The perils of restricting free speech

As all of you undoubtedly know by now, Iran is hosting a conference on the Holocaust. Billed as an academic inquiry, the thinly-veiled gathering of Holocaust deniers has drawn international criticism.

Let's be clear here. Holocaust deniers rank right up there with flat-earthers as people not to be taken seriously. They're a bit like creationists, pointing to bits and pieces here and there, or building elaborate theories based on the flimsiest conjectures, all while ignoring the towering mountains of evidence all around them.

But frankly I think the conference mostly demonstrates why countries like Germany and Austria are misguided when they make denying the Holocaust a crime.

Why? Because by banning discussion of the topic, they make racist, conspiratorial fools like David Duke look reasonable, even civic-minded. From his website:

In some Western nations, to diverge even slightly from Holocaust orthodoxy will cause an historian to face not only a loss of academic career but also imprisonment.

The main theme of the Holocaust Conference is that there must be freedom of speech on this subject as on all others. Free speech, inquiry and debate is the only way to learn the truth on any issue. Many Western governments have imprisoned many academics for simply expressing their historical opinions on the Holocaust.

For instance, world-renowned historian David Irving at this moment sits in a prison near Vienna, Austria for simply stating his historical opinion about Auschwitz in a lecture in Austria in 1989. German researcher/chemist Gemar Rudolf faces years of imprisonment for simply publishing a forensic analysis that challenged the authenticity of alleged Auschwitz gas chambers...

First, freedom of speech is a vital human right. It is the cornerstone of all other rights, because without freedom of speech no one has to the right to even freely know and learn of the abrogation of other rights affecting human freedom and survival. That is why the American founding fathers put freedom of speech, press and religion as the first and highest of the Bill of Rights.

Second, freedom of speech and debate are absolutely vital for the truth to prevail. If one side of any controversial issue can suppress the voice of opposition, we cannot arrive at the certainty of any truth. If academics and citizens can be career and monetarily blackmailed; if they can be threatened with firings, loss of income, or imprisonment from simply sincerely pursuing an historical inquiry and publishing it, how can the truth be fairly arrived at?

See? Duke is simply asking for the right to speak freely, and may the best idea win. How can you disagree with him? You can't; he's right. And by banning him you give him the opportunity not only to indulge his paranoid fantasies ("Look! Look! I'm being repressed!") but to cloak himself in the language of light and freedom.

Never mind that he's a lying loon. He also writes:

I and Davidduke.com take no hard position on the historical accuracy of the Holocaust. Obviously, Jews, as well as other nationalities suffered great losses during the Second World War.

But at the conference in Iran:

On Monday, Mr. Duke asserted that the gas chambers in which millions of Jews perished did not actually exist. In prepared remarks published by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, he contended that the depiction of Jews as the “overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”

Hmmm... no hard position, except the gas chambers didn't exist. Sure, Dave.

See what happened there? We gave Duke some light, and exposed him for a fraud. That's how free speech works; while bad ideas are never actually banished, they lose their ability to influence the mainstream. Banning bad ideas merely gives bad ideas credibility and a certain outlaw panache.

I recognize that the Holocaust is a much more provocative and painful topic in Europe than it is here in the States. And I can even understand -- though not agree with -- the feeling that such talk needed to be controlled immediately after the war. But 60 years have passed; three generations have been born since then, more than enough time to get some historical distance on those dark days. Holocaust censorship now does more harm than good, and should be stopped.

Update: Duke goes on CNN and calls Wolf Blitzer a "Jewish extremist." And that was before he got really nutty.

free speech, civil liberties, Holocaust, Iran, politics, midtopia

Why does anyone read WorldNetDaily?

Some conservative bloggers are fond of citing the Richard Mellon Scaife-backed WorldNetDaily or its evil twin, NewsMax, to support their arguments. When I criticize such sources, I get accused of attacking the source instead of attacking the argument.

Enter the Captain. I view Captain's Quarters the same way I view Antonin Scalia -- I disagree with much of what he says, but there's no denying that he is smart and thoughtful. He's one of the most influential conservative bloggers out there.

Here's what he has to say about WND:

While this article is an opinion column and therefore slightly less egregious than the news article from last month, it uses some of the same tricks seen in that WND exclusive. It references vague 'studies' without ever naming them or providing links to them. It assumes that a food element consumed for thousands of years in Asia in significant amounts without turning it into a large version of Fire Island has suddenly begun feminizing Americans.

WND reminds me of the National Enquirer. It sometimes gets stories right, and most of the time has at least some elements of truth. More often than they should, WND relies on hyperbole and outrageous exaggeration to draw attention to its political agenda. Readers who know this can pick their way through the chaff -- but those readers know better than to waste their time at WND.

The "last month" article he refers to is this one.

The WND article that triggered all this is here.

Loons.

WorldNetDaily, blogging, politics, midtopia

The nature of civil war

James Traub, one of my favorite writers, has a piece in this Sunday's New York Times on Iraq and civil wars in general. He quotes James Fearon, a Stanford University expert on civil conflicts, who ticks off the death toll, the massive refugee flows, the major players, and says "by any reasonable definition, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war."

But that's not really the point of this post, which is to delve into what we might expect in the future as Iraq is consumed by sectarian conflict.

Scholars and diplomats who have closely studied civil wars describe them almost as forces of nature, grinding on until the parties exhaust themselves, shredding bonds that cannot be stitched back together even long years after the killing stops.

Wars that do not end quickly -- as the Rwanda civil war did, for instance -- tend to drag on for years. Take Northern Ireland, for example, or (as the article does) Bosnia and Lebanon. All three continued until everyone finally recognized that they were not going to win by force alone and decided that just about any alternative, including compromise with hated enemies, was better than continuing to fight.

In Lebanon -- perhaps the best parallel for Iraq -- that came only after 5 percent of the population was killed or wounded and half had become refugees. Translated to Iraq, those numbers would mean a war that caused 1.3 million casualties and uprooted 13 million people.

The good news, I suppose, is that we're already making excellent headway on those numbers, with death estimates in the 100,000-plus range and 3.4 million refugees.

Given that civil wars are driven by grievances rooted in tribal, religous and ethnic divisions, it's possible to view an Iraq civil war as inevitable. In this instance we were the catalyst, knocking over the dictator that kept the lid on the bubbling pot. But Saddam wasn't going to live forever, and when he finally shuffled off the scene the suppressed tensions were likely to explode anyway. And one could argue that it's better for that to happen sooner rather than later -- otherwise the grievances keep piling up and make the subsequent spasm of violence that much more gruesome.

So what happens if civil war is indeed in Iraq's future? Assuming the Kurds don't simply secede and the Shiites don't overrun the Sunni, this:

When the sectarian combatants finally do exhaust themselves, Iraq will need a great deal of outside help, though not the kind it has received so far. Civil wars liquidate the trust among parties that makes settlements possible; outsiders must act as guarantors and, usually, peacekeepers. And they have to be prepared to make a major commitment: NATO put 60,000 troops in Bosnia, with a population less than one-sixth that of Iraq, to police the Dayton Accords that ended the war. Today 1,900 soldiers from the European Union are sufficient to do the job.

For Iraq, that means returning in several years as peacekeepers, 400,000 strong -- the same number, not coincidentally, that we should have gone in with in the first place. And it probably won't be us doing it, but a coalition of non-Western forces, perhaps under UN flag, that won't rekindle the anti-Western resistance our presence has provoked.

Perhaps from the perspective of history our invasion of Iraq, flawed as it was, will not be viewed as a horrible catastrophe that caused all sorts of problems in the Mideast. Instead, it will be viewed as the event that merely triggered a catastrophe that was coming anyway. It's a measure of our attenuated ambitions that such a historical verdict might be something for us to hope for.

civil war, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Regional winners and losers in the 110th Congress

Technical note: You may see several versions of this post over the next few hours, as it is my first attempt to include a table with a post. If it looks weird in your browser, let me know.

The Democrats have nailed down most of their committee assignments for the new Congress. Much has been made of the race and gender of the new chairmen and chairwomen. But what does that tell us about how business will be conducted come January?

Beyond the politics of the individual chairmen, consider the way power shifted regionally.

SENATE

Committee	Former chairman	Incoming chairman
Aging	Gordon Smith (R-Ore.)	Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry	Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)	Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
Appropriations	Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)	Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Armed Services Committee	John Warner (R-Va.)	Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs	Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)	Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)
Budget	Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)	Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
Commerce, Science, and Transportation	Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)	Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Energy and Natural Resources	Pete Domenici (R-N.M.)	Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)
Environment and Public Works	James Inhofe (R-Okla.)	Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Ethics	Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)	Tim Johnson (D-S.D.)
Finance	Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)	Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
Foreign Relations	Pete Domenici (R-N.M.)	Joe Biden (D-Del.)
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions	Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)	Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs	Susan Collins (R-Maine)	Joe Lieberman (I/D-Conn.)
Indian Affairs	John McCain (R-Ariz.)	Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Intelligence	Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)	Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Judiciary	Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)	Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
Rules and Administration	Trent Lott (R-Miss.)	Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Small Business and Entrepreneurship	Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)	John Kerry (D-Mass.)
Veterans' Affairs	Larry Craig (R-Idaho)	Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)

Analysis: Power shifted generally from the middle and South to California, New England and the Upper Midwest. Mississippi and Maine each lost two chairmanships, New Mexico and Iowa broke even, while Hawaii, California, North Dakota, West Virginia, Connecticut and Massachusetts each gained two. The middle South remains shut out.


HOUSE

Committee	Former chairman	Incoming chairman
Agriculture	Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)	Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)
Appropriations	Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.)	David Obey (D-Wis.)*
Armed Services	Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.)	Ike Skelton (D-Mo.)
Budget	Jim Nussle (R-Iowa)	John Spratt (D-S.C.)
Education and the Workforce	Howard McKeon (R-Calif.)	George Miller (D-Calif.)
Energy and Commerce	Joe Barton (R-Texas)	John Dingell (D-Mich.)
Ethics	Doc Hastings (R-Wash.)	Howard Berman (D-Calif.)
Financial Services	Michael Oxley (R-Ohio)	Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
Government Reform	Tom Davis (R-Va.)	Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)
Homeland Security	Peter King (R-N.Y.)	Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
House Administration	Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.)	Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.)
Intelligence	Peter Hoekstra (R. Mich.)	Silvestre Reyes (D-.N.Y.)
International Relations	Henry Hyde (R-Ill.)	Tom Lantos (D-Calif.)
Judiciary	James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)	John Conyers (D-Mich.)
Resources	Richard Pombo (R-Calif.)	Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.)
Rules	David Dreier (R-Calif.)	Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.)
Science	Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.)	Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Small Business	Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.)	Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.)
Transportation and Infrastructure	Don Young (R-Alaska)	James Oberstar (D-Minn.)
Veterans' Affairs	Steve Buyer (R-Ind.)	Bob Filner (D-Calif.)
Ways and Means	Bill Thomas (R-Calif.)	Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)

Analysis: A more muddied picture, but generally power shifted from Virginia and the Central Midwest -- Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio -- to New England, the Upper Midwest and the South. Alaska, again, lost its only chairmanship. Texas, California, Wisconsin and Michigan broke even; New York went from two to three chairmanships. The West remains entirely shut out.

Looking at specific subject areas, you can predict what sort of legislation will make it out of certain committees in both houses:

Agriculture: Midwest (Minnesota, Iowa) takes over from the South (Georgia, Virginia). Among other things, might the dairy subsidy system (which has long penalized farmers in the Upper Midwest) be in for a reform effort? Also expect efforts to increase tax credits for ethanol production.

Energy: The House chairmanship stays in New Mexico, but the Senate chair shifts from Texas to Michigan. Look for fewer "drill more!" solutions and more emphasis on alternative energy. ANWR will remain untouched.

Transportation: The Alaskan stranglehold that led to such excesses as the "Bridge to Nowhere" is gone, replaced by a Hawaiian and a Minnesotan. Look for a greater emphasis on air travel. Further, with both states sharing large port facilities, expect stepped up efforts on port security and infrastructure.

Anyone see any other patterns of significance? Point 'em out!

politics, midtopia

Democrats still sounding good

As the lame-duck session of Congress drew to a close, the Democrats are still managing to make the right noises on reform.

Several days ago, they announced the new Congress would work a five-day week -- a far cry from the current Congress, which was lackadaisical on a historic scale, tending to put in three-day weeks and notching the fewest days of work of any Congress since reliable records were first compiled in 1948.

One legislator's complaint, while understandable, isn't likely to land on many sympathetic ears:

But Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families, that's what this says."

Right. Tell it to all the people who have to do such things every day. Maybe this will make him more sympathetic to working conditions, labor laws and bills dealing with child care and flexible scheduling.

Opponents have a point when they say that lawmakers' work away from Washington can be just as important as the work done in the Capitol. But it's hard to argue things are fine when this same light-load Congress failed to pass nine of 11 appropriations bills, which after all is their main job.

The news provoked some interesting perspectives from WaPo readers, including several who weren't thrilled at the prospect of a Congress with more time to do mischief.

Separately, the Democrats also blocked a proposed Congressional pay raise unless Congress also ups the minimum wage. It's a bit of a gimmick -- the pay raise will go into effect in several weeks unless Congress votes to block it again. And several critics objected to it being tied to the minimum wage, claiming the two issues aren't related. And they're right to an extent. One involves Congress changing its own pay structure; the other involves the government intruding on private pay structures nationwide.

But I for one don't mind. Legislators are well-paid already, so it's hard to show an overwhelming need for a pay raise. In fact, indexing Congressional pay to inflation was a way for Congress to avoid the politically unpopular act of voting itself a pay increase while still getting the money.

And the minimum wage is exactly that -- a minimum -- and hasn't been increased in nearly 10 years. Raising it isn't going to have a major effect on the economy; it will simply keep the minimum wage from becoming irrelevant.

As with many things, however, we must now wait and see what the Democrats actually do when they take control. The table has been set; let's see what they serve up.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Ruh-roh

Meet Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nice guy, by all accounts quite smart and hard working.

And stunningly ignorant.

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up a l Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil....

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

Let me help you out, Silvestre. They're a Shiite militia in Lebanon backed by Syria and Iran.

Yeepers.

Does it make anyone feel better to know that key Republicans and FBI counterterrorism officials fared poorly on the same test? Cuz it sure doesn't do anything for me. These guys are paid $160,000 a year to understand this stuff. The fact that I am apparently more familiar with the forces at play than they are is -- well, pick your adjective: absurd? appalling? frightening?

But it goes a long way towards explaining why we've done such a horrible job in Iraq.

As I noted above, Reyes is by all accounts a very smart man. Let's hope he's a quick study, because the nation is going to need it.

terrorism, Islam, Iraq, Reyes, politics, midtopia

Immigration and crime

It seems obvious that new immigrants -- and especially illegal immigrants -- bring with them various short-term ills, including increased crime. There's nothing particularly surprising about that belief; crime is often correlated to poverty and limited opportunity, and new immigrants tend to be poor and face barriers of language and culture that can make social mobility difficult.

One problem though; the popular belief appears to be untrue. As immigration has skyrocketed, crime has fallen.

Ramiro Martinez Jr., a professor of criminal justice at Florida International University, has sifted through homicide records in border cities like San Diego and El Paso, both heavily populated by Mexican immigrants, both places where violent crime has fallen significantly in recent years. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “I’ve discovered that the homicide rate for Hispanics was lower than for other groups, even though their poverty rate was very high, if not the highest, in these metropolitan areas.” He found the same thing in the Haitian neighborhoods of Miami. In his book “New York Murder Mystery,” the criminologist Andrew Karmen examined the trend in New York City and likewise found that the “disproportionately youthful, male and poor immigrants” who arrived during the 1980s and 1990s “were surprisingly law-abiding” and that their settlement into once-decaying neighborhoods helped “put a brake on spiraling crime rates.”

The article quotes other researchers who found similar things. And even David Brooks has noted that as illegal immigration surged in the 1990s, the violent crime rate fell by 57 percent.

There are plenty of alternative explanations for doubters. Perhaps the effect of immigrants was simply overwhelmed by other factors, like the booming economy. One such critic also notes that illegals are less likely to report crime, thus masking the true crime rate in immigrant neighborhoods.

But that doesn't truly explain experiences like this:

In June, Sampson and I drove out to a neighborhood in Little Village, Chicago’s largest Hispanic community. The area we visited is decidedly poor: in terms of per capita income, 84 percent of Chicago neighborhoods are better off and 99 percent have a greater proportion of residents with a high-school education. As we made our way down a side street, Sampson noted that many of the residents make their living as domestic workers and in other low-wage occupations, often paid off the books because they are undocumented. In places of such concentrated disadvantage, a certain level of violence and social disorder is assumed to be inevitable.

As we strolled around, Sampson paused on occasion to make a mental note of potential trouble signs: an alley strewn with garbage nobody had bothered to pick up; a sign in Spanish in several windows, complaining about the lack of a park in the vicinity where children can play. Yet for all of this, the neighborhood was strikingly quiet. And, according to the data Sampson has collected, it is surprisingly safe. The burglary rate in the neighborhood is in the bottom fifth of the city. The overall crime rate is nearly in the bottom third.

Sampson's theory is that many Mexican immigrant communities are tight-knit, with neighbors watching out for neighbors. He also notes that Mexican immigrants are more likely to be married than either blacks or whites. In short, they're more socially conservative, even if they are here illegally.

Two more interesting things researchers have found. One, second-generation immigrants are substantially more likely to commit crimes than their parents; and third-generation immigrants are even more likely still. So the more Americanized they become, the more criminally inclined they become.

Second, one reason why immigrant neighborhoods are linked to crime in the public eye:

The experiment drew on interviews with more than 3,500 Chicago residents, each of whom was asked how serious problems like loitering and public drinking were where they lived. The responses were compared with the actual level of chaos in the neighborhood, culled from police data and by having researchers drive along hundreds of blocks to document every sign of decay and disorder they could spot.

The social and ethnic composition of a neighborhood turned out to have a profound bearing on how residents of Chicago perceived it, irrespective of the actual conditions on the streets. “In particular,” Sampson and Raudenbush found, “the proportion of blacks and the proportion of Latinos in a neighborhood were related positively and significantly to perceived disorder.” Once you adjusted for the ethnic, racial and class composition of a community, “much of the variation in levels of disorder that appeared to be explained by what residents saw was spurious.”

In other words, the fact that people think neighborhoods with large concentrations of brown-skinned immigrants are unsafe makes sense in light of popular stereotypes and subliminal associations. But that doesn’t mean there is any rational basis for their fears.

When something is this counterintuitive, I'm reluctant to accept it at face value. But it's something to consider, at any rate.

crime, immigration, race, politics, midtopia

Ethics committee rebukes GOP over Foley

That's a sexy headline, but for the most part there's nothing here we didn't already know. The GOP leadership knew about the relatively tame e-mails, and evinced roughly zero curiosity over them. A failing, to be sure, but an understandable one. When you hear about a friend of yours being friendly with the kids, your first thought generally isn't "I wonder if he's a pedophile?"

This is not to let them off the hook. As the full report (pdf) states, on Page 74:

The Investigative Subcommittee does not conclude, however, that the e-mails sent to the former Alexander page were merely "overly friendly", as they have often been described... When read carefully and in context, the e-mails reflect inappropriate communications... (the committee) finds no merit to any of hte suggested justifications by Rep. Foley or anyone on his staff for the tone or content of the e-mails....

The emails clearly provided sufficient basis to at the very least confront Rep. Foley.

So while resignations aren't in order, severe shaming and political beatings are.

There is, however, the matter of the far-more-lurid instant messages. The IMs were highly incriminating. If anyone knew about them and did nothing, they should be sanctioned.

But on page 75 the report flatly states that there is no evidence anyone in the House knew of the IMs prior to their publication by ABC.

Finally, who provided the e-mails and IMs to ABC? The e-mails are easy; they had been circulating among media outlets for nearly a year, to the poitn that by this summer Foley's office assumed that every reporter they talked to knew about the e-mails. It was only a matter of time before someone -- in this case, ABC -- published them.

And the IMs? There was a lot of speculation that they were released by Democratic sources. but it turns out it was simply a former page (see page 62 of the report). The IMs had been circulating among the pages for years, but none of them thought to send them to the media until the e-mail story broke.

And so the story ends. The GOP leadership gets slapped around, but they already received most of their comeuppance at the polls. And all the Republican conspiracy theories about a Democratic "October surprise" prove false.

corruption, Foley, politics, midtopia

What does this say about terror?

Police have foiled a plot -- and I use the term loosely -- to "blow up" a Chicago-area shopping mall, as the AP headline breathlessly reports.

A Muslim convert who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians was charged Friday in a plot to set off hand grenades at a shopping mall at the height of the Christmas rush, authorities said.

Blow up a mall? He wanted four hand grenades, and planned to set them off in garbage cans. Not particularly nice, but a far cry from "blowing up" a mall.

Let's note two other things about this case:

1. As usually happens, he never got close to carrying out his plan. He was arrested when he met with an undercover agent to trade stereo speakers for the grenades.

2. He was caught through old-fashioned police work: a tip from an acquaintance, followed by a police sting operation.

Thus this case demonstrates two things:

1. The low threat actually posed by terrorists. Most of the people we've been arresting lately are low-capability loons. We haven't sniffed a serious domestic plot since shortly after 9/11.

2. Law enforcement is the proper venue for catching and punishing would-be terrorists, with a supporting role provided by the military and intelligence agencies. And they don't need to dramatically curtail civil liberties to do it.

I'm not suggesting that terrorism is something to be taken lightly; far from it. We should take it very seriously indeed, as these police did. Beyond catching bad guys, we should take reasonable and prudent security measures to make us less vulnerable to attack in the first place. And the perps should be punished severely.

But we do not need to overreact.

For more detail on that approach, check out "Terror: a military or a criminal problem" in my sidebar, under "Notable Posts".

civil+liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Xenophobia

Where does the "War on Terror" end and simple racism begin?

In Texas.

A plan to build a mosque in this Houston suburb has triggered a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims.

What did the Muslims do? They bought an 11-acre parcel for $1.1 million, on which they plan to build the mosque, and asked a neighbor to stop pasturing his cattle on it. He got mad and vowed to do pig races.

It could all be a misunderstanding:

Baker ... mistakenly thought the Muslims also wanted him off the land his family has lived on for more than 100 years.

Except Baker still seeks his revenge.

Though he now concedes the Muslims are probably not after his land, Baker said he is obligated to go through with the pig races, probably within the next few weeks, because “I would be like a total idiot if I didn’t. I’d be the laughingstock now because I’ve gone too far.”

Meanwhile, another resident has set up an anti-Islamic Web site that claims residents will have to listen to a call to prayer five times a day, keeps a running tally of terrorist attacks since 9/11 and provides the home addresses of some of the Muslim association members.

And the Sheriff has been fielding calls like this one:

Cynthia Blackman wrote Radack that the center was a security risk: “Would you and your family safely and comfortably live next to this 11-acre Muslim mosque and facilities?”

Xenophobia really brings out the stupid in people.

racism, Islam, religion, politics, midtopia

Bush on ISG: Don't hold your breath

In response to the Iraq Study Group's report (which I blogged about here), President Bush today essentially blew them off.

President Bush said today that the United States needs "a new approach" in Iraq, but he implicitly rejected a key recommendation of a bipartisan panel that issued a hard-hitting report yesterday: the holding of direct talks with Iran and Syria independently of other issues.

Beyond that, he continued to insist on "victory" in Iraq, despite rising criticism -- including from the ISG -- that his definition of victory is unachievable.

He also refused to acknowledge that his strategy has failed.

That's his right, of course, but those are not the words or actions of man who is open to major changes of course.

To be fair, it can be very hard for anyone -- and most especially someone with Bush's stubborn personality -- to be told that their plan has failed. It's doubly difficult when the message is delivered clearly, in public and in some measure by his dad (through family proxy James Baker).

And it doesn't get easier when Baker throws doubt on one of Bush's orginal reasons for invading.

Both Baker and Hamilton also questioned one of the Bush administration's original premises for the 2003 invasion -- that going into Iraq was necessary to defeat al Qaeda and other terrorist groups following the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

Asked directly by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) whether Iraq was central to the war on terror, Baker said "it may not have been when we first went in," even though he felt "it certainly is now."

Ouch. And I'd even dispute the "certainly is now" line. Sunni Iraqi leaders are already miffed with the foreign jihadists; once we leave those jihadists will be persona non grata in large parts of Iraq. Al Qaeda simply does not have much popular support among Iraqis of any stripe.

Administration officials said Bush will make a decision on Iraq strategy in the next few weeks. Let's hope his eventual decision is more promising than his initial reaction.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Quran dustup, revisited

A followup on the "controversy" over Keith Ellison's plan to be sworn in on a Koran.

Not only are Jewish and Muslim leaders alike demanding that Prager apologize; we have yet more examples of how he's simply wrong historically.

In his Nov. 28 column, Prager claimed that all members of Congress, including Jews, use a Christian Bible for the swearing-in ceremony.

However, members of Congress are sworn in together in a simple ceremony that only requires that the representatives raise their right hand. Individuals may carry a sacred text, but its presence isn't required. Representatives can bring in whatever they want, said Fred Beuttler, House of Representatives deputy historian.

In his column, Prager also claimed that no "Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon." In 1997, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon), a Mormon, carried a Bible that included the Book of Mormon to his swearing-in ceremony. But Ellison's use of a Quran isn't without precedent. In 1999, Osman Siddique became the first Muslim to serve abroad as a U.S. ambassador, and he took his oath using both a Quran and a Bible.

I hope he continues to refuse to apologize. It's fun beating him black and blue with his own ignorance.

Keith Ellison, Dennis Prager, Islam, religion, politics, midtopia

The second battle of Pearl Harbor

The New York Times came up with the best Dec. 7 story, hands down -- a never-published article by their wartime correspondent on the astonishing salvage work after the Japanese attack.

The discussion of how they refloated the battleship West Virginia is incredible -- filling the gaping holes in her hull with concrete, attaching cofferdams to slowly raise her, gingerly moving her into drydock, then blasting the concrete out with dynamite so they could get to work on repairs. It was more of rebuilding than a repair, and came with its own hazards -- like the discovery of an unexploded 1,750-pound bomb deep in the ship's guts.

It's a classic story of the unheralded side of warfare, which is as moving and dramatic as any story of battlefield heroism.

Pearl Harbor, war, history, politics, midtopia

"Sink or Swim" in Iraq

It took me awhile, but I've finally read the entire ISG report.

There's nothing earth-shattering in their analysis of the current situation -- though they flatly reject "stay the course" and note that terrorists are a small part of the problem -- and nothing paradigm-shifting in their proposed solutions. But both are very solid, very reasonable. I came away with two impressions:

1. The report's biggest contribution may be a shifting of the debate, because it rather authoritatively makes assertions about various things that have been bones of contention for years. War opponents will be unhappy with its conclusion that Iraq is of critical interest to the U.S.; war supporters will be unhappy with a whole slew of things, mostly relating to the reality on the ground and the prospects for certain pet strategies. The analysis will be familiar to anyone who frequents centrist sites. So in a way, the ISG report is another triumph for moderates.

2. The fact that the conclusions are obvious, reasonable and workable says volumes about the alternate reality the Bush administration has been living in. Because it didn't take a genius or an expert to write this report; many, many bloggers and other observers have come up with many of the same recommendations. This is common sense stuff -- and the administration somehow missed it.

I have quibbles with some of their points, and questions about the workability of others, but the overall strategy looks solid -- and it's in large part the Democratic "fixed timetable" strategy, though I prefer to think of it as the "Sink or Swim" approach.

The report calls for "enhanced" (read "serious") diplomacy with Syria and Iran to tamp down the chaos in Iraq, along with efforts to resolve the overall Israeli-Arab conflict and reach a comprehensive peace involving Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel. Specifics include Israel returning the Golan Heights to Syria, Syria ceasing aid to Hezbollah, Syria ceasing to meddle in Lebanon, and Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist.

It calls for gradually pulling out U.S. combat forces while increasing the number of troops embedded with Iraqi units. At the same time, the Iraqi government must meet certain milestones to show that it is progressing toward a time when it can stand on their own. The intent is to send a message to the Iraqi government: we are pulling out regardless. We will continue to support you if you show yourself willing to take on your responsibilities, but we will not make an open-ended commitment of troops. And if you fail to meet the milestones, we will reduce our support accordingly.

Side benefits would include an increase in the resources available for Afghanistan (a tacit admission that the invasion of Iraq did, in fact, divert resources from Afghanistan), a lessening of the Arab anger provoked by our presence and a cost structure that the American people are more likely to support.

The specific milestones ISG recommends are laid out on pages 62 and 63 (overall, pages 80 and 81 of the pdf). They envision a legal dismantling of militias by May 2007, followed by provincial elections in June. Security-wise, it calls for Iraq to take over the Army in April, take control of all provinces by September, and be self-reliant (with U.S. support) by the end of 2007.

Given the pace of developments up until now, those are very ambitious goals, but I can support them. Best of all, the ISG suggests adhering to the withdrawal timetable even if Iraq doesn't meet its milestones. The net effect is that U.S. combat forces would be gone from Iraq by the end of 2007, leaving only advisors and trainers behind.

Some of the more explosive conclusions in the report involve intelligence and civilian-military relations.

The report gently but clearly states that the administration is in the habit of ignoring the advice of its generals, and making it clear that contrary views are unwelcome. Recommendation #46 reads: "The new Secretary of Defense should make every effort to build healthy civil-military relations, by creating an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice not only to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon but also to the President and the National Security Council, as envisioned in the Goldwater-Nichols legislation."

The commentary on intelligence is more scathing.

On readiness: "We were told that there are fewer than 10 analysts on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency who have more than two years’ experience in analyzing the insurgency."

On telling the truth: "There is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

In other words, the administration set up the system to produce results it liked, rather than results that were useful.

Lots to chew on. My prediction: The Democrats will embrace the ISG plan and use it as a blueprint. Politically it's a godsend for them: a credible, bipartisan group coming up with a proposal that looks a lot like what many Democrats have been suggesting. War supporters will use the "cut and run" rhetoric at their peril now that the idea of a fixed timetable has received the imprimatur of the Baker Group. Bush will be hard-pressed to resist them, since "stay the course" clearly isn't working and his credibility on Iraq is about zero.

Some specific quotes and interesting points from the extended report, along with comments from me:

CURRENT SITUATION
In general: "However, the ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing. Many Iraqis are embracing sectarian identities. The lack of security impedes economic development. Most countries in the region are not playing a constructive role in support of Iraq, and some are undercutting stability."
Comment: Yep.

How important is Iraq? "Iraq is vital to regional and even global stability, and is critical to U.S. interests. It runs along the sectarian fault lines of Shia and Sunni Islam, and of Kurdish and Arab populations. It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves. It is now a base of operations for international terrorism, including al Qaeda."
Comment: I'm not sure critical is the right word. No more critical than Israel, for example. If we pull out we will still have an interest in Iraq, but our national interest is not imperiled by a pullout. And I strongly disagree that Iraq will become a base of operations for terrorists. The Iraqis will clean house on those jokers once they don't have us to shoot at. Shiite Iran and the Shiite majority in Iraq simply have little use for Sunni fundamentalists, and the Sunni Iraqis tend to dislike extremist foreigners.

What about the terrorists? "Al Qaeda is responsible for a small portion of the violence in Iraq."
Comment: Demonstrating once again how badly the administration has debased the word "terrorist."

Death toll: "Attacks against civilians in October were four times higher than in January. Some 3,000 Iraqi civilians are killed every month."
Comment: That's 36,000 civilians a year by this conservative estimate. Saddam killed fewer people. And it's a huge number in a country of 26 million. Proportionally, it's as if 415,000 Americans were killed each year in political violence.

Scope of the violence: "Four of Iraq’s eighteen provinces are highly insecure— Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, and Salah ad Din. These provinces account for about 40 percent of Iraq’s population of 26 million."
Comment: And don't forget the 3.4 million internal and external refugees.

State of the Iraqi army: Units lack leadership, equipment, personnel, and support.

State of the Iraqi police: Substantially worse. Besides being riven by sectarian groups, they can't control crime and aren't equipped to deal with insurgents.

State of the Iraqi government: Riven by sectarian factions. Further, it appears uninterested in reform. "Maliki has publicly rejected a U.S. timetable to achieve certain benchmarks, ordered the removal of blockades around Sadr City, sought more control over Iraqi security forces, and resisted U.S. requests to move forward on reconciliation or on disbanding Shiite militias." And it's ineffectual. "The Iraqi government is not effectively providing its people with basic services: electricity, drinking water, sewage, health care, and education. In many sectors, production is below or hovers around prewar levels. In Baghdad and other unstable areas, the situation is much worse." Why? Five reasons. Services are sometimes provided on a sectarian basis; security is lacking; rampant corruption; not enough skilled technocrats; and a weak judiciary.
Comment: Which is why the government must prove it is both capable of governing and worth saving.

Economy: The good news: growing currency reserves, growing consumer imports, lots of new businesses and construction in secure areas. The bad news? tepid economic growth, 50 percent inflation, unemployment that is anywhere from 20 percent to 60 percent, and very little foreign investment. All if it worsened by corruption.

The region: "No country in the region wants a chaotic Iraq. Yet Iraq’s neighbors are doing little to help it, and some are undercutting its stability. Iraqis complain that neighbors are meddling in their affairs. When asked which of Iraq’s neighbors are intervening in Iraq, one senior Iraqi official replied, 'All of them.' "
Comment: It didn't help that when we invaded we openly boasted that a free and democratic Iraq would eventually transform the region. Guess what? The current players don't want to be transformed. That pretty much guaranteed they would oppose the venture with more vigor than they might have otherwise.

Iran and Syria: Generally supports the conventional wisdom that Iran is actively meddling while Syria engages in "malign neglect", looking the other way as weapons and fighters cross its border into Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Gulf States: Haven't supported the Iraqi government in any substantial way.

Reconstruction aid: U.S. has committed about $34 billion to Iraq, but has gotten limited results and is reluctant to send more. International donors have pledged about $13 billion but so far delivered just $4 billion.
Comment: The foot-dragging from donors is traditional if detestable. In addition, the lack of security in Iraq makes reconstruction a difficult undertaking.

OPTIONS
Immediate withdrawal: Would be morally wrong, would produce greater sectarian violence, and could lead to regional instability.
Comment: The question, though, is whether staying will change that. Many observers think that a civil war is inevitable, almost necessary. If we pull out it will be short and very bloody. If we stay it will be drawn out and very bloody, with our troops caught in the middle and serving as a distraction. I agree with the "morally wrong" part, but on that basis I'm only willing to remain if there are signs the Iraqi government is shaping up.

Staying the course: "Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost."
Comment: Smackdown!

More troops: "Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation.... Meanwhile, America’s military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence."
Comment: What they fail to say -- because they're looking forward, not back -- is that this could have been avoided if we had provided adequate security to begin with, post-invasion, and prevented those sectarian differences from being given voice through the barrels of guns. Now it's too late.

Split Iraq into three parts: "The costs associated with devolving Iraq into three semiautonomous regions with loose central control would be too high.... A rapid devolution could result in mass population movements, collapse of the Iraqi security forces, strengthening of militias, ethnic cleansing, destabilization of neighboring states, or attempts by neighboring states to dominate Iraqi regions."
Comment: It still might be the least bad option available. And it may end up happening naturally as a resolution of civil war. But I agree it shouldn't be a policy we consciously pursue.

THE WAY FORWARD
Diplomacy: "The United States should embark on a robust diplomatic effort to establish an international support structure intended to stabilize Iraq and ease tensions in other countries in the region. This support structure should include every country that has an interest in averting a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors—Iran and Syria among them.... it is clear that the Iraqi government cannot succeed in governing, defending, and sustaining itself by relying on U.S. military and economic support alone."
Comment: Gee, maybe Bush shouldn't have flipped off the rest of the world three years ago when we invaded.

The Arab-Israeli conflict: Get a permanent peace based on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.
Comment: This hasn't been settled in 60 years, so it seems like an unnecessary complication to try to settle it as part of our Iraq strategy. But the ISG is correct that the Israel issue is at the heart of many Arab grievances, and until that problem is solved we'll continue to have problems in the Mideast. Their proposals are conventional, but the underlying message is clear: we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq; we need to get back in the Arab-Israeli game to prevent further deterioration.

Iraqi milestones: "It should be unambiguous that continued U.S. political, military, and economic support for Iraq depends on the Iraqi government’s demonstrating political will and making substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance."
Comment: Agreed.

Permanent bases: "The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq."
Comment: That seems prudent. I wonder why we haven't done it already?

De-Baathification: "Political reconciliation requires the reintegration of Baathists and Arab nationalists into national life, with the leading figures of Saddam Hussein’s regime excluded. The United States should encourage the return of qualified Iraqi professionals—Sunni or Shia, nationalist or ex-Baathist, Kurd or Turkmen or Christian or Arab—into the government."
Comment: Let me translate that for you. "George, disbanding the military and throwing all the Baathists out of government was a stupid move."

Kirkuk: Essentially punts on this question, which is a no-win issue; everybody wants control of this city, which brings with it control of rich oil fields.

Iraqi police: "The entire Iraqi National Police [and Border Police] should be transferred to the Ministry of Defense, where the police commando units will become part of the new Iraqi Army."
Comment: This is an effort to defang the Interior Ministry, home of sectarian death squads. It's a good idea for that reason alone. Message: You break the rules, we take away your toys. The ISG also urges restructuring the Interior Ministry. This plan is somewhat offset by a further ISG proposal to put the Facilities Protection Service under Interior Ministry control. But that's a case of picking the lesser of two evils.

HERE AT HOME
Accounting for the war: "Costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the President’s annual budget request, starting in FY 2008: the war is in its fourth year, and the normal budget process should not be circumvented. Funding requests for the war in Iraq should be presented clearly to Congress and the American people."
Comment: Amen. Keeping the cost of the war out of the budget has served to hide the true cost of Iraq and paint an overly rosy budget picture.

Iraq Study Group, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Pelosi makes nice with Hastert

In a gesture to the opposition, Nancy Pelosi has apparently offered outgoing Speaker Dennis Hastert some primo digs in the Capitol:

A well-placed GOP source says that Pelosi, in a random act of bipartisan kindness that will surely irk Members on both sides of the aisle, has decided to reward Hastert with the plush and coveted Capitol office suite now held by retiring Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.).

Awww, isn't that nice?

The story's a little more complicated than that, of course.

For one thing, the reason Hastert is looking for a new office is because Pelosi is taking over his suite -- a suite that has been in Republican hands for 50 years thanks to previous acts of kindness by successive Democratic Speakers. But those decisions, too, were unusual -- and had a lot to do with Democrats liking their existing digs.

Things changed when a new visitor's center -- a project overseen by the GOP-majority Capitol Preservation Commission -- chopped up the Democratic leadership complex, forcing them to scatter all over the building.

By taking over the suite that has come to be known as "the speaker's office", Pelosi will be able to consolidate her leadership team in one place.

That's the way the game is usually played, and there are no grounds to criticize Pelosi for playing it. Pelosi's offer to Hastert, on the other hand, is unusual, unexpected and unnecessary. Which makes it simply nice. And refreshing.

(h/t: Centrisity)

Hastert, Pelosi, politics, midtopia

Beta Blogger

With some trepidation I've upgraded the site to Blogger Beta. I'll have to put a lot of work into the site at some point to take full advantage of the upgrade. For now, you should notice some little things, like the "Labels" links at the bottom of each new post (and old posts, too, as I get around to updating them). Let me know if things aren't working like you'd expect.

politics, midtopia

The educated class

When our children were little, their grandparents really liked talking "baby talk" to them. I'd watch as supposedly intelligent adults spent hours talking nonsense to unresponsive infants. both baby and adult seemed to enjoy it.

I hated it.

Why? Because my wife and I were convinced that it stunted brain development. Because of that, and because we had no desire to turn our own brains to mush by babbling like idiots, we always talked conversationally to our children from the day they were born. Sure, for the first year it was more of a monologue than a dialogue, but that was fine. We got used to speaking to them like they were adults.

We felt strongly enough about this that we eventually asked the grandparents to stop with the babbling. They thought we were killjoys, but they complied.

Vindication is oh-so-sweet. Not only were we right, but we were a living example of why there's an enduring achievement gap in this country.

This according to the New York Times, which hides its best stuff behind the Times Select wall. In an article in the Nov. 26 magazine, writer Paul Tough explores the challenges facing the No Child Left Behind act. After noting that black children are three times more likely to grow up in poverty than white children, he writes, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley decided to conduct an in-depth study of 42 families. What they found should surprise people only in its scope.

Vocabulary growth differed sharply by class.... By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children's I.Q.'s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.

... By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child's home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child's vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child. That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 ''utterances'' -- anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy -- to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour.

What's more, the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class. The most basic difference was in the number of ''discouragements'' a child heard -- prohibitions and words of disapproval -- compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval. By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well. As conversation moved beyond simple instructions, it blossomed into discussions of the past and future, of feelings, of abstractions, of the way one thing causes another -- all of which stimulated intellectual development.

In other words, talk to your kids like they're adults, and they will rise to the challenge. Talk to them like they're servants to be ordered around (or worse yet, don't talk to them much at all) and they will stagnate.

So why do blacks do worse than whites on standardized tests? Trick question, because it's the wrong question. There is a gap in education, but it's not racial. Instead, race has become a misleading proxy for class.

Tough identifies other class-related differences. Poor kids tend to be taught not to question authority, for example, while middle-class kids grow up engaging in back-and-forth conversation and negotiation with their parents -- which is a lot more work for the parent, but ends up producing kids with more self-confidence, who expect their concerns to be taken seriously.

The article goes on to discuss what that means for equalizing academic performance, and it's not pretty: intensive (and expensive) intervention in order to compensate for the shortcomings at home.

But interesting as that is, it's not the point of this post. I'm going to use the article as a springboard to make two related points:

RACE IS OFTEN IRRELEVANT
It's time to look very hard at how race is viewed in our society, because education is not the only place where race is used as a proxy for other issues, with the result that actual causes (and thus actual solutions) are overlooked.

The most controversial way race is accounted for is in college admission and hiring, where schools or companies apply racial preferences as a way to increase minority representation. Laudable as that goal is, it isn't a long-term solution.

Because affirmative action is itself discrimination, it's only legitimate as a way to directly repair damage done by previous discrimination. It would have been unfair, upon repeal of Jim Crow laws, to simply say to blacks "okay, compete." Some degree of remediation was needed to level the playing field and make up for decades of discrimination. But such reverse discrimination must be narrowly tailored and carefully monitored, and ended as soon as the major effects of prior discrimination have been ameliorated. Which requires that objective standards be developed to decide when that has occurred, and that we are careful to separate the effects of racism from other, non-race-based effects for which affirmative action is not the solution.

I'm not saying affirmative-action should be ended; I'm saying it's way past time we had a conversation based around the question "when has the debt been paid, and how will we tell?" The Times article notes that black achievement soared between 1960 and the late 1980s, and then stalled. A reasonable explanation for that might be that by the late 1980s the major effects of racism had been accounted for, and after that the continued focus on race not only did increasingly little good but may have done active harm by diverting attention from underlying causes. It bears looking at.

BARRIERS ARE REAL
While race may not be the barrier it once was, barriers do exist. The biggest barrier, I believe, is class. We have a good degree of social mobility in this country, but the mythical Horatio Alger model simply doesn't work as social policy. From their home environment to the school they attend to the expectations ingrained in them from the day they are born, children from poor families must contend with things that most middle-class children do not.

My wife was raised in a blue-collar household. When she inquired about going to college (an ambition that itself set her apart from many of her peers), her parents didn't encourage her. Their response was "why do you want to do that?" and "don't expect us to pay for it." She was left entirely on her own to find the money, time and initiative to enroll in community college, then transfer to a four-year university. She worked full-time during her entire college career.

My dad has a PhD and my mom has a master's. From early in my childhood I understood that I was expected to go to college. Schoolwork was a priority. Money wasn't a problem; if I hadn't landed an ROTC scholarship, my parents would have paid for everything. Because I didn't have to work, I had plenty of time to study (I didn't, as a rule; but I could have....).

If our roles were reversed, would I have made it to college? Would I have made it through college while working full time? It's impossible to say. But in many situations, the answer would be "no".

And that's the key point. Is it possible to rise above adversity and succeed without help? Of course. But social policy shouldn't be based on the extraordinary exceptions, however convenient that may be for the comfortable.

So the challenge before us is this: identify the true barriers to achievement, and develop policies to address them. I suspect that such an approach would see racial preferences wither and die, while other measures -- primarily, class -- step up to replace them. Extra help for poor students would both address the real cause of disparity and, as a pleasant side effect, increase minority representation and performance.

And our kids? Big vocabularies. Further, one thing we discovered is that to them a concept is a concept. "Tree" is a concept, but so is "black hole." As long as both are explainable, one isn't drastically more intimidating or difficult to grasp than the other. Children teach themselves to talk; they're wired to assemble seemingly unrelated pieces into a coherent whole with minimal clues. If you don't tell them it's complicated (and thus encourage them to give up), more often than not they'll surprise you with their depth of understanding.

Every child deserves that chance.

affirmative action, education, race, politics, midtopia

To the moon!

NASA has long been committed to returning to the moon on a regular basis by 2020. What they were unclear on is what exactly they would do after that.

Now we know.

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The south pole was chosen for several reasons, notably the suspected presence of water ice and the fact that it's almost always in sunlight -- an important consideration since the station will be largely solar-powered.

Why go? Well, beyond the scientific reasons, a permanent base on the moon would be both a demonstration project for extraterrestrial habitation and a first step toward exploring and eventually colonizing the rest of the solar system. It could be used as a way station and refueling point for expeditions to Mars, for instance, reducing the amount of mass such missions would need to lift out of Earth's gravity well. Looking way ahead, a truly self-sustaining colony could perform a lot of heavy industrial tasks -- mining, refining, even spaceship construction -- without needing to worry about pollution and in much lighter gravity.

In addition, the base would have relatively easy access to the dark side of the moon. Beyond learning more about that poorly understood area, the far side would make an excellent place to set up gigantic telescopes -- far bigger than anything we can orbit and far more sensitive than any Earthbound observatory, which must contend with distortions caused by atmosphere and light pollution.

It won't be cheap -- $100 billion or so over the next 20 years -- but given the time frame and the potential payoffs, it's worth it. It certainly will provide far more return on capital than, say, blowing $500 billion in a horribly mismanaged war. Or $400 billion on a badly designed prescription-drug plan.

And if the international fusion reactor project pans out, the moon base could eventually use all the Helium-3 lying about to provide hot showers.

space, science, moon, NASA, politics, midtopia

War on Terror mess #45,672

On Wednesday, we'll see the report from the Iraq Study Group, which reportedly will propose a gradual withdrawal from the country.

Then we find out that Donald Rumsfeld -- apparently able to see the obvious, if only three years too late -- proposed major changes in the administration's Iraq policy shortly before resigning.

But whether Bush is in denial or not -- and the answer to that would appear to be at least a qualified "yes" -- any solution will have to take into account that some of our most reasonable-sounding plans have, simply, not worked. This time, in Afghanistan.

a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone....

In its most significant finding, the report said that no effective field training program had been established in Afghanistan, at least in part because of a slow, ineffectual start and understaffing.

Now I realize that corruption, incompetence and inefficiency are something of a hallmark for this administration, but even so this is quite an indictment. Afghanistan has its own problems, but until recently a raging insurgency wasn't one of them. This isn't a case of the police not being trained to fight a guerrilla war; it's a case of the police not being trained or equipped to do basic law-enforcement tasks.

And what is being done in response to the report? Why, more inadequacy and corruption, of course:

Afghan and American officials recently announced that they had instituted an “auxiliary police” program at the end of the summer, which aims to hire 11,200 officers in parts of the country beset by Taliban attacks, primarily in the south.

But those officers receive only two of the standard eight weeks of training, and the police training experts say the program could worsen the situation. They say the new hastily created program could place ill-trained and poorly vetted officers in the field and allow militias and criminals to infiltrate the force.

Nothing quite like coming up with a "solution" that might be worse than the problem, though to be fair, at this point the situation is a complex one with no easy answers.

And if you need more evidence that this administration has difficulty learning from its mistakes, I leave you with this:

The training experts say the United States made some of the same mistakes in training police forces in Afghanistan that it made in Iraq, including offering far too little field training, tracking equipment poorly and relying on private contractors for the actual training. At the same time, those experts say, the failure to create viable police forces to keep order and enforce the law on a local level has played a pivotal role in undermining the American efforts to stabilize both countries.

Great.

politics, midtopia

Bolton steps down

Earlier than expected, maybe, but with his nomination clearly dead in the water, his departure was a foregone conclusion.

In a sort of weird aside, the White House went out of its way to dispute the notion that Bolton "resigned." Technically they're right; he will simply leave when his recess appointment expires. But if the White House thinks that anybody outside of Washington reads much significance into the difference, they're wrong. Bolton has essentially withdrawn his nomination for a permanent spot because it's clear he will not be confirmed. The rest is semantics.

While I won't particularly miss Bolton, I do think he deserved an up-or-down vote. The president ought to be able to nominate anybody he wants for serve-at-the-pleasure-of posts like ambassadorships, and barring gross incompetence his choice ought to be respected. Bolton might have been a bull in a china shop, but he was not incompetent. He also comported himself pretty well during his tenure, not proving to be the disaster critics feared. One could argue that he was simply lying low in order to win permanent confirmation, but that's nothing but speculation.

Speaking of speculation, with Bolton leaving the rumor mill turns toward the question of who will replace him. There's some silly stuff, like suggesting Donald Rumsfeld should get the post (if there's one man more unpopular in Congress than Bolton, it's Rumsfeld). Other names tossed out there include Jim Leach, an outgoing Iowa congressman.

The speed with which Bush moves to nominate a successor will provide some indication of how important he views the post. Considering the myriad international issues facing the administration -- Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, North Korea, Sudan, free trade, global warming -- one hopes he moves quickly to name a replacement, and that the person he names is one likely to win quick confirmation.

Bush, Bolton, politics, midtopia

War? What war?

I was listening to a radio interview today with a retired Marine, Col. Thomas X. Hammes, a noted authority on modern warfare. He's on a promotion tour for his new book, "The Sling and the Stone", a treatise on the (poor) U.S. response to modern guerrilla warfare.

The interview was interesting enough; but what struck me was a point he made at the outset. He said that the "Pentagon had never gone to war" in Iraq. When asked what that meant, he used the example of the Future Tactical Truck.

The FTT is intended, in part, to be a replacement for the Hummer, which has proven poorly suited for counterinsurgency operations. It's underarmored, underpowered and ill-equipped, and a disproportionate share of U.S. casualties are incurred by troops using them.

Faced with these harsh realities, the Pentagon is moving to have the replacement ready by.... 2012.

As Hammes notes, that's a peacetime development cycle. In a time when people are fighting and dying daily in underarmored Hummers, it's a pace so leisurely it verges on criminal. If the same course had been followed in World War II, we would have fought the entire war with 37mm antitank guns and Grant light tanks. And lost.

Yet another sign, IMO, of how Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, three years in, never has taken the war in Iraq seriously.

Future Tactical Truck, Hummer, Iraq, Pentagon, politics, midtopia

Why atheism is not a religion

I've mentioned before that I'm an agnostic, for the usual reasons: I don't believe the existence of God can be definitively proven or disproven, so why waste time trying? Life's too short. And while I certainly hope there is an afterlife, I think that any God worth worshiping wouldn't base the entrance requirement on successfully picking the One True Faith out from the thousands of imposters.

I say that by way of explanation for linking to this thread over at one of my other homes, Blogcritics.org. It's the best explanation of why atheism isn't a religion I've ever read. And the comments discussion is outstanding.

I'm agnostic, not atheist, but since agnostics often get lumped in with their more-certain cousins I'm always glad to see a reasoned argument like this one.

My favorite paragraph:

One of the biggest selling points for the "atheism is a religion" trope is the common misperception that atheists know that there is no god. Certainly there are some who would say so, just as there are Christians who have no religious doubt whatsoever, but these are not (I hope) majority views. Insistence on the absolute correctness of your position is not a sign of either faith or rationalist purity; it's a sign of hubris and epistemological immodesty.

It echoes what I've said before: In matters of religion, it's always a good idea (and good for social harmony) to always consider the possibility that you are the one who is wrong.

Go give it a read. It's excellent.

atheism, religion, politics, midtopia

What one hand giveth....

Iran has offered to cooperate with the United States in Iraq, and hosted a conference with Iraqi and Syrian leaders to discuss ways to stabilize the country. Iran's president has also written a letter to the American people urging peace and cooperation.

Meanwhile, the other hand has been busy:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

This goes along with previous reports that Shiite militiamen have traveled to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia that recently fought a short war with Israel.

These actions are not necessarily contradictory, nor even evidence that Iran is lying or is acting in bad faith. Helping an adversary dig themselves into a hole before offering to help them out of it makes perfect sense; it increases your leverage and raises the price you can exact for your help.

What they do point out is the urgency with which we must address the problem. Through confrontation or cooperation or some combination, the Iranian role in fomenting instability in Iraq must be dealt with. Because their ability to stir trouble far exceeds our ability to tamp it down.

Our options are few. There's no real way to stop the flow of arms or training without widening the war to include Iran -- a prospect that enjoys roughly zero support here at home. Never mind that such a move would by no means be a sure thing; Iran has three times the population of Iraq, a military that hasn't been sapped by years of sanctions, and some truly rugged terrain to fight in.

Galling as it may be, I predict we eventually will have no choice but to play ball with Iran. Unless we simply leave, in which case Iran also wins, because it is in the best position to pick up the pieces and expand its influence in the region.

Either way, it looks like we'll be witness to an ultimate irony: that our invasion of Iraq ended up strengthening one of the regimes we identified as part of the "Axis of Evil" when this whole thing started. That may turn out to be the ultimate legacy of Bush's foreign policy.

terrorism, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Surplus time!

The state budget news is in, and the headline, anyway, is good: a $2.2 billion surplus.

Surpluses are good, of course. Especially if the state uses them wisely -- to replenish reserves, lower tax rates and pay down debt, for example, rather than blow them on rebates or expensive new programs.

But let's not forget how we got here. Gov. Pawlenty balanced the state budget largely on the backs of local taxpayers, and the effects are still being felt: on the same day the state announced its projected surplus, they also estimated that property taxes would rise 8.2 percent in 2007, for a three-year average of 7 percent per year.

So tone down the patting yourselves on the backs, guys. There was no magic here. The state technically held spending flat by cutting local aid -- but property taxes went up as a result. That had the effect of making taxes more regressive, since property taxes are essentially a flat tax, mitigated somewhat by the homestead exemption.

At least the governor has enough shame to suggest that part of the surplus should be used for property tax relief, as a way to undo some of the damage. But he suggested doing so through a one-time rebate. That's a bad idea: "Jesse checks", as Gov. Jesse Ventura's rebates were known, helped contribute to the huge deficit Pawlenty confronted when he took office, because the rebates drained state reserves.

DFL leaders, more sensibly, are pushing permanent tax relief instead. That would be more just, and have a more predictable effect on state and individual finances.

Finally, heed the caveats on that big number. Half of it is essentially a one-time deal, and the other half would be needed to cover inflation if state spending remains at current levels. Given that, the most prudent use might be to stick it into state rainy-day funds, to help avoid the surplus/deficit/surplus roller-coaster we've been on in recent years.

surplus, Pawlenty, budget, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Texas and ethics: an oxymoron?

Gotta say, this doesn't look good:

A Texas official who receives any sum of cash as a gift can satisfy state disclosure laws by reporting the money simply as "currency," without specifying the amount, the Texas Ethics Commission reiterated Monday.

Texas officials must report all gifts over $250. What this ruling says is that they don't have to say whether the check was for $250 or $250,000. It would be a massive understatement to describe it as contrary to the spirit of transparency that underlines most ethics laws.

Luckily, most observers have not been so restrained.

"What the Ethics Commission has done is legalize bribery in the state of Texas. We call on the commission to resign en masse," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, who heads Texas Citizen, an Austin-based group that advocates for campaign finance reform.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, said the "currency" interpretation would render it "perfectly legal to report the gift of 'a wheelbarrow' without reporting that the wheelbarrow was filled with cash."

In a letter to the commissioners dated Monday, Earle called such an analysis "absurd and out of step with both the law and current public attitudes and concerns about corruption in government."

The Ethics Commission has its defenders, who say the problem is the unclear law, not the Commission's interpretation of it. The commission, they say, is constrained by the language of the law, which nowhere specifies that the amount of the gift should be revealed. Indeed, Republicans have delighted in pointing out that the law in question was passed by Democrats in 1993.

(When reading the above law, be sure to pause at Subchapter C, lines 75-1 to 75-27, where there still exists a prohibition against communists running for office, except that the definition of "communist" has been changed to mean "anyone who commits an act reasonably calculated to further the overthrow of the government." Then skip ahead to line 77-8, where you'll find the law establishing the Texas Ethics Commission, and line 110-21, where you'll find the chapter discussing financial disclosure standards; line 124-3 is the particular language in question).

Republicans are right that the statute doesn't specify a dollar amount is required. But the law does require a "description" of any gift over $250, and if you read the chapter as a whole it's clear that dollar amounts are central to the process.

Isn't that the point of having an ethics commission -- to make such decisions when the law is silent on a particular detail? And shouldn't that decision take into account the purpose and function of ethics laws? Instead, the commission made a ruling that pulled its own teeth.

The good news is that the Texas legislature appears poised to fix the problem in the next session, by specifying that the disclosure must include the dollar amount. And governor Rick Perry has indicated he would sign it.

Maybe while they're at it they can specify the kind of behavior they expect from a commission charged with preventing corruption in public office. And foremost in that clause should be the following: "In its deliberations the commission shall seek to prevent corruption, not abet it."

corruption, Texas, politics, midtopia