scenario is that some part of the levee would fail," [Jospeh] Suhayda [a Louisiana State University engineer who is studying ways to limit hurricane damage in the New Orleans area] said. "It's not something that's expected. But erosion occurs, and as levees broke, the break will get wider and wider. The water will flow through the city and stop only when it reaches the next higher thing. The most continuous barrier is the south levee, along the river. That's 25 feet high, so you'll see the water pile up on the river levee." [link]

Actually, it's a shame that the President and FEMA Director Michael Brown didn't read the entire five-part series, since it was strikingly prescient. Turns out that a lot of things that actually came to pass were not only "anticipated", but spelled out explicitly. Here are some excerpts that could have been written this week:

Amid this maelstrom, the estimated 200,000 or more people left behind in an evacuation will be struggling to survive. Some will be housed at the Superdome, the designated shelter in New Orleans for people too sick or infirm to leave the city. Others will end up in last-minute emergency refuges that will offer minimal safety. But many will simply be on their own, in homes or looking for high ground.

Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.

...

Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.

A variety of creatures -- rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs -- will be searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.

Contaminated food or water used for bathing, drinking and cooking could cause illnesses including salmonella, botulism, typhoid and hepatitis. Outbreaks of mosquito-borne dengue fever and encephalitis are likely, said Dr. James Diaz, director of the department of public health and preventive medicine at LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.

...

New Orleans would face the future with most of its housing stock and historic structures destroyed. Hotels, office buildings and infrastructure would be heavily damaged. Tens of thousands of people would be dead and many survivors homeless and shellshocked. Rebuilding would be a formidable challenge even with a generous federal aid package.

...

A large population of low-income residents do not own cars and would have to depend on an untested emergency public transportation system to evacuate them.

...

"I don’t have a question about the fact that a lot of people are not going to leave, not just the 100,000 who don’t have private transportation," said Terry Tullier, acting director of New Orleans’ Office of Emergency Preparedness. "We think we’re going to do our people a terrible disservice if we don’t tell them the truth. And the truth is that when it happens, a lot of people are going to die."

Those who remain should not expect to find safe shelter, officials say. Few buildings in the area can withstand the forces of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. "We don’t have structures that can handle wind and water at those velocities and at that water height," Maestri said.

...

In an evacuation, buses would be dispatched along their regular routes throughout the city to pick up people and go to the Superdome, which would be used as a staging area. From there, people would be taken out of the city to shelters to the north.

Some experts familiar with the plans say they won’t work.

"That’s never going to happen because there’s not enough buses in the city," said Charley Ireland, who retired as deputy director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness in 2000. "Between the RTA and the school buses, you’ve got maybe 500 buses, and they hold maybe 40 people each. It ain’t going to happen."

...

A similar plan in Monroe County, Fla. -- the Florida Keys -- failed during Georges when drivers opted out. "The problem is that we may have the buses but we don’t have the drivers," said Irene Toner, director of the county’s emergency management office. "In Hurricane Georges we had 25 people on our bus-driver list and only five showed up." [link to the series]

"I don't think anybody could have anticipated the breach in the levees"? Respectfully, Mr. President, that's bullshit. You just didn't want to listen.

2005-08-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

So, what was our energy policy again?

Liz, at Spector Sport, has a post about the effect of higher gas prices that speaks for itself. I've quoted it below, but please go visit Liz's site and read her other stuff. It's good.

I don't know exactly what it is that Liz does for a living, but I gather that it involves traveling around Virginia inspecting grocery stores for some government agency. Anyway, her job puts her in contact with lots of small-business owners, who have interesting stories to tell. This one makes me wonder -- when your party controls the executive and legislative branch, at what point do you have to take responsibility for an energy policy that doesn't address dramatically increasing gas prices?

Not just gas shortages any more

I hear more and more often from the owners of small convenience stores in rural areas that their bread, dairy and/or grocery vendors will no longer drive that far to supply them. The cost of gas and diesel fuel has made it unprofitable to run a refrigerated truck twenty miles out into the boonies to keep a small store stocked.

Some stores simply don't sell bread or milk any more. Some store owners drive to a Costco or Sam's Club once a week and buy at near retail themselves, in order to keep at least a small inventory of dairy products and bread on hand. Others make deals with friends who own stores in larger towns; the friend contracts for enough for both stores, and gets reimbursed by the owner of the more remote store.

One might conclude that buying at a convenience store isn't the wisest way to spend one's money anyway. But many of these stores serve an elderly, poor population that may have no easy way to get into town to the supermarket. Many of them are disabled enough that they couldn't drive even if they could afford a car, and many have no family members living nearby who could help. In some counties, non-emergency transport is available to take people into town to shop, or for doctor's appointments and the like. But this isn't available everywhere, and it often seems as though the most needy areas have the least services of this sort.

So these little convenience stores in the most remote areas provide an important service, and they are having an increasingly difficult time staying stocked. Some of them are just going out of business. I arrived at one store to find that it was closing that same day. The owner had fallen and broken her hip, and while she was more or less ambulatory in terms of taking care of herself, she could no longer drive. Her dairy vendor had long since stopped stocking the store, and her bread vendor had told her the previous month that he couldn't afford to drive out there any more either. She said to me with a pained little laugh, "All these years I've been trying to keep things on hand so the old widows around here could walk to the grocery store. Now I'm just another old widow like them, and I don't know how I'm going to get my food either."

As gas prices continue to rise, I expect to hear more stories like this. Churches and social services will step in to help to some extent, of course, but I worry that the first response will be to move people out of their homes into assisted living, something that costs a whole lot more than keeping a remotely located grocery store stocked.

2005-08-17T06:57:00.000-04:00

The Price We Pay (as of August 17, 2005)

According to the Department of Defense, the number of Americans (soldiers and military-related civilians) who have been killed in Iraq as of August 17, 2005 is 1,854. The number of Americans wounded who were able to return to duty within 72 hours is 7,262, and the number of wounded who could not be returned to duty is 6,759 (for a total of 14,021 wounded).

So how much are the lives of the dead soldiers worth today, in cold dollars and cents? By my calculations, approximately $175,000,000.

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

In an effort to be transparent, here is the methodology I used to reach that number:

Federal statutes in various places (covering railroad workers, sailors, longshoremen and various other groups) set a death benefit compensation scheme of 50% of wages to the surviving spouse and 16.67% to surviving children, or 66.67% of wages. I therefore assumed that that amount -- 66.67% of wages -- times life expectency, reduced to present value, would roughly approximate what the dead person's life is worth by the standards of their employer, the Federal government. I am not saying that this is how the military death benefits are actually calculated or awarded, just that this is an objective measure that the government uses elsewhere.

In any event, I assumed that the average enlisted soldier serving in Iraq is an E-6 with fewer than 12 years of service, and that the average combat-duty officer is an O-4 with fewer than 12 years of service. My hypothetical enlisted soldier makes between $43,000 and $54,000 (approximately) [link], and the hypothetical officer makes between $69,000 and $95,000 (approximately) [link]. For purposes of my calculations, I chose the midpoint in each hypothetical salary grade, and then averaged the two salaries to get one hypothetical salary amount, $65,250. I then multiplied that number by 2/3, to get $43,717.50.

I then assumed an average life expectency of approximately 77 years (it's actually slightly higher than that). [link] I also assumed that my average soldier was 28 years old when he died, meaning he had a life expectency of 49 additional years. (Various websites have noted that the average age of casualties in Iraq is between 27 and 29. See, for example, this link to a post by war historian James Dunnigan [link].) Multiplying that times $43,717.50, I derived a total life value of $2,010,982.

Because that amount would be paid out as an annuity, I reduced the total down to present value. I assumed that the payments would be indexed for inflation at a 4% inflation rate. Applying the present value calculation, I determined that the net present value for each dead soldier's life would be approximately $95,000. I then multiplied that number by the number of dead to arrive at the amount of $175,000,000.

(Please note that because of the number of assumptions in my analysis, I have rounded some numbers in this description, although all calcuations were done in Excel, so they were correct to whatever number of decimal places were needed.)

2005-08-16T01:03:00.000-04:00

Things Previously on My Chest

Judge Roberts...Clearly qualified, not clearly an ideologue. Is he the ideal nominee? No. But the Democrats lost the election, so we should get over ourselves and consider that it might have been worse (and that if Roberts is defeated, it could yet be worse).

NARAL...I understand that they are just playing a part in Roberts saga, but issue ads only work if there's nothing for the opposition to latch onto and make the story about the advocate instead of the message. By overselling their opposition, they gave the right the stick with which they were then bludgeoned.

Cindy Sheehan...Just once, couldn't liberal activists leave well enough alone? The symbolism of a grieving mother keeping a vigil while the President blows by in the limo on the way to a fundraiser is powerful, simple and compelling. Don't try to coopt this quixotic crusade or make it more than it is; the story plays better if she's a burr under the President's saddle instead of face of the antiwar movement. (For one thing, her public statements both before and during this protest suggest she's not the best front person; for another, to build a groundswell against the war, liberals need to build a grassroots coalition of hundreds of thousands of actively engaged citizens, not a cult of one.)

Judy Miller...It's not a free-speech issue. It's a signature example of mainstream journalists becoming part of the story rather than reporting on it. The politics of smear and slime thrive on the supposition that some lofty principle (protection of "confidential" sources) is at stake; the slimers appeal to this so that they won't be outed by a skeptical and independent media. Playing First Amendment martyr belittles actual instances of unjust impositions on a free press by overzealous prosecutors. (Bad facts make bad law, something that President Clinton's arguments on executive privilege made clear. The same is true here.)

Washington press corps...Please please please could you either be skeptical investigators who ferret out and call politicians on the bullshit that they feed you daily or just admit that you're lazy and like going to fancy dinners with important people? I'd prefer the former, but would accept the latter as a fact of life. I just don't like the facade of one cloaking the reality of the other.

Conservative pundits...Dissent is patriotic and is the lifeblood of a vibrant democracy. Slandering dissenters as unpatriotic betrays a shocking ignorance of what this country was founded on, dishonors the ideas that your obsessive flag worship supposedly glorifies, and is a disgrace to everyone who died for the right of each of us to think for ourselves. Furthermore, it betrays a degree of sophomoric insecurity in your positions that would be amusing if it weren't so corrosive.

2005-08-09T09:49:00.000-04:00

The Price We Pay (as of August 8, 2005)

According to the Department of Defense, 1,829 Americans (military and DOD civilian) have been killed in Iraq as of August 8, 2005. The number of wounded remains at 13,769.

To put the number of dead in perspective, it equates to two people killed every day that we have been in Iraq. Using a "constant casualty comparitive" of 1.5 to 1 (Vietnam to today), that is the equivalent of 2,743 KIAs during the Vietnam War, which is approximately the number of KIAs in Vietnam as of Spring 1966.

Put another way, it is the same as if, over the course of 843 days, you killed everyone in the town of Helmetta, New Jersey (population: 1,825).

2005-08-04T07:15:00.000-04:00

The Price We Pay

The media rarely report the numbers anymore, so let it be me who does.

According to the Department of Defense, as of August 3, 2005, the total number of military deaths in Iraq is 1,816. The number of wounded is 13,769, of whom approximately half (6,661) had wounds that did not permit them to be returned to duty within 72 hours. [link]

Of course, numbers don't really tell the whole story. For that, I recommend an article that was published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, which describes in detail how injured soldiers are treated, and the issues that treatment raises. The article also describes a bi-weekly conference call between surgeons at Walter Reed Medical Center and surgeons in Iraq, in which they review cases over the past two weeks. The excerpted description below is from the biweekly summary on October 21, 2004, but gives an idea of what the injury statistics alone blandly obscure. [If you're squeamish, you might want to skip to the bottom].

Every other Thursday, surgeons at Walter Reed hold War Rounds by telephone conference with surgeons in Baghdad to review the American casualties received in Washington during the previous two weeks. The case list from October 21 provides a picture of the extent of the injuries. There was one gunshot wound, one antitank-mine injury, one grenade injury, three rocket-propelled–grenade injuries, four mortar injuries, eight IED injuries, and seven patients with no cause of injury noted. The least seriously wounded of these patients was a 19-year-old who had sustained soft-tissue injuries to the face and neck from a mine and required an exploration of the left side of the neck. Other cases involved a partial hand amputation; a hip disarticulation on the right, through-knee amputation on the left, and open pelvic débridement; a left nephrectomy and colostomy; an axillary artery and vein reconstruction; and a splenectomy, with repair of a degloving scalp laceration and through-and-through tongue laceration. None of the soldiers were more than 25 years of age. [link]

If you ask me, the last line of the quote says it all.

2005-08-03T07:35:00.000-04:00

True Colors

President Bush makes a comment that endorses "intelligent design". [link]

ID, as it's known to supporters, posits that the complexity of natural world is so great that it could not have evolved on its own, but must have resulted from an "intelligent designer". Critics say that ID is merely thinly-veiled creationism that doesn't belong in our children's science classes. Supporters insist it's not about religion, just alternative science.

Not so fast. Upon hearing the President's comment, Stephen Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (The institute is a leader in developing intelligent design), is quoted in the New York Times as saying this: "We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biblical origins."

Question: If ID is about science, what's with the reference to "biblical origins"?

True colors, if you ask me.

2005-07-31T18:42:00.000-04:00

Back to the Salt Mines

Sometimes, we only know by looking back that we lived through an historical moment; the significance of events as they unfold isn't seen and connections that later seem plainly obvious aren't at the moment. This is not one of those times.

I was reminded of this earlier this week, when I walked down the steps to the Wall Street subway station and was greeted (politely) by a police officer asking me if I would consent to having my briefcase searched. As you may or may not know, New York City police have begun random searches of subway riders in response to the July 7 subway and bus bombings in London. Riders may refuse to have their bags searched, but if they refuse, they will be prevented from entering the subway. There is, so we are told, no penalty for refusing a search beyond the inconvenience of finding an alternative form of transportation -- including, ironically, buses, whose riders are not subject to search under this policy.

So there I was, confronting a constitutional moment all my own. On the one hand, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits, in black and white, unreasonable searches and seizures: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." Based only on a Scalia-esque plain reading of the text, it would seem, therefore, that in order for a police search to be lawful, it would have to be "reasonable". On this much, the Constitutional text seems clear.

On the other hand, what is "reasonable"? Does it refer the scope and method of search -- that is, a search conducted in an unreasonable manner? Or does it refer to "unjustified" searches -- that is, a search conducted without adequate reason to suspect it will yield evidence of wrongdoing? And what about the circumstances surrounding the search -- does it matter how the police act before the search or what the punishment is if you will not consent to a search? On these points, the Constitution is less clear. But based on the remaining portion of the Fourth Amendment (preventing warrants from issuing except where there is "probable cause"), and based on the abuses committed by the British in the waning days of the Colonies, I think that the concern was not primarily with the method of search, and more with the fact that searches often lacked justification (they were intended to harass and intimidate opponents of the Crown).

In any event, a number of thoughts went through my head in the split second that I had to decide what I would do.

One was that on a gut level, the searches don't seem reasonable; they're more about the appearance of security than actual security. For example, there is no conclusive evidence that the bombers in London were suicide bombers (for more on this, I recommend a recent article in The American Prospect [link]) and therefore I find it doubtful that periodic random searches at a handful of subway stations will prevent bombings, either suicide or otherwise -- the system is simply too porous to secure from someone intent on bombing it, and while random searches might catch unwitting mules (people carrying bombs without knowing it), mules are, by definition expendable, and therefore the prospect that a mule is caught wouldn't seriously deter a non-suicide bomber. Further, let's suppose you are a suicide bomber and the police ask you to consent to a search. Are you going to say yes? More likely, you'll leave and find another place to enter the system, or maybe you'll get on an unsecured bus and blow that up instead. Or maybe, when confronted, you'll blow yourself up at the entrance to the subway, next to the police officer who asked you to consent to a search and the tens or hundreds of other people entering the subway at that location at that moment. Maybe it's me, but the notion of random searches doesn't seem particularly well-suited to the task of securing the subways. So much for the notion that these searches are reasonable tailored to meet a specific (if amorphous) threat. If anything, searches conducted in this manner might be making us less secure.

But if they're not reasonably calculated to meet a threat, are the searches "reasonable" on some other grounds? Here, the argument is that the searches aren't particularly intrusive, so what's the harm? On this point, I admit to some inconsistency: after all, where I work, I regularly walk through a magnetometer (metal detector) and consent to having my bags and possession x-rayed as a condition of employment. I also travel fairly frequently by airplane, where I similarly consent to be searched as a condition of travel. If I don't object to those searches, why do I object to this one?

One answer is the randomness -- when I travel by air, or when I go to work, I know that I will be searched, and therefore I can decide whether I want to carry a particular object that is non-threatening, but nevertheless private. With the subway searches, I am deprived of that choice -- if I am carrying an object I wish to keep private (assuming it's not illegal), but need to ride the subway, I have to choose between freedom of travel, and freedom from unreasonable search. Put another way, if I want to avoid being publicly embarrased by a search, I must now always alter my behavior in case I am randomly searched. It seems to me that if I am always having to look over my shoulder (metaphorically, that is), the protections embodied in the Fourth Amendment begin to fade just a little.

But another, and perhaps more pragmatic, answer is the value of what is being traded and received -- my privacy for a modicum of actual physical security. At airports, and at my office, there are only a limited number of physical access points and each of those is heavily scrutinized for potential terrorists. Thus, the sacrificing some amount of privacy, which I value fairly highly, is matched by a fairly high degree of confidence that the search will substantially reduce the likelihood of a suicide or other kind of bomber attacking. But as I described above, I have no such confidence in the ability of the police to adequately secure the subway -- there are simply too many access points, not enough police, and therefore, practically speaking, no measureable enhancements in my security resulting from these random searches that would justify the high cost of sacrificing my personal right to privacy. Benjamin Franklin said that those who would sacrifice fundamental liberties for a modicum of security deserve neither liberty nor security, but I think ol' Ben overstated the case: a fundamental tenet of the social compact between a sovereign and the ruled is that the people must sacrifice some amount their personal liberties in order for the sovereign to provide for some amount of physical security and order. Too much sacrifice leads to tyranny; too little leads to anarchy. The trick is to find the balance, where the liberty voluntarily relinquished is roughly equal to the security provided. And so, while I am willing at various times of the day and on vacations to trade personal liberty for actual security, it does not follow that I'll make the same sacrifice for nothing significant in return.

A second thought that went through my head is a quote that Martin Luther King may or may not have said in this form: "I believe in the beauty and majesty of the law so much that if I believe that a law is wrong, I am willing to go to jail and stay there until it is made right". (I got this formulation of the quote from my wife; a Google search of the phrase yielded no results, although a subsequent search revealed a quote by Dr. King that expresses exactly that point:

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
" [link]).

Simply put, somebody has to arouse the conscience of the community. Should it be me? Would it be political cowardice not to object and meekly submit to a search? Was there a form of civil disobedience I could engage in short of asking to be arrested?

In case you're wondering, I didn't invite them to arrest me, and I didn't leave the subway (I was late getting home, and really needed to catch a train). Surely, I would have made a great poster child for the cause however -- Wall Street lawyer with young child, Caucasian, clearly not carrying anything remotely threatening, connected to people who could easily bail me out and who would probably defend me for free -- but I don't know if that's what is needed exactly at this moment. After all, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, and probably dozens of other organizations, are already on the case, so getting myself arrested would not necessarily "arouse the conscience", as Dr. King put it.

I'm not real happy with what I did do; in retrospect, I should have left the subway and found another way home. Instead, I announced, loudly but politely, that I would comply with their request, but that I strenuously objected to the violation of my civil rights. I don't know how much of an impact I made. Perhaps I gave someone around me something to think about, or perhaps I empowered someone else who was wavering on principle, to leave the subway. Or maybe I did nothing but make an ass of myself.

In the end, it's hard to say. I just think that in these times when the police in London gun down an innocent person, and it doesn't cause outrage, or when no one seems incensed that innocent tourists on a Grey Line double-decker bus are made to put their hands over their heads and submit (involuntarily) to searches by police with M-16s merely because some of the passengers "looked suspicious" (they weren't), or when people mutely submit to random searches by the police in the hopes of gaining some fleeting and ephemeral "security", perhaps we need to start asking the hard questions. If we don't, I don't where it all stops.

On second thought, maybe we do need to start getting ourselves arrested.

2004-12-28T13:19:00.000-05:00

That's What I Said!

One of the frustrations of blogging in relative obscurity is that sometimes, after I have blogged about a point of view, or an idea, or a way of looking at a set of facts, the mainstream media comes along and runs an article that takes that very point of view. There's no legal wrong (unless, improbably, someone is actively stealing from my blog), just a sense of "Hey, I wrote about that idea eight months ago! I should be writing for [insert name of publication]?"

In these situations, about the best I can do is hope that my readers (all three of you) will appreciate that we here at Laboville are way ahead of the curve. You may now commence basking in smug self-righteousness that you are on the "bleeding edge", as they say.

The latest example of this comes courtesy of Slate Magazine, which has an article about how to accurately compare the war in Iraq with the war in Vietnam. [link] The gist of the article is that advances in medical technology, war-making technology, and the strategy by which we wage war have all improved since Vietnam, so that a straight comparison of casualties and killed-in-action is misleading. To accurately assess the burden on soldiers in Iraq relative to Vietnam, some adjustment is necessary in order to account for those changes. And, not surprisingly, the adjusted statistics are grim and possibly getting worse.

Here's what Slate had to say:

Economists like to quote statistics in "constant dollars," where they factor in historical inflation rates to produce statistics that allow for side-by-side comparison. Warfare is more complex than macroeconomics, but it is possible to produce a similar "apples to apples" comparison for casualties across conflicts. In a recent article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Atul Gawande (a former Slate contributor) concluded that improvements to military medicine since Vietnam have dramatically reduced the rate at which U.S. troops die of wounds sustained in combat.

. . .

Simply, a soldier was nearly 1.5 times more likely to die from his wounds in Vietnam than in Iraq today.

And here's what we had to say in Laboville on March 11, 2004, in a piece entitled "Statistics for People Who Do Like to Think":

These changes in both warfare and medicine got to me to thinking -- what is the relevant comparison when comparing casualties of war? In economics, when prices are compared across a long period of time, the comparisons are often made in "constant dollars" or by using a benchmark currency value (e.g., "in 1980 dollars"). Wouldn't it also be relevant to account for changes over time when talking about the effects of war?

. . .

For example, based on the statistics cited by CBS, we could assume that if we had fought the Vietnam War using todays tactics and technology, the ratio of injured to killed would have been 6:1 instead of 4:1. In other words, we could calculate that 1 out of 3 soldiers who died in Vietnam then might have survived today. Thus, instead of 55,000 dead, the number might have been closer to 36,000 dead.

Conversely, one would need to multiply the number of killed in action in Iraq by 1.5 (6 divided by 4), which would bring us to approximately 840 combat deaths, in constant numbers.

This is not a subject in which I want to gloat about being right. More appropriately, I am glad to know that my initial hunch has been borne out by research, since that suggests that the mainstream media back in March (when CBS ran the numbers that my post was based on) was actually doing some constructive reporting. Nevertheless, I'm saddened that the research was necessary in the first place.

Update -- here is the link to the New England Journal of Medicine article on casualty statistics in Iraq. [link]

2004-12-18T23:50:00.000-05:00

Securing Social Security

On the subject of social security, the Democrats, if history is any guide, will take an issue in which they represent the views of the majority of Americans and lose. Paul Krugman, Joshua Micah Marshall and others are trying to stiffen their resolve, but I think that the subject needs to be made even simpler for some Democrats to get it. Therefore, I offer these talking points:

1. Social Security is not about to run out of money

Today's retirees receive their benefits from today's workers. When today's workers retire, their benefits will be paid for by the next generation of workers. Unless tomorrow's workers stop working, Social Security will continue to have funds to pay benefits indefinitely.

2. Social Security is collecting more than it spends

In the 1980s, Social Security reforms were enacted that ensure that the program is taking in more than it spends. It is true that as the Baby Boomers retire, the number of workers for each retiree will drop from three to one to two to one. But don't worry, that's why we're collecting more money now, while the boomers are still working.

3. Social Security is not an investment program, it's insurance

Before Social Security, people who hadn't saved money for their retirement became poor. Very quickly. And since most people couldn't afford to save much for their retirement while they were working, elderly poor were a common sight. Social Security ensures that everyone who works will receive something each month. Sure, it's not much, but it's more than nothing, and that's the point.

4. The point of Social Security is security

I enjoy gambling, and occasionally even make some money at it (not much, but some), but I would never take the mortgage money to the casino. Social Security is the mortgage money -- no matter how smart you are, or how lucky you are, at the end of the day, you can count on Social Security when you retire. Under their system, remember, markets will still go down, and if they're down when you retire, you lose.

5. Democrats believe that markets are a good thing

Markets are good places to make money. Democrats like making money as much as the next person, and more importantly, we have as much of a stake in the markets (stock and bond) as everybody else. Democrats, just like Republicans, invest in mutual funds and 401ks and individual stocks and bonds. Union pension funds (the ones that are supposedly biased against Republicans) invest in the markets. Big public projects (the kind that Democrats are supposed to be madly in love with) are often financed by bonds, which are sold in the bond markets. The bottom line is that Democrats can oppose changing Social Security and still believe in the markets.

6. Democrats like Wall Street

If Social Security becomes an investment program, Wall Street will make a lot of money. That's not why we object to changing it -- we object because changing Social Security is a bad idea. If Social Security change becomes a reality, we'll have bigger problems than Wall Street making some money in the process.

7. Deficits are the single biggest threat to the future of Social Security

This requires a little logic, so stick with me. If you'll recall, Social Security is collecting more money than it needs right now. That's the so-called "surplus". To cover its non-Social Security debts, however, the government has been taking the cash out of the surplus and replacing it with huge IOUs. When those IOUs come due, the government will have two choices: it can borrow the money necessary to put cash back into Social Security, or it can severely cut lots of non-Social Security programs to free up cash. The latter is obviously bad. But the former is bad, too, since when the government borrows massive amounts of money, the law of supply and demand says that interest rates (the cost of borrowing all that money) go way up. What's more, much of the borrowed money comes from outside the country. If countries like China, Japan, and the European nations don't think we're a good credit risk (say, because we continue to run huge deficits), they will demand even higher interest rates.

8. Hope is not a strategy

Republicans say that we won't need to borrow money or cut non-Social Security spending because the economy will be vastly improved by the time that the Social Security IOUs come due. That is, of course, that there are no recessions in the future, and no wars, and no other national emergencies that may require funding. What's more, the projections that they rely on today to make their statement are chock-full of assumptions, hedges, and estimates that can be proven wrong today. Let one example stand in for the rest: When the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will be eliminated by 2012, that CBO is required by law to assume that the President's 2001 tax cuts will expire in 2010. But as we all know, the President is pushing to make those tax cuts permanent. 'Nuff said.

9. The President's plan just doesn't work

You don't need to understand Social Security all that deeply to see this one: The President wants to allow each of us to divert some portion of our FICA taxes to private investment funds. But remember, our FICA taxes are supporting current retirees. If we divert some of our FICA funds to private investment funds, the benefits for current retirees would have to be cut, or we would have to borrow massive amounts of money right now to keep their benefits the same.

10. It's not "privatization". It's ending Social Security

Don't mince words on this one. What the Republicans want is not to "privatize" Social Security -- what they want is to end it, but politically, you can't just come out and say that, so they call it "privatization". But there's nothing to "privatize" -- if you change Social Security from retirement insurance to a bet on the markets, one of the most successful social welfare programs this country has ever seen is dead. Here's another thing they don't say publically: The Republicans who are driving this (which is not all Republicans, mind you) hate Social Security because they're greedy and are offended by the assumption inherent in Social Security that each of us is our brother's keeper. Their motives are, frankly, selfish and deeply un-Christian. But if the Republicans want to play on the field of "Christian values," then, as the President is fond of saying, "Bring it on!"

Those are the talking points. But I also have two tips for Democrats to avoid another political disaster. Here goes:

1. The P.R. war is the only battle we can win

Forget the legislative arena -- the Republicans have majorities in the House and Senate, so some proposal will get passed if that's what they want. We need to change the tenor of the debate. It's not "Social Security reform", it's "Killing Social Security". It's not "privatization", it's "the Republicans want to take Grandma's food". It's about slogans, and catch-phrases and ten word answers like the ones that I've laid out here. Yes, there's a lot of substance that is being glossed over, but you have to hook the fish before you can reel it in. And if the Republicans accuse Democrats of fearmongering, look squarely into the camera, smile reassuringly, and say that the Republicans are acting like Chicken Little. The point to get across, every time you open your mouth, is that the sky isn't falling.

2. We must all hang together or we will surely hang separately

This isn't so much about Social Security as it is about politics. The Democrats have got to stand together on this, with no exceptions. What the Republicans need is a handful of turncoat Democrats who wil make this a "bipartisan bill". Don't give in to the temptation. Without any Democrats to provide cover, the political price of "reforming" Social Security to the Republican Party goes way up, and that price could embolden moderate Republicans to oppose the President. Remember, the Republicans have solid majorities in both the House and the Senate, so they're going to pass the President proposal if they want to. Why make it easy for them?

2004-11-29T22:39:00.000-05:00

Mining Our Heritage

Apropos of nothing in particular, I happened to be reading the Supreme Court's decision in Whitney v. California, from 1927. [link] The opinion of the Court is muddled, to say the least, but fortunately, Justice Brandeis gave a concise statement of the case in his concurring opinion:

Miss Whitney was convicted of the felony of assisting in organizing, in the year 1919, the Communist Labor Party of California, of being a member of it, and of assembling with it. These acts are held to constitute a crime, because the party was formed to teach criminal syndicalism. The statute which made these acts a crime restricted the right of free speech and of assembly theretofore existing. The claim is that the statute, as applied, denied to Miss Whitney the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case is remembered today because it contains a quotable quote from Brandeis ("Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."). The quote is often recited out of context, however. Oddly enough, when it is read In context, what stands out is not the quote itself (in some ways, it has a ring of non-sequitor to it), but the overall fervor of Brandeis's defense of liberty, which has a power all its own:

This court has not yet fixed the standard by which to determine when a danger shall be deemed clear; how remote the danger may be and yet be deemed present; and what degree of evil shall be deemed sufficiently substantial to justify resort to abridgment of free speech and assembly as the means of protection. To reach sound conclusions on these matters, we must bear in mind why a state is, ordinarily, denied the power to prohibit dissemination of social, economic and political doctrine which a vast majority of its citizens believes to be false and fraught with evil consequence. [274 U.S. 357, 375] Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. 3 They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence [274 U.S. 357, 376] coerced by law-the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one. Every denunciation of existing law tends in some measure to increase the probability that there will be violation of it. 4 Condonation of a breach enhances the probability. Expressions of approval add to the probability. Propagation of the criminal state of mind by teaching syndicalism increases it. Advocacy of lawbreaking heightens it still further. But even advocacy of violation, however reprehensible morally, is not a justification for denying free speech where the advocacy falls short of incitement and there is nothing to indicate that the advocacy would be immediately acted on. The wide difference between advocacy and incitement, between preparation and attempt, between assembling and conspiracy, must be borne in mind. In order to support a finding of clear and present danger it must be shown either that immediate serious violence was to be expected or was advocated, or that the past conduct furnished reason to believe that such advocacy was then contemplated. [274 U.S. 357, 377] Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, selfreliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. 5 Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it.

Read and enjoy.

2004-11-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

We are thankful for

My wife's family has a tradition of writing "We are thankful for ..." on small post-it notes and then listing all of things that we are thankful for. Certainly this year, we have more than our fair share of things to be thankful for. Sam is growing into more and more of a little boy every day, doing all of the things that a three-year old does, and every day with him is all about discovery. We're all relatively healthy -- Mom's brain cancer hasn't recurred, and she's survived far longer than the statistics said she should; Dad's training for a half marathon at the age of 65; Mimi is going strong at 83, and although Grandmom Gi passed away this summer, it's hard to say she hadn't lived a full life in her 94 years on this Earth.

But somehow, all of the celebration is still tinged with some sorrow. On the one hand, Tasha was elected to the partnership at an AmLaw 20 law firm, the culmination of nine long and hard years of working and striving and stressing, and ultimately, excelling. The fact that 200 associates started at the same time Tasha did, and she was the only one to be elected partner, says something about how much of an achievement this is. But at the same time, one of our best friends, who deserved to be made partner at the same time, was passed over. And more devastating than that, Tasha's mentor and friend, who had worked tirelessly to make her a partner, died unexpectedly the day after the official announcement. It's hard to imagine a bigger devastation to his family, to the Firm, and to Tasha. The fact is, Conor was larger than life, and had an unparalleled ability to make whomever he focused his attention on feel like the singularly most important person in the world. It was a stunning blow at a time when, by all rights, we ought to have been celebrating. But somehow, without him, any celebration would have been hollow.

And yet, it's still Thanksgiving, and we're in Santa Fe with eight inches of snow on the ground and the desert is achingly beautiful. The turkey is in the oven after five of us worked all morning on stuffing and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and beans and carrots and the rest of our feast. This afternoon, 16 of us will sit down around a table and laugh, and drink some wine, and share stories, and revel in each other. Even with everything going on in our lives, it's hard not to be thankful for that.

2004-11-12T18:08:00.000-05:00

A Thought Exercise

Would you recognize radical fundamentalism if you saw it? Here it is in "recognizable" form, if you'll excuse the stereotype for a moment:

Dear Mr. President:

The glory of Allah be upon you! The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your election, Allah has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Prophet daily, we who know Allah will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the infidels nothing. They despise you because they despise Allah. Honor the prophet, and he will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Koran says I must (Shura 11.123). It would have been hard, but because Allah lifts up whom he will and pulls down whom he will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Allah has allowed you to be his servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many judges who are faithful to the will of Allah and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that follows the Koran regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, and freedom of speech. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Allah himself.

As it is said in the holy Koran, "O men! serve your Lord Who created you and those before you so that you may guard against evil." (Shura 2.21) The student body, faculty, and staff at Al Ibrahim Madrasa commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honor Allah. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share the values of the Prophet Muhammed, shed yourself of them as it is commanded in the Koran, "O Prophet! Make war against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be merciless against them." (Shura 9.73). Muslims Americans who are true believers in the way of the Prophet would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.
Sincerely your friend,
Azam ibn Said,
Imam

PS: A few moments ago I read this letter to the students in the mosque. They applauded loudly their approval.

On occasion, Muslims have not agreed with things you said during your first term. Nonetheless, we could not be more thankful that Allah has given you four more years to serve Him as President, never taking off your faith and laying it aside as a man takes off a jacket, but living, speaking, and making decisions as one who knows the word of the Prophet to be eternally true.

Now consider that the letter was actually written and delivered to the President by a leader of the Christian right (though, obviously, with quotes from the New Testament instead of similar quotes from the Koran)? Would you still recognize it as fundamentalism?

It happened. Here's the link to the letter, by Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University. [http://www.bju.edu/letter]

* * *

By the way, the Republicans are fond of paying homage to Barry Goldwater, and the impact that he had on the party's current dominance. But here's what Goldwater had to say about the Christian right's role in all this:

When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye. (Washington Post, July 28, 1994) [sorry, no link to the WaPo, only to Wikipedia

[In conclusion, I should note that I chose to use a "Muslim fundamentalist" as the example because the American media, and frankly, the Bush Administration, has for years portrayed a black and white vision of Islam. In order for the thought exercise to work, it had to play to that prejudice. I had no intention of offending anyone (other than Republican extremists, of course), and apologize if I did offend the non-extremists among us. In point of fact, in the course of researching some of the quotes from the Koran, I found a number of verses and Shuras that I want to go back and reread for their humanist and literary value. I freely acknowledge, by the way, that I may have taken the Koran quotes out of context, but I was trying to make a point.]

2004-11-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

If I've Said It Once...

You get the government you deserve.

If you think you deserve better than lying, voter intimidation, crippling budget deficits, callous disregard for human life, disdain for the basic rules of our democracy, snobbish evangelism, and an inability to see, let alone admit, errors, then you deserve better than four more years of George W. Bush.

While we here at Laboville have been reluctant supporters of John Kerry, the fact is that Senator Kerry on his worst day -- the day when he is feeble, unsure, trying to play both ends against the middle -- Kerry will be infinitely more competent then the President is on his best day, and therefore is the clear and obvious choice tomorrow.

We deserve better.

2004-10-21T01:19:00.000-04:00

The Relevance of Dred Scott

I didn't get a chance to comment on it at the time, but while I was listening to the second Presidential debate, I was puzzled by the President's reference to the Dred Scott decision in the 1850s, although I was relieved that he doesn't support that decision. [Dred Scott, for those who don't know, was a slave who went with his master to a free state; when his master died, Scott sued to claim his freedom, but was told that he did not have standing to sue in federal court, and that he was not free simply because he was then residing in a free state. To the contrary, his status (slave or free) was determined by the state in which his master had lived.]

Anyway, here's what the President said:

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all—you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.

And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've got plenty of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution.

And I suspect one of us will have a pick at the end of next year—the next four years. And that's the kind of judge I'm going to put on there. No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution.

First, there's the question of why he's mentioning Dred Scott at all. The answer, as Tim Noah at Slate.com points out, is that Dred Scott is code for Roe vs. Wade among conservatives. [link] The notion is, I guess, that the Supreme Court ruled that slaves didn't have rights and that decision was overturned, so there's hope that history will be similarly unkind to Roe's holding that fetuses aren't entitled to rights. Tim Noah has explored this in clear and readable detail, so I will defer to his analysis on this point.

So if Dred Scott is code for Roe v. Wade, I think it's a crude comparison that doesn't stand up even to casual scrutiny (a topic for another time). Srike one.

Now, leaving aside the mangled syntax (Bush appears to be saying that the Constitution doesn't speak to the equality of America, which it actually does, in the 14th Amendment), Bush claims Justice Taney, the author of the majority opinion in Dred Scott, was being an activist judge, and that the Constitution doesn't say that "slavery is allowed because of personal property rights." But is that true? Well, I'll report, and you decide:

The Constitution explicitly refers to slavery in two places. In one, it says that states may continue importing persons as they see fit until 1808. We're not so concerned with that clause here. But here's what the other clause says:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. (Art. IV, Sec. 2, Clause 3)

So it seems that the Constitution was pretty clearly enshrining the notion that one to whom service or labor is due has a right to have the escaping slave "delivered up" to him. How exactly is that different from personal property rights? The answer is, it's not. By way of explanation, consider this analogy: my wallet doesn't become yours simply because I leave it at your house; you have to return it to me if I ask for it. The result would be the same even if you had decreed that in your house, the rule was "finders, keepers." Taney was simply saying that slaves were no different under the Constitution -- free states couldn't decree that slaves who found their way to the free state were automatically free. If the owner demanded the return of the slave, the slave had to go.

Strike two.

But now let's turn our attention to the President's distinction between supposedly activist judges like Justice Taney (bad) on the one-hand, and "strict constructionists" (good) on the other. Is the President right that Taney was an activist, and not a strict constructionist?

Sadly, no. [If he had been an activist, American history might have taken a very different turn.] The fact is that, at least in this case, Taney was engaging in strict construction. Among other things, Taney wrote thusly in his opinion:

It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

That, in a nutshell, is the mantra of the strict constructionist. And indeed, that is how Taney proceeds: as he points out, the plain language of the Constitution required a free state to "deliver up" an escaped slave, and prohibited that state from conferring free status on the slave by operation of the free state's law. Since Dred Scott was a slave, he was not entitled, under the plain language of the Constitution, to receive the rights of a citizen (i.e., his freedom) when he moved to a free territory.

And lest there be any mistake that Taney was engaging in strict construction, he tells the world as much:

Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of this opinion, upon a different point, the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, in every state that might desire it, for twenty years. And the government in express terms is pledged to protect it in all future time if the slave escapes from his owner. That is done in plain words -- too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.

From the actual language of the opinion, it's hard to see where Taney isn't engaging in strict construction. This makes the President's attempt to differentiate between the kind of judges he would appoint from the justices who decided Dred Scott all the more puzzling.

Strike three. Please sit down.

[For the record, please be aware that I am defending neither slavery nor Justice Taney's decision in Dred Scott. My purpose here is to point out that even if you take the President's comments at face value, he's gotten the history, the analysis and ultimately, the lesson to be learned completely wrong. As a citizen and a lawyer, I find that disturbing.]

2004-10-20T23:17:00.000-04:00

Why it wouldn't be bad if the Yankees lose (no, really!)

As I write this, the Yankees are completing their historic collapse in the Bronx. Now, as a Yankees fan, I am disturbed -- if they had to lose, did it have to be this way? Despite the fact that Boston has won exactly one World Series in the time that New York has won 26, Boston Red Sox fans will be insufferable.

But there's a silver lining to all of this (or so I am desperately telling myself). Consider the situation: on the same day that the Red Sox look likely to win, the Astros lost. Put another way, the team from Texas lost and the team from Massachusetts won. Hmmm. That's got a nice ring to it in this election season, doesn't it? So, while I'm not superstitious, I'm willing to graciously cede Boston this victory and the bragging rights that come along with it, but on one condition -- I expect that Boston's other contender this fall will exhibit the same grit and determination in the face of a better financed and more corporatized rival, and beat the pants off of his opponent as well.

If Boston isn't willing to do that deal, then, well, I'll be forced to point out another team that choked bitterly and spectacularly during the playoffs. Yes, I'm talking about the 1986 Red Sox.

Do we have a deal?

2004-10-01T01:39:00.000-04:00

And another thing...

One of the other things that I noticed, and was prepared to wax eloquent on, this evening was the repeated admonition on FreeRepublic.com to "Freep these polls" -- shorthand for going to various mainstream media websites and repeatedly vote in their on-line surveys about who "won" the debates, with an eye toward skewing the vote toward the President. My thought was, "gee, what is it with right-wingers and their unending need to undermine legitimate voting?" But then I surfed over to Atrios, and what did my wondering eye behold but exactly the same message (albeit a bit more polite): "Be sure to visit these polls and vote." And there were the links to the same on-line polls that FreeRepublic was urging its readers to "Freep"!

What's going on here? It's like some perverse arms-race -- one side jacks the polls, and so the other side feels like it has to do the same thing. Then each side either touts the results as showing a surge for its guy, death for the other guy's campaign or both.

But surely, the media whose sites are being used this way must know, right? I mean, they can't seriously believe that these polls are in any way objective or scientific, or dare I say it, meaningful, can they? And yet, they continue to run the polls, and people keep thinking they're meaningful!

I just don't get it.

2004-10-01T01:12:00.000-04:00

Post-Debate Thoughts

Actually, my post-debate thoughts aren't exactly about the debate, but about the post-debate spin. For one thing, the blogosphere echo-chamber is, on the left, proclaiming Kerry the hands-down winner. On the right, it's not exactly "Bush won" but more like "Kerry didn't score." I think that speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, The Daily Show was decidedly calling the debate for Kerry. Jon Stewart's interview with Rudy Guiliani was harsh on the Republicans pretty much from start to finish -- Guiliani was trying to spin it that Kerry believes the world would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power, but Stewart was having none of it. Over and over again, Stewart repeated what Kerry actually said: that the way that President Bush went about disarming Hussein was itself dangerous and inimical to American interests abroad. Giuliani didn't have a good rejoinder, but just kept repeating the mischaracterization. At the end of the interview, Stewart signed off with something to the effect of "we'll let you go now, you clearly have a lot of work to do tonight."

And finally, compared to the post-debate splash pages (page one of the website) CNN.com and Foxnews.com, MSNBC was positively glowing for Kerry. The headline on MSNBC.com was "Face Off on Iraq: Kerry Rips Handling of War; Bush Says U.S. Must Stand Firm" Off to the side, the subhead read "Democrat says Bush made 'colossal error'; president accuses Kerry of sending 'mixed messages' to troops, allies." (And yes, "president" was not capitalized on the site.) By contrast, CNN and Fox News were tame: CNN had "The Debates: Highlighting the Differences" (no subhead), while Fox had "Bush, Kerry Spar on Iraq", with a subhead that read "At first debate in Florida, candidates argue differences over the War on Terror". Fox News. Tame. Imagine that.

2004-09-20T22:36:00.000-04:00

Comparitive Journalism

A while back, I had an idea for the blog: take a news story and see how it's covered by various media outlets. I filed the idea under "Interesting, But Don't Have Time". Part of the problem was identifying a story that would be worth the effort.

This evening, I think I found one, mostly by accident. John Kerry today gave a speech at New York University that, at least on paper, is finally the compelling argument against the Bush administration on Iraq: they lied us into this war, they didn't plan for the war or the peace, didn't listen to anyone who did think about the war and the peace, and are lying even as things go from bad to really bad. To get out of this quagmire, the president needs to take proactive steps (outlined coherently by Kerry) and then we need to change presidents.

That's the argument. Along the way, Kerry coherently lays out his rationale for voting to give the President the authority for military action in Iraq -- in effect, Congress was giving the President the "big stick" that Teddy Roosevelt spoke of, with the understanding that we would try first to speak softly, and only use the big stick after every other diplomatic effort had been exhausted. Kerry, at least, also believed that the President would internationalize the coalition; at the end of the day, however, he failed to do so, and as a result, 90% of the casualties have been Americans. A copy of the text of Kerry's speech is at salon.com [link]

So now you know what the speech says, roughly. Here's the coverage:

Salon.com put the speech on the front page of its website, along with a large picture of Kerry at NYU (with the word "Stronger" prominently displayed on the backdrop). At nytimes.com, the article is the second story, with the provocative "In Harshest Critique Yet, Kerry Attacks Bush Over War in Iraq". [link]. The third story at nytimes.com, by the way, is about the video of an American hostage being beheaded. Clearly, the Times and Salon both think this is an important speech.

Curiously, the speech doesn't rate front page coverage at cnn.com, even in the headliner section "Politics". The stories there are "CBS: Memos discredited" and "Campaigns agree to three debates". So much for CNN's supposed "liberal bias". Fox News Channel's website, meanwhile runs not once, but three times, the headline "Bush: Kerry's Waffling" (with a teaser that reads: "President accuses rival of leaving behind a trail of contradictory positions in Iraq"). Not surprisingly, Fox covers President Bush's decision to lift sanctions on Libya, and CBS's apology for being duped (with a subhead that a Kerry advisor supposedly met with CBS's source). It also runs on its front page a story about Democratic questioning of CIA Director nominee Porter Goss.

MSNBC.com mentions the Kerry speech on its front page ("Kerry Rips Bush Over Iraq"), although it buries the headline as a "related link" under a much larger headline about the hostage being beheaded. Still, MSNBC.com includes a video link, so they must think there's something there. Slate.com, a relative of MSNBC.com, also covers the story on the front page, with what is probably the best story on the speech. The article lays out, in 13 boldface headings plus commentary and quotes, what Kerry's position is, but unfortunately, the story is hidden in plain sight, as it were, under a snarky frontpage headline that suggests a direction that is the opposite of where the article actually goes ("Where Kerry Stands on Iraq: A Kerry-English Translation"). [link]

Other front page mentions come from washingtonpost.com, a buried headline at denverpost.com (under a large headline announcing the CBS apology), the Houston Chronicle (again, buried deep on the front page, below a headine that reads "Bush Defends Iraq Policy Amid Criticism"), and a second-level importance headline at the Chicago Tribune. (In the Trib's defense, there was "hard" news out of Illinois today, as a guard at the state capitol was shot and killed, but then again, Dan Rather got the biggest headline, and the capitol guard was second. Kerry's was below those two headlines, in the same type size as the guard story). The story also got front page coverage in the Des Moines Register ("Kerry Accuses Bush of Incompetence on Iraq").

Nothing on the front page of the Dallas Morning News (dallasnews.com).

Overseas, the story is front page material in France's Le Monde (no surprise there, is there?) ("John Kerry expose sa strategie pour sortir du "chaos" irakien"). Nothing on the front page of the London Times or the Independent, and mixed coverage on the BBC website -- the BBC uses a picture of Kerry speaking at NYU and offers excerpts of the speech, but under a headline that reads "Kerry and Bush Square Off on Iraq". Interestingly, the same story leads the BBC's Arabic language site. By contrast, no mention of Kerry's speech on Al Jazeera's front page, which I thought would have carried it.

Anyway, these are my findings on the subject. As usual, I don't have an explicit conclusion to draw from this -- many media outlets covered the speech more or less prominently, some didn't, and one (you know who you are, Fox News Channel) covered the story so misleadingly that I am wondering if we saw the same speech. Anyway, there you have it.

[A note about my methodology: first, this post is only accurate as of about 11:00 p.m. this evening, and is a non-scientific survey of major media outlets. The nature of internet news sites is that they change frequently, so I didn't bother linking to generic front pages as examples -- inevitably, they'll change. Nor did I make PDFs of front pages since I have neither the server bandwidth nor the storage space to link to them. All publications are named by some easy identifier, usually popular name, for ease of identification if you're interested in perusing that publication particularly and for ease of searching in Google. For foreign press, go to abyznewslinks.com, which has links to many international media outlets.]

2004-09-17T16:31:00.000-04:00

Liberal Media, My Bottom!

USA Today has a front-page story reporting that a new Gallup poll has Bush leading Kerry by double-digits. [link] According to the article, "the 55%-42% match-up is the first statistically significant edge either candidate has held this year."

Here's where the liberal media bias is so clear, if you ask me. Why do I say this? Consider the headlines: on the front page, it reads "Bush Leads". When you follow the link to the article, it gets even more lefty -- "Bush Clear Leader in Poll."

Here's the lefty part: in the article, we learn that Bush is the clear leader in one poll. Coincidentally, there is another poll out the same day, from an equally reputable polling organization, which shows that Bush and Kerry are statistically tied -- 47% for Bush and 46% for Kerry, according to Pew Research Center. USA Today didn't see fit to report that in its headline.

But wait, there's more: the Gallup poll (where Bush is supposedly leading) surveyed "registered voters". Pew surveyed "likely voters". The difference, though not even remarked on by USA Today, is huge.

Next point: USA Today quotes Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign senior strategist as follows: "Dowd says Kerry at this point would 'have to defy history' to defeat a sitting president." Dowd might not want to take this comparison too far, of course -- as the article notes, Ronald Reagan trailed a sitting president by 8 points, and won. Even W was behind a sitting Vice President by 10 points and "won". Having done no other research, I can't say whether this statistic holds true for other presidential races, but apparently, I'm in good company -- USA Today didn't do any additional research, either.

I'm sure there's more, but not at the moment. In any event, it's clear from this article that the left wing liberal media bias in favor of President -- oops, too soon -- Candidate Kerry is alive and well.

[Special mention goes to loyal reader Gail, who was present at the creation of this blog and kibbitzed on the debunking of USA Today.]

2004-08-23T22:25:00.000-04:00

Flunking Home Ec

Recently, I received a copy of the Walter Drake catalogue (www.wdrake.com), which says on its cover that it has been "satisfying customers since 1947".

Remember all those times when you said "there ought to be a gadget that [fill in the blank]" or "wouldn't it be neat if you could push a button [pull a knob, press a lever, etc.] and ---- would happen"? Well, now you can rest easy. Whatever it is, it's been invented, and it's being sold in the Walter Drake catalogue.

Need long, narrow ice cubes to fit into your water bottle? Well, then order item 100-47587, which is an ice tray that makes 10 long-narrow-fit-into-a-bottle ice "cubes".

Embarrased that your hamburgers don't have that "restaurant quality" look? Thank goodness there's item number 101-02770, the "Restaurant Quality Hamburger Press".

Is City Hall ignoring your suggestion that you deserve to have a street named after you? Now your troubles are over, thanks to item 100-65928, the "Personalized Street Sign" (although you'll probably also need item 100-31557, the "Cap Holder (for 1 sign), or 100-31565, the "Crosspiece (for 2 signs)").

There is a downside to this consumer utopia, however -- as I thumbed through the catalogue, I began to realize how woefully deficient I have been in providing my family with the proper tools for sophisticated living. I refer, of course, to the Really Cool But Really Pointless Kitchen Gadgets section. Mind you, the folks at Walter Drake don't call it that, but that's what it is.

For example, when I use half a red onion, I wrap the other half in plastic wrap and put it back in the vegetable crisper. Who knew that I could be using the "Dome Onion Saver", which, with its nifty "hinged lid" "seals to confine odor". It even hangs from the edge of the refrigerator shelf to save valuable shelf space. (Item 100-47546)

But wait, that's not all. There's the whole "Saver" line, which includes the "Lettuce Saver", the "Tomato Saver", the "Bacon Saver", the "Bologna Saver", the "Pancake Mix Saver" and the "English Muffin Saver". You should not confuse these, of course, with the "Hot Dog Keeper" ("holds 8 pack!") and the "Bag-In Bread Dispenser" ("fold cuff over end to prevent crushing and staleness!").

But the coup-de-grace has to be the "Cracker Container" (item 100-47439), in which you can protect your crackers from crushing. Just be sure to specify "round" (Ritz cracker size) or "square" (think Wheat-Thins).

2004-08-05T23:49:00.000-04:00

Things you have to believe to be a Republican Today (Revised and Updated)

There has been a list kicking around liberal emails and blogs for a while about the hypocrisy of today's Republican Party. The list is cynical and funny, but then you stop laughing because the hypocrisy just makes you want to cry. Still, the list is funny.

Anyway, I recently got it again in my email and decided that it might be worth updating, if only so that more recent hypocrisies can be memoralized.

Here's the original (as best I can tell) list from November 2003 [link]:

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

“Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is none of our business.

You support states’ rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

For what they're worth, here are my suggested updates:

Killing an unborn child is the equivalent of murder. Killing a convicted murderer is a good deterrent policy.

Creating a Homeland Security Department was a bad idea until it was a good idea.

Forming the 9/11 Commission was a bad idea until it was a good idea.

The 9/11 Commission's recommendations were bad ideas until they were good ideas.

It is unreasonable to suggest that corporate CEOs whose companies engaged in accounting fraud weren't aware of the fraud at the time, unless the company is Halliburton, in which case it is unreasonable to suggest that the CEO could possibly have known about the fraud.

It is okay (cathartic, even) for the Vice President to tell a Senator to "Fuck off" on the floor of the Senate, but it is inexcusable for the wife of the Democratic nominee to tell a reporter to "shove it."

Anti-miscegenation laws are wrong and immoral unless we can use them to keep gay people from marrying, in which case they're just good law.

We support states' rights, unless the states do things that we find immoral, in which case the states should be Constitutionally prohibited from acting at all.

Presidential advisors should not have to testify before legislative bodies because that would trample the separation of powers doctrine, but Congress should strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to specific laws that Congress enacts.

Citizens are not entitled to know what materials the Vice President reads when making national energy policy, but the government is entitled to know what books citizens take out of libraries.

Fox News is "fair and balanced".

As a public service, I am collecting additional examples of Republican hypocrises, and will share any that I collect at a later date. Please submit your entries in the usual ways.

2004-07-30T17:15:00.000-04:00

Cleared or Not Cleared?

There are conflicting reports out that Sandy Berger has been cleared of wrongdoing in the 9/11 documents/National Archive matter. Berger had recently disclosed that he was under investigation for removing documents, but the Wall Street Journal reported today that he had been cleared. The story was picked up by ABC Radio stations, including KYW News in Philadelphia, which is where I saw it, courtesy of Atrios. [link].

But according to NewsMax.com, the Archives is denying that it said any such thing [link], and indeed, no other mainstream press seems to be reporting the matter.

All in all, it's somewhat curious...

2004-07-30T07:32:00.000-04:00

July Surprises

Yesterday, just a few hours before John Kerry gave his acceptance speech in Boston, Pakistan announced that it had apprehended Ahmed Ghailani, a "major" Al Qaeda operative connected to the 1998 embassy bombings, and one of the 22 people on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.

If you think that the timing of the announcement was merely a coincidence, even if a convenient one for the Bush administration, think again. Here's what The New Republic reported on July 19, 2004 [link]:

But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told that they must produce HVTs [high value targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections."

. . .

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Huq's] meetings in Washington." Says [National Security Council spokesman Sean] McCormack, "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Huq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" -- the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."

Still not convinced that the timing was intentional? Well, according to the New York Times, Ghailani was arrested on Sunday, yet the announcement didn't come until Thursday. [link]

Hmmm.

[I wanted to note that I saw this on the TNR website this morning, then read about it again on Talking Points Memo [link], and recalled that I had read about this on TPM in May [link]. I guess that that means technically, credit for this lead properly goes to TPM.]

2004-07-28T22:48:00.000-04:00

Barack to basics

I did some research on Barack Obama, to find out a little more on who this "rising star" of the Democratic Party is. Among other things, I found an article on Salon.com by novelist Scott Turow. [link] Turow first got to known Obama in 1996, and later worked with Obama when Turow was a member of the Illinois commission that was reexamining the death penalty in that state, and Obama was a state senator who was influential in getting some of the proposed reforms passed into law.

Turow had this to say about Obama:

Adding it all up, the smart money has to be on Barack Obama to win in November and thereby to become a pivotal American leader. To be young, black and brilliant has always appeared to me to be one of the more extraordinary burdens in American life. Much is offered; even more is expected. You are like a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day. Yet Barack Obama, who spent his early years coming to terms with his heritage, is in every sense comfortable in his own skin and committed to a political vision far broader than racial categories.

Because they work for George W. Bush, and therefore cannot be regarded as influential political figures in the African-American community, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice may be the first blacks in government whose race is an afterthought in the public mind. If he wins, Barack Obama will also answer to a constituency that is principally white. As a result, he may become the first black Democrat able to rise above race in the fashion of Powell and Rice, and in doing so become the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams.

Turow's instinct matches my own (and that of my brother-in-law, who apparently echoed my prediction about Obama to my sister before he read it on Laboville). Obama has a quality -- an obvious comfort on the dais, an ability to speak to people instead of at them, and a set of achievements outside of politics that give what he says a certain authenticity -- that is all of those separate qualities rolled together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Give him a term or two in the Senate, and you could see Obama as a sort of real world Jed Bartlet, proving that smart is not the opposite of electable.

What a novel concept!

2004-07-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

Touching the Future

You heard it here first -- Barack Obama will some day run for President. And he just might win.

I have been following the Illinois Senatorial election sort of vaguely, in the background. Mostly, it has been the stuff of political farce. A candidate in the primary implodes over allegations in a nasty divorce. Then, in the general campaign, the Republican candidate assigns a staffer to literally stalk Obama and record every word out of his mouth. But instead of provoking Obama into an outburst, the tactic just makes the Republican candidate look bad. Then the same Republican's candidacy implodes over -- surprise surprise, allegations in a messy divorce. The Republicans scramble to find a replacement but no one who might have a chance, but no one, including Chicago legend Mike "Da Bears" Ditka is willing to jump in.

And why would they? Their opponent is Barack Obama, a tall, trim, well-spoken, Harvard-trained lawyer, who also happens to be black. At least, that's what I had heard in the punditocracy -- I had not ever heard the man speak, and didn't know much about him. But it turns out that he is a man of substance and a force to reckoned with.

I confess that I still don't know much about him (something I intend to rectify), but now, at least, I have heard him speak, and all I can say is "wow." He was coherent, eloquent, passionate, compassionate, and had something to say. I wish I had a transcript, because he had a number of good soundbites, delivered with oratorical flourish and no obvious reliance on a prepared text (as near as I can tell, he didn't look down at his notes once). Anyway, here are some of the soundbites that I had the presence of mind to copy down:

"...hope is a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too..."

"...The audacity of hope..."

"...If an elderly person cannot afford medication, that affects me, even if it is not my grandparent.... If a Muslim family is being rounded up without the benefit of a lawyer, that threatens my civil rights. I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."

"...There are no red states and blue states. There is just the United States of America..."

I took the position in my last post that the oratorical skills of President Clinton are sadly the exception among modern politicians rather than the rule. And while I stand by that observation, I freely concede that Barack Obama tonight made a great case for being added to the short list of modern orators worth listening to any chance you get. I note, as well, that his position as the keynote speaker augers well for his future -- lest we forget, the last Democratic president made his national debut as the keynote speaker at the 1988 Democratic convention. It doesn't hurt that Obama is good-looking in a Tiger Woods sort of way -- sadly, it may be the case that the first black man to break the barrier to the Oval Office may have to be one who is black, but not "too black". I wish it weren't so, but if that is the case, Obama certainly looks and sounds the part.

But anyway, remember, you heard it here first.

2004-07-26T23:05:00.000-04:00

Now That's a Speech

President Clinton just finished giving his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and I have to say that I was moved. Now, that's not to say that I haven't been outraged at the former President for putting his pleasure ahead of the party or for trying to play king-maker with Wes Clark. But no matter what you may think of the man or his politics, credit has to go where credit is due.

The man is a truly gifted orator, perhaps the best of our age.

It's sad, because that's a lost art in America. We don't give extemporaneous speeches anymore, and we don't celebrate the ability to get up in front of a crowd and say something meaningful or even just coherent. Interestingly, oration as a tradition seems to be alive and well in parts of the South -- of the speakers who I listened to this evening, I was most impressed by Clinton, Kerry's swift-boat gunner (Rev. Alston, I think his name was) and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Technically, she's an outlier, since she was raised in Chicago, but she did spend a number of years speechifying as a political spouse in Arkansas, so maybe she picked some of the Southern Baptist preacher style up by osmosis or immersion. But anyway, the person I was least impressed with was Senator Barbara Mikulski, who sounded wooden, and who is from only a nominally Southern state, Maryland. Similarly, although the Congresswoman from Ohio who co-chaired the platform committee (didn't get her name, and am too tired to look her up) spoke well, she didn't fire up the audience in the same way that Gore and the Clintons did. And finally, although President Carter spoke well, he never struck me as being of the same tradition as Clinton and Rev. Alston.

All in all, I thought that the first night of the Convention went well, and avoided the trap of incessantly criticizing the Bush Administration to the exclusion of articulating a positive message. Both are needed, but the latter is more desperately needed than the former; if the latter is compelling, the former will take care of itself.

2004-07-26T21:28:00.000-04:00

Songs of Boston

So I'm sitting here watching the Democratic Convention in Boston, and I suddenly had the thought -- there are no good songs about Boston. About the only one I can come up with is "Charley on the MTA", a song that was written in 1949 for the campaign of Walter A. O'Brien, the Progressive Party candidate for Boston mayor. [A side note -- during the 1950s, the Progressive Party and any associated with it were presumed to be Communists. Although O'Brien was never himself a Communist, when the Kingston Trio recorded the song, just to be safe, they changed "Walter A" to "George" so that no one would accuse them of advertising for Commies. (special thanks to Discover Newbury Street for the history lesson).] The only other one I could think of was "Rock and Roll Band" by the band Boston.

In any event, neither of them are particularly adaptable songs that a political party could use the way that any number of New York songs could be adapted to the Republican convention's needs in New York, or, for that matter, the way that "Georgia on My Mind" was adapted for the Carter campaign in 1976. [For the record, there is also a Tom Lehrer song about the Boston MTA [link], but it's not very flattering, either.]

I'm taking votes, by the way, for good Boston songs that the Democrats could use to send the delegates home humming. Anyone?

2004-07-20T22:12:00.000-04:00

You Say Either, I say F--- Off, Part II

Courtesy of whitehouse.org, a transcript of the congratulatory phone call from Vice President Cheney to Senator John Edwards. [link]

2004-07-18T19:13:00.000-04:00

Undemocratic? Antidemocratic?

There are a lot of screeds against the Bush administration that go something like "Bush is stupid" or "conservatives are stupid". Usually, the evidence for the purported stupidity is that the conserviatives have obviously failed to see reason; if they had, they'd have enacted the Democratic agenda, or at least refrained from enacting their own agenda, which is either greedy or rapacious or both.

I've never thought that this was a particularly compelling argument. To the contrary, rather than convince anyone, it merely entrenches the factionalism that already exists. Let's face it -- if you're never going to convince me to become a conservative by telling me I'm stupid to be liberal, why should I think I can convince you to become a liberal by doing the same? But that's where much political discourse seems to be stuck these days.

I also think that the convervative-liberal dichotomy is largely irrelevant to the upcoming elections, since even many conservatives question whether President Bush is himself a conservative. It seems to me that a more compelling argument side-steps the conservative-liberal debate altogether and focuses on the ways in which the Bush-Cheney-DeLay wing of the Republican Party has embarked on a course of conduct that is inimical, and possibly fatal, to the values that underpin our republican (small "r") heritage. From DeLay's unprecedented efforts to subvert the redistricting process to Congressional arm-twisting to pass unpopular legislation to the White House's use of viscious personal attacks against its critics to simply lying, there is a pattern that most mainstream Republicans (that is, Republican voters, if not the Republican leadership) might just see as disturbing, if only someone would just connect the dots.

Fortunately, someone has. As George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now put it, if you only read one political essay this summer, you're not reading enough, but anyway, Jonathan Chait's essay in The New Republic should be the one you read. [link] Chait's thesis is not explicitly ideological. That is, he doesn't argue whether or not any particular position is correct or incorrect. Rather, he argues that the tactics used by the Republicans are anti-democratic and dangerous.

Bush and his allies have been described as partisan or bare-knuckled, but the problem is more fundamental than that. They have routinely violated norms of political conduct, smothered information necessary for informed public debate, and illegitimately exploited government power to perpetuate their rule. These habits are not just mean and nasty. They're undemocratic.

What does it mean to call the president "undemocratic"? It does not mean Bush is an aspiring dictator. Despite descending from a former president and telling confidants that God chose him to lead the country, he does not claim divine right of rule. He is not going to cancel the election or rig it with faulty ballots. (Well, almost certainly not.) But democracy can be a matter of degree. Russia and the United States are both democracies, but the United States is more democratic than Russia. The proper indictment of the Bush administration is, therefore, not that he's abandoning American democracy, but that he's weakening it. This administration is, in fact, the least democratic in the modern history of the presidency.

It's a powerful argument that you should encourage your friends -- particularly Republican ones -- to read.

2004-07-14T23:47:00.000-04:00

The New Imperialism?

Over the past year or so, the word "imperialism" has taken a beating in the press. The general line seems to be "imperialism" is bad. But to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, imperialism, as a concept, is not necessarily bad -- it's just drawn that way. In essence, the argument in favor of the "new imperialism" is that failed states threaten the world order either because they harbor terrorists or madmen with territorial ambitions, and it is incumbent upon richer, more democratic states to tend to these failed states if the successful states want to preserve a stable international order. For all of its faults, so the argument goes, the world order that existed under various empires was at least orderly.

One of the early defenders of the "new imperialism" was Sebastian Mallaby, an editor and columnist at the Washington Post who wrote about liberal imperialism in Foreign Affairs in March/April 2002. [link]. Mallaby admits that his thinking has "evolved" on this issue, and he recently penned a post-script that acknowledges that the label "imperialism" may be problematic. Nevertheless, Mallaby stands by the fundamental argument behind the concept of "new imperialism":

But what I don't regret is the argument behind my label. As bad as the recent experience in Iraq has been, we can't escape the fact that we will face more challenges like this: state failure does threaten our interests and we have to respond to it. Projects such as the International Reconstruction Fund I proposed in my Foreign Affairs essay no longer seem as far-fetched as they did then. . . We lack the tools and institutions to do what empires once did, and we need somehow to create them. [link]

I have been trying to decide whether I agree with Mallaby that empires provided a kind of world order that would be useful today. I don't know yet where I come out on the balance between imposing a stable international order and honoring self-determinism, but I'll let you know when I do figure it out. [I know that these days, it's rare for a blogger to say "gee, I don't know" since blogging tends toward instant and polarized opinion-formation, but there it is. I don't know.]

2004-07-14T06:55:00.000-04:00

Vermont Yankee Update

A while back, Laboville noted that some spent nuclear fuel was unaccounted for at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Apparently, the missing fuel rods have been located, still in the holding pool where they were supposed to be. [link]

The mystery was solved when Vermont Yankee's owner, Entergy Corp., located records from another power plant indicating that it had sent a particular container to VY that could have contained the "missing" fuel. VY officials then searched for the container, and sure enough, located it in the pool. One watchdog group said that this raised a new concern, because earlier, VY officials speculated that the missing rods might be in a container welded to a bucket at the bottom of the pool. Leaving aside obvious questions about how nuclear fuel is stored -- the description of the second "container" calls to mind a hasty run to the local Ace Hardware just before closing (Excuse me, where do you keep the lead-lined buckets?) -- the fact that VY officials thought the fuel was in this bucket-container makes you wonder (a) how sure we can be that they're right this time; and (b) what IS in the bucket-container?

Anyway, thanks to all Laboville readers who diligently searched their attics and basements for the missing fuel rods. You may go back to searching for the real killer now.

2004-07-13T07:51:00.000-04:00

That's what I was trying to say

Jesse Walker at Reason.com has an article entitled "10 Reasons to Fire George W. Bush (and nine reasons John Kerry won't be much better). I recommend it, even if I don't agree with all of Walker's conclusions regarding Kerry. [link]

2004-07-12T07:52:00.000-04:00

Priorities

News that the President thinks that gay marriage is a "critical" issue facing the country got me to thinking that maybe the problem here isn't ideology, but that the President simply doesn't understand what a "critical" issue might look like.

First, I offer a definition of "critical":

Of or forming a crisis: crucial; characterized by acute, desparate or dire circumstances suggesting urgent response.

But I've heard that the President isn't a book learner, so let's try some examples, and see if we can't find a pattern of what's "critical" and what isn't:

Example: The steady pace of deaths in Iraq (American and Iraqi) makes it evident that the administration has no realistic plan to extricate ourselves and prevent the place from descending into anarachy when we do.

Example: The economy is still shaky, and hasn't begun to recover all of the lost jobs that existed when President Bush took office, let alone create new ones. Four months of 350,000 +/- job growth dents, but does not eliminate, the 3 million jobs lost since 2000; and what's more, it may not be a real trend -- according to recent reports, job growth slowed down again, significantly, in June. Also, as USA Today notes, as many as 300,000 of the million or so jobs added since April 2003 have been by temp firms, suggesting that the jobs being added don't really replace the jobs that were lost. [link].

Example: We continue to rack up staggering deficits that cause economists to talk about the "United States debt levels" and "banana republic" in the same sentence. For an example of this, consider an interview that Paul Krugman gave to Tim Russert, in which Krugman used the "banana republic" label and compared the U.S. economic policy to Argentina's. [link]

Example: The Medicare drug benefit "reform" was sold to Congress based on intentionally misleading numbers, with the result that it costs far more than Congress at the time estimated or understood. At the same time, as a result of the administration's tax cuts, there is less revenue, while other expenses are either mounting (homeland security, for example) or looming (the baby boomers will soon be in the 60s).

Example: "No Child Left Behind" continues to be underfunded, so students at failing schools continue to be shortchanged.

Example: Whom someone decides to marry has nothing to do with the stability or sanctity of my marriage; my wife and I aren't looking at Massachussetts and saying, well, that's it, I guess we ought to divorce. Moreover, I don't think I'm alone in that response.

Now, one of these things is not like the others...any trends coming clear here? Which makes me wonder -- what's so "critical" that we need to mess with the Constitution?

2004-07-08T08:09:00.000-04:00

We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

As one reader pointed out, the layout of the blog has gotten all Cheney'd up. I'm in the process of trying to fix it, possibly by upgrading to a new template that incorporates new Blogger features. Please bear with me over the next week or so as I try to iron out the bugs.

For now, by the way, the archives are located all the way at the bottom of the page, if you need to find something.

2004-07-06T17:30:00.000-04:00

You Say Either, I say "F--- off"

Courtesy of Bill, who made this observation to me in an email:

CNN reports:

Cheney called Edwards Tuesday morning to to congratulate him. A spokesman for Cheney for described the conversation as "brief and cordial".

Does that mean Cheney DIDN'T curse out Edwards?

2004-07-06T07:20:00.000-04:00

A note on subliminal messages in graphic design

In the course of my surfing recently, I visited the Bush-Cheney '04 website to see the new ad featuring John McCain. But that's not the point of this post. The point is that while I was at georgewbush.com, I noticed that the site spends most of its visual energy on John Kerry. For example, on the right is a picture of John Kerry and John Edwards under the headline "John Kerry: The Raw Deal". Meanwhile, in the center of the page, just below a not entirely flattering picture of the President, there is a headline that reads "Campaign Memo: Expected Kerry Bounce", a button for the "Kerry Gas Tax Calculator" and the "John Kerry Travel Tracker", which features a take-off on the interstate highway signs that reads "Travels with John". Below that are two ads about John Kerry, both of them negative, with the headlines "Yakuza" and "Pessimism". Finally, in the left column, there is a link to something called the "Kerry Media Center."

Contrast this with johnkerry.com, which features a picture of Kerry and Edwards shaking hands, and never once mentions or shows pictures of President Bush. Meanwhile, the ads that are available on the website are promoted by positive headlines ("Investing in High Tech", "A Realistic Path in Iraq", "Fighting for American Jobs", etc.)

So who's going negative and striking a tone of pessimism? I submit that it's not John Kerry. In fact, on balance, I think the Bush site's obsession with Kerry is a good thing for Kerry: first, there's the whole Captain Ahab obsession-leads-to-ultimate-destruction thing; and second, any publicity is good publicity -- as Huey Long may (or may not) have said once, "Say anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right."

***

One other note on graphic design: it's a small point, but I was struck by the placement of the picture of President Bush at a lecturn at the top of his campaign website. Most graphic designers will tell you that when you picture a person in profile, he or she should be facing into the center of page, because we interpret this as more inclusive. This is because the eye tends to look for and follow a logical path when taking in visual images, and will therefore follow the "gaze" of the figure in profile. If that gaze directs the reader toward the center of the page, the reader is therefore being "drawn into" the page and will be included in the action on that page. On the other hand, if the gaze is off the page (either to the left or right), the reader will follow the gaze off the page, and therefore outside the action taking place on the page. We usually interpret this as cold or uninviting. (To see this phenomenon at work, look at almost any fashion magazine; chances are good that the model will be facing the camera or turned slightly toward the center of the page.)

Given this, I find it interesting (and perhaps unconsciously telling?)that the profile of President Bush is facing off the edge of the page, instead of the other way.

2004-07-03T20:37:00.000-04:00

The Court and the Terrorists

I have wanted to say something about the Supreme Court's decisions in the Padilla, Hamdi and Rasul matters, but I confess that my work schedule and personal life have prevented me from having the time to read the decisions fully and carefully enough to comment. In the interim, a number of commentators have weighed in with their thoughts, many of which I agree with, and some of which I don't. Anyway, the New York Times today has an interesting summary of the Supreme Court's changing center-of-gravity that also touches on the terrorism decisions. I recommend it. [

2004-06-28T22:06:00.000-04:00

Subtly, thy name is Bush

By now, you've surely heard that Bush-Cheney '04 has stooped to using Adolf Hitler as a campaign image in its latest ad. The ad in question shows clips of various prominent Democrats, including Al Gore, Howard Dean and Adolf Hitler, giving speeches in which they appear to yell and rant.

Okay, this part is old news. What is truly new and bizarre, however, are the twisted justifications being trotted out by Bush supporters to defend a tasteless and insensitive campaign commercial.

Here's the pitch, as penned today by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

The ad, called "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-Eyed," is available on the Bush campaign Web site. It is a medley of clips from the Angry Left, including rants from Al Gore, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt and Kerry himself (though Kerry looks downright lethargic compared with the others). The Hitler images--as the Kerry campaign must have known full well--are from a pair of ads the far-left, pro-Kerry outfit MoveOn.org posted to the Internet a few months back. In other words, the Bush campaign is not comparing Kerry to Hitler; it is criticizing Kerry's supporters for comparing Bush to Hitler.

Get it? It's doubly-ironic, see? We're not showing you pictures of Hitler interspersed among images of Democrats so that you'll associate Democrats with Hitler (that's just an added bonus). We're showing you images of Hitler so that you can see how wrong it is for the other guy's troops to use images of Hitler.

Right. And Bill Clinton didn't inhale.

But let's unpack Taranto's so-called logic a bit further, shall we? Of course to do that, we'll need to get some basic facts straight, which admittedly is not something that the WSJ editorial staff is all that familiar with.

First, MoveOn is not connected to the Kerry campaign. In fact, at the time that the contest was held, Howard Dean was the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination and John Kerry was a distant third. What this fact suggests is that MoveOn is not so much pro-Kerry as it is anti-Bush. It's a small point, but it makes the "things posted on MoveOn's site are attributable to Kerry" argument a bit more strained. For all we know, the Hitler ads were made by supporters of Dennis Kucinich who now support Ralph Nader. In any event, the link to Kerry is tenuous.

Second, MoveOn did not create the ads in question or do anything other than post them, briefly, on its contest website. John Kerry's campaign, I hasten to note, had absolutely nothing to do with the Hitler ads, either. Once again, the link to Kerry is tenuous at best.

Third, MoveOn quickly and forcefully repudiated the ads, and apologized for putting them on its website. Here's what they actually said:

None of these was our ad, nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund. They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members and the public, who reviewed the ads and submitted nearly 3 million critiques in the process of choosing the 15 finalist entries.

We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process. In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system.

In other words, MoveOn said "we don't believe that it is appropriate to use images of Adolf Hitler in campaign advertising", or words to that effect.

Contrast those three facts with these:

First, after MoveOn took the ads off their contest website, one of the only places to find them was on the Republican National Committee website.

Second, the Bush campaign itself created and is promoting the latest commercial to use Hitler's image, not some third party or surrogate.

Third, at the time, the RNC and others were apoplectic that anyone would stoop to using Hitler's image, calling it "political hate speech", "vile" and "heinous". Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC, called for the ads to be immediately removed from circulation (despite the fact that one of the biggest circulators was the RNC itself). [link]. Now, they say, " likening the other fellow to Hitler may be noxious, but it's undoubtedly political speech, fully protected by the First Amendment." [James Taranto]

But now back to James Taranto's incoherent logic. Here's what he says:

Kerry had the opportunity for a Sister Souljah-like moment here. He could have said: "I categorically reject any comparison of the president to Hitler, and MoveOn was wrong to disseminate these ads. But two wrongs don't make a right. I call on President Bush to withdraw his ad." Instead, he tacitly approved of his backers' Hitler analogies, thereby validating the substance of the Bush ad, if not its choice of images.

Once again, the facts say otherwise. For example, Kerry's campaign sent an email to supporters (including, apparently, Taranto, since he quotes it) that says, "The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong." Anyone who can find the part where Kerry is "tacitly endorsing" the use of Hitler's image, please raise your hands.

But more importantly, must President Bush wait for John Kerry to do the right thing? Taranto says that Kerry's failure to make the "Sister Souljah" statement shows that Kerry "lacks courage". Logically, therefore, if Kerry did make such a statement, it would courageous. And doesn't that indicate that Taranto knows that the ad is wrong...?

2004-06-28T00:53:00.000-04:00

View from the Sidelines

Liz at Spectator Sport has a post about the Congressional race for the North Carolina Fifth. [link] The Republican candidate is Ed Broyhill, of the Broyhill furniture family. Liz reports that Broyhill is running ads that repeat these claims as to what he belives in (from his website):

•in the right of the unborn, the right to pray in school and the right to worship as we wish without government interference.
•it is our duty to uphold and defend our Constitution. I support Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
•in supporting a limited federal government and a free enterprise system that encourages economic growth.
•we must fight and win the war against terrorism. I will stand firm with President Bush to win the war against terrorism.

According to Liz, he ends his ad with this statement: "I will work in Congress to preserve our conservative Christian values."

I confess that I don't get the linkage between most of Broyhill's list and "Christian values". Yes, abortion has been a conservative Christian issue for years, but gun control? Free enterprise? The size of the federal government? What is particularly "Christian" about these things?

I guess my fundamental question is why conservative politicians seem to be able, with impunity, to mix conservatism and Christianity and call the whole thing "Christian values"? I'm liberal and I'm Jewish, but that doesn't automatically make the values I hold "Jewish values"; I must make that case on my own. Similarly, it seems only right that if politicians insist on talking about "Christian values", they ought to have to explain how their values really are "Christian". If they can't, they and their purported values ought to be disavowed by the Christian mainstream for misappropriating the religious mantle.

What it comes down to is forcing politicians claiming that mantle to answer the hard question, "what would Jesus really do?" Somehow, I don't think he would advocate the right to keep and bear arms as a primary objective or propose smaller governments that kill social welfare programs. After all, aren't clothing the naked and feeding the hungry Christian values also? In the circumstances, Broyhill's conservatism (to use just one example) would seem to conflict with his Christian values. But if that's the case, why isn't the Christian mainstream repudiating his hijacking of their religion?

I certainly don't mean to say, by the way, that all mainstream Christians have gone down without a fight. Based on what I read (Liz's post is just one example; there are others), there is a strong liberal wing of American Christianity that is struggling with this issue. It's just that from the sidelines, it looks like the conservative side of the house is winning the battle for attention.

I also don't mean to belittle or disrespect Christianity; to the contrary, I think that the question "What Would Jesus Do" is a profound one that more Christian politicians ought to ask themselves, but only if they're prepared to answer it honestly and then act accordingly.

2004-06-25T22:49:00.000-04:00

"That's a wonderful suggestion, Ms. Jones. Perhaps one of the men would like to make it?"

Today's title comes from caption of a marvelous New Yorker cartoon, which shows a board room full of men and one woman; the chairman of the board is addressing her following her suggestion. That cartoon came to mind this evening because of this comment in Talking Points Memo by guest blogger John Judis, on June 24 [link]:

Thanks to all the people who wrote in response to my first attempts at blogging. As Josh will testify, I was a bashful bride who had to be wooed with flattery. But I am glad I did it. I learned something about the vitality of this medium. It is an important replacement for the vanishing soapbox, union hall, and neighborhood pub.

Judis's use of the soapbox analogy struck me as awfully familiar. In fact, here's what Laboville had to say just one day earlier:

The reality of the modern world is that we no longer gather on the village green, or in the great halls in town, to discuss and be challenged by the ideas of our day; those conversations have moved online, and are now carried on by the bloggers and their readers. And so while I may occupy but a small soapbox, it is the only soapbox I've got, and I thank all of you for helping me make the most of it.

Of course I'm not saying that Judis stole it from me or that the thought is even particularly original. I'm just saying that it's nice to know that the cognoscenti and I are in tune. And maybe someday, my soapbox will be just as big as Josh Marshall's...

2004-06-25T08:03:00.000-04:00

Not Fit to Print

There is shocking news out of Washington today: The Vice President said the "F" word to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Or at least, I think he did, since the New York Times, where I first saw the news, was typically coy in reporting it. [link] The headline reads: "Salty Language as Cheney and Senator Clash", and the body of the article describes the interchange thusly:

Congressional aides said the argument occurred just after the photograph was taken. Mr. Leahy was mingling on the Republican side of the aisle, they said, when he spotted the vice president, who was included in the picture because of his role as president of the Senate.

Mr. Leahy approached Mr. Cheney to chat, the aides said. When Mr. Cheney recoiled, Mr. Leahy made a jocular remark, on the order of, "What, so you won't talk with Democrats?''

The vice president is said to have replied that he did not appreciate Mr. Leahy's personal attacks on him. Mr. Leahy, in turn, told Mr. Cheney he did not appreciate being called ''a bad Catholic''- a reference to Republican accusations that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were "anti-Catholic'' because they refused to confirm a judicial nominee, William H. Pryor Jr., who opposed abortion. Mr. Leahy is the senior Democrat on the panel.

At that point, the aides said, the vice president turned and stalked away, using an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do.

The key phrase here seems to be "an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do." Now, I'm just guessing, but it sounds like the Vice President invited the Senator to engage in an act (physically improbable though it might be) of self-copulation. There. Was that so hard to say? Even kids could read that one and not immediately catch on, so what's the Grey Lady afraid of?

Of course, Newsday had fewer qualms about its reporting of the incident, although it did use dashes for certain letters in order to maintain its air of being a family publication. Here's how it described the incident: "Cheney then responded, "F--- off" or "F--- you," the aide said." [link]

I note, by the way, that if the Times' description is accurate (even though oblique), the latter of the two phrases cited by Newsday probably isn't correct, since it would be inconsistent with the transitive nature of the statement implied by the Times' description (i.e, that the Senator should do something).

Unless, of course, the Vice President was propositioning the Senator, which would be a much much much bigger story.

Special thanks to Bill for tipping me off to the Newsday account.

2004-06-24T21:48:00.000-04:00

Man oh Mandamus

The Supreme Court has decided Cheney v. District Court [link], putting behind it (at least for now) some of the controversy that the case engendered for the Court.

Some quick observations:

First, as much as I think that Justice Scalia acted inappropriately in not recusing himself from this case in the face of the duck-hunting flap, a 7-2 decision (which this was) takes some of the wind out of the argument that he would improperly skew the process. The fact is that a broad majority of the court felt that the Court of Appeals decision was flawed, and said so.

Second, although the media will surely make this out to be a broad victory for the Bush Administration, this case turned on a fairly narrow legal principle, and did not grant the Administration's petition, but merely gave guidance to the appellate court on the proper scope of its mandamus powers and directed it to reconsider its previous ruling. In essence, the Supreme Court punted. Now, obviously, that has political implications since the follow-on litigation is likely to drag on until after November, but in principle, the Supreme Court did not vindicate the Bush administration's argument.

Third, I was struck by the paradox that is presented by the Federal Advisory Committee Act ("FACA") in this case. In essence, the dispute boils down to this: the plaintiffs sued the government claiming that Vice President Cheney's energy task force had de facto members who weren't government officials, and therefore the make-up and deliberations of the task force must be publicly disclosed. If the plaintiffs are right -- that is, if the task force contained de facto members who were not government officials -- they are entitled to a broad range of documentary material. The problem is in proving that they're right, because one of the threshhold matters is determining who was on the committee both officially and de facto. In order to prove that threshhold element, the plaintiffs claim that they need a broad range of discovery that would tell them who is on the committee. In other words, to figure out whether FACA entitles them to broad discovery, they need the same broad discovery to see if FACA applies in the first place. Hence the paradox.

The Administration's position is equally curious. The Administration argues that in determining whether FACA applies, the court must begin and end its analysis with the administrative record -- primarily, the Presidential order creating the task force and the report of the task force upon the completion of its work. As a result, they argue, no further discovery is warranted. And since the administrative record does not establish that there were any de facto members, the case ought to be dismissed.

But here's the problem with the Administration's position: it means that the Administration never has to prove its affirmatve defense, since it can, in theory, preemptively manipulate the administrative record to scrub out any references to non-governmental members. It seems to me that to have any kind of meaning, the applicability of FACA ought to involve "burden-shifting" -- that is, once the plaintiffs have met the initial burden of showing some minimal basis for applying FACA, the government would have the burden of showing that FACA doesn't apply. This only makes sence since the government is the party that possesses the relevant evidence. I suspect that that was what the District Court in Cheney was trying to do, since it approved very broad discovery by the plaintiffs but invited the government to make particularized objections based on executive privilege and undue burdens in complying. That effort may have gotten lost in the procedural wrangling, however.

In any event, the drama will continue to play out in the District Court, so stay tuned...

This post was edited slightly after it was originally posted, mostly to clean up grammer and typos, but also to clarify the argument somewhat.

2004-06-23T07:01:00.000-04:00

Laboville enters the terrible twos!

Yes, it's true -- Now Entering Laboville has been online for 2 years! I would like to take this opportunity to thank my regular readers (both known and unknown) for taking this endeavor seriously enough to read it, think about it and in some cases, to respond to the points that I have raised or arguments that I have floated. I haven't always agreed with your points of view, but I have valued them all the same.

Blogging is not something that one does for either glory or profit. Even so, I do it because it is important, in these times, that we maintain what Howard Dean called "The Great American Conversation". The reality of the modern world is that we no longer gather on the village green, or in the great halls in town, to discuss and be challenged by the ideas of our day; those conversations have moved online, and are now carried on by the bloggers and their readers. And so while I may occupy but a small soapbox, it is the only soapbox I've got, and I thank all of you for helping me make the most of it.

2004-06-15T19:02:00.000-04:00

Philosophy is where you find it...

Recently, the management of my office building posted a sign by the delivery entrance that reads "All Exits Are Final". I have no idea what problem they are trying to address, but in an abundance of caution, I think that I will be avoiding the delivery entrance of the building for a while.

[Laboville has been in radio silence for a while, as I dealt with a few personal matters. It looks like things are clearing up and I'll have more time to blog. See you soon.]

2004-06-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

Flip Flop

No time to post at length today, except to say this: President Bush has routinely tried to portray Senator Kerry as a flip-flopper, willing to say whatever's politically expedient.

Jim Hightower has turned the camera on George, however, and come up with before/after comparisons where the President changed his position 180 degrees. It's an interesting read. [link]

2004-05-24T08:25:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-24T07:49:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-24T07:34:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-18T06:41:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-17T23:30:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-12T07:59:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-12T07:20:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-06T08:23:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-06T08:07:00.000-04:00

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)]

2004-04-29T21:40:00.000-04:00

How Can You Tell When a Republican is Lying?

It used to be that the only answer to that joke was "His lips move". But now, thanks to the Center for American Progress [link], there's also the Claim vs. Fact Database [link], which is a database of statements by the Bush Administration and its adjunct, Fox News, and then sourced facts that debunk or discredit the lies.

The database is small so far (around 400 entries), but it's new, and the blogosphere is being invited to submit examples for consideration and possible inclusion in the database, so I suspect that it won't be small for long. One neat feature is that you can search the database by topic and speaker, so that, for instance, if you're looking for misstatements by Donald Rumsfeld on the subject of whether American troops would be greeted as liberators ("Never said that. You may remember it, but I never said that." I'm sorry, that answer will be marked as "wrong". Please play again later), you can find it with no fuss, no muss.

2004-04-29T07:03:00.000-04:00

Signs of the Times

Wonkette [link] has a link to "Freeway Blogger [link], which memorializes a phenomenon that the site calls (not surprisingly) "Freeway Blogs". In the pre-blogging world these would have been called "signs hung on overpasses so that motorists can see them as they drive by."

In any event, as Freeway Blogger points out, the signs probably cost all of $35 dollars, but reached 2 million people. Think of them as Burma Shave ads, only political.

Anyway, some of the more arresting ones:

(Four signs across an overpass): "485 Dead" "2779 Seriously Wounded" "3,264 Blood-Soaked Uniforms" "And we impeached Clinton over one lousy dress"

"Quagmire Accomplished"

(Two signs) "Real Soldiers Died in their Hummers" "So You Can Play Soldier in Yours"

"You can have my gun when you pry it from the fingers of my cold dead child"

Given the serious subject matter, I won't say "Enjoy" (which I usually do when sending people to a quick-hit site), but rather, "Go see it."

2004-04-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

A Little Piece of History

A break from politics today to ruminate, briefly, on the successfully-completed maiden voyage of the ocean liner "Queen Mary 2".

Growing up, I had often heard exotic stories about my great-aunt, Rohama Lee (nee Siegel), and my great-grandmother, Ida Lewis Siegel. Ida was among the grand doyenne of the Toronto Jewish community. She help found a number of prominent organizations in the city, including the Hebrew Ladies Maternity Aid and Child Welfare Society, and was a member of the Toronto School Board. She raised six children, one of whom was an up-and-coming singer before she died in her early 30s (part of the family lore is a picture that my father has of his aunt Sarah with Bob Hope).

But of Ida's six children, I imagine that her most troublesome was Rohama, who lived a bohemian life and was at the center of any number of exotic stories. Among other things, she co-wrote the 1943 film "Tonight We Raid Calais" and the 1938 film "We're Going to Be Rich". She married an Englishman, then later, so the family legend goes, had him deported after he became violent with her. She wrote short film scripts for the Office of War Information during WWII and later edited Film News, a leading film industry magazine. Some of her papers reside in a collection at the library of the University of Iowa [link]

So what's the connection to the Queen Mary 2? Well, it turns out that among her many and varied escapades, Rohama was the first stow-away on the Queen Mary, on its maiden voyage. At the time, she was a reporter for the Toronto Star, and looking for a great story. Apparently, she toured all three classes of the grand ship, attended a number of bon voyage parties and befriended one of the elevator operators, who may have helped conceal her when the ship left Southhampton, England. Unfortunately for Rohama, she was discovered when the ship stopped at Cherbourg, France to take on additional passengers. Legend has it that Rohama's passage back to Southampton from Cherbourg was paid for by unnamed admirers.

Such an act of derring-do seem almost quaint today, in the age of terrorism and heightened alerts and heavy scrutiny of travelling documents. But still, as New York welcomes the QM2, it makes me happy to think of my small connection to a world that's probably lost forever...

2004-04-23T23:08:00.000-04:00

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

A quick hit from BoingBoing.net. [link]

From a U.S. Treasury Department press release, dated April 9, 2004:

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation. [link]

And from the Republican National Committee's website, dated April 2, 2004:

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's polices are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation. [link]

Isn't there a law against such blatant politicking by supposedly non-partisan government agencies?

2004-04-20T07:56:00.000-04:00

Hiding Judicial Power in Plain Sight

Nat Hentoff has an interesting article about the so-called "hidden" power of the Supreme Court. [link] He argues that given how much influence the nine justices wield over American life, it's remarkable -- and dangerous -- that the institution so limits public scrutiny and that the justices operate in relative anonymity (Hentoff reports that Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade, sometimes took perverse delight in standing anonymously on the fringes of anti-abortion rallies outside the court, as protesters called for his impeachment).

The sub-head of Hentoff's article contains a challenge that hints at the core of the problem: public indifference. The subhead asks: how many Supreme Court justices can you name? According to a National Law Journal survey in 1990, 59% of Americans couldn't name a single justice. [True confessions: In two tries, I could only remember eight out of nine, even though I recognized the name of the ninth when I looked it up. But then, I'm a lawyer, so I'm sure I'm not representative, since I was, at least in theory, exposed to the names of all nine during law school.]

Hentoff blames this indifference on the Court itself, for failing to open itself and its deliberative process to the public by, among other things, permitting television in the Court and releasing transcripts that indicate who is questioning the litigants (currently, the transcripts don't indicate which Justice is the questioner). He also faults the media for failing to educate the public by reporting more consistently and prominently on what the Court does and how it does it.

Interesting food for thought.

[And now, a trivia question: Only five US presidents have not put a Justice on the Supreme Court. Who are they? (answer is in the comments section)]

2004-04-19T16:13:00.000-04:00

I Wish I'd Said That!

Every once in a while, I come across a post on someone else's blog that captures what I'm feeling and couldn't put into words. Today, it's Liz at Life as a Spectator Sport who captured what I wanted or wished or didn't even realize I could put into words:

When my kids were little and I'd come home from work to find the makings of peanut butter sandwiches on the living room carpet, I used to holler at them, "If you're going to fix food in the living room, at least have sense enough to get rid of the evidence!" I feel like saying to Bush, "If you're going to lie to us, at least have the decency to pretend you're telling the truth."

It's the arrogant smirk that gets to me, the attitude that "I can do whatever I want and you can't do a damn thing about it." It's the repeated reference to WMD's even after his own people have admitted they weren't there to be found. They're hidden on a turkey farm? My God! Does he think we're so ignorant that we can't tell when he's making it up as he goes along? No, I don't think he believes that. I think he believes that what we think doesn't matter, so the complete and utter inanity of his claims doesn't matter either.

What we think about his performance doesn't matter to him, so why should he examine and analyze his actions? Surely not so he can answer questions about them at press conferences. The most arrogant man in the world is the one who thinks he shouldn't have to explain himself to anyone.

What we think about his statements doesn't matter to him, or he wouldn't countenance the outright lies his campaign puts out, claims that are pathetically easy to refute (see D-Bunker for some of these).

What we think about his economic policies doesn't matter to him, or he wouldn't continue to push for tax cuts that have already plundered the treasury and brought financial ruin on thousands of middle class families.

What we think of his work ethic evidently doesn't matter to him, or he'd spend more time at work and less time trotting his friends around on his ranch. Who else in this country could get away with spending 60% of his working days goofing off? What real "war president" of the past would even have considered leaving his post for so much time?

Even the opinions of service men and women and their families don't matter to him, this self-declared war president. He promises National Guard units a year of "boots on the ground," and then, while they're packed up and waiting at the Baghdad airport for transport home, he extends their tour of duty.

Thanks, Liz.

2004-04-19T07:25:00.000-04:00

Overloaded

Lately, I have found it difficult to blog, if only because the mind boggles at the myriad of things to comment on. A brief list:

Listening to discussions of President Bush's press conference on the left and on the right leads me to the conclusion that there must have been two of them: one in which he displayed steely resolve and exhibited strong qualities of leadership, and one where he stammered and stared dumbly into the klieg lights as he searched for bits of sound-bites that he could use to evade questions. I saw the press conference, and as I have discussed below, thought he sounded remarkably evasive and seemed oddly unpresidential, considering that the ability to communicate fluidly is a significant element of the modern presidency.

Over at the 9/11 commission, there is an accusation by Tom DeLay and others on the right that the commission is being too partisan in its questioning even as Attorney General John Ashcroft blamed the Clinton Administration for all faults relating to 9/11 and singled out commissioner Jamie Gorelick and her "wall" memo when she was Deputy AG as the primary reason why the FBI could not "connect the dots". Never mind the question of why Ashcroft, when he became AG didn't immediately tear down the "wall" if it was such a big impediment -- that would be a partisan question.

Meanwhile, in typical Bush Administration fashion, once Colin Powell's criticisms of the President were aired by Bob Woodward's book, the sliming campaign began -- this morning, the New York Times quoted a senior administration official as saying that Powell has a history of running away from failed policies:

Another official, who like others declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accused Mr. Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official said. [link]

Then there's Iraq: sadly, this has been the deadliest month since we invaded, with 100 dead in April so far (and there's still 11 days to go). Yet when asked who will receive the reigns on June 30, the President says "that's an interesting question" and announces that he's waiting for a recommendation from U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The June 30 date for handing over sovereignty is looming, the job of transitioning is going to be huge, and the Bush administration has no idea who they'll be giving the keys to? If ever there were conclusive proof that they haven't properly planned this whole endeavor, this has to be it.

And the deference to Brahimi and the UN is itself interesting, considering first, that Brahimi is on record as saying that de-Baathification (purging the Iraqi government of Saddam's former Baath party officials) is a bad idea, and that Baath party loyalists ought to, in most cases, be eligible to serve in the new government. [link] I don't necessarily disagree with Brahimi, but I thought that one of the underlying themes of this war was to rid Iraq of the Baath party's deadly influence. Doesn't Brahimi's view seem just a little inconsistent with that vision?

And the UN, meanwhile, has been dissed up, down and across by the Bush Administration for months nigh unto years, yet there they were -- the President and Prime Minister Tony Blair -- practically on bended knee, saying that UN participation will be crucial to a successful transition. As the New York Times put it,

Mr. Bush, who before the war in Iraq had expressed great dissatisfaction with the United Nations, and Mr. Blair went out of their way today to say that the international organization now had a vital role to play. [link]

But don't look to the international community as a sure thing just yet -- yesterday, Spain announced that it would send replacement troops to Iraq, but did not expect them to stay long (in fact, the Spanish Prime Minister announced that Spain's 1,400 troops would be pulled out "as soon as possible"). This led Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, to praise the decision and predict that other European governments might soon follow suit:

Mr. Prodi said today that by withdrawing troops, Spain was "applying strong pressure to speed up a solution to these problems rapidly. It is a very clear position and one that we share." [link]

Like I said, with so much to talk about, it's hard to know even where to start.

2004-04-14T00:23:00.000-04:00

The Art of Asking Questions

I am a prosecutor. And one of the things that I do for a living is ask questions of witnesses who don't particularly want to answer me. Sometimes, they don't -- you ask a question, and they use it as an excuse to repeat their stock answer, without ever acknowledging that they're not answering the question that you've just asked. It is possible to get them to answer your questions; the trick is not to lose your focus, and keep reminding them that they haven't answered the question that was asked. Eventually, you wear them down and they answer the question that you've asked. It's tedious, but it works.

Why do we do it that way? Because it's the best way to get to the truth. It doesn't endear me to the witnesses that I'm questioning, and it's not likely that they're going to invite me to dinner anytime soon, but then, my job isn't to get dinner invitations, it's to investigate wrongdoing.

Would that the White House press corps had the same interest in getting to the truth, even if it didn't endear them to the President and even if it imperiled their dinner invitations!

After watching the President's press conference, I was amazed at how often he simply failed to ask the question that was actually asked. But I was just as amazed that few reporters called him on it, either as a follow-up to their own questions, or as a follow-up to the previous questioner's question.

Below, a question-by-question analysis:

The President was asked "How do you explain to Americans how you got that [WMD, that the US would be greeted as liberators, and that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for reconstruction] so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series of false premises?"

There was a 9-part answer, but no mention of either how the intelligence on WMD turned out to be so wrong or why we weren't greeted as liberators. And on the oil question, all he said was that oil revenue was "significant", but didn't address why, if the revenues are "significant", he still needed to get $87 billion from Congress to rebuild Iraq.

Elizabeth Bumiller, of the New York Times, felt no need to follow up that evasion, and turned to whether the President felt any "personal responsibility for September 11th?"

There was no answer to this question, either, although he did state "There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place." [Side note: Incredibly, one of the things he wishes had been in place was a Homeland Security department, despite the fact that he opposed just such a thing when it was originally proposed by Senator Lieberman, a Democrat.] Other than that, he only rambled about how the country was changed by 9/11. Again, there was no follow-up by Bumiller or the next reporter.

Next up was this question: "One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?"

There was no answer, just (1) no one could have envisioned 9/11; (2) the people know where I stand on Iraq; and (3) our mission in Iraq is important. Let's face it -- he didn't even try to answer this one, not even close. And once again, no follow-up.

The President did give a sort of answer to the next question, which was whether he requested any specific action as a result of the August 6, 2001 PDB: according to the President, if the PDB had given specific information about an attack involving airplanes flying into buildings, the government would have "moved heaven and earth" to stop that plot. Note however, that this was only a hypothetical answer ("If we had known, we would have taken action") and not an actual answer ("Yes, we did x, y and z"). Needless to say, there was no follow-up to pin him down on what the actual answer to that question is.

The President answered the next question, which assimilated testimony from today's hearings of the 9/11 commission to the effect that the FBI investigations reported in the PDB were exaggerated, and did the President have any additional information about that? The President answered that he expected to learn more about that soon.

The next question was whether the President was prepared personally to apologize for failures that led to 9/11. The President stated that he could "understand" why "his people" were "anguished" over 9/11, but did not answer the simple question that was actually asked. Instead, he took the obvious, but irrelevant tack of blaming Osama bin Laden. Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up.

He answered the next question about whether the "coalition" in Iraq was merely window dressing for a unilateral action (he says it's not), so let's give him credit for that one.

On the next question after that, it was as if the President was in a different room than the reporters. He was asked -- twice -- why he had insisted that he would appear before the 9/11 commission only with the Vice President, and not alone, as the Commission had requested. His answer the first time: "because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions." Remarkably, the reporter repeated the question, but got the same evasive non-answer: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them." No one, not even the East German judge, could give him credit for that one. And there was no follow-up.

He gave a mangled, but responsive answer to the next question (you've been accused of letting the 9/11 plot mature too much before taking action, and not letting Iraq mature enough -- how do you respond?), so again, credit where credit is due.

There was a softball question about whether he's willing to do what's right even if it means being voted out of office in November. He parried and evaded the answer, but it was a political, rather than factual, question, so I wouldn't deduct points for the non-answer. Some questions are made to be evaded, and you learn either to live with whatever evasive answer you get, or not to answer the question in the first place.

Then, an unscripted question: have you made any mistakes since 9/11? This elicited an honest response, I think: the President is sure that he has made some, but can't think of any off the top of his head. Hubristic, yes, but also honestly evasive, rather than duplicitously evasive.

The next question was whether he would revamp intelligence and law enforcement at the federal level despite pleas from field agents not to. The President didn't quite answer this one, but that may be because he doesn't have an answer yet. At the same time, he used the question as a jumping-off point for his 10-minute stump speech about staying the course, which wasn't responsive to the question.

And finally, he was asked whether he thought he had failed as a communicator because despite the White House's relentless projection of its "stay-the-course" message, public support for his policies in Iraq have deteriorated. The answer was another rendition of the stump speech and a political nonanswer-answer. No evasion, but no light shed, either.

2004-04-08T17:39:00.000-04:00

The Future of Free Speech?

Well, if that don't just beat all!

Justice Antonin Scalia is famously averse to having his speeches recorded by the media, so much so that in March 2003, he barred news cameras from a ceremony in which he received the "Citidel of Free Speech Award." [link] Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.

But I digress. Yesterday, Scalia was giving a speech to high school students in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although television cameras were barred from the speech, there was no announcement prohibiting recording devices. And, in fact, two reporters were recording the speech when they were approached by a "deputy federal marshal" named Melanie Rube, who told them that they would have to erase their tapes. When one of the reporters resisted, the deputy federal marshal took the recording device from her hands; the reporter later relented and showed the deputy how to erase the recording. [link]

Out of curiosity, I ran "Melanie Rube" through Google, and came up with a reference to her, by name, by Senator Orrin Hatch on the Floor of the Senate. Specifically, he quoted her as "endorsing" the nomination of Charles Pickering, Sr. to the federal bench. [link] In fact, she's quoted in a book published by the Committee for Justice praising Judge Pickering's "compassion" and extolling the "positive impact" that he would have if confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. [link -- see page 27 of the pdf file].

Now, you should be aware that the U.S. Marshal Service is an executive agency, although it is tasked with defending and assisting in the operations of the judicial branch. It is also an organization that, throughout its (or its immediate predecessor's) history, has been described as "rabidly partisan". For example, in 1880, here is what one magazine had to say: The Nation, an independent Republican periodical and a leader in the movement for civil service reform, insisted that "the U.S. Marshal . . . is always a partisan, and often a rabid partisan, and is rarely appointed for anything but partisanship" (Nation 1880). [link]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. But consider the evidence of conspiracy here: A Supreme Court justice who has recently and over the past three years been excoriated by the Left as being improperly partisan is being protected by a deputy U.S. Marshall who has herself been very vocal in support of a judge whose nomination triggered one of the nastiest and most partisan nomination fights in 25 years, and who has been the subject of much media criticism. In the course of protecting her principal, this deputy marshal uses her official position not only to demand that two reporters refrain from taping the justice while he speaks at a public forum, but confiscates their recording devices and demands that they erase what has already been recorded.

I'm not saying that anything that took place was illegal. But even if there's nothing wrong with what happened, it just looks bad. And in a system where the legitimacy of the Court is predicated on not only a lack of impropriety but also the appearance of no improprities, the fact that it looks bad makes it actually bad.

2004-03-31T23:32:00.000-05:00

Defending and Protecting the Constitution (But Only Sometimes)

The following observation is a little late, given that Condi Rice will now testify publicly before the 9/11 commission, but what the hey:

Does it strike anyone other than me as odd that the Bush administration was refusing to have Rice testify because it was concerned about a Constitutional principle? This is the same administration, after all, that, in the name of fighting terrorism, unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and, whether through overly intrusive elements of the USA PATRIOT Act or through enemy combatant designations, has stripped American citizens of rights guaranteed to them under the 4th, 5th, and 6th (and possibly the 8th) Amendments. For those of you playing along at home, by the way, these are specifically enumerated sections of the Constitution, right there, in plain enough English that almost anyone can read them and understand what the drafters of the Constitution were saying. [link]

Meanwhile, executive privilege -- that is, the right of the Executive Branch not to have to answer to inquiries by the Legislative Branch -- is nowhere enumerated in the text of the Constitution; indeed, one could argue that, to the contrary, that since the President is obliged under Article II, Section 3 to keep Congress informed as to the State of the Union ("He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union"), testimony by the Executive Branch before the Legislative Branch is entirely consistent with the Constitution, and would not violate the separation of powers. To say that executive privilege is a "constitutional principle" is, to my mind, stretching things a bit.

So to hear the President defend a political position by wrapping himself in that same document that he is only too happy to shred in other areas (and for the media to let him get away with it, too) just makes me mad as heck.

Now Entering Laboville

We are thankful for...

Brevity is...wit

That's What I Said!

Are You Smarter than a Twelfth Grader?

Harry Potter and Primo Levi

Spinning the F-word

Great Speeches

Logic Has No Place in Journalism

Bigots and Bullies

My Campaign Commercial

The Fog of War

Eulogy for My Mother

In Memoriam, Deborah R. Labovitz, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTAOctober 13, 1942-July 14, 2006

Common Cause?

My So-Called Life as a Blogger

Not the Usual Carping and Complaining

But What Do the Experts Know, Anyway?

What I'm Pondering At the Moment

George W. Bush, Loyal Foot Soldier in the War on Christmas

You say FEE-sah, I say FI-sah

Surviving the Strike

On coincidences

Inherent Authority

If You're Such a Believer, I Suggest You Pick Up a Rifle, Son

Read Free Republic. Learn Something. Who knew?

Can you smell it now? Good.

Another Quick Hit

Quick Hit

If You Can't Trust Stars and Stripes, Who Can You Trust?

It Just Doesn't Ring True

The Price We Pay (as of September 8, 2005)

Let the Shilling Continue

Once More into the Breach

Bullshit.

So, what was our energy policy again?

The Price We Pay (as of August 17, 2005)

Things Previously on My Chest

The Price We Pay (as of August 8, 2005)

The Price We Pay

True Colors

Back to the Salt Mines

That's What I Said!

Securing Social Security

Mining Our Heritage

We are thankful for

A Thought Exercise

If I've Said It Once...

The Relevance of Dred Scott

Why it wouldn't be bad if the Yankees lose (no, really!)

And another thing...

Post-Debate Thoughts

Comparitive Journalism

Liberal Media, My Bottom!

Flunking Home Ec

Things you have to believe to be a Republican Today (Revised and Updated)

Cleared or Not Cleared?

July Surprises

Barack to basics

Touching the Future

Now That's a Speech

Songs of Boston

You Say Either, I say F--- Off, Part II

Undemocratic? Antidemocratic?

The New Imperialism?

Vermont Yankee Update

That's what I was trying to say

Priorities

We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

You Say Either, I say "F--- off"

A note on subliminal messages in graphic design

The Court and the Terrorists

Subtly, thy name is Bush

View from the Sidelines

"That's a wonderful suggestion, Ms. Jones. Perhaps one of the men would like to make it?"

Not Fit to Print

Man oh Mandamus

Laboville enters the terrible twos!

Philosophy is where you find it...

Flip Flop

In Memoriam, Deborah R. Labovitz, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA
October 13, 1942-July 14, 2006