Discredited tactics

A week ago, the UN issued a report noting that 14,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the first six months of this year -- evidence that the violence in Iraq is spreading, not shrinking.

A lot of war opponents used this to point out the obvious: that the credibility of the administration on this -- from Dick Cheney's "last throes" comment to Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal of "dead-enders" -- has become all but nonexistent.

Others have noted that perhaps blaming the media for "only reporting the bad news" was a smokescreen after all.

And lately we've been seeing a lot more grim and realistic assessments of the situation from unlikely suspects: Congressional war supporters, the military, the Iraqi government -- even the administration itself.

But that hasn't stopped some ardent war backers from resorting to tried-and-discredited arguments in an attempt to maintain their fantasy of progress in Iraq. Here are a few of them, from political discussion sites I read:

IRRELEVANT WAR COMPARISON
Compare these casualties to those suffered in World War II, as if the situations were at all comparable. By that logic the American Civil War was just a light disagreement, since it didn't kill anywhere near as many people as World War II.

IRRELEVANT CRIME COMPARISON
An actual quote: "How many die in the US every year from various forms of violence? I am betting that the ratio is comparable."

First, the comparison is of apples and oranges. We're not talking about civil homicides and assaults here; we're talking about IEDs, car bombs, sectarian massacres and armed insurgency.

Second, Iraq's population is 1/11th that of ours. This figure is comparable to 300,000 Americans being killed each year by insurgents and death squads.

Third, even if this comparison were valid, there were 17,000 U.S. homicides in 2003. So the Iraqis are experiencing a rate of violent death that is 20 times ours.

ATTACK THE MESSENGER
Another actual quote: " Well, why doesn't the UN get off their Kofi Anan fat butts and do something about it? I'll tell you why: because they are worthless.....100% worthless. And if they are not willing to do that....then they need to shut their freaking mouths!!"

The underlying suggestion here is that we can ignore the report because it came from the UN, which isn't doing anything to stop the violence.

The inherent illogic in that argument aside, it ignores two things: that the United States has rejected the idea of a UN military presence, and that the sketchy security situation makes it difficult for UN agencies to perform humanitarian and reconstruction work -- though they're trying.

MOST OF IRAQ IS PEACEFUL
This argument quotes a March 2006 report that most of the violence is limited to three of Iraq's 18 provinces.

Besides relying on a report that is four months old, this argument ignores several things:

1. Those three provinces contain a third of Iraq's population.

2. "Most" doesn't mean "all": 25 percent of the attacks were occurring outside those provinces.

3. Most insurgencies and civil wars only affect a small geographic area at any given time.

4. The violence is spreading, both geographically and in intensity.

We can never have a reasoned discussion on what to do in Iraq -- and the fight against terror in general -- unless we can agree on the reality facing us. Those posing these arguments discredit only themselves, not their entire side. But we need to show no tolerance for such arguments from either side, because all they do is provide an excuse not to think clearly about the situation.

Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Redistricting reform

The Moderate Voice has an excellent roundup on redistricting reform, in the form of the Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act making the rounds in Congress (follow these links for the Senate and House versions of the bill). The prospect for passage this session is (naturally) slim, but it's a good one to let your representative know you care about.

gerrymandering, redistricting, politics, midtopia

Sue the president

While I'm not happy with Specter's weak response to warrantless surveillance, I do approve of his readiness to settle another constitutional question -- Bush's use of signing statements.

A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

As I've said before, if the statements are just rhetoric, fine. But if Bush is actively ignoring parts of laws he doesn't like, he needs to be stopped. I hope a suit will illuminate how the statements are used and let us judge.

constitution, signing statements, Specter, Bush, politics, midtopia

What it will take to elect moderates

Here's the guest post I wrote for Unity08 yesterday.

A lot of other bloggers here have expounded on what it means to be a moderate, and on the evils of partisanship, and what's wrong with the current way of doing things.

Me, I want to talk about the practicalities.

I strongly believe in the ideal behind Unity08. If we can make moderates a force of their own -- just as conservatives and liberals have become forces within, but separate from, the two major parties -- we can achieve several interrelated objectives. Among them:

1. Forcing elected officials to pay attention to moderates, rather than their partisan bases.

2. Giving moderate Republicans and Democrats a base of support independent of their party. That will make them less beholden to their party, which should lead to fewer party-line votes and more thoughtful and independent political debate.

3. Offering a lever for those moderates to recapture their parties and reestablish the long tradition of "meet in the middle" that the last 15 years of partisanship have all but erased.

4. Reasserting pragmatism over ideology, leading to legislation that thoughtfully addresses complex problems, instead of pursuing oversimplified or actively harmful agendas in order to conform to some predetermined principle.

The question, though, is how to achieve this in a winner-take-all electoral system dominated by two major parties, who have gerrymandered most districts to make them "safe" for one party or the other. Where is our leverage?

First we need to demonstrate the political clout of moderates. Sites such as this are a start, providing much-needed organization. But what will really force the parties to pay attention is fundraising. If supporting moderate viewpoints generates huge sums of cash, the parties will become more moderate. Rhetoric and ideology have power, but money is king.

So contribute to moderate candidates, wherever they may be. Support (or create) moderate PACs. Volunteer for campaigns. When party fundraisers call, tell them that you have already contributed to the moderates in the party and if they want a party-level donation they need to start addressing your concerns on a party level as well.

Even more importantly, convince others to do the same. If moderates indeed represent a large and decisive slice of the electorate, the parties will get the message loud and clear. Even if it doesn't lead directly to election victories, it will strengthen the hand of moderates in both parties.

All the money in the world, though, will still have trouble overcoming gerrymandering. In the last midterm election in 2002, 96 percent of incumbents won re-election -- down from 98 percent in 1998. How will moderates make inroads when the whole system is designed to insulate incumbents from the electorate?

This one requires a multipronged approach, with both short- and long-term strategies.

In the short term, the key is to note that seats are gerrymandered to make them safe for parties, not particular ideologies. If you don't care about the party label, then the answer is simple: work to help moderates win their party's nomination in a particular district. The more we can make a race be a choice between two moderates, the more we can make the gerrymandered system work for us by electing -- and protecting -- moderates.

At a minimum that means voting in primaries, and doing your homework on the candidates. But that's not really enough, since at that point you're just picking from a pre-selected group of candidates. What it really takes is getting involved in the party of your choice, so that moderate candidates stand a better chance of surviving the internal party debates that precede the public primaries. Anything that weakens the strangehold that partisans have on party organizations will help move the parties toward the center.

In the long term, moderates should actively support two initiatives intended to weaken the two-party duopoly: some form of instant-runoff voting, and some sort of district-drawing method that would force districts to be constructed according to objective criteria, with as little political involvement as possible.

That's the strategy in a nutshell: reward parties and candidates for moderate stances, work to build moderate influence within parties, all while establishing electoral conditions that will enable moderates to get elected without being unduly beholden to their party bosses. It won't be easy, and it won't happen overnight. But that's what politics is: hard work. Let's get to it.

redistricting, gerrymandering, instant-runoff voting, politics, midtopia

Guest post at Unity08

I've been asked to be a guest poster at Unity08, the site dedicated to fielding a moderate presidential ticket in 2008. My first post is up there now, on the main page; the permalink is here.

Tommorrow I'll put the guest post up here at Midtopia, after it's had a day to itself over at Unity.

I also crosspost at Donklephant and Blogcritics, although everything of mine that you find there (other than comments) I post here first.

I strongly support the idea behind Unity08, and encourage you to check it out and see what you can do to help.

unity08, politics, midtopia

Chickenhawk?

Jeff Jacoby had a generally good column yesterday on the incoherence of the term "chickenhawk."

"Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur -- a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply -- that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force.

He's right. Lack of combat or military experience does not somehow disqualify someone from rendering judgments on the use of military force. If it did, Clinton -- or Reagan, for that matter -- had no business being president.

But Jacoby ignores the larger point behind the use of terms like "Chickenhawk": that it's easy to order people into harm's way when you and yours aren't risking anything yourselves. The amount of military power at the president's disposal can feel pretty intoxicating -- unless you're versed in the gory details of its application. There is a very real long-term problem if more and more decisionmakers have no personal experience with the military organization they are deploying.

That does not justify terms like "Chickenhawk", but the larger point is a legitimate part of the debate over how our military gets used, and how the military fills its ranks.

Jacoby also messes up his first -- albeit minor -- point:

After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer.

I'd be pretty willing to bet money against him on that. Soldiers are more conservative, true. But they're also more realistic -- and thus more cautious -- about the use of force.

Heck, Jacoby disproves his own point with two examples in the same column:

George C. Marshall, our greatest soldier-statesman after George Washington, opposed shipping arms to Britain in 1940. His boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with nary a day in uniform, thought otherwise....

General George B. McLellan had a distinguished military career, eventually rising to general in chief of the Union armies; Abraham Lincoln served but a few weeks in a militia unit that saw no action. Whose wisdom better served the nation -- the military man who was hypercautious about sending men into battle, or the "chicken hawk" president who pressed aggressively for military action?

In both cases, it was the military man preaching caution -- and the civilian pushing for more aggressive action. Another example would be the Joint Chiefs during the first Gulf War, who counseled going in massively or not at all.

I strongly support civilian control over the military, and thus agree with Jacoby's main point. But his understanding of the military mindset is limited. That's understandable for someone who never served, but perhaps he should be more careful with his generalizations -- especially when he proves them wrong with his own words.

P.S.: Every time I hear the word "Chickenhawk", it makes me want to go re-read the excellent book by the same name, the memoir of a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. If you want a real feel for what it was like to be such a pilot -- and the physical and emotional toll it took -- this is the book for you. My copy has been torn, mutilated and dropped in a lake -- and I still re-read it regularly.

military, chickenhawk, politics, midtopia

A mouth without teeth

In today's Washington Post, Arlen Specter defends his flawed deal with the White House over its warrantless surveillance program. His main point:

Critics complain that the bill acknowledges the president's inherent Article II power and does not insist on FISA's being the exclusive procedure for the authorization of wiretapping. They are wrong. The president's constitutional power either exists or does not exist, no matter what any statute may say. If the appellate court precedents cited above are correct, FISA is not the exclusive procedure. If the president's assertion of inherent executive authority meets the Fourth Amendment's "reasonableness" test, it provides an alternative legal basis for surveillance, however FISA may purport to limit presidential power. The bill does not accede to the president's claims of inherent presidential power; that is for the courts either to affirm or reject. It merely acknowledges them, to whatever extent they may exist.

That may be his intent, but by not pressing the point he avoids a resolution of the issue. If the president has inherent authority, let's establish that once and for all. All Specter's bill does is allow the current murky situation to continue.

And I'm not impressed by this part:

The negotiations with administration officials and the president himself were fierce. The president understandably rejected a statutory mandate to submit his program to FISC, on the grounds that such a mandate could weaken the presidency institutionally by binding his successors. Indeed, such a mandate might not withstand a future president's contention that it unconstitutionally limited his Article II powers to conduct surveillance without court approval.

Of course the president didn't want binding restrictions in this matter. So what? The entire purpose of Congressional oversight is to restrict the power of the executive branch. If the president thinks such a restriction is unconstitutional, let him challenge it in court -- and resolve the matter once and for all. By refusing to go that route, Specter is giving the administration wiggle room -- which, experience shows, Bush will use for all it's worth.

Specter's unconvincing final paragraph:

In my opinion, it is intolerable to let this matter drift indefinitely. If someone has a better idea for legislation that would resolve the program's legality or can negotiate a better compromise with the president, I will be glad to listen.

Okay, here's mine: write a bill that orders Bush to use the FISA process, or whatever process Congress thinks should be used. Negotiations be damned; let Congress have the cojones to do their job. Then let Bush challenge that bill in court, using his "inherent authority" argument. Have both sides agree to expedited consideration before the Supreme Court. And thus settle the question once and for all.

There are pitfalls to that approach: if the final bill does not have substantial support in Congress, Bush could veto it rather than go the court route. But if the bill is pitched as a simple way to decide the limits of Bush's authority, it ought to garner reasonably wide support.

An alternative might be to pass a bill that simply asserts Congressional authority in this matter, without specific restrictions -- then pass a separate bill containing specific measures. The first bill can be used to force a court decision on the overall constitutionality, while the second is where Congress hammers out the contentious details.

But one way or the other, let's settle it.

FISA, surveillance, terrorism, Specter, Bush, politics, midtopia

ABA on signing statements

The American Bar Association -- admittedly, not a big fan of President Bush -- today releases a report on his use of signing statements.

Administration officials describe the practice as "routine" and comparable to the use of such statements by previous presidents.

But the ABA notes that Bush has issued more such statements than all previous presidents combined -- depending on how you count -- and that he often uses them to challenge the legality of various provisions, rather than simply make a statement or indicate how the law will be implemented.

And the administration's defense would be more believable were it not for all the other evidence that Bush believes in an ultrapowerful "unitary" presidency, which often ignores Congress, relies on "presidential authority" to ignore inconvenient laws and does not need to be scrutinized -- as when Bush blocked the Justice Department's inquiry into warrantless wiretapping.

The Cato Institute lays out the troubling aspects of Bush's signing-statement addiction quite clearly:

If the presidential signing statements are no big deal, why does the president make them? One reason is that it skews the administration of a statute by presidential subordinates before a matter gets into court. A second--and more troubling--point relates to the larger question of the role of judicial review.

Modern understanding of judicial review requires the executive branch to take its marching orders from the Supreme Court. Signing statements, I fear, could be the opening wedge to a presidential posture that judicial decisions may limit the president's ability to use courts to enforce his policies, but cannot stop him from acting unilaterally. On this theory, the president could continue to order wiretaps and surveillance in opposition to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after a court had determined that he has exceeded his powers--he just couldn't use the evidence acquired in court. Different branches of government have different views of the law, yet the executive marches on. A major check on executive power goes by the boards.

We elected a president, not a king. He does not get to decide for himself which laws are constitutional and which aren't; that's the job of the judicial branch. A spineless Congress deserves a large share of the blame for not acting as the strong check it was conceived as. But Bush has not just taken Congressional acquiescence and run with it -- he has found new and sweeping ways to simply ignore even those few restraints that Congress has imposed.

If the statements are just talk, fine. But if they are shaping policy -- if Bush truly is ignoring portions of the law he doesn't like -- then we have a problem.

ABA, signing statements, Bush, politics, midtopia

IRS cuts estate-tax attorneys

While Congress fought to partially gut the estate tax, the IRS has decided to back off on enforcement of the tax -- by cutting the number of attorneys who audit such returns in half.

The folks pointing this out are the ones poised to lose their jobs, so take what they say with a grain of salt. Meanwhile, the administration says the cuts are related to the legislation -- with fewer people qualifying for the estate tax, fewer auditors are needed to examine them.

Fair enough, as far as it goes. But consider this:

Estate tax lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the I.R.S. For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes that people owe the government.

Why would you cut your most productive auditors?

Further, there seems to be a shifting ground as to how much fraud such auditors uncover. Six years ago, the IRS said that 85 percent of large taxable gifts it audited shortchanged the government. And for the past five years "officials at both the I.R.S. and the Treasury have told Congress that cheating among the highest-income Americans is a major and growing problem."

But now, in justifying the cuts, an IRS spokesman says that only 10 percent of estate audits bring in worthwhile amounts of money.

The IRS will get vilified no matter what it does. And I'm willing to consider the statistical arguments in favor of the cuts. But cutting their most productive people when everyone agrees that cheating by the rich is a huge problem doesn't make much sense on the face of it -- especially when they have to ignore what they've been saying for the past five years in order to justify it.

estate tax, IRS, politics, midtopia

Open mic nights

The blogosphere has been abuzz with the recent "unguarded moment" incidents involving President Bush -- one with Tony Blair and the other with Angela Merkel, in which Bush walked up behind her and started giving her a surprise backrub.

Couple that with other such moments from Bush -- such as the time he and Karl Rove discussed a reporter by way of an expletive -- and I have only one observation.

When Condi Rice is caught in unguarded moments, it gives me increased respect for her. When Bush is caught in unguarded moments, it.... doesn't.

G8, Rice, Merkel, Blair, Bush, politics, midtopia

The bed you make

A militant Islamic cleric -- banned from Britain for saying Britain was partly to blame for last year's London bombings -- is now stuck in Beirut -- and begging Britain to save him.

A hard-line Muslim cleric barred from Britain for glorifying violence said on Friday he tried to get on board a British warship to flee Beirut but was turned back.

"The answer was, 'unless you have a British passport you are not entitled to come on board'," Omar Bakri told Sky News on Friday.

Unpopular views should not be a death sentence. But it seems a bit ironic to be seeking help from the same country he vilified.

Britain, Islam, terrorism, Lebanon, Bakri, politics, midtopia

DeLay PAC fined, shut down

But I'm sure it's all just a misunderstanding.

The political action committee used as a vehicle to power in Congress by Representative Tom DeLay has agreed to pay $115,000 in fines for violations of federal campaign rules and will close its doors permanently, the Federal Election Commission said Thursday.

According to an agreement with the commission, Mr. DeLay’s committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, agreed to the fines to settle accusations that it had failed to report more than $322,000 in debts and other obligations to its vendors and had misrepresented more than $240,000 in other financial activity in 2001 and 2002.

The PAC was going to close anyway, thanks to DeLay's retirement. But the fine is substantial, as is the detailing of wrongdoing. And it illustrates DeLay's habit of skating close to -- and, it appears, over -- the edge of legality.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

FEC, ethics, DeLay, politics, midtopia

Centrist Democrats convene

The Democratic Leadership Council, bastion of Clintonism, is meeting this weekend in Denver.

The Denver gathering is scheduled to hear from the putative Democratic frontrunner for 2008, Senator Clinton, as well as other possible contenders such as Senator Bayh of Indiana, Governor Vilsack of Iowa, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico.

Their main conflict is not with Republicans but with the netroots left epitomized by Howard Dean and DailyKos.

The tension dates back to the last presidential race when council officials threw cold water on the populist, Webdriven campaign of Howard Dean. Dr. Dean, who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, derided the council as the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party." A sharp-tongued aide for a Dean rival told the New Republic that the Vermont governor's Internet-savvy backers resembled the grotesque denizens of the "bar scene from ‘Star Wars.'"

The conflict between the two camps is so intense that when Mrs. Clinton appeared before the council last year and called for a halt to the internecine fighting, bloggers unleashed attacks on her that are still reverberating. A newspaper report in May that Mrs. Clinton hoped to create a unified Democratic agenda under the council's aegis received two reactions from a leading liberal blogger, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com, "LOL," shorthand for "laugh out loud," and "DOA," meaning "dead on arrival."

I'm of a couple of minds about this.

I think the Democrats need to have a knock-down, drag-out battle for the soul of the party. But they also need to be a big-tent party. That makes defining the party's "soul", much less fighting for it, a difficult task. In an ideal world, the party would define a few broad principles and let each individual candidate decide on specific policy positions. The trouble is that such a necessarily vague appeal will be inherently less persuasive than more ideological rhetoric. So the practical often loses out to the seductive.

Then there's the practical problem of reconciling certain policies with a big-tent approach:

Mr. Sirota scoffed at the notion that, with Mrs. Clinton's prodding, the DLC can lead a "big tent" coalition. "You can't put the steelworkers, working class people, in the same tent with an organization that continues to push trade policies that sell out workers," he said. "I don't care how big a tent you have. You just can't do it."

That's another reason to stick to broad principles on the party level while working with individual candidates to craft policy. All in all, though, I like the philosophy behind the DLC -- an effort to confront the entrenched interests of the old Democratic Party. I like much of what the DLC advocates. I do wonder on occasion if they have been co-opted by the Clintonistas, but as long as they stand by their stated principles, I'm happy.

Which is good, because while I like Howard Dean, I think some of the policies he embraced in 2004 were ill-advised. And the Kossacks can be just plain nuts. I find them more palatable than fire-breathing conservatives, if only because they're generally less bloodthirsty. But I have no interest in seeing them become the dominant force within one of the major parties.

So I wish the DLC well. If they can establish firm control of the party while giving the netroots faction a place to express itself within the party, it would bode well for moderates -- and Democrats -- in the upcoming elections.

DLC, politics, midtopia

War backers finally begin confronting reality

As civilian deaths continue to mount in Iraq, even GOP lawmakers are moderating their rhetoric about the war.

Rank-and file Republicans who once adamantly backed the administration on the war are moving to a two-stage new message, according to some lawmakers. First, Republicans are making it clear to constituents they do not agree with every decision the president has made on Iraq. Then they boil the argument down to two choices: staying and fighting or conceding defeat to a vicious enemy.

The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war. In the first half of this year, 4,338 Iraqi civilians died violent deaths, according to a new report by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. Last month alone, 3,149 civilians were killed -- an average of more than 100 a day.

Even Rep. Gil Gutknecht, once a strong supporter of the war, is having doubts.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht found the situation in Iraq more bleak than he anticipated during a weekend visit to the war zone, and said a partial withdrawal of some American troops might be wise.

Gutknecht, a strong supporter of the war since it began in March of 2003, told reporters in a telephone conference call Tuesday that American forces appear to have no operational control of much of Baghdad.

“The condition there is worse than I expected,” he said. “... I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem.”

Gutknecht went on to say that “Baghdad is worse today than it was three years ago."

Gutknecht spent most of his time inside the Green Zone. On the one hand, you might attempt to dismiss his observations because he didn't actually get out into the field to see things for himself. On the other hand, if things are noticeably bad even in the most heavily fortified part of Iraq, imagine how bad it is outside the wall.

The man who last month said "Now is not the time to get wobbly" now says "I guess I didn't understand the situation." He now supports a partial troop withdrawal to make it clear to Iraqis that they need to step up and take responsibility for their own security.

That security continues to deteriorate despite the fact that we have trained nearly 300,000 Iraqi troops. That grim fact suggests our entire strategy -- to "stand down as they stand up" -- may be flawed, especially because elements of the Shiite-dominated armed forces are thought to be associated with the militias and death squads that are helping foment sectarian violence.

Eyewitnesses at some scenes of sectarian cleansing in Sunni areas report that gunmen travel in government vehicles. Others note that attackers travel from one neighborhood to another through police checkpoints, apparently unchallenged.

Some U.S. officials acknowledge privately that their hopes that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to rein in Shiite militias and persuade Sunni insurgents to negotiate may be misplaced. Many of the government's leaders, they note, are themselves linked to Shiite or Kurdish militias.

"I keep hope up -- it's misguided perhaps -- that cooler heads will prevail," said a U.S. defense official in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I have to believe that; otherwise all of this has been a tremendous, tremendous fiasco."

Iraq has turned into the tar baby that war opponents long worried it would. War supporters are now reduced to saying that even if we can't go forward, we can't go back -- all we can do is sit there and bleed and hope for the best.

That's not a strategy. A strategy would involve sending in enough troops to establish a certain minimal level of security. That would provide the breathing space to rebuild infrastructure and governmental authority. We've never had enough troops to do the job right, and in that sense our current predicament was entirely predictable.

Achieving our stated objective means deploying enough troops and enough rebuilding aid to secure a strategically significant portion of the country -- including Baghdad. If we are unwilling or unable to do that-- and there has long been a disconnect between our rhetoric in Iraq and the resources we have committed to the job -- then we should admit that our objective is unachievable at acceptable cost and withdraw. Half measures lead to quagmires, and those serve nobody.

Finding sufficient troops may involve going hat in hand to various countries we have been bad-mouthing up until now. It may involve unwelcome exercises in humility and admission of errors. It may involve major drawdowns of U.S. troop levels elsewhere in the world. It may involve even more deployments of reserve units, and more frequent deployments of active-duty ones. But those are the choices facing us. Either get serious about winning, or leave. Anything else is a disservice to both Americans and Iraqis.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Sheik condemns Hezbollah

In an illustration of just how many divides there are in the Mideast, a prominent Saudi Arabian cleric has issued a fatwah against Hezbollah.

This isn't what one might hope: a moderate cleric taking a stand against terrorism or Islamic extremism. The cleric in question is a Sunni Wahhabi Arab fundamentalist -- a group that is generally part of the problem rather than the solution when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

No, this is an example of a Sunni Arab deciding that Shiite Persians are worse than Israeli Jews in this particular instance.

As Israel and Hezbollah turn back the clock in Lebanon, simply listing the divides provides an idea of what the region is up against:

1. Islam/Judaism and Islam/Christianity.

2. Within Islam, Sunni/Shiite.

3. Within those two, fundamentalist sects like Wahhabism and Salafism that often consider "heretic" Muslims to be a bigger problem than non-Muslims.

4. Arabs and Iranians (Persians) both dislike Israel, but they also dislike each other. And everyone dislikes the Kurds. And never mind the dozens of other religious and ethnic splinters like the Maronite Christians and Druze in Lebanon.

5. Tribal divides within ethnic groups.

6. The usual political divides driven by regional or economic interests.

Given that level of parsing, I would venture to say that there is very little one can do in the Middle East that won't end up drawing opposition from a majority of the region's population; their interests are simply too atomized.

When there are a limited number of players and compelling mutual interest, much can be achieved -- witness the Egypt-Israeli peace accords. But as long as the region remains as divided as it is, progress will come in small steps. And it doesn't take much to backslide into a past that nobody seems to want but few have the influence and willpower to avoid.

Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel, politics, midtopia

Off again

I'm going to be away for the next several days, taking the kids to see the grandparents. I might get in occasional posts while I'm gone, but things won't pick up again until Thursday. See you then!

politics, midtopia

Specter FISA bill looks weak

The devil is indeed in the details.

From a Washington Post editorial:

In an effort to win votes, Mr. Specter has turned the bill from a flawed accountability measure into one that rewrites the rules of domestic surveillance and gives the administration an all but blank check to spy.

The most dangerous provision of the proposal would effectively repeal the current law's requirement that all domestic wiretapping take place under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Mr. Specter's bill would amend it to read: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to gather foreign intelligence information or monitor the activities and communications of any person reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign enemy of the United States." The effect would be to withdraw Congress's insistence on regulating domestic spying -- and it would thereby help legitimize whatever the administration might be doing.

The bill also would allow the administration to seek permission from the FISA court system for "an electronic surveillance program," that is, surveillance of large numbers of people who aren't individually named in a warrant. Currently, the court can authorize only individual wiretaps and searches in the cases of people against whom the government presents evidence of terrorist or espionage ties. The bill, however, seems to authorize the administration to ask for a warrant for all kinds of "programs" without showing evidence against any individual, instead showing that the program is lawful and targeted at foreign intelligence collection.

Increasingly this looks like a really bad piece of law.

Why is it that Congress always get rolled by the White House in negotiations?

Bush, Specter, terrorism, NSA, FISA, politics, midtopia

Biting the hand that feeds you

South Korea, which has generally opposed harsh methods to deal with North Korea, yesterday cut off humanitarian aid to its isolated neighbor.

South Korea on Thursday suspended humanitarian aid to North Korea until it agrees to return to international nuclear-disarmament talks.

The action infuriated visiting North Korean officials, who immediately cut off high-level talks in South Korea and returned home.

The decision to postpone consideration of a North Korean request for 500,000 tons of rice marked the South's first punitive action against its impoverished communist neighbor since it defied the international community and test-fired seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 4.

On the one hand it's called "humanitarian aid" for a reason, and shouldn't normally be subject to the vicissitudes of politics.

On the other hand, maybe the North shouldn't be antagonizing the countries that it relies on for food.

What's amazing to me is that North Korea still talks about juche.

Korea, politics, midtopia

Wiretapping issue goes to FISA

A busy day today for the "Is it constitutional?" division of Midtopia.

Besides the Padilla case popping back up, President Bush has agreed to allow the FISA court to review the legality of his warrantless eavesdropping program.

Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who has sharply questioned the propriety of the program since it was disclosed several months ago, said the White House had agreed to a bill that provides for the highly secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to “consider the program as a whole and to make a decision on it.”

Sounds good, but the devil is in the details. For instance:

Mr. Specter said the bill would give the administration “greater flexibility” in applying for emergency eavesdropping orders and would recognize changes in technology, like cellphones, with more specific language on “roving wiretaps.” Ms. Perino agreed with the senator’s assessment, saying that the bill would modernize regulations “to meet the threats we face from an enemy who recognizes no bounds, kills with abandon, hides and masquerades as it plans attacks against us.”

"greater flexibility" could mean a lot of things. I'm all for a reasonable set of rules for determining when a warrant is needed and when it's not. But I hope Specter didn't give away the store -- especially because I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why Bush had to bypass FISA in the first place.

For instance, Specter told committee members that the bill would require government investigators to explain a wiretap's terrorism connection. That's a much looser standard of proof than FISA requires -- loose enough that oversight might prove meaningless.

The bill still has to pass the Senate and be signed by Bush. But while that may take time, it's presumably not a big problem.

We may never know if this fixes the problem or not. Because FISA court decisions are (necessarily) secret, and Specter wouldn't say whether the court would announce the results of its review.

To refresh your memory, here are a couple of summary posts I wrote back when this first came to light:

Eavesdropping primer
Eavesdropping deductions

Specter, Bush, eavesdropping, NSA, FISA, civil liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Padilla gets access to classified evidence

Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber" who was held for three years as an "enemy combatant", has been given permission to personally view classified documents so he can plan a defense in his upcoming trial.

I was all set to write an interesting post about the tension between security and defendant rights in terrorism cases, until I read this:

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke's order issued July 5 allows Padilla to view 32 Defense Department documents that summarize statements Padilla made during his years in military custody. He also can examine 57 videotapes of interrogations he underwent during that same period.

That's right: the government classified summaries and videotapes of Padilla's statements and interrogations, and then used that classification to attempt to deny him access to those documents.

Uh, guys? He was there.

Am I missing something? Because this sure looks like an example of excessive government secrecy to me.

security, terrorism, Padilla, politics, midtopia

Britain considers ban on choosing baby's sex

The British health minister, Caroline Flint, included the idea among others proposed in a review of health regulations.

Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a "clear and specific ban" on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.

Allowing parents to pick sex for reasons such as "balancing" the make-up of their family could be the start of a "slippery slope" to designer babies, she warned.

There are plenty of other things in the article that could spark a discussion, but for the moment let's focus on this.

She's talking about fertility clinics. What she proposes outlawing is any method of screening eggs or sperm for desired characteristics -- gender, hair color, whatever -- before implantation.

My question is: why? Why is this the government's business? Why should anyone care? If they're only going to implant a subset of the eggs anyway, why shouldn't they be able to pick which eggs?

And if they use a technique such as sperm washing, which occurs prior to fertilization, there's even less reason for anyone to care.

I can see one long-term concern. By allowing us to select for specific traits we could end up harming our species' genetic diversity, become something of a monoculture genetically speaking. Which could have large ramifications down the road, from susceptibility to disease to the ability of our species to survive calamities. But that would require mass selection for a small number of traits. So the concern is more theoretical than real.

Thoughts?

ethics, bioethics, reproduction, health, politics, midtopia

GAO: Iraq strategy muddled

The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report yesterday assessing the U.S. strategy in Iraq. You can read the abstract online, and download the full report in pdf format.

Their conclusion: it's a mess, and we're still following a plan based on assumptions that haven't been true for awhile: that security would be established, for instance, and that the international community and Iraq itself would pick up a bigger share of the costs.

They give the administration credit for clearly laying out the national interest and the goals. Where the administration falls short -- as it has in so many other things -- is execution.

I'm still reading through the main report. Some key findings, as far as I'm concerned:

1. Prior to fall 2005, our effort in Iraq lacked a clear, integrated strategy. Specifically:

(1) no unified strategic plan existed that effectively integrated U.S. government political, military, and economic efforts; (2) multiple plans in Iraq and Washington have resulted in competing priorities and funding levels not proportional to the needs of overall mission objectives; (3) focused leadership and clear roles are lacking among State, DOD, and other agencies in the field and in Washington, D.C.; and (4) a more realistic assessment of the capacity limitations of Iraqi central and local government is needed.

Those findings led to the creation of the current plan, which is the subject of the new report. The GAO calls the new plan, known loosely as the NSVI, an improvement but still flawed.

In all, the administration gets terrible marks on identifying costs (and how those costs will be met), risks (and how those risks will be addressed) and integration, as well as the data-gathering needed to determine if the plan is working.

The report also illustrates how unrealistic the administration's early assessments were. The number of troops deemed necessary to achieve security has grown from 162,000 in 2003 to 326,000 in 2005 -- and still the insurgency remains, in the GAO's words, "strong and resilient."

Me, I'm stunned that we had not yet developed a coherent plan more than two years after invading Iraq. It seems like part and parcel of the whole Iraq adventure -- a carefully planned invasion, followed by "and then we fix things." From Jay Garner to the CPA to the continued security problems, we appear to be trying to emulate the British and simply "muddle through."

Three years in, that's simply not good enough.

GAO, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

One worry addressed

Answering one of my worries about the sudden embrace of the Geneva Conventions by the Bush administration, there's some good news.

But first, some context.

The detainees are not being afforded the full protection that a uniformed soldier would get from the Conventions. What they do get is Article 3, which mandates certain minimum standards that must be applied to everyone, not just signatories or regular soldiers. Detainees shall:

in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever:

* violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
* taking of hostages;
* outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
* the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

That's it. The last two items are the most important, prohibiting most forms of torture and speaking to the potential legality of Bush's proposed tribunals.

So with that caveat, we have the following details from the story:

President George W. Bush declared in 2002 that Article 3 did not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but ordered that they be treated humanely "subject to military necessity."

It turned out that "military necessity" left the door open for some of the interrogation techniques observed by FBI agents. Which really spells out the difference between voluntarily following the Conventions and being required to follow them.

The Supreme Court ruling overrides that declaration. But there was some ambiguity, as I noted in my initial post on the ruling -- notably, whether this would apply to prisoners in nonmilitary facilities.

It does.

The Bush administration said all detainees in its war on terrorism are covered by Article 3, without making any distinction between those in military custody and those in custody of agencies such as the
CIA.

Good. Next step: establishing a fair and reasonably transparent method for detainees to challenge their detention, and coming up with a system for determining how long each will be held. In that way we can move them out of the deservedly embarrassing legal limbo they've been living in and back under the rule of law.

geneva convention, civil liberties, Bush, Gitmo, Guantanamo, terrorism, politics, midtopia

An ongoing car crash

The top staffers for Rep. Katherine Harris' troubled Senate campaign will resign this week, continuing an ongoing exodus of help from the campaign.

The departing staff includes Glen Hodas, Harris's campaign manager, her spokesperson, Chris Ingram, and Pat Thomas, her field director. The status of Harris's chief fundraiser, Erin Delullo, is not clear.

Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State who helped put Florida in the Bush column, has been in trouble for a while, exhibiting increasingly bizarre behavior. She trails her opponent, incumbent Bill Nelson, by a mile.

One person involved in the campaign said there was no single precipitating factor. "She's just very difficult to work with. It's all the same stuff. The more than we put her out there, the more she shot herself in the foot," this person said.

This slate of staff lasted just three and a half months; in April, Harris lost her campaign manager, Jamie Miller, and strategist Ed Rollins. Both have since become outspoken critics of Harris's.

As of this post only Ingram, the communication's director, had officially quit. We'll see if the rest of the story proves true in the coming week.

Update: Still no official word, but a second report that Five staffers did, indeed, leave.

Florida, Harris, politics, midtopia

Iran punishment?

As Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas go at it hammer-and-tongs next door, Hezbollah's main backer, Iran, is being hauled back before the U.N. Security Council because it has refused to respond to a European offer over its nuclear program.

"The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on behalf the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany and the
European Union.

Don't expect quick action:

Any real punishment or coercion at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it will seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Debate could begin as soon as next week.

If Iran does not comply, the group said it would then seek harsher action. The group's short statement did not give any specifics, but it cited a section of the world body's charter that could open the door to economic or other sanctions.

Though Russia and China agreed to bring the matter back before the Council, they oppose strong measures against Iran. Still its heartening to see them at least this much on board with the rest of the Council. They could have chosen to let Iran buy a lot more time.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

A victory for the American Way

Superman might not be willing to say it for fear of alienating overseas audiences (the market at work, by the way), but I will.

Bowing to the inevitable, the Bush administration today said all detainees at military facilities, including Guantanamo and other overseas locations, are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

The Bush administration, called to account by Congress after the Supreme Court blocked military tribunals, said Tuesday all detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by
President Bush. That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

This is a victory for the true American Way: the one that values civil liberties and individual freedom, and doesn't abandon our principles the instant we feel that our security is threatened. It's a brave America, one that has the courage to live in a free and open society, even when we think we might be physically safer in a more closed and paranoid society.

This doesn't make everything okay overnight. For one thing, this refers to military facilities, leaving open the possibility -- nay, likelihood -- that it will not be applied to CIA facilities.

And it will take time to heal the damage done to our cause, damage that could have been avoided if we had simply declared this policy from the beginning.

But at least we're here.

How this plays out in practice could become complex. If detainees are covered by Geneva, that implies they are prisoners of war, without recourse to civilian courts. That's fine, as long as the prisoners have the right to challenge their combatant status. And as I've argued before, we really need to start defining which "war" they are being held in, because the generic "war on terror" will go on for a long time and span multiple conflicts. We should recognize the injustice of holding a Taliban foot soldier long after any recognizable conflict in Afghanistan has ended, simply because we're still fighting our "war on terror" in Iraq or Iran or Yemen or wherever.

If they are terrorists, they are criminals and should be charged as such. If they are soldiers, they are POWs, and deserve a clear and precise definition of just which war they can be held until the end of.

Snow gets the unenviable job of trying to cover his bosses' backsides:

"It's not really a reversal of policy," Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision "complex."

Yuh-huh. I understand what he means -- he's saying that we've generally been following the Conventions even while claiming we didn't have to. But "generally following" is far different from being required to faithfully obey the whole thing. It's a reversal of policy, even if the practical effect on the ground is less than a 180-degree turn.

The argument is not over. The Senate began hearings today on the Gitmo military tribunals, and the administration still wants legislation making them legal. But there are also upcoming inquiries into our strategy in Iraq and the various secret surveillance programs that have come to light in recent months. All in all it looks like we're finally going to get a much-needed conversation on just how we wish to fight terror. If you have any interest in the outcome at all, let your elected representatives know. Because what is decided in the upcoming months, against the backdrop of a looming election, will likely determine our country's security/freedom tradeoff for years to come.

Geneva Convention, civil liberties, Guantanamo, Gitmo, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Congress not above the law

A judge has ruled that the FBI did nothing wrong when it searched the Congressional offices of Rep. William Jefferson, who is under suspicion of soliciting bribes.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, in an anxiously awaited 28-page opinion, said politicians were not above the law, and he rejected arguments from the Louisiana Democrat that the search violated the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause, which protects speech and documents related to legislative activity.

"Congressman Jefferson's interpretation of the Speech or Debate privilege would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime," Hogan wrote, rejecting the request to return the seized materials.

Ya think? It kind of boggles my mind that anyone would think Jefferson's defense could hold water. There is a legitimate debate about which documents the FBI can seize, but if criminality is suspected, the fact that the documents are "related to legislative activity" should not be an absolute protection.

The battle isn't over, of course:

Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's lawyer, vowed to appeal the ruling. He said he also planned to request a stay to keep the seized documents under seal pending appeal. If granted, the stay could further delay FBI investigators, who have been waiting to examine the potential evidence in the 15-month probe.

"The raid on Congressman Jefferson's office was unprecedented, unnecessary and unconstitutional," Trout said in a statement, adding that "we respectfully disagree" with the judge's ruling.

Good luck with that.

Jefferson has yet to be charged with anything, so we shouldn't jump to hasty conclusions. But things sure don't look good for him.

FBI, bribery, William Jefferson, politics, midtopia

Coulter syndicate rejects plagiarism charges

Oh, fooey.

The syndicator of Ann Coulter's newspaper columns rejected allegations that she had lifted material from other sources, saying a review of the work in question turned up nothing that merited concern.

"There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism," Lee Salem, editor and president of Universal Press Syndicate, said Monday in a statement.

This isn't all that surprising; the examples from her column were pretty weak. The examples from her book were more compelling, but her publisher there is a partisan publishing house, and they've already rejected the plagiarism accusations -- without serious investigation, IMO.

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. And we've still got the vote-fraud allegations to look forward to.

plagiarism, Coulter, politics, midtopia

The name of the game is escalation

Oh, goody. Japan is considering whether it should launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korean missile sites.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

Japan's constitution currently bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces.

A complicating factor is that Japan doesn't have much in the way of weapons to conduct such a strike. But that's not going to deter them if they really, really feel they have to take out the sites.

Japan certainly has a right to feel threatened, and they can plausibly make a case that they are no longer the most dangerous long-term threat in Asia (neither is North Korea; from a military standpoint, neither is going to be able to touch China in the long-term).

But the specter of a remilitarized Japan is a diplomatic nightmare in a region where the U.S. has many strategic interests and where memories of Japanese atrocities are still fresh. And if that remilitarized Japan's first action is a pre-emptive strike, that will go over very poorly in the region.

Which is why South Korea, arguably the other country most threatened by North Korea, told Japan to cool it -- though they withdrew the statement the next day.

"There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite," a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun's office said, suggesting that Tokyo was contributing to tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Abe said Monday it was "regrettable" that South Korea had accused Japan of overreacting.

"There is no mistake that the missile launch ... is a threat to Japan and the region. It is only natural for Japan to take measures of risk management against such a threat," Abe said.

For the sake of regional stability, we should do what we can to resolve the issue without Japan having to take action on its own. Otherwise we risk an escalation of tensions in the region that helps nobody not named Kim Jong-il.

Japan's saber-rattling could have a diplomatic purpose. The Security Council is considering a resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea. In an acknowledgement of the limited effect such sanctions would have, they've delayed the vote in order to give China time to convince North Korea to give up missile tests and return to the six-party talks they walked away from in November. But Japan could be trying to put pressure on the UN to take action of some sort and not just let the issue die.

China, North Korea, Japan, politics, midtopia

Congress kept in dark on intel programs

Rep. Pete Hoekstra wrote an angry letter (pdf) to President Bush, complaining that he had just found out about various intelligence programs that the administration hadn't bothered briefing Congress about.

"There was at least one major -- what I consider significant -- activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on," Hoekstra said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right."

Hoekstra said the briefings took place after he complained in a May 18 letter to President Bush of hearing about "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not described to committee members in classified briefings. "If these allegations are true," he wrote to Bush, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee."

Two things are interesting about this:

1. He's clearly referring to programs other than the ones we already know about. It shouldn't surprise anyone that such programs exist, but it's worth keeping in mind.

2. The administration appears to ignore its duty to inform Congress about intelligence activities on a fairly regular basis. That may be a generalized executive branch habit, not just one peculiar to this administration. But that doesn't make it acceptable.

Congress should not have to find out about briefable activities and then demand briefings; that undermines the whole idea of Congressional oversight. And it's not like this is resolved. Even after receiving the briefings he sought, Hoekstra said he still thinks the administration is not fulfilling its legal obligations to inform Congress.

I agree. But I'm forced to take this with a grain of salt, seeing as how Hoekstra has been acting a bit idiotic of late.

Hoekstra, terrorism, Bush, politics, midtopia

Coulter plagiarism, continued

It's a bit of a slow news day, so we'll spend some time updating the Coulter case.

TPMmuckraker has gathered as many alleged plagiarism examples as they could find, so you can compare for yourself.

Some of the column examples are unconvincing, although overall they demonstrate that Coulter has a problem with attribution. The book examples are more damning.

Somewhat gleefully fanning the flames, Media Matters has asked Random House, Coulter's publisher, to investigate the book-related charges.

plagiarism, Coulter, politics, midtopia

Fugitive dentist seeks Congressional seat

In the "you couldn't make this up" category:

Jack Shepard, a former Minneapolis dentist who lives in Italy and faces a 23-year-old arson charge, is again running for Congress in Minnesota's 4th District.

Shepard ran long-distance campaigns for Congress in 2004 and for the U.S. Senate in 2002, and was decisively defeated in Republican primaries both times.

On Wednesday, Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer received by mail Shepard's statement of candidacy and filing fee. On Thursday, Kiffmeyer accepted Shepard as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House seat now held by Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum.

Then there's this:

The pending arson charge against Shepard alleges he set fire to his Lake Street dental office on Sept. 3, 1982. He appeared in court on the charge later that year, was released on a recognizance bond and then failed to show up for subsequent hearings, according to Hennepin County court records.

In a series of phone calls and e-mail messages to the Pioneer Press over the last two years, Shepard has repeatedly denied setting fire to the office. He also has said that he was allowed, as a dentist, to possess the narcotics that led to his drug conviction.

Which clearly explains why he fled to Italy and has stayed there for 23 years rather than return and clear his name....

This is almost as funny as the blind hunters in Wisconsin.

Jack Shepard, Congress, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

DeLay stays on the ballot

I wrote earlier -- and disapprovingly -- about a suit filed by Texas Democrats to keep Tom DeLay's name on the ballot.

Well, get this: they won.

The Texas Republican Party must keep Tom DeLay's name on the November election ballot, even though the former congressman has dropped his re-election bid, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

DeLay, the former House majority leader who resigned from office June 9, won the Republican primary for his district in March but decided against re-election a month later.

If that decision stands -- and a Republican appeal is almost a certainty -- it would all-but-guarantee that Democrat Nick Lampson will take over DeLay's seat come November.

The reason DeLay resigned when he did was so he could help handpick his successor -- without having to go through that messy piece of intraparty democracy known as a primary. So on one level the Dems have merely foiled one last shady maneuver by the Hammer.

But the extended legal dispute also keeps the GOP from naming a replacement, thus delaying their ability to start campaigning and raising funds. So it's a strategic move by the Dems as well.

One could argue that this is simply DeLay reaping what he sowed: an emphasis on hardball partisanship, regardless of the cost to the nation. It might be considered poetic justice for him to be beaten into the ground with his own favorite weapon.

But that's what everyone disliked about DeLay; Democrats do themselves no favors by emulating him. They need to rise above it and show that they really are different, and that they really do repudiate DeLay and everything he stands for.

So I stand by my earlier position: The Dems should drop the suit and let the Reps name whatever replacement they want. Democracy is not served when a contest is essentially reduced to a one-party race because of legal technicalities. Sugarland voters deserve a choice in November.

Texas, Lampson, DeLay, politics, midtopia

Two setbacks for gay marriage

In New York, the state's highest court said an existing ban on gay marriage is constitutional, and so it's up to legislators to remove it.

The Court of Appeals in a 4-2 decision said New York's marriage law is constitutional and clearly limits marriage to between a man and a woman. Any change in the law should come from the state Legislature, Judge Robert Smith wrote.

"We do not predict what people will think generations from now, but we believe the present generation should have a chance to decide the issue through its elected representatives," Smith wrote.

The case featured one interesting image: Elliot Spitzer, who supports gay marriage, defending the state's gay-marriage ban in his role as attorney general. Anyone want to bet whether Republicans will try to use that fact to weaken Spitzer's support among gay-rights supporters?

Hours later, Georgia's top court reinstituted a gay marriage ban that had been invalidated on a technicality by a lower court.

In an ideal world, the state would get out of the marriage business altogether and leave it to churches. But that's not going to happen.

So I take the long view on things like this. Can we codify anti-gay sentiment? Yes. But we can also uncodify it when the time comes. Each succeeding generation is less and less concerned about their neighbors' sexual orientation. In 20 years these laws will start to be repealed, viewed with the same faint tinge of embarassment that haunted anti-miscegnation laws in their last dreary days.

In the meantime, we should pass laws ensuring same-sex couples enjoy the same legal rights as heterosexual couples in the areas that matter: inheritance, medical decisions, tax law and adoption. That's a simple matter of fairness.

gay marriage, Spitzer, New York, politics, midtopia

Ken Lay dies...

... and I try, and fail, to care.

I'm sure his mother loved him. And I certainly didn't wish him dead. But I save my sympathy for those who deserve it. Other than that, I tend to share the view of Andrew Cohen:

I think the company's demise ruined him, financially and otherwise, and eventually killed him. What more punishment does anyone want above that? Instead of dying a slow death in some tax-funded prison world, Lay died a quick death on the eve of his federal sentencing. As sad as any man's death is, Lay's death is not an entirely unfitting one given his personality, his role at Enron, and his place in the history of corporate America.

When I first heard the news, I jokingly told my wife, "he died because he knew too much."

Little did I know that the conspiracy theorists had gotten there ahead of me.

And then there are the people who think he was some sort of hero. I kid you not.

How many more innocent people will moonbats railroad into jail? How many more will they drive into stress-induced death?

Kenneth Lay is the Socrates of our times, the St. Thomas More of the early 21st century. His innocence transforms his loss into martyrdom; the blood of martyrs demands retribution. The moonbat media moguls that hounded this poor man’s every waking moment must suffer as he suffered, in jail or Guantanamo. It is the only way to restore justice to America.

Uh, sure, dude. Put down the mouse and back away from the keyboard. Slowly.

Ken Lay, Enron, politics, midtopia

North Korea's Fourth of July

Apparently inspired by all the bottlerockets we Americans were preparing to send skyward, North Korea launched seven missiles yesterday.

After firing six missiles over four hours early Wednesday, North Korea continued its unprecedented series of tests by sending a seventh into the Sea of Japan some 12 hours later during rush hour in Japanese cities.

Most of the missiles were known short-range weapons. They weren't test flights; they were demonstrations of North Korea's missile capacity.

One of the missiles was the new Taepodong-2, which some analysts fear can hit the United States.

But the missile considered most dangerous to the United States -- the long-range Taepodong-2 potentially capable of hitting targets on the U.S. West Coast -- appeared to fail on its first test flight after only 35 seconds and before it entered the second of two-stages, dealing a blow to the North Korean missile program, Japanese and U.S. officials said.

Before we go much farther, let's put some of these worries into perspective. The estimated range of the Taepodong-2 is thought to be between 2,500 and 2,800 miles. That's not far enough to hit the United States. There is worry that future versions of the missile could have extra stages that would boost the range to as much as 5,600 miles. But what all that boils down to is that we have no real idea of the missile's range, and it poses no current threat.

Second, while the missile exploding is better news than a successful test flight, North Korea would still have gotten useful telemetry out of it. The data they glean from the failure will increase the odds of success the next time they test it.

On the other hand, the failure could show the deterioration of North Korea's missile program:

Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank with ties to the Pentagon, said the failure of the first stage of the Taepodong-2 missile -- after working in 1998 -- could underscore that North Korea "hadn't done much with this missile in ten years."

"The possible bright spot is maybe they're really losing their edge. Of course, errors do happen. And it's not impossible that this was just a technical glitch, and they could put another one on the launch pad in a month, let's say," Goure said.

Of course, a conspiracy theorist might consider the possibility that North Korea blew up the missile intentionally. I'm not sure why they would do that, but with North Korea it's best not to rule out such things.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is meeting to discuss the development (with China resisting strong measures and even South Korea opposing economic sanctions), Japan has imposed limited sanctions and just about everybody is condemning the launches.

So what does it mean? I'm inclined to consider it an Ann Coulter-like cry for attention, a bid for direct talks with the United States. That seems a bit pointless on one level: I wouldn't expect such talks to produce anything useful, given North Korea's past willingness to ignore treaties and agreements. But perhaps they think such talks might lead to U.S. concessions, and maybe they just want the prestige of being treated seriously by the United States.

As long as North Korea remains under China's wing, there's little serious pressure we can bring to bear. On the plus side, North Korea continues to be more buffoon than bear, wanting to be taken seriously but not truly interested in igniting a shooting war or doing anything that will cause China to withdraw support.

In the end I'm less worried about North Korea's own missiles than I am about their eagerness to sell their missiles and technology to anyone who wants them (hey, maybe that's what this was: a sales demonstration). It's bad enough for one crazy dictator to have such weapons; it's worse when he shares them with the other crazy dictators.

The one meaningful sanction we might try imposing is a ban on North Korea missile sales. That would hit them in their hard-currency soft spot, and also allow us to legally intercept shipments like the one that got away back in 2002.

After that, we can get back to worrying about their claims to have nuclear weapons.

Taepodong, missiles, North Korea, politics, midtopia

Coulter caught plagiarizing?

The New York Post reports that the developer of a plagiarism-detection program has found multiple instances of copy-catting by Ann Coulter.

John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column....

Is this important? Not at all, unless you take Coulter seriously. And perhaps there's an innocent explanation. But as with her vote-fraud problem, it's good to see the karma system working properly.

Update: The company that syndicates Coulter's column has asked for details of the plagiarism accusations. This could either confirm or debunk the charges.

Update II: Here's a video of Barrie's appearance on MSNBC, which includes examples of the text he says was plagiarized.

plagiarism, Coulter, politics, midtopia

Bad omen?

I know news photographers have to work really hard to get new and interesting pictures of shuttle launches. But perhaps this guy worked a little too hard.

The caption:

A vulture sits on a pole near the space shuttle Discovery at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-B Monday morning July 3, 2006 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Workers inspecting the shuttle's external tank discovered a crack in the insulating foam. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

That's right. On a day when everyone is wondering if we can get the shuttle into orbit and back down to earth safely, we get a photo juxtaposing a vulture with the shuttle.

The launch was scrubbed twice this weekend, and now they've discovered a crack in the foam on the big external tank. They're still hoping to launch on July 4.

Which reminds me of the other crass shuttle-related imagery I've encountered. Way back in 1985, I spent a summer in Germany. One day some friends and I went shopping for fireworks. Among the items we purchased was a large bottle rocket with a little space shuttle on the top. Light it, step back, and watch it climb into the sky and explode.

I thought it was kind of funny at the time, a poorly thought-out tribute. Then two years later Challenger did it for real.

I still find this stuff morbidly funny. I've always had a weakness for gallows humor, which came in handy in the military. But I recognize poor taste when I see it.

Good luck to NASA and the astronauts.

Update: The shuttle launched safely, with no apparent damage from falling foam.

Challenger, astronauts, Discovery, shuttle, NASA, politics, midtopia