Easter Bunny gets booted in St. Paul

In what will surely be touted as yet another example of the "war" on religion, Easter decorations in the St. Paul City Council offices were taken down after questions were raised about whether it was appropriate to recognize the Christian holiday.

A toy rabbit decorating the entrance of the St. Paul City Council offices went hop-hop-hoppin' on down the bunny trail Wednesday after the city's human rights director said non-Christians might be offended by it.

The decorations — including the stuffed rabbit, Easter eggs and a handcrafted sign saying "Happy Easter," but nothing depicting the biblical account of Christ's death and resurrection — were put up this week in the office of the City Council by a council secretary.

Now before people get totally bent out of shape, let's point out that nobody complained; the city's human-rights director simply raised the question of "is this appropriate?", and they decided it was not. This is an incident of trying to be sensitive to other beliefs, not caving to pressure or litigation.

We should also acknowledge two other things:

1. This is not a constitutional issue. A bunny and a "Happy Easter" sign put up by a municipal worker without city money or approval doesn't really amount to establishment of religion.

2. The sensitivity issue was overblown, inasmuch as there was expressed concern that a non-Christian might be "offended" by the display. I'm sure someone could get offended by it, but I don't think such a person would meet the "reasonable person" standard so common in law.

All that said, taking down the display was the right thing to do. It's not a matter of law; it's a matter of simple human courtesy.

Religion is a part of society. It has no more and no fewer rights than any other form of expression. A municipal worker who is allowed to put up a "Go Vikings!" sign in their cubicle is equally allowed to put up a "Jesus Saves" sign.

But religion is unique when it comes to perceived government sponsorship. City Hall can hang a 50-foot banner out front saying "Go Vikings!"; they would be way out of line to hang a similar banner saying "Jesus saves."

Between those clear examples lies a vast gray area, where what is appropriate is open to debate, subject to context and personal preference.

Government has a right to acknowledge religion's role in society. And there's no real problem with marking religious holidays, as they are part of society, too. The problem comes when government only acknowledges a single religion, or gives clear preference to a single religion, or when they are driven by religious motivations and not a more neutral one.

In the St. Paul case, I highly doubt that non-Christian holidays get the same routine celebratory treatment that Christian holidays do. To some extent that reflects the fact that we are still a majority Christian country; but where government is involved, caution and sensitivity are called for. Not for fear of offending non-Christians, but so as to make clear that we are a government for all faiths, not just one.

Governmental units should commemorate all major holidays of major faiths, or none of them. Or come up with a religion-neutral criteria for choosing. Acknowledge religious contributions to society for their contributions, not their religion.

In our increasingly multireligious society, anything else is simply rude. The St. Paul display was absolutely minor; it was unlikely to offend anyone. But the principles that led to the decision to take it down were absolutely correct.

Minnesota, St. Paul, Easter bunny, Easter, religion, politics, midtopia

Debt and stimulus

Bush supporters credit the President with cutting taxes (and, mumble mumble, boosting spending) in order to stimulate economic growth and dig us out of recession. "Works every time!" they say.

Well, duh. Borrowing $1.9 trillion and injecting it into the economy should certainly provide some stimulus. The real question is: does the extra economic growth justify the debt incurred? How long will it take to pay that debt?

To answer that question I've put together a spreadsheet that (hopefully) is downloadable via this link. It lets you input relevant variables and see the effect on the deficit, the debt Bush has incurred during his term, and the total national debt.

(If the link doesn't work, please e-mail me and I'll fix it.)

I start with FY2005. The numbers come from Treasury Department data.

For instance, Bush has incurred about $1.9 trillion in debt through the end of FY2005. If we assume that inflation averages 2.2%, revenue grows a fairly robust 2% above inflation, and spending grows a relatively restrained 1% above inflation, we see three things:

1. It will take until 2021 to run a budget surplus;
2. It will take until 2033 to pay off the Bush debt;
3. It will take until 2041 to pay off the national debt.

This assumes the government uses *all* of its extra cash to pay down the deficit, rather than to pay for new programs. The history of government is, shall we say, not encouraging in that regard. When a budget surplus appears, we tend to spend it.

It is therefore doubly irresponsible to borrow huge amounts of money in order to stimulate the economy. First, because the debt will take so long to pay off; and second, because we lack the fiscal discipline to avoid spending the eventual largesse.

For those of you praising Bush for cutting taxes without cutting spending: think fondly of him in 2020, when you're still paying off the debt he rang up on your behalf.


economy, Bush, tax cuts, deficit, budget, politics, midtopia

A thoughtful perspective

Over at Centerfield, the blog of the Centrist Coalition, a thread on the "undisputed" facts about Iraq has, predictably, drawn a lot of comments disputing the facts.

But among all the thoughtful comments, one stands out, a long response by Maxtrue. I shamelessly reproduce it here, because it's well worth reading even if you disagree with parts of it.

-----------------------------
By Maxtrue

I, too, supported removing Saddam even while Clinton was President. After all, Bill was in favor of "regime change".

The real difficulty about Iraq gets back to the re-emergence of "pre-emption". Our NSS, going back to Truman, was effected by 9/11. No longer was America to use prevention and intervention, but pre-emption as well.

Without going into the reasons for our being in the Gulf and our supporting the State of Israel (which is consistent with our historically bi-partisan NSS), our NSS for the last sixty years sets out broad centrist principles which Republicans are botching and many Democrats are now rejecting. Bush certainly did not establish a sound criteria for pre-emption. Neither did the Germans at the outbreak of WW1.

The validity of invading Iraq ultimately rests on the soundness of pre-emption. The centrists must develop a criteria for pre-emption as well as the responsibilities of the pre-emptor to the international community. This must include a reasonable intelligence basis for pre-emption as well as a policy for dealing with the consequence of pre-emption such as radiation containment or the spread of bio-weapons from a targeted terrorist sight. If Bush had to seek centrist consensus of his intelligence judgments, his post-invasion plan and diplomatic strategy BEFORE he invaded Iraq, the American people through their representitives would have favored the Clinton plan and the Powell Doctrine. That approach called for a "deal" with the Security Counsel to abstain from vetoing American force by 2004 in exchange for a final round of inspections and acceptance of constraints and monitoring both Saddm's military production and human rights abuses. It is clear Saddam was certainly more than two years away from wmd delivery. It is most probable that the Bush timetable was based on partisan politics -which might be a "high crimes and misdemeanor" given the consequence of that intentional decision.

I do think it would be suicide for the Dems to even breath the word impeachment before the 2006 elections. Yet, intelligence seems not to be either Party's inclination. The difficulty with Centrist supporting removing Saddam ala Bush was the lack of criteria and the "clear and present danger" intelligence which MUST be present in order to mitigate the effect on international consensus & law as well as the needed international commitment to the consequence of pre-emption.

Americans drift to extremes partly due to the inablility of Centrist-minded people to stand up to these political extremes and to explain that Western Hegemony is not "American domination" and is the greatest force behind the international consensus required to resist terrorism, proliferation, human rights abuses and constraint on both China and Russia.

Rove would be the other reason for domestic polarity. Hillary is under attack by her own Party which Rove has managed to back into a corner with the Far Left. To see Rove spin the Democrats to reject Wilsonian Internationalism, Bill Clinton and decry the clear merit and success of our modern NSS is almost as bad as Bush bungling. Almost...

Discussion of Iraq invariably falls into this political abyss of our NSS and pre-emption is popularly replaced with "Evil Empire" or "oil exploitation". David Duke and Harvard seem to think Iraq was an Israeli conspiracy. Does this prove Western political space is curved like the universe and extremes meet at the ends of a apparently straight line?

How the Right concludes from the transcripts of Saddam's secret cabinet discussions in the 90s that he had any real wmd ability is ludicrous. How the Left concludes Saddam was not a maniacal butcher seeking wmd and that he would not have quickly become a 100x more difficult a job to remove is equally pathetic.

Jefferson built a navy to go after pirates. Madison had General Jackson to save face in 1812 while the Federalists were swept away in a wave of nationalism. Perhaps it is the Center's roleat the moment to remind both Parties that ignorance of history and global realities often lead to repeated mistakes with increasing consequence (especially political). Today, American leadership is seriously challenged by a failure of Centrist American Leaders from gaining the power to apply non-ideological solutions to present conflicts. In this, the Dems and Repugs SHARE blame for the polarized statemate of unsound thinking and performance that marginalizes the Center. Dems respond that the Center is merely the average between extremes. Talk about marginizing! Our times require informed debate, decisive action and consistent principles. Niether Repugs or Dems have shown that much over the last six years. Another six might be too late for America to recover.

To have Bush lead the charge forward is however, a bit like Custer directing the battle. Now there was a general who had trouble understanding the difference between single shot and repeating rifles -which the government wouldn't buy because the Army didn't manufacture it directly. Unfortunately the Indians bought them on the free market and the result wasn't too good for Custer.

Perhaps, Centrists in both Parties should defect to a Centrist Party before the Dems would have us squander American leadership, security and commerce, or the Repugs leave us bankrupt, militarily broken, Constitutionally weakened and no longer invited as the defender of freedom and the system of prosperity. A wonderful outcome for the greatest generation to witness before departing.

Then America would at least have a Party that represents the majority view......

Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Dean Johnson: Lie vs. lie

The Dean Johnson blowup continues -- fanned by Republicans and gay marriage opponents, downplayed by Democrats.

Chief Justice Russell Anderson adds the latest fuel:

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Russell Anderson on Monday said flatly that no member of the court -- including former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz -- ever spoke to Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson about the state's marriage laws.

"This just never happened," Anderson said.

If true -- and we should keep in mind that the judiciary has a selfish interest in preserving its own reputation -- then Johnson just flat-out lied when talking to pastors about gay marriage. Further, his evolving retractions of that January statement appear to contain ever-finer shades of truth.

None of this is making Johnson look good, and it shouldn't. He should be taking to heart the high price one pays for playing games with the truth.

But does this really change anything? No. No one is accusing Johnson of habitual lying, or fraud, or using his office to commit crimes or enrich himself.

He should be embarassed. He should be contrite. It should be brought up during his re-election campaign so that voters have a chance to make their views on the subject known.

But should he resign, as anti-gay-marriage groups are calling for? No. That's for voters to decide, and it speaks poorly of the marriage-amendment lobby that they would push for such an extreme sanction. Tom DeLay still has his seat -- and he's been charged with actual crimes. Only intemperate voices called for him to quit Congress.

Should Johnson resign his leadership post, as some Republicans have suggested? That is a slightly more reasonable course, but again, no. A single lie that does not involve a substantive wrong does not deserve that punishment. And Republicans should be wary about pushing for that too vigorously, lest they invite close scrutiny of every statement they've ever made to see how closely they track with reality.

I expect my politicans to tell the truth, but I also recognize that they are human. And while they need to be held to a higher standard, the punishment should fit the crime. In my book, the ongoing flogging that Johnson is getting constitutes appropriate and sufficient punishment, with voters getting the chance to render final judgement on election day.

Finally, the most interesting thing to me are the political calculations being made -- calculations that could end up forcing Johnson to fall on his sword even if it turns out that he didn't lie in January.

When it gets down to it, either Johnson or at least one justice is lying. Unfortunately for Johnson, everyone -- including Johnson -- has a strong interest in protecting the reputation of the state Supreme Court. People expect partisanship from politicians, but expect their judges to be neutral arbitrators. Faith in that concept is one of the key supports of the balance-of-powers system.

Republicans, whatever they may actually think about "activist" judges, find it convenient to treat the justices as unimpeachably honest in this case, because their real target is Johnson. Johnson and the Democrats, for their part, cannot defend themselves without either slandering the judiciary or revealing and destroying any actual sympathies that might exist between some justices and the DFL. Either course would ultimately hurt the DFL more than it would help them.

As long as they don't overplay their hand, the Republicans have a win-win situation here. But the rest of us should be aware that this is largely a minor political game. Weigh Johnson's lie against his 36 years of service and make up your own mind, without undue input from either Republican attackers or DFL defenders.

gay marriage, Dean Johnson, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Death penalty for converting to Christianity

An Afghani man faces the death penalty. His crime: converting to Christianity from Islam.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

Sometimes you run across something so jaw-droppingly, paralyzingly stupid that commentary seems superfluous.

The State Department, to its credit, is watching this case closely, considering it a test for the Afghani government. One wonders what they will do if Afghan president Hamid Karzai fails the test. Or what happens in the vast majority of Afghanistan that is essentially outside central government control.

More than four years after we (rightly) toppled the Taliban, Karzai is still little more than mayor of Kabul, the Taliban are rebuilding and we apparently haven't even gotten around to reforming the judicial system. What the heck have we been doing there?

Abdul Rahman, Karzai, Afghanistan, religion, Christianity, politics, midtopia

Kersten returns

Another day, another intellectually lazy gay marriage column from Katherine Kersten.

This time her trope is that okaying gay marriage will turn all sorts of "ordinary Minnesotans" into official bigots.

Amendment supporters are ordinary Minnesotans: soccer moms, Twins fans, the folks next door. But some advocates of same-sex marriage apparently view them as a sinister and unsavory bunch, even comparing them to racial bigots.

Just in passing, let's point out that amendment opponents are "ordinary Minnesotans", too. Kersten's arguments often get framed as "us" vs. "them." It gets tiresome.

Also, fear of being called a "bigot" strikes me as one of the weakest possible reasons for abridging someone's rights. Next shall we imprison people because they looked at us funny?

The money quote, though, is when Kersten argues that "if same-sex marriage becomes a civil right, the belief that one-man, one-woman marriage is best for kids becomes discriminatory, and those who hold it become bigots."

This sentence fails so many rules of logic and argument that I don't know where to begin.

First, Kersten accidentally or deliberately mixes two separate ideas: what one believes, versus what limits one can place on others based on one's beliefs. Civil rights laws are based on actions, not thoughts. You can think anything you like, but you cannot abridge someone else's civil rights regardless of what you believe. The idea -- an idea fundamental to our form of government -- is that some rights trump majority opinion. That is why we are a republic and not a pure democracy. Legal compulsions and prohibitions should be something reserved for extreme cases, where the societal interest is so compelling, and the potential harm so apparent, that it demands action. The effort to prohibit gay marriage fails both tests.

Second, allowing gay marriage would not make bigots out of people simply for thinking man-woman pairings are better for kids. That's an indefensible strawman argument, and Kersten should be ashamed of herself for employing it. Plenty of people support legalized divorce, for example, while thinking that divorce is generally bad for kids and should be discouraged. Lots of people who don't drink hard liquor, or don't drink at all, nonetheless support legal access to alcohol. In both cases, people seem to recognize that their personal view on divorce or alcohol is not something that should be forced upon others who may feel differently.

The comparisons are not perfect -- divorce and drinking are choices, while sexual orientation is not . But someone who thinks divorce is harmful is not an anti-divorce bigot; someone who discriminates against divorcees is. Someone who thinks alcohol is harmful is not an anti-alcohol bigot; someone who discriminates against people who imbibe is.

In the end, society decides who will be perceived as "bigots" -- not the law, not the activists Kersten likes to quote in an attempt to paint all gay-marriage supporters with the actions of their most extreme elements. It's the "ordinary Minnesotans" who Kersten claims to speak for. So her point is either false or reflects a lack of confidence that the majority is really on her side -- which might help explain her resorting to fearmongering instead of debating gay marriage on the merits.

It's true that over time the law can shape perceptions; gender equity laws have helped dismantle the idea that a woman's place is in the home, for example. But that's hardly coercive. It's only threatening to people who have no faith in the foundation of their beliefs.

And if that's the fear, the battle has already been lost. Young people are far more accepting of gay marriage than their parents and grandparents. If that trend continues, gay marriage will have majority support within a generation.

So Kersten's fear of being branded a bigot may be well-founded, but not for the reason she claims. It has nothing to do with whether gay marriage is legalized. It has nothing to do with the words or actions of a handful of GLBT activists. It has to do with changing societal opinion on the subject, of which the gay marriage debate is but a reflection. If I were her I'd abandon the appeal to the majority, because that appeal will stop working in a few short years. If she wants to ban gay marriage, she should start articulating why gay marriage is harmful and thus prohibiting it is justified.

And if she wants to avoid being labeled a bigot, a good place to start would be by stopping the baseless fearmongering.

Minnesota, Kersten, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld revisited

Retired Gen. Paul Eaton, who supports our venture in Iraq and was in charge of training Iraqi forces in 2003 and 2004, agrees with me that Rumsfeld must go.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead America's armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with U.S. allies from what he dismissively called "old Europe" has imposed far greater demands and risks on American soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in the U.S. military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq. ... Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his Cold Warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result the U.S. Army finds itself severely undermanned -- cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

Rumsfeld made a rookie mistake: thinking that what helps in one type of military situation is effective in *all* military situations. His idea that technology will mean we need fewer soldiers is a classic example.

In force-on-force combat, technology offers *huge* multipliers. My Abrams tank could hit targets more than 2,000 meters away. We had great commo to coordinate our movements, and satellite technology allowed us to pinpoint and anticipate enemy movements and locations within a few meters.

A tank battle was like a live-action video game, moving the targeting reticle from target to target, firing, reloading, doing it again.

But the closer you get to your enemy, and the more you have to discriminate between friend and foe, the less technology helps. I can nuke a whole city from the continental U.S.; if I want to capture the city, I have to send in troops. If I want to minimize civilian casualties, I have to be very careful in my target selection, and send in far more troops per target. And the closer you get, and the more wind or rain or dust there is, the less difference there is between the U.S. soldier and his ragtag opponent.

That's one reason the Army *hates* urban combat. The close quarters neutralize many of our advantages; it gets down to the infantry digging people out of holes, one hole at a time. It's bloody, nasty, exhausting work that has destroyed more than one elite military force.

The U.S. military is unparalleled in its ability to destroy an enemy armored brigade. But it's effectiveness in pacification comes down to training, unit cohesion, discipline, leadership and numbers -- not technology. You don't build local support by dropping bombs from space; you do it by walking the streets every day, meeting people, shaking hands, establishing relationships. A U.S. soldier's technology is no help in that regard. They are no more effective at that -- and, due to language and cultural barriers, perhaps even *less* effective -- than Pakistanis or Bangladeshis.

Rumsfeld ignored this, and the Bush administration let him. Living in an alternate reality may be comforting, but it makes for real bloody messes when such fantasies are used as the basis for real-world policies.

Eaton, Rumsfeld, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Captured Documents, Part IV

The conservative blogosphere appears to be going nuts over the released documents, but they seem willing to ignore the nature of raw intelligence to do so -- for instance, taking information at face value without regard to the verifiability of the information or the reliability of the sources.

Even the government is saying there won't be any bombshells in the documents.

According to an intelligence official who declined to be identified, Negroponte plans to release all documents that have no further intelligence value. Files that might help apprehend members of the Iraqi insurgency will remain under wraps. So will files that could violate the privacy or harm the reputations of innocent people. For instance, the Hussein regime used rape as a method of torture, and the government won't release documents containing the names of Iraqi rape victims. Nor will it release files mentioning Iraqi-Americans or other US citizens, such as journalists.

The remaining documents, the official said, will mainly provide insights into Hussein's rule. ''This stuff needs to be laid bare because it helps the democratic process in Iraq, like it did in South Africa, like it did in Germany," he said.

If any of these documents actually proved the government's case against Iraq, it would have been published by now. What bloggers may hope for is finding an overlooked gem, or building smaller cases about specific details.

My own looks back that up. I don't speak Arabic, so I have to rely on already translated documents. But nothing I've found sheds any new light on the question of WMD or links to terrorism.

Still, it's fun digging around in primary documents.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

What do they think will happen?

Critical as I am of the decision to invade Iraq and much of our execution during the post-war occupation, I don't quite get antiwar protesters.

The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of "Stop the War" and calls for the withdrawal of troops.

As my wife, another war critic, said, "we should get a bumper sticker saying 'Insurgents go home!' "

While a large chunk of the Iraqi resistance is sparked by our presence and will go away when we leave, another large chunk is driven by sectarian goals and the foreign fighters under Al-Zarqawi appear interested in triggering a civil war. Both of the latter would be helped by a precipitous withdrawal. It can be difficult to identify good guys in Iraq, where tit-for-tat killings are becoming common, but I think most people would agree that the latter two groups definitely count as bad guys.

It angers me no end that the Bush administration started this war in the first place, and then dug the hole so deep that we have no choice but to keep digging. But we really have no honorable choice. We must withdraw on our own timetable, not rush for the exits now that the war is going poorly and becoming more and more unpopular. There's nothing wrong with a timetable, but it had better be contingent upon certain milestones being reached -- with a Plan B in case those milestones are judged to be unreachable.

antiwar protests, protests, Iraq, politics, midtopia

More prisoner abuse

Today's New York Times details yet another interrogation center where abuses took place, this time a place called the Black Room at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of an interrogation group charged with locating Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the foreign fighters in Iraq.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. ... Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

What makes this example particularly bad is that these weren't ill-trained reservists. They were elite counterterrorism troops, occasionally paired with soldiers or intelligence agents who had interrogation skills.

The abuses are described as unsanctioned, but well known to those serving in the area.

It should surprise no one that the abuse was not helpful.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

The good news is that it was complaints from other interrogators -- and institutional actions by their superiors, such as withdrawing CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency interrogators from cooperating with such tactics -- that exposed the abuses.

The bad news is that the unit is still operating, with even less accountability:

In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.

Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees more humanely and can police themselves.

I would hope there is far better oversight now. But history indicates that that might be more hope than reason.

prisoner abuse, detainees, Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld's missed opportunity

One of the few things I respect Donald Rumsfeld for has been his attempt to reform the structure and bureaucracy of the military. Killing the Crusader self-propelled artillery program, for example, was a smart move. It hurts double to say that, both because I was a tanker (making the Crusader kin of a sort) and because much of the work would have been done here in Minnesota. But the Crusader was a hulking Cold War relic, unsuited for the sort of lighter, nimbler, more flexible military that I agree we need to build.

That's why this essay from Armed Forces Journal caught my eye (a tip of the hat to my friend Munko for pointing it out). It argues that whatever his intentions, Rumsfeld has (once again) messed up the execution, missing his big chance to make a difference in how the military operates:

The Quadrennial Defense Review calls for greater mobility, but the budget terminates both of the Air Force’s airlift programs. The report says America is engaged in a “long war” against terrorism, but the budget cuts back the Army’s planned number of combat brigades. The report says the Pentagon needs to rely more on market forces in its business practices, but the budget proposes creation of a monopoly for producing the most popular military engine in the world.

Despite these seeming disconnects between rhetoric and budgetary realities, the spending request is likely to be the high point of impact for the strategic paradigm underpinning the QDR. The rest of the year will witness a gradual erosion of its influence as political players and private-sector analysts pick apart the rather mediocre document that the Pentagon has presented to them. When the smoke clears to reveal a reconciled Defense Authorization Act for 2007, it will be apparent that the Quadrennial Defense Review didn’t matter; it was another missed opportunity, possibly the last on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s watch.

The article goes on to detail why the QDR doesn't matter. Essentially, it's too late in the budget and political process. The Bush administration's influence is on the wane as 2008 approaches, and if Rumsfeld wanted to make lasting changes he had to start last year. He didn't.

Rumsfeld didn’t really hit the ground running. Strategic reviews and the filling of key positions took too long during the first year, and then the whole process was overwhelmed by the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. More distractions followed: the Afghanistan war in 2002, the Iraq war in 2003, Abu Ghraib in 2004. So when the time came in 2005 for another term — and another QDR — Rumsfeld’s team had achieved precious little in the way of true transformation.

As it turned out, much of 2005 was consumed by the review itself. The sixth year of Bush’s eight years in office has commenced, and time is running out for military transformation. Two years ago, it was common for policymakers to say that hard choices would need to be made in the 2006 defense budget. When that didn’t happen, it was predicted that truly momentous shifts would unfold in 2007. Now, people around Rumsfeld are predicting real change in the 2008 budget. However, 2008 is the president’s last year in office, so nobody on Rumsfeld’s team is likely to be around to enforce the priorities contained in that budget. In other words, the transformationists have missed the budgetary boat. It’s too late to radically rearrange the nation’s defense posture.

In addition, the writer argues that Rumsfeld's vision of current conditions and future warfare were flawed:

The experience of the past five years has proven these and other precepts of the Rumsfeld paradigm to be inadequate at best. It is apparent the nation is not in a strategic pause; the U.S. intelligence community isn’t all that good; new networks and sensors do not play a decisive role in coping with emerging enemies (and may empower those enemies more than they do U.S. forces); and today’s adversaries are so different from those of the past that they continually surprise U.S. military leaders. ... That the fight [in Iraq] has not gone so well has to raise doubts about whether he and his advisers understand what the military needs. In retrospect, it seems that despite all the talk about asymmetric threats, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and others had a rather unimaginative view of how unconventional the danger might become.

There's more: Rumsfeld's alienation of Congress, an inability to rein in military entitlements, a detached and indecisive leadership style.

In a way, Rumsfeld sums up much of what I think history will say about the Bush administration: soaring and determined rhetoric sprinkled with good and principled ideas, but based on an unrealistic view of the world and executed with almost stunning incompetence.

It's too bad, because the military needs what Rumsfeld promised to deliver. We can only hope that the next Secretary of Defense has the same priorities and better luck.

Click here for a follow-up/companion post.

military, Rumsfeld, defense, politics, midtopia

More site tweaks

I've greatly expanded the "Political Blogs" section of the sidebar and begun a list of Minnesota blogs. I've also added a couple of more links to my "Favorites" page.

Inflation -- the good, cosmic kind

A group of physicists says it has direct evidence of how the universe expanded immediately after the big bang.

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

Not only does this provide confirmation of current thought, it provides an opportunity to consider some really cool questions. For example, during the expansion the universe grew many, many times faster than the current speed of light. Does that indicate that the universe itself is not subject to the same laws of physics that hold sway *within* the universe? It also refocuses attention on questions like "what's outside the universe?"

If pondering imponderables fascinates you, this provides a lot to chew on.

physics, universe, big bang, midtopia

Johnson "embellished" conversation with justice

A follow-up to this post. Dean Johnson, given a choice between being branded a liar or an ethics breaker, says he "embellished" his conversation with a state Supreme Court justice when talking with pastors.

"I embellished it to say the judiciary doesn't seem too interested in overturning this," Johnson said.

He said he had been attempting to dissuade the clergy members from the need for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage when two conservative members pressed him on his assessment.

"I suppose I became frustrated," he said. "I made a mistake."

And that will probably be the end of it. The Star Tribune editorialized that Johnson owes a lot of people an apology, including fellow opponents of a gay-marriage amendment, and he does. But as I said in my earlier post, this brouhaha has nothing to do with the underlying merits (or lack thereof) of the amendment. I hope Johnson is properly chastised, but it should not affect his approach to the issue.

Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia

Captured documents, part III

Yet more, from another transcript . Saddam's rambling is getting worse. On Pages 2-3, Saddam (presumably; once again he's only identified as "Male 1")is discussing what to do about inspections and the difficulty of documenting the destruction of his WMD programs.

It doesn’t have anything to do with banned weapons, that’s it. They destroyed the industrial foundations. They destroyed the Weapons. But can we guarantee that somebody didn’t forget any file? Then what are the basics for you? What is the value of a piece of paper? ... They were destroyed, now they say you have to bring me documents to show when they were destroyed? What day what time? Every single missile.

In this transcript, Iraqis are discussing a pending inspection visit by Kofi Annan to several presidential palaces, which would place the conversation in 1998. Saddam appears to be "Male 2" this time around. They're talking about where Annan will go and what he will see. It starts out sounding like they're trying to figure out how to hide things... but by page 15 I got the impression that what they're trying to protect is Saddam's privacy. He's in the middle of an international confrontation, and he's mostly concerned with strangers poking around his living areas!

You read enough of this stuff and I guarantee you'll be thinking to yourself, "I am glad I wasn't Saddam." How he didn't die of boredom, I'll never know. These meetings are b-o-r-i-n-g.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Captured documents, part II

A follow up to my initial post, here are some more tidbits from the captured Iraqi and Al Qaeda documents.

From a transcript of an audio tape, we have what appears to be Saddam Hussein (Male 1) discussing various diplomatic, economic and security issues.

Saddam, like all great megalomaniacs, is a boring rambler to listen to. Cut to Page 8, where after talking about the hide-and-seek games they played with inspectors, he complains that Iraq has destroyed all of its atomic, chemical and biological projects, but now the UN is changing the rules.

Flip to Page 10. He starts discussing diplomatic overtures to Iran as a way to get around sanctions or maybe find common cause against a common enemy. He notes the international pressure over Iran's nuclear projects and says the international community is "talking about Iran just like they did with (Iraq) in the beginning."

Finally turn to Page 11 for a humorous finish. He mulls the possibility of asking Iran for his planes back -- the planes he had flown to Iran for safekeeping during the first Gulf War and never got back. He talks about taking the planes apart and trucking them back to Iraq, because they can't fly them thanks to the no-fly zones. It's kind of pathetic, really.


Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Tired arguments, lousy logic

I didn't really mean to have so many gay marriage posts in the last few days, but the issue just keeps cropping up.

It must have been a slow day for conservative columnist Katherine Kersten, because she devoted her entire allotment of newsprint to regurgitating one of the tiredest attacks on gay marriage -- that it will necessarily lead to polygamy.

Her argument:

But wait. What if a person loves two people, or three or more? If "one man-one woman" is a discriminatory limitation on the choice of a life partner, on what grounds can the state logically restrict marriage to two people? The fact is, once you adopt same-sex marriage -- legally changing the standard for marriage from one-man, one-woman to a "committed relationship" -- there is no principled way to prevent its extension to polygamy or other forms of "plural marriage" or partnership.

First, let's just note that in practical terms this is a straw man. The number of people who actively support polygamy are vanishingly few. It just isn't going to be legalized any time soon because there's no meaningful political pressure to do so.

But I'll play along.

Legally speaking, the major problem with preventing gays from marrying is that the government allows these two people to marry, but not those two people. The only reason for the different treatment is the gender of the people involved. That is presumptively discriminatory, and must be justified on practical grounds -- showing that the discrimination serves a legitimate government interest.

That is qualitatively different from saying any two people can marry, but any three (or more) can't. The situations are not the same, so treating them differently is less of a problem. You might still need to justify it, but the hurdle is far lower.

Logically speaking, polygamists can already make the "two vs. three" discrimination argument. That doesn't change just because we recognize two people of any gender and not just man/woman pairings.

Further, polygamy is a choice, not a condition. That makes it more susceptible to regulation than more ingrained characteristics such as sexual orientation.

Let's now get into the philosophy of gay marriage.

Philosophically, one can view gay marriage as "imposing" acceptance of homosexuality on an unwilling majority. But that implies that legality equals acceptance, which isn't a traditionally conservative viewpoint. A true conservative argues that citizens should generally be free to do as they please, and government intrusion should be kept to a minimum, stepping in only as much as necessary to preserve order.

Approval simply doesn't enter into it. What such a viewpoint defends is the concept of individual liberty -- not whatever each individual chooses to do with that liberty.

And that's all that allowing gay marriage would do. It's not forcing anyone to do anything; it's simply allowing homosexual couples to have the same rights and responsiblities that heterosexual couples do. There's no imposition in any meaningful sense of the word.

Having established those cases, let me now take up the separate question of whether polygamy should be outlawed.

Respect for individual liberty means that the only reason to ban a behavior is if it can be shown to be harmful. So before we get all upset about the prospect of polygamy being legalized, we should establish why it should remain illegal. If we can't show harm, there's no logical reason to ban it.

What harm does polygamy do? And is that harm sufficient to warrant government intervention?

I'm willing to believe that there are provable downsides to polygamy, but I can't think of one offhand. There are plenty of plausible arguments -- it subjugates women, for instance. But proof seems to be in short supply.

There are also practical arguments, such as an increased risk of welfare fraud or the need to rewrite a sizable chunk of our legal code to deal with multiperson marriages. Those are not philosophical objections, and would not be weakened by the existence of gay marriage.

That's the ultimate way to draw a line between two behaviors: show actual harm. Gay marriage opponents have repeatedly failed to show that gay marriage will be harmful to society. So they raise the specter of legalized polygamy as part of their rearguard action. Well, the solution to that is entirely in their hands: if they don't want gay marriage to lead to polygamy, all they have to do is show that polygamy is harmful. Do that, and I'll lead the charge to keep it illegal.

You know where to reach me.

Minnesota, polygamy, Kersten, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Captured Iraqi and Al-Qaeda documents released

Like every other political blogger out there, I can hardly wait to start checking out the collection of captured documents released by the government today.

Though not all the documents come with translations from the Arabic, they could shed some interesting light on the state of things in Iraq and within Al-Qaeda at various points.

The collection is here.

I'll come back to this when I've had more time to dig through the archive, but for now the most interesting thing I've found is an Al-Qaeda employment contract.

Enjoy.


Al-Qaida, Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Getting heard

Thanks to the Daou Report at Salon.com for linking to my health-care post. Welcome, Daou readers!

Expensively mediocre health care

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, every American -- regardless of gender or ethnicity -- gets roughly equal routine medical care.

Other studies have shown evidence of racial disparities in treatment, and this study doesn't totally refute those. There are still disparities in access to some kinds of specialized care, and the methodology doesn't really address barriers to seeking care in the first place. But once people sought care, they were treated generally the same.

The real kicker, though, is that that the care was rather uniformly mediocre.

The study ... found that though there are some disparities, the world's most affluent health system fails to provide all patients with optimal care at least 40 percent of the time.

"Differences exist, but they pale in comparison to the chasm between where we are today and where we should be," said chief author Dr. Steven Asch of Rand Health and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Los Angeles. "No matter who you are, it's almost a flip of the coin as to whether you get the care that experts want for you."

We spend more money per capita on health care than any other nation on earth. And what do we get? Mediocrity.

There are many things wrong with our health-care system beyond the skyrocketing costs. Most reimbursement systems end up giving bizarre incentives to health-care providers, driving up overall costs. And it simply makes no sense that the cost and quality of health-insurance coverage depends on one's employment status. Not only is that bad policy from a public health perspective, but increasingly it is a competitive disadvantage to American businesses and a barrier to hiring, constricting employment and economic growth.

It is time we seriously considered alternatives.

People talk about health-care rationing, but the alternative to rationing is exploding costs -- which eventually leads to rationing by ability to pay. Perhaps exploding costs would be acceptable if we were getting top-of-the-line care for all that money, but we're not.

Should nationalized health care be on the table? Sure. I don't think it's the best alternative, but it's arguably better than the system we have now.

Worried about a huge new bureaucracy? Right now we're subject to a private medical bureaucracy instead of a government one.

National health care limits choice and results in long waiting lists for non-emergency procedures? Well, all systems have their problems. I just don't see the logic in trying to boast about our system and bash every flavor of national health care out there. None of the systems are perfect; they all represent different attempts to address the cost/benefit ratio.

Say what you will about national health care on an individual level, but on a macro level it seems to keep the population pretty healthy at reasonable cost. And it's not at all clear that waiting lists are an inevitable result of a single-payer system.

But rather than looking at the extremes, I think the more useful discussion would be "is there a combination that provides maximum choice while reducing costs appreciably?" And if we can de-link health insurance coverage from our employment status, so much the better.

I actually agree in large part with the Heritage Foundation on this, especially their assessment of the problems with the current system. We may quibble a bit on the details, but their system is workable and, with a bit of residual government involvement, equitable.

My solution would look like this:

Instead of employers providing insurance, they simply boost your pay by the current premium amount, and you go out and buy coverage yourself. Tax credits help ensure that the money is spent on health care, and that the very poor can afford health care. Future increases are left to the market: the cost of health care becomes just one more factor that workers consider when weighing a salary offer.

Medical costs would automatically become linked to performance, insurance products would become more closely tailored to individual needs, you wouldn't lose your insurance coverage when you lose your job (or be forced to change doctors when you switch jobs), and employers would no longer be locked into ever-higher medical premiums -- eliminating a growing barrier to hiring. Small businesses -- the engine of economic growth -- could compete for the very best workers who might otherwise go to large companies simply for the cheaper, better health coverage.

There would still need to be some government involvement, to ensure adequate coverage for people with very expensive medical problems that a true market system, without the "group" aspect of coverage, would lock out. There might have to be a law requiring that everyone have health insurance, much like we do with car insurance. But overall you'd have better coverage and better care without a new bureaucracy deciding what each individual medical procedure is worth.


health care, politics, midtopia

Dean Johnson, Court tamperer?

Democrat Dean Johnson, majority leader in the Minnesota Senate, has been caught on tape saying he had talked to several state Supreme Court justices about gay marriage, and they assured him that the current law restricting marriage to a man and a woman would not be overturned -- meaning that a gay-marriage amendment is unnecessary.

In the recording - made without Johnson's knowledge - he says he had talked with two of the three justices named Anderson on the bench and they had told him, "Dean, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do this." He also said former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who recently stepped down, told him, "'We're not going to touch it."'

If true, Johnson and the justices committed a serious ethical breach. Justices are not supposed to discuss pending cases or make committments on how they'll vote.

The justices deny it and Johnson says he chose his words poorly. But it's hard to imagine any other meaning for what he said. So either he was emptily boasting then, or is lying now.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with whether gay marriage is a good idea or not; it's just hardball politics driven by disagreement over gay marriage. And I think it points up the lack of substantive arguments against gay marriage, especially as framed here in Minnesota.

The proposed amendment would ban not only gay marriage but also civil unions. One can believe that homosexuality is immoral, but that's not an argument for denying gays the legal benefits of marriage. Public policy should be based on objective facts or principles, not personal dislike or religious prohibitions.

And the case against gay marriage has no objective basis. "It will harm marriage?" Nonsense. "Marriage is for procreation?" Nonsense, and besides, gays are conceiving and adopting children in ever-increasing numbers. "It indicates societal approval of gays?" Not true, unless we think that recognizing third and fourth marriages mean we approve of serial monogamists.

Gay marriage isn't about societal approval; it's about keeping the government's nose out of people's private business. If the state can show a compelling interest in providing support to marriage, it may do so -- but it must establish neutral criteria that narrowly address its interest, and provide support to anyone who meets those criteria -- regardless of gender, age, moral character or any other irrelevant factor.

For centuries marriage was a purely civil institution, and did not involve churches. The perfect solution would be to return to a form of that, in which "marriages" are performed by churches and the state recognizes only "civil unions." "Civil unions for everyone, marriage if you want one and can find a church willing to perform the ceremony" would allow all couples to have the same legal rights while letting churches establish their own standards for marriage.

But I don't foresee that happening in the near future. And until it does, gay marriage -- or "civil unions" that provide the same legal benefits as marriage -- is simply the right thing to do.


Dean Johnson, homosexual, gay, marriage, minnesota, politics, midtopia

A continent splits apart

This is just too cool for words.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

Basically, Africa will lose its horn once the land slumps enough to let the ocean in.

Visit the link. There's a lot more there, including photos and maps.

Thanks to Centerfield for pointing out this story.

Afar Triangle, Africa, geology, midtopia

Cracks in the Iranian facade

Iran's hard-line stance on its nuclear program is producing some domestic dissent.

Some people in powerful positions have begun to insist that the confrontational tactics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been backfiring, making it harder instead of easier for Iran to develop a nuclear program.

This week, the United Nations Security Council is meeting to take up the Iranian nuclear program. That referral and, perhaps more important, Iran's inability so far to win Russia's unequivocal support for its plans have empowered critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad, according to political analysts with close ties to the government.

One senior Iranian official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue, said: "I tell you, if what they were doing was working, we would say, 'Good.' " But, he added: "For 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that."

It remains to be seen whether the opposition has any actual teeth, especially with Iran's top cleric, Ali Khamenei, supporting the hardline approach.

In the end it may require a very delicate diplomatic approach from us: keeping the pressure ratcheted up sufficiently high that we reward neither delaying tactics nor the hard-line approach, but not so high that we push the reformers into a united front with the hardliners.

With luck we can avoid the need for my earlier suggestion.


diplomacy, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Housekeeping and recognition

I've been spending some time mucking with the site instead of posting, and have now added a links page. It's a place for any sort of link I find interesting but that doesn't seem to belong in the main page sidebar. It's far from complete, and suggestions are welcome. Scroll down to the "other links" section of the sidebar, or click here.

Separately, my post on the Republican Study Committee's 2007 budget proposal has been picked as one of the Posts of the Week by Blogcritics. In addition, a link from The Moderate Voice to my post on Iran nearly tripled the site traffic over the weekend. I wish you could see the happy dance, but perhaps it's best all around that you can't.

Thanks to everyone who finds Midtopia a worthwhile place to spend part of their day.


politics, midtopia

Terri Schiavo all over again

The Minnesota House will consider a bill requiring that "incapacitated persons" be provided with food and water.

The bill would create a presumption in law that a person incapable of making his or her own health care decisions would be given food and water. The law would provide for three exemptions:

• If food and water would not contribute to keeping the person alive or would not provide the person comfort.

• If the person had completed a health care directive explicitly authorizing the withholding or withdrawal of food and water.

• If there is "clear and convincing evidence that the person, when legally capable of making health care decisions, gave express and informed consent" to withhold or remove food and water.

What I fail to understand is why legislators think things like this are any of their business. If someone is incapacitated, those closest to them should make decisions regarding their care. Not the government, not me, not you. Nobody can plausibly claim to know the wishes of the patient better than those who know them best.

The exceptions don't address this. I've made it clear to my wife that I don't want to be kept alive if I'm ever in a Schiavo-like condition. But my health-care directive remains unfinished. Would my wife's testimony alone be considered "clear and convincing evidence" of my wishes? It sure wasn't in the Schiavo case.

The last thing we need in end-of-life decisions is more laws, more lawyers and more public nosiness. Leave such decisions to the family, except in cases where there is reason to believe that the family does not have the patient's best interests at heart. Litigate the exceptions, not the norms.


right to die, Schiavo Bill, Minnesota, Schiavo, politics, midtopia

Senate rejects "pay as you go"

The Senate yesterday rejected a "pay as you go" amendment to the 2007 budget.

The vote was 50-50. The 50 "no" votes? All Republican.

Pay as you go is a simple concept: if you want to cut taxes or increase spending, you have to find offsetting spending cuts or tax increases so that the deficit does not increase. We had it for much of the 1990s, but Congress let it lapse in 2002. It pretty much forces fiscal discipline on Congress, which has demonstrated time and again that it needs exactly this sort of cudgel in order to be fiscally responsible.

Republicans as the party of fiscal discipline? Please. The Democrats might be more willing to raise taxes, but at least they don't think it's perfectly fine to spend money we don't have.


paygo, deficit, Senate, budget, politics, midtopia

The military, present and future

Two interesting bits on military recruiting -- one examining a myth, one painting a bleak picture of the future.

In the March issue of Reason magazine, Tim Cavanaugh reports on a Heritage Foundation study that appears to explode the myth of a poor-man's military.

The largest group of new recruits in 2003—18 percent—came from neighborhoods with average annual household incomes of $35,000 to $40,000, compared to a median household income of $43,318. In all, the top two income quintiles (comprising households with incomes starting at $41,688) produced 45 percent of all recruits in 2003. A mere 5 percent came from neighborhoods with average incomes below $20,000 per household.

The study itself is available here. But interestingly enough, the National Priorities Project analyzed the same data and came to a different conclusion.

Nearly two-thirds of all recruits (64%) were from counties with median household incomes below the US median. About one-third were from counties with a higher median household income. All of the top 20 counties had a median household income below the national median household income.
* 19 out of the top 20 counties had lower median household incomes than their respective state median household incomes. (As a whole, the county-level incomes averaged 70% of the state median income levels.)
* 15 of the top 20 counties had higher poverty rates than the national average.
* 11 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the national average.
* 16 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the state average.
* 18 of the top 20 had higher poverty rates than the state average.

Subsequently, both organizations offered dueling arguments about who was right here and here.

So who is right?

The answer appears to be "neither." The undisputed facts are these:

1. Households with income under $20,000 are underrepresented;
2. Housholds with income of $20,000 to $25,000 are proportionally represented;
3. Households with incomes of $25,000 to $55,000 are overrepresented;
4. Households with incomes over $55,000 are underepresented.

One problem is that the same "household income" can mean widely varying standards of living, depending on family size. A single person making $30,000 is doing far better than if that same $30,000 has to provide for a family of four.

There's also the imprecision of the data. An area's median household income doesn't reveal which households that area's recruits are coming from; they may be coming from an unrepresentative sample of the area's population -- disproportionately poor or minority, for example.

That said, the above data suggests a few things:

1. It makes sense that the poorest households are underrepresented, because the very poor are less likely to meet military standards, be it because of poor schools, physical problems or a criminal record.

2. The wealthiest households are underrepresented because the wealthy have far more options, and because they're more likely to go to college than enlist.

3. In between those two extremes, the share of recruits increases as income increases -- but only to a point.

The conclusion seems clear to me. The military is primarily working poor and lower middle-class. This reflects the convergence of educational attainment and economic incentives in those income brackets. Income levels are low enough to make the military an attractive option, but high enough that potential recruits are more likely to meet military standards. Heritage's claim of a "middle-class" military is overreaching; NPP's claim of an army of the poor likewise hyperbolizes.

One other thing the studies agree on is that while rural areas are slightly overrepresented, four out of five recruits come from urban and suburban areas. That may help explain why so few of the next generation of young adults are considered potential recruits:

The military doesn't want most people in the prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24.

Of some 32 million Americans in this group, the Army deems the vast majority too overweight, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

The projected pool shrinks to 13.6 million when only high school graduates and those who score in the upper half on a military service aptitude test are considered.

Other reasons for exclusion: obesity, a lack of physical fitness, the use of Ritalin and other stimulants to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, other medical problems, criminal histories, and having too many dependents.

That leaves 4.3 million fully qualified potential recruits and an estimated 2.3 million more who might qualify if given waivers for certain problems. Fifteen percent of recruits received such waivers in the last federal budget year.

That's long-term bad news. From those 6.6 million potential recruits, the military has to get enough soldiers to fill its 1.2-million-soldier ranks. For the Army that means 80,000 recruits a year. That means the Army just needs to get 1.2% of the eligible recruits to sign, and they're sitting pretty. But last year the Army missed its recruiting targets.

If you ever wanted to know how few people join the military, that should tell you. The ongoing war in Iraq isn't helping, but military recruiters are getting the sort of low response rates usually reserved for spam or cold-calling. And as more and more of our population ends up in urban/suburban areas, and obesity rates increase, that pool of potential recruits will continue to shrink.

It may be hard to believe, but in a generation the world's last superpower may find it difficult to field a military as large as North Korea's.


NPP, Heritage Foundation, recruiting, military, politics, midtopia

Why an independent press is important

If you ever want an example of why we should not allow the government to regulate the press, here's one.

Douglas County Coordinator Bill Schalow last Monday sent an eight-point protocol to Echo Press reporter Erin Klegstad, requesting that she submit stories to his office for accuracy checks and go through the office to set up interviews.

"If you willfully ignore this request," it concluded, "or fail to cooperate and comply without contacting me first regarding your concerns, your actions could result in a total system 'gag' and limit your interaction with the county to the coordinator's office only."

Klegstad - who had to call Schalow to find out if he was serious (he said he was) - showed the e-mail to Al Edenloff, the paper's editor.

"I was shocked," Edenloff said. "I thought it was the most ridiculous document I'd ever read. ... We do not need our stories to be pre-authorized, prearranged or sanitized. We're the watchdogs, not them."

The Minnesota Newspaper Association's attorney, Mark Anfinson, said the protocol seemed to violate not only the First Amendment but also the state's open records law.

"This is something you would have expected to see behind the Iron Curtain," Anfinson said. "I told (Edenloff) that the best remedy for this would be a story, that it wouldn't stand the light of day."

That's what happened. When the news broke, the public was infuriated, and some county leaders who hadn't seen the policy said they didn't support it. Schalow quickly backed off.

Irritated as we can sometimes get about perceived excesses by an out-of-control press, the alternative is worse. It's quite refreshing that the citizens of Douglas County not only recognize that, but felt it was important enough to do something about it.


censorship, Minnesota, watchdog, free press, politics, midtopia

When your own rhetoric is turned against you

As a critic of the Iraq war, I get very tired of war supporters claiming that just about any criticism is akin to treason because it emboldens the enemy to keep fighting.

So I was very amused when I read this article on U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad that included the following:

MR. Khalilzad, who is known as both a strategic thinker and a skilled political operator, may have put himself in the middle of this maelstrom shortly before the Samarra shrine bombing. He had begun to sharply criticize Shiite leaders for sectarian killings carried out at the Interior Ministry, hinting that the United States might withdraw its support if Iraq's security forces were not reformed. Those remarks prompted Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite alliance, to declare that Mr. Khalilzad was partly responsible for the attack, because his words had emboldened Sunni terrorists.

I'm sure war supporters will see the illogic in al-Hakim's assertion. Will they recognize the parallel illogic in their own version of the same claim?

Khalilzad, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Putting Iraq's WMDs to rest

For the people who still cling to the belief that Iraq had WMDs, today's New York Times will not be welcome.

In an article about Iraq during the runup to to the war, based on a secret military history derived from captured documents and interrogations of high-level officials, we learn that Iraq didn't have WMDs, gave full access to inspectors and did its best to destroy any remnants of old programs that might exist.

In other words, "muscular inspections" -- coercing intrusive inspections backed by the credible threat of force -- worked. Or would have, if we would have let it.

The relevant bits:

In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

The inspectors reported that they were getting unprecedented access, and finding nothing. All we had to do was wait a couple of months for them to finish their work, and war could have been avoided.

Instead, we ordered the inspectors out so we could invade.

Perhaps toppling Saddam was a worthwhile objective in its own right. But the cost/benefit ratio of such a move was highly questionable. In any event that should have been its own discussion, not something now used to retroactively justify an unwarranted mistake.


Saddam, WMD, iraq, politics, midtopia

Equality ride gets results

A group of college students is traveling to 19 Christian colleges that have anti-gay admission policies, in something called the Equality Ride.

The response has generally been pretty good.

Ten of the 18 schools on Equality Ride's itinerary have agreed to have riders on their campuses and are working with organizers to plan events.

More than 100 students at Christian and military schools have e-mailed their support for the ride. Some volunteered help. Others asked for T-shirts.

Professors at the schools have opened class discussions on church policies toward GLBT students.

Oklahoma Baptist University slightly altered its official policy: It still bans gay students but no longer threatens to expel straight students who support gay rights.

Twenty U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen signed a petition that they were willing to serve with gay military personnel; closeted gay students, including one midshipman, called Equality Ride asking for outside support or counseling.

The one notable exception: Jerry Falwell's Liberty University:

As he stepped from the sidewalk onto university property, Reitan, 24, read a speech saying riders had come to foster understanding. As police arrested him, the next rider picked up reading where he left off. By the time all 24 were arrested, the entire text had been read.

I like this because it's a civil approach, involving dialogue instead of mere protest. I doubt it will change many minds, but it's important to be able to talk to people with whom you have fundamental disagreements.


civil rights, religion, Christian, politics, gay, midtopia

Privacy vs. openness, continued

Following up on this post, the Star Tribune's reader representative, Kate Parry, lays out the case for preserving public access to government information.

A pitch-perfect quote from Thomas Ellington, a political science professor at Wesleyan College, turned up recently that crystalized why we've all got a stake in keeping our government -- the one we elect and pay for with our taxes -- as open to scrutiny as possible:

"It is certainly not the case that every secret hides a crook or a fool. But it is true that incompetence and corruption will always seek to cloak themselves in secrecy."

She doesn't stop there. She gives examples of the sort of stories the newspaper has done that relied on public records -- stories that might be impossible to do if Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Attorney General Mike Hatch get their way.

The privacy issue looks like it's being fast-tracked through the Legislature. If you care about holding our government responsible, call your representatives and tell them so.


Hatch, Pawlenty, privacy, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Shakeup at conservative think tank

The Center for the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis, has fired its CEO and five other top staff members.

The departures include: Annette Meeks as the center's president and CEO; Corey Miltimore as its director of media research and study; Randy Wanke as communications director; Chris Tiedeman as director of government affairs and MinnesotaVotes.org; Ryan Griffin as development director; and Jonathan Blake as research fellow.

In the two years since Meeks took over, the center became more of an advocacy group than a policy group, pushing various initiatives like a "legislative watchdog" and providing resources for conservative college students to combat "liberal bias" in academia.

Apparently the main reason for the shakeup was that the new approach was costing a lot of money. The center is a nonprofit, and donations were down, so income wasn't keeping up with expenses.

This is probably a good thing. As a pure think tank, the center is able to contribute more to political discussion that it can by pursuing a handful of high-profile partisan initiatives. We have enough partisan advocacy organizations; what we need are more thoughtful organizations developing fleshed-out ideas for dealing with the issues confronting us.

Now if only the Taxpayer's League would develop serious funding issues. That's one group that can't go belly-up fast enough for me.


Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Early 2008 Republican contenders

Republican activists in Tennessee held a straw poll to test the appeal of possible presidential candidates.

The delegates were voting in an informal straw poll to test the popularity of White House hopefuls including those in attendance — Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. George Allen of Virginia, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Not exactly the full selection of candidates, but it'll be interesting to see how the votes go. I'm not thrilled with most of the options. Frist is a buffoon and Brownback is too conservative. Romney and Huckabee are decent governors and Allen's resume is respectable, but I don't know enough about any of them to draw a conclusion yet.

John McCain continues to disappoint:

McCain planned to urge his backers to write in President Bush's name as a show of support.

"In the next three years, with the country at war, he's our president and the only one who needs our support today," McCain said. The pro-Bush audience applauded the senator, who went out of his way to back the president's policies on Iraq, Iran,
Social Security, the line-item veto and the controversy over port security.

So much for being a maverick.

All in all, I'm still liking Hagel among the Republicans.


Hagel, Romney, Frist, McCain, Allen, Huckabee, Brownback, politics, midtopia

Another Mars probe arrives

Another Mars probe achieved orbit around the Red Planet on Friday.

Scientists cheered after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter emerged from the planet's shadow and signaled to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the maneuver was a success.

The two-ton spacecraft is the most sophisticated ever to arrive at Mars and is expected to gather more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian missions combined.

It will explore Mars in low orbit for two years and is expected to churn out the most detailed information ever about the planet. In the fall, the orbiter will begin exploring the Martian atmosphere, scan the surface for evidence of ancient water and scout for future landing sites to send robotic and possibly human explorers.

What I'm most excited about is the ground-penetrating radar that can look for underground water and ice.

And coming up:

It is expected to serve as a communication relay for the Phoenix Mars Scout, which will explore the icy north pole in 2008 and the Mars Science Laboratory, an advanced rover scheduled to launch in 2009.

Let's get it on.


science, space, Mars, NASA, midtopia

What to do about Iran

After several years of fixating on Iraq, the Bush administration is finally waking up to the nuclear ambition of Iran.

Some observers argue that a confrontation with Iran may be politically helpful to Bush, giving him a chance to demonstrate leadership and regain some of the lost luster on his security credentials. But there are a lot of little things that will probably prevent it from rescuing his reputation.

Any confrontation with Iran will point up:

1. How much of our military capability is tied up in Iraq, leaving us unable to do much more than saber-rattle against real threats;

2. How much Bush ignored Iran in the last several years;

3. How passive Bush has been even in recent months, letting the Europeans take the lead in dealing with the problem.

So what can we do?

Our policy begins with an unwavering bottom line: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. It's not just that they've signed the nonproliferation treaty; treaty or not, we would be foolish to let unstable states get nukes, and Iran grows more unstable every year.

However, we have to recognize Iran's legitimate interest in civilian nuclear power. A lot of people scoff at the idea of an oil-rich state needing nuclear energy, but they miss three points:

1. When the oil runs out it will run out for everyone, including suppliers;

2. As the price of oil climbs, every barrel of oil not used domestically is another barrel that can be sold for hard currency;

3. There may be remote places where it's more efficient to build a nuclear plant than run a pipeline or transmission towers.

As far as options, we begin with negotiations, of course. The basic outline of the Russian offer -- providing closely-accounted-for nuclear fuel to Iran, so that Iran does not enrich any of its own -- is a good solution. Iran has some legitimate complaints about sovereignity, but they mostly lost the right to complain about that when they were caught redhanded with an illegal enrichment program. If they want civilian nuclear energy, there will be serious strings attached.

What happens if we fail to reach a diplomatic solution?

Invading Iran just isn't going to happen; it would be plain stupid. Iran doesn't pose much offensive threat, but they could shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf at least temporarily, and I wouldn't want to dig a few hundred thousand infantry out of those mountains. Never mind what China or Russia might do, or how much further we'd inflame the Middle East by knocking over yet *another* Muslim country -- this one full of Shiites, our erstwhile allies in Iraq.

Besides, we don't have enough troops to provide security in Iraq, population 27 million. How are we going to occupy Iran and its 70 million?

We can try sanctions, but sanctions alone are unlikely to solve the problem. And our experience in Iraq was that strict sanctions hurt the populace far more than it damaged Saddam.

If it comes to the last resort, the best way to deal with nuclear ambitions is through coercive, muscular inspections, backed by the *credible* threat of force:

Step 1: Establish a credible independent inspection regime under international auspices (not necessarily UN, but something that makes it clear this is not a U.S. operation).

Step 2: Get the inspectors in the country, with free access and the right to conduct unannounced surprise inspections. Part of the negotiations may well include "Let the inspectors in and give them free access or we will destroy anything we think is a nuclear facility." Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

Step 3: Once they're in, be consistent and deadly serious about enforcing their access. "Let the inspectors into this facility *right now* or we will bomb it" may be one tactic. Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

We won't necessarily find everything, and some facilities may be both hidden or buried so deeply that bombs can't reach. But that's okay. A nuclear weapon isn't something you can build in your basement. You need enrichment facilities, fabrication facilities, testing facilities... all of which leave a reasonably large footprint. Sufficiently intrusive inspections will make building a bomb prohibitively difficult and expensive.

bush, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia