Stupid teacher tricks

They don't get much stupider than this.

Staff members of a Murfreesboro elementary school staged a fake gunman attack during a school trip, telling them it was not a drill as children cried and hid under tables.

Usually it's the playground bullies who are responsible for terrorizing kids. I guess they've been put out of business by the teachers.

Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who was present, said the scenario was intended as a learning experience and only lasted five minutes.

Oh, okay; it only lasted five minutes. That makes it all better.

The details:

During the last night of the school trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose.

The students were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, said 11-year-old Shay Naylor.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " Shay said Saturday. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out. (A teacher) told us, 'We just got a call that there's been a random shooting.' I was freaked out. I thought it was serious."

A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door and pretended to be suspicious subject....

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

I can understand one teacher thinking this was a good idea. It's hard for me to comprehend how all the teachers on the trip came to that conclusion.

The best part is that by crying wolf -- especially the "this is not a drill" part -- the teachers have pretty much ensured that in the event of a real emergency, some students will simply disbelieve their warnings and disregard their instructions. Great work.

One caveat: Almost all of the details in the story come from kids (who aren't necessarily the most reliable witnesses) and their parents (who weren't there). The school is investigating, and perhaps a different picture will emerge. But I don't imagine it will be substantially different. The kids were terrified, that seems clear. Whatever happened, it was misguided at best and downright mean at worst.

education, politics, midtopia

Meet the new war czar

After a month of searching, a "war czar" has been found.

President Bush on Tuesday chose Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the
Pentagon's director of operations and a former leader of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war czar.

Lute seems like a fine soldier, but he's way down the administration's wish list for the position. The authority and doability of the job aside, it's unclear whether such a relative unknown will have the personal force and charisma necessary to break logjams and keep everybody moving in the same direction.

There's also the question of whether we should put much trust in anyone who helped oversee combat in Iraq between 2004 and 2006, years in which the situation there spiraled out of control. There's always the question of whether to blame the generals or their political overseers, and Lute wasn't the overall commander in the theater. But at first blush it's not a great recommendation.

Here's what some military folks think of the pick. They think Lute's a fine officer, but wonder how a three-star general is going to order around four-star generals and Cabinet members.

And here's an interview (pdf) Lute did with Charlie Rose in January 2006, when he was director of operations for Centcom.

In it he says Al-Qaeda is weakening and losing support as a result of the war. But the example he gives has nothing to do with Iraq; he cites the bombing of a wedding in Amman, Jordan, and the collapse in AQ support afterward. Is anyone surprised that when AQ attacks Muslim targets, those Muslims don't like it?

He also discusses -- in a sort of premonition of his new job -- the need to fight networks of terrorists with networks of agencies and governments:

The other thing I would point to, Charlie, is the importance of taking this on, not simply as a military fight, but as a multi-agency fight where different arms of the government, the intelligence arm, the military arm for sure, the State Department, diplomatic arm, economic arm, those who bring law and order systems into a post-conflict scenario, that all these arms come together in an integrated networked way.

That's what he's been hired to do. Let's hope he is able -- and allowed -- to do a good job.

Update: Here's the video of part II of Charlie Rose's interview of Lute, conducted a few days after the interview I link to above. The segment with Lute starts around the 38-minute mark.

This time he discusses the strain on the military from our deployment in Iraq, in which he argues that while the soldiers' private lives are strained, most of them want to return to Iraq and, as a long-term upside, we're developing a large core of combat veterans. The first argument is a little bit of "happy talk." Our troops tend to be motivated, but dedication to the mission starts to wane after the third or fourth tour. The second part, while true as far as it goes, assumes those veterans stay in the service.

He also talks up the Iraqi army, a confidence that was proven to be a bit misplaced in the year that followed. He heaped praise on Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad -- a charter member of the neocon club who departed a year later (amid mounting chaos) to become our ambassador to the United Nations, a post about as important to this administration as the embassy in Liechtenstein (which is actually handled by the ambassador to Switzerland). He also discusses the military and political changes needed to succeed in Iraq.

He comes across as smart, but his role as spokesman and obvious cheerleader damages his credibility and doesn't give a true sense of the man.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Lobbying reform runs into hurdles

Attempts are afoot in Congress to weaken the lobbying reforms passed with such fanfare in the first days of the 110th Congress.

The culprits? Democrats.

Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls.

The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats' campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices....

They include proposals to:

* Require lobbyists to disclose details about large donations they arrange for politicians.
* Make former lawmakers wait two years, instead of one, before lobbying Congress.
* Bar lobbyists from throwing large parties for lawmakers at national political conventions.

First, the bill has not been voted on yet. What we're seeing here are the behind-the-scenes disputes about the final language, and how to reconcile it with the Senate version.

That said, let's be clear: If the Democrats fail to deliver on this promise, they will and should be toast in 2008. If there's one thing voters wanted when they voted in November, it was a real clean-up of Washington's money culture. The Democrats promised to do so, and if they back away from key provisions it will simply have been a lie. Maybe all that money is nice now that they're in power; but they won't remain in power long if they don't take steps to lessen the lure of its siren song. And quickly.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Gonzales roundup

Sheesh, I go away for a few days and everything goes bonkers.

Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty -- one of the people involved in the U.S. attorney firings -- said he would resign.

He says he always intended to spend no more than two years in the post, and by the time a successor is found he will nearly have hit that milestone. But it seems pretty clear that the prosecutor brouhaha contributed to his decision.

Alberto Gonzales said a lot of nice things.

"Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend," Gonzales said.

Let me be a little more precise. He said a lot of nice things yesterday. Today, Gonzales wasn't quite so complimentary.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied heavily on his deputy to oversee the firings of U.S. attorneys, appearing to distance himself from his departing second-in-command....

"At the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters after a speech about Justice Department steps to curb rising violent crime.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.

So after months of Congress asking a simple question -- who ordered the firings? -- Gonzales has finally provided an answer: McNulty.

Except that there's mounds of evidence that the actual driving forces were Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, and all McNulty did was sign the final list. Plus, if Gonzales was so interested in the opinion of the man who oversaw the prosecutors, why did he never consult Jim Comey?

As House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers put it, "With this Justice Department, the buck always stops somewhere else, and the fall guy is always the last guy out of the door."

Now, that's hardly a failing that's limited to Justice, or Republicans, or the current administration. Lesser mortals always take bullets for top officials. But Gonzales appears prepared to sacrifice the entire top leadership of the department, if necessary -- and he is so not worth it.

Speaking of Jim Comey, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, and dropped this bombshell:

On the night of March 10, 2004, a high-ranking Justice Department official rushed to a Washington hospital to prevent two White House aides from taking advantage of the critically ill Attorney General, John Ashcroft, the official testified today.

One of those aides was Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel and eventually succeeded Mr. Ashcroft as Attorney General.

“I was very upset,” said James B. Comey, who was deputy Attorney General at the time, in his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I was angry. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.”

Besides being distasteful, what's the bombshell? This story has been told before.

The New York Times link above lays out the events of the night in gripping detail. But the Washington Post sums up their significance..

The White House three years ago reauthorized a controversial surveillance program, parts of which the Justice Department found to be illegal, overriding the objections of top department officials after failing to get a seriously ill attorney general John D. Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed, Ashcroft's former deputy told a Senate panel today.

So the White House wanted the Justice Department to say the eavesdropping program was legal. Justice refused. The White House went so far as to send Gonzales to pressure an ailing Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed, and when both he and Comey refused, the administration decided to reauthorize the program anyway. Only the threat of mass resignations at Justice averted that move.

Justice's approval was not required by law. But its refusal to say the program was legal offers powerful evidence that the program broke the law. Rather than accept the rule of law, the administration ignored the advice of its own lawyers and did what it wanted to do anyway.

The only high-ranking legal mind that decided the program was legal: Alberto Gonzales. The same Gonzales who pressured a sick man to sign a form. The same Gonzales who came up with the legal justification for torture. The same Gonzales who appears to have been almost absent as a manager at Justice, consumed as he was with being a full-time lapdog for Bush. The same Gonzales who lied to Congress, and when confronted with his contradictions retreated into "I don't know" mode about significant departmental events.

Resign already, Fredo.

McNulty, Comey, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Iraq and the GOP

Speaking of Iraq, a group of moderate House Republicans have warned President Bush that the Iraq war is deeply damaging the Republican Party, and he cannot count on support from that quarter for too much longer.

The meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), Michael N. Castle (Del.), Todd R. Platts (Pa.), Jim Ramstad (Minn.) and Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.)....

Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party's position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.

Ya think?

The one thing everyone seems united on -- including Senate Democrats and me -- is that the House war-funding bill, which only provides money through July, is a bad idea, doomed to yet another sustainable presidential veto. Let's hope the House and Senate versions pass quickly, and they toss out the bad stuff in conference committee. That would leave a bill that funds the war through September -- giving us time to assess the "surge" -- while providing timetables that the Iraqi government must meet. Get it passed and to the president's desk in the next two weeks. If he vetoes that, the blame is entirely on his head. Bush seems to recognize that, publicly agreeing to "negotiate" on benchmarks.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Troubles in the Green Zone

The Moderate Voice has a comprehensive post on the political situation in Iraq. The summary:

Not only do Iraq lawmakers plan to surge away from their desks for a looonnnnnng vacation this summer (two months) while American troops fighting in and for their country won’t get similar R&R, but it now turns out that a majority of lawmakers are singing the old familiar song: “Yankee Go Home” — to the tune of a demand for a U.S. withdrawal timetable.

The source: A survey of Iraqi lawmakers that found more than half of Parliament wants a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, the happy talk from the Iraqi national security adviser notwithstanding.

And I must join in touting this essay by Jason Steck on the surge. It, and the comment thread, are purely excellent. I disagree with some of his assessments, but I concur with his explanation of the surge and some of his ideas for assessing its success or failure.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

The distaff side of misogyny

Coyote Angry has a wonderfully funny and barbed post on how sexism really hasn't worked out that well for men. My favorite part:

Another lightbulb moment was seeing a middle eastern woman on television gloating about her wonderful, dearly departed martyr husband and how "Sheik Osama" had sent her a big, fat wad of cash. Beautiful strategy....encourage the men to blow themselves up and you get the payoff AND the love and respect of your community, you're set for life and no annoying male to spoil it for you. The men apparently have not figured this one out yet. Hey martyr guys.....you're being played.

Few people do rants as well as she does. Give it a read.

politics, midtopia

The Book of Mitt

Will the candidacy of Mitt Romney produce -- dare I say it -- a teachable moment?

I've written before about my perspective on the state of Islam, the existence of moderate Muslims and the illogic of people who say "Islam, not Muslims, is the problem."

First, to make such a claim one must ignore all the real-life examples of moderate Muslims -- such as the moderate Muslim who helped the British foil a plot to bomb transatlantic jetliners. If they exist, it stands to reason that there can be moderate interpretations of Koran.

Second, the holy books of most major religions contain violent passages, passages depicting horrific punishments for nonbelievers or outsiders, passages rife with misogynism, racism and fourth-grade ethics. That's what you get from books written between 1,400 and 4,000 years ago.

It makes no sense to point to such passages in the Koran and say all Muslims are violent or evil without applying the same logic to Christians and Jews and Hindus. The latter have (mostly) managed to overcome the violence and tribalism built into their books; it stands to reason that Muslims can, too -- and have.

Which brings us to Romney. Because in his case I'm starting to see the roles reversed: Some liberals/Democrats bashing Mormonism (using sites such as this one) and conservatives/Republicans defending him.

All of which, with luck, gives us an opportunity to pause and think. Liberals should realize that by adopting the tactics of Islamaphobes, they become no better than those they oppose. Conservatives should realize that if the tactic is illegitimate when directed at Romney, it's also illegitimate when directed at Muslims.

Some bloggers point to time as an important distinction: Christianity's violence is in its past, while Islam's is in the present. They are right, but that still does not make Islam the problem; the problem is certain medieval interpretations of Islam that still hold sway in some areas. Instead of attacking Islam as a whole, we should be attacking those vile interpretations. That way we get to be intellectually consistent, logically correct, and as a practical matter it minimizes the number of enemies we have to deal with (some Muslims instead of all Muslims).

As for Romney, he's not in my top five list of candidates I would vote for. I find his new-found conservative views both wrong and a fine example of gross pandering. But who the heck cares if he's a Mormon? Even if he was deadset on creating a Mormon version of Sharia law, does anyone seriously think he could do so? You think the distinctly non-Mormon Congress and courts would go along with him, not to mention the American populace and those trial lawyers that Republicans love to hate? I have yet to see any plausible scenario wherein Romney's faith could have any meaningful impact on his presidency, and thus be a legitimate factor in his presidential campaign.

If we can absorb that lesson in tolerance (and the limits of power) and then transfer it to other religions, Romney's campaign will have performed a public service, win or lose.

religion, Romney, politics, midtopia

Student, school district reach settlement over proselytizing

The saga of Kearny high school student Matthew LaClair is over for now.

The Kearny Board of Education in New Jersey and the parents of Matthew LaClair, a 17-year-old junior at Kearny High School, settled their dispute on Tuesday night about a teacher who proselytized in class.

The settlement will include training for teachers and students about the separation of church and state and a public statement by the board praising Matthew for bringing the matter to its attention.

The training was already in the works, so mostly what happened here is the district agreed to recognize Matthew's actions as proper, not troublemaking. Which you'd think would be obvious, but bureaucracies act in reflexively self-protective ways sometimes.

So another educational kerfuffle appears to be over. Or is it? There is at least one loose end still hanging:

The settlement does not address the status of Mr. Paszkiewicz, 39, who has remained a history teacher at the high school. Mr. Paszkiewicz, who is also a Baptist youth pastor, had his classes switched in the middle of the school year so as not to have Matthew as a student.

Paszkiewicz's lawyer, commenting on the settlement, said, "there are people who think my client is the victim." In addition, it's not clear if the school's "no recording" rule remains in effect. So perhaps there's another chapter or two yet to come. But for now, common sense has prevailed.

religion, education, New Jersey, politics, midtopia

Iranian weapons in Iraq update

Pajamas Media has a 12-minute video from Iraq, interviewing an ordnance disposal officer on the origin of various weapons discovered in Iraq. The point of the video: they're Iranian.

But PM then goes on to misrepresent its own video, calling it proof of Iranian involvement in Iraq.

I like the video, although the reporter asks some (to me) cringingly ignorant questions. The EOD officer is polite, informative and clear. But he doesn't shed any new light on the subject of Iranian involvement.

The mere presence of Iranian-made weaponry in Iraq does not say anything about how it got there. It could have been bought on the black market, for instance. (And if it were, that would, conversely, not be evidence that Iran wasn't involved: countries routinely use the black market to disguise what are essentially arms transfers).

Nor does it get at how much weaponry is Iranian. As the major noted, Iraq is awash in unfathomably huge amounts of leftover ordnance. At a minimum, it's highly unlikely that Shiite Iran is arming Sunni insurgents. So even if Iran stopped sending weapons tomorrow, it wouldn't seriously hamper the ongoing violence.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming Shiite groups in Iraq. But proving Iranian involvement is going to be very tough indeed, unless they're caught in the act of delivering it.
(h/t: Central Sanity)

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Hezbollah opens South American branch

In yet another example of how Iraq isn't helping stop the spread of terrorism, Hezbollah (who we're not fighting at the moment) now has a cell in South America.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

There's a lot of reliance on anonymous sources in this report, and it's a big step from operating in a lawless region of South America to being able to mount attacks on the United States. So the warnings and predictions should be taken with large grains of salt. Plus there simply aren't that many radical Muslims (or Muslims, period) in the region. Hezbollah's presence seems to be more of a smuggling and finance operation than a serious military effort.

But such spin-off operations are exactly what we should be confronting in our war on terror, and demonstrate why Iraq is an expensive drain on resources better used elsewhere. We should go where the terrorists are and confront them there, not invade an unrelated country and then find ourselves battling a smattering of jihadists amid a much larger native insurgency and a brewing civil war. All the latter approach does is waste mind-blowing amounts of money and create unnecessary enemies.

terrorism, South America, Hezbollah, politics, midtopia

Iraq: politics and reality

President Bush says he would veto the House version of a war-funding bill if it comes to his desk. No surprise there: July is simply too short a timeframe. What will be interesting is if the Senate bill passes, with some of the same restrictions but a longer funding period. He will have a harder time vetoing that one.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney states the obvious (while drawing no actual lessons from doing so) and the U.S. Embassy deals with the current reality. The last item, in particular, is a bit of bad news for the surge, although arguably it's easier to lob mortar rounds during a still-unfolding crackdown than it is to mount more direct and bloody attacks. Once again, the verdict on the surge is still out.

Update: This isn't good news for the surge, either:

Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders and families who fled.

Similar episodes of what has become known as sectarian cleansing raged through Baghdad neighborhoods last year as Sunnis drove Shiites from Sunni areas and Shiites drove Sunnis from Shiite ones, but this marks the first apparent attempt to empty an entire Baghdad neighborhood of Christians, the Christians say.

The article goes on to note that more than half of Iraq's prewar Christian population now lives outside the country.

What makes this particularly hard to fathom is that Dora is a known insurgent stronghold. So why have we ignored it thus far? One possible explanation is that we're securing the easy stuff first, so that the insurgents will have no place to go when we finally crack down on the hard cases. Still, I'd like to see an explanation of that.

Another thing to note is that Iraqi Christian groups blame Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists for such cleansings. They're there because we're there, and they're only tolerated by Iraqis because we're there. So mark this down to another little piece of joy our presence has brought to the country. The expulsions themselves are not our fault, but they are at least partly our responsibility.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Atheist sets up post-Rapture postal system

Okay, this is both funny and practical. It's the Post-Rapture Post.

For as little as $4.99, Witter offers to deliver your letters to friends and loved ones left behind after the Rapture, when some Christians believe they will be whisked up to heaven while everyone else — the "Left Behind" of the popular book series — suffers a series of tribulations.

As Witter sees it, it will fall to the unsaved to serve as the postmen of the Apocalypse.

It's a joke, of course, but he actually provides the service -- although he has only 11 takers so far. He also gets a lot of hate mail -- which seems a bit unChristian, but is perfectly understandable from a human point of view.

(h/t: Sad-Sav)

humor, religion, politics, midtopia

What would you do?

O.J. Simpson walks into your restaurant with a bunch of friends. Do you serve him?

A Kentucky restaurant owner didn't.

Ruby -- who owns restaurants in Cincinnati, Ohio. Louisville, Kentucky, and Belterra, Indiana, -- said Simpson, who was in town for the Derby on Saturday, came in with a group of about 12 Friday night and was seated at a table in the back. A customer came up to Ruby and was "giddy" about seeing Simpson, Ruby said.

"I didn't want that experience in my restaurant," Ruby said, later adding that seeing Simpson get so much attention "makes me sick to my stomach."

He said he went to Simpson's table and said, "I'm not serving you." Ruby said when Simpson didn't respond, he repeated himself and left the room.

For his part, Simpson showed some class:

Ruby said Simpson soon came up to him and said he understood and would gather the rest of his party to leave.

Far more class than his lawyer:

Simpson's attorney, Yale Galanter, said the incident was about race, and he intended to pursue the matter and possibly go after the restaurant's liquor license.

"He screwed with the wrong guy, he really did," Galanter said by telephone Tuesday night.

But this isn't a celebrity blog. My interest is more philosphical. What would you do in such a case?

I think I would have done what Ruby did. It has always seemed clear to me that Simpson got away with murder. While I respect the verdict of the judicial system and do not advocate harassing him or the like, neither do I have to tolerate his presence in my private place of business. Especially given winking stunts like his "If I Did It" book deal.

But I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints -- both what you would do, and comments on the ethics/legality of what Ruby did.

(h/t: Munko)

Simpson, politics, midtopia

Sharpton slams Mormons?

That's the gist of the YouTube snippet above, and an AP story about it.

During a debate on religion with atheist Christopher Hitchens, Sharpton said: "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation."

Sharpton says he wasn't questioning Romney's faith, but was instead contrasting himself with Hitchens.

His words came to light in a New York Times blog entry that provides a little context to the remark, noting that Hitchens first referred to past Mormon support for racial segregation. So that was what Sharpton was responding to.

It still leaves open the question of who he was contrasting himself to with his "those who really believe in God" comment. The word "really" is the key: It's hard to read that as referring to anyone other than Romney and Mormons, since it wouldn't be necessary to use the word "really" when referring to atheists.

That said, I really hate controversies that revolve around careful parsing of single words, especially words spoken off the cuff at a live event. "Really" could have been verbal filler, unneeded emphasis -- the kind of lazy grammar and word patterns that differentiate spoken words from written.

Further, Sharpton's tone is jocular. So while it certainly appears to be a slam on Romney, it feels more political than religious and there's no heat to it. Arguably he's joking, like a sectarian version of "Your mama" insults.

I have little use for Al -- I consider him largely a publicity seeking bomb-thrower. So let's just agree that if he was slamming Romney's religion as somehow "inferior" to his own, he was wrong. And if he was joking, he was still wrong -- not for the joke, but for his lame excuse afterward.

Curiously, though, such a "my religion is the One True Religion" stance parrots that of many on the religious right. Which leads us to the most interesting thing about Sharpton's debate with Hitchens: Much of what he said during it could just as easily have been spoken by a conservative Christian.

Mr. Sharpton, who had listened to Mr. Hitchens’s presentation with a sober expression, offered a calm response.

“You made a very interesting analysis of how people use or misuse God, but you made no argument about God Himself,” Mr. Sharpton said. “And attacking the quote-wicked-unquote use of God does not at all address the existence of God or nonexistence of God.”...

Mr. Sharpton offered two other arguments in defense of religious belief. He argued – as he would throughout the evening – that without God, all is morally relative.

“If there is no God and if there is no supreme mechanism that governs the world, what makes right right and what makes wrong wrong?” Mr. Sharpton asked. “Why don’t we just go by whoever is the strongest in any period in history?”

He added, “On one hand, we’re going to argue God doesn’t exist; on the other hand we’re going to call people wicked. Wicked according to whom, and according to what? It would be based on whoever has power at that time.”

Further, Mr. Sharpton suggested that the marvel of human creation – including evolution – implies the existence of a divine creator.

Something tells me you won't hear many of Sharpton's detractors pointing that out.

The debate itself is far more interesting than the brouhaha over Sharpton's comment. I encourage you to give it a read. Hitchens is quite well-spoken, and while I'm not sure I would have picked Sharpton to defend the believer's side, he does well enough. If you want to listen to the whole thing, you can find the audio here.

Update: A writethru to clarify some points above, and some pointers in the audio. At around the 24:30 mark Hitchens starts discussing church actions, and around 25:00 brings up Mormonism. Sharpton starts responding at 28:10, and makes his Romney comment around 32:00.

politics, midtopia

Ripping RedState

This is fun: Dyre Portents tears Red State a new one for mocking a bill they don't understand.

Good times.

politics, midtopia

Greensburg update

In response to my "Memories of Greensburg" post, I've gotten a couple of e-mails from people who think they know the people I describe. I will be tickled to death if that turns out to be true. The Internet is a fabulous thing.

Meanwhile, the town's meteorite has been found, buried in the rubble of the museum that housed it, as residents returned to salvage what they can.

Greensburg, politics, midtopia

House develops short-term war-funding bill

The House is trying to solidify support behind a bill that would fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through July, then require another vote to keep the money flowing.

The Senate favors a slightly longer leash, providing funding through September.

I go with the Senate on this one, because the House version makes no practical sense. Does anyone claim the surge will show conclusive effects by the end of July? No. So what's the point of drawing an arbitrary deadline there? The Senate version sets the deadline at a logical place: by September we should know if the surge is working and whether it's sustainable.

Politically it's silly, too. There we'll be in July, and the Democrats will be saying "should we continue funding?" and the answer will be "nothing has changed, so if you provided funding before, you need to provide it now." It simply makes the Democrats look dumb.

I know Pelosi needs to placate her antiwar members, but a bill that draws an arbitrary line at a meaningless date on the calendar is no way to do it. Make the date meaningful; go with the Senate version.

Speaking of the surge, the Pentagon today notified 35,000 troops that they could be going to Iraq this fall in order to sustain the higher troop levels through the end of the year. That gives an indication of why sustaining the effort will be the most difficult part. For one thing, the troops include 10 brigade combat teams -- a sizable chunk of the 43 or so teams in the entire Army. Add that to the troops already on the ground, and what you come up with is that the only way to sustain the surge is to stop or greatly curtail rotations home -- in other words, just leave the troops in Iraq.

A plan like that is bad for readiness and morale, especially in a volunteer military. The Army brass won't go for it. Which leads to the inevitable question of whether it's physically possible to put enough troops into Iraq to secure it. The answer generally seems to be "no." Which leads us back to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to secure the place is if Iraqi units take the lead. Problem is, they're far from ready to do that, and there is skepticism in many quarters that they ever will be ready, given their political divisions and rampant corruption.

September will be make or break time. Not just for the surge, but for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi government.

Fund the war until then.

The units affected by the callup are:

• 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Germany;
• 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga.;
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades of 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.;
• 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment from Fort Hood, Texas;
• 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored from Germany;
• 4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, La.;
• 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division from Hawaii;
• 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Tx.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Remembering Grandma

My grandmother died last weekend. With her death I have no more grandparents, and my parents become the oldest living members of that side of our family.

She was 94. She'd had dementia for years, so her death frankly was more of a relief than anything else. The Grandma we knew has been gone a long time, and we did most of our mourning long ago.

She and my grandfather lived most of their adult lives in Houston. He was a federal mediator, resolving labor disputes at places like the Johnson Space Center. She was mostly a stay-at-home mom, active in school and the church.

Beyond that she was a Daughter of the American Revolution, tracing her ancestry back to a man who served as a captain in the Revolutionary War. She was also a very fine person.

I'm heading down to my parents' house this weekend for a memorial service. Then in June we'll all go out to the east coast to bury her in her native Virginia, next to her husband, at Pohick Church -- yep, George Washington's church.

May she rest in peace.

politics, midtopia

Administration departures continue, with no czar in sight

Back in April, the White House announced it was looking for a war czar -- someone to coordinate the government's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main goal was to find someone to replace deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who was stepping down.

They still haven't found anyone. And meanwhile the exodus of national security officials is increasing.

The most recent departure? Another deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch. He joins O'Sullivan and the administration's top policy people for Russia and Asia, among 20 top officials who have left in recent months.

Things like this are signs of an administration in neutral. However capable their replacements -- and highly capable people rarely sign on to join an administration in its last two years -- it's going to be hard to put any kind of energy or creativity into foreign policy. Beyond the normal "get up to speed" delays, other countries increasingly have an incentive to simply do nothing, and instead hope that Bush's successor will be more amenable to their specific concerns.

For all those reasons, it's normal for a president's foreign policy influence to decline near the end of his term -- and for ambitious people to start looking for new work as a result. But it's unusual for the process to start happening this soon.

Turnover is normal as an administration nears its end, but "this is a high number," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on government.

"You would expect to see vacancies arise as things wind down, but it's about six months early for this kind of a mass exodus," he said.

All of which is one more reason Bush remains invested in Iraq: It's one of the few places in foreign policy where he still exerts sizable influence. Pulling out would leave him pretty much done as far as large-bore foreign policy initiatives, without the time, popularity or political capital to launch anything new. Iraq is more than a mission for him: It's a way to remain relevant.

The cost, of course, is measured in forgone opportunities, blood and Republican 2008 hopes.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Tanks for this

It's not my backyard, of course, but as a former tanker I fully support the family in this one.

WASECA, MINN. -- Tony Borglum has a thing for tanks. So much so that last fall, after he and his father traveled to England to buy one, they bought four more with the idea of opening a tank-riding business and obstacle course in their back yard.

"We were there a day and a half, and I got to thinking: 'There's nothing like this in the U.S.,' " said Borglum, 20, talking about the obstacle course in England where he bought the tanks and an armored personnel carrier. "I said, 'I think people would be interested. So let's bring some back and see what happens.' "

What happened has turned Waseca County into a battleground, pitting the Borglums and their plan against dozens of residents who are less than thrilled by the idea of seeing and hearing tanks and an armored personnel carrier rumbling across the land.

The vehicles involved are British and varied, and none of them are actually tanks. They include an Abbott self-propelled artillery piece, a FV432 armored personnel carrier and two armored cars: a Saladin and a Ferret.

Noisewise, I don't think the neighbors have much to worry about, though I agree with their concerns about the outdoor shooting ranges. I just wish ex-tankers could actually drive the things instead of merely riding on them. Ah, well.

Minnesota, armor, politics, midtopia

Memories of Greensburg

Saturday morning, I woke up and went downstairs to start making breakfast. Sleepily, I turned on the radio to listen to the news. My head was in the refrigerator when I thought I heard the announcer say that Greensburg, Kansas, had been destroyed by a tornado.

I popped my head out of the fridge and listened some more. Yep, a gigantic tornado had indeeded practically wiped the town from the map.

I live in the Midwest, and I'm used to stories about a small town here and there being heavily damaged by wind or tornados. A few years back, heavy winds took apart St. Peter, Minn., and the grim joke around here is that God hates trailer parks, because they seem to get hit so often.

But Greensburg was different. Because I've only been to Kansas once, and Greensburg is the only town in the state (besides Dodge City) that I actually visited.

In June 1989, I had just graduated from college and bought my first car. I was at loose ends, trapped in professional limbo. The five-month Armor Officer Basic Course didn't start until November, and I still held out hope of landing an active-duty slot, so there didn't seem to be any point to starting a civilian career just yet.

So in July I headed out on a road trip to celebrate graduation: West through South Dakota to Mt. Rushmore, then down through Wyoming and Colorado to Rocky Mountain State Park, then to Oklahoma to visit relatives, and back up through Missouri and Illinois to see my parents in Wisconsin before returning to the Twin Cities. I brought a tent and camped the whole way to keep costs down.

I had to cut through Kansas to get from Colorado to Oklahoma. My initial impression of the state was that it was hot, dry and flat, an impression reinforced by the severe drought that hit the region that year. Kansas has a whole series of manmade fishing lakes, and my plan was to use them as campsites. I stuck to that plan, even though most of the lakes I found were entirely dried up.

Then I hit Greensburg.

At this point, I'll switch to quoting from my diary entry of that day, edited to leave out juvenile musings and at least some tedious detail.

"SUNDAY, JULY 30, 1989

I intended to take 183 south just outside of Greensburg, but decided at the last moment to go on into town to see 'The World's Largest Hand-Dug Well' and a Pallasite meteorite.

The well and rock were both mildly interesting, although I declined to pay to go down into the well, contenting myself with peering into it from above.

On the way through Greensburg I had seen a sign for another fishing lake, and decided it might make a good place to camp. This time the lake was actually there, and though there were no facilities the price was right: free.

I pulled in and parked in the shade of an elm tree. It was by now probably 2 p.m., and far too hot to do anything. I pulled out "The Civil War" [I was reading Shelby Foote's three-volume series] and started reading. It soon became too hot even for that, so I made a run into town to buy some Gatorade and started running the car occasionally to get some air-conditioning.

When it had cooled off a bit, I went out on a nearby pier to watch the people around me. Apparently the lake was a popular social center, because people of all ages drove repeatedly around it, cruising.

Pretty soon three girls came walking up -- Leabeth, 16, Venus, 13, and Samantha, 7. They were supposed to meet a couple of guys there on the pier, and while they waited we started talking.... [Leabeth and Venus] told me about drinking, defying their parents, and boys, more or less in that order. There seemed to be nothing to do but hang out, swim, drink and party. Both seemed to accept the fact that they were not leaving Kansas.

After waiting for probably 45 minutes, I offered to give them a ride wherever they needed to go. We piled into the car and were off.

Things were going normally until I took a railroad track at slightly high speed and got momentarily airborne. I don't think I did any permanent damage, but it inspired them to show me 'Piss Road,' little more than a dirt track out in the middle of nowhere. That posed further challenges to my suspension, as well as lodging dirt and grass all along the underside of the car. We survived it, however, and finally I dropped them off, returning to camp much worried about my car but otherwise in a good mood.

Once back, I set up the tent and ate dinner. As I ate a carload of women pulled up t the pier and sat on it for a while, talking and watching the other cars. When they left I waved at them.

Taking my diary, I wandered out to the pier to finish the day's entry before dark. Soon two of the girls from the car came walking back, looking for a lost earring, and we started talking.

Tanya and Estileda (who was from Honduras) both lived in Pratt, had both graduated from high school this year and were both going to college in the fall. Tanya was interested in accounting, while Estileda was looking at human resources.

Seeing my diary, they asked if I was a writer, and we talked for awhile about college, Kansas and Minnesota. Then having failed to find the earring, they said goodbye and left.

The bugs on the pier were becoming intolerable, so I retreated to the trunk of my car. Several more cars -- filled with males, this time -- passed, and I got rather thorough lookovers from them.

Presently Tanya and Estileda returned, explaining that they had found the earring and asking if I wanted to go cruising with them. Having never been, I said yes.

We took off and went cruising, which consisted of driving all through Greensburg -- 'a retirement community', they called it -- while fiddling with a balky radio. Tanya, who was driving Estileda's car, was quite talkative; Estileda was far more shy and quiet.

We drove around until 10 p.m., talking and having a good time. Then we ran into some friends of theirs -- Kristina and Sarina -- on the main drag and pulled over to talk. Pretty soon other cars had pulled over and for a while a lively social gathering was underway -- although I missed most of it, being confined to Estileda's back seat. I learned a lot about small-town high school life: sex ed, or rather the lack therof (this is a mighty Baptist community), drinking, boredom, etc. Pratt Community College lets you major in rodeo!

This went on until nearly 11:30, when Kristina and Sarina left, stalked by three stray kittens that had wandered by. Tanya and Estileda drove me back to the lake and we said goodbye.

The night was beautiful. Overhead was clear sky, but all around on the horizon were clouds and repeated lightning strikes. I watched for a while, then fell asleep. I woke once, when a tremendous thunderstorm broke overhead. The deluge went on for a long time, and I listened and enjoyed every minute of it.

Kansas may be harsh, but I've grown to like the people."

That was 18 years ago, and the girls I met are all adults now. Tanya and Estileda would be 35 or so; even Samantha would be 25. They may not even live in Greensburg anymore. Nonetheless, I hope that they and everyone they know are safe, and that the town finds a way to rebuild. They might have been teenagers, but they gave a much-needed dose of friendliness and community to a stranger on a lonely trip. I'll always appreciate that.

Greensburg, politics, midtopia

Iraq spam

More stuff from my inbox: Today I got one of those standard Nigerian scam e-mails, but with a twist: the supplicant claims to be a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq. The name appears to be legit -- there is a combat photographer named Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon serving in Iraq -- but other than that it's a standard scam letter. The language gives it away, of course, but even the links claiming to show photos of Sgt. Allmon don't actually do so.

The full text:

Attention Please,

l humbly and honestly solicit your immediate assistance though this unsolicited mail may come to you as a surprise. My name is Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, I am an American soldier, I am serving in the military of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regimient, Patrols Tal Afar, in Iraq. I am presently in Iraq at the moment in discharde of my duty. I apologized using this medium to reach you for a transaction/business of this magnitude we are not alowed to make telephone outside calls from Iraq.

Please view this link to see my picture:
http://www4.army.mil/armyimages/armyimage.php?photo=9169
http://www4.army.mil/armyimages/armyimage.php?photo=7990

We have in our possession the sum of US$25,000,000.00 (Twenty five Million US Dollars), which belongs to Saddam Hussein. These funds have been moved and deposited in one Finance commission in Europe, please view this link for more details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm

Basically since we are working for the American Government, we cannot keep these funds, but we decided to use our bullet box to package the Fund and move it to one Finance Commission in Europe for safe keeping.Thats our reason of contacting you, so that you can keep it for us in your safe account or an offshore account.

I have the authority of my partners involved to propose that if you are willing to assist us in this transaction, your share of the sum will be 30% of the US $25 million, 70% for us and rest assure that this business is 100% safe on your part provided you treat it with utmost secrecy and confidentiality.

Therefore, if you are interested, please reply immediately to this email address 2_aaron_2@myway.com for security reasons.


Respectfully submitted,

Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon

It's almost enough to make one cynical about humanity....

Aaron Allmon, scams, politics, midtopia

Bombs built into girl's school in Iraq

If true, you're talking about a premediated massacre of kids.

The plot at the Huda Girls' school in Tarmiya was a "sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims," military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said....

The plot was uncovered Saturday, when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street from the school. They picked up the wire and followed its trail, which led to the school. Once inside, they found an explosive-filled propane tank buried beneath the floor. There were artillery shells built into the ceiling and floor, and another propane tank was found, the military said.

It's our military, not the Iraqis, saying it, so it has some credibility. And it's not like Al-Qaeda isn't capable of something like this.

But there are some real inconsistencies. For instance, the bombers were sophisticated enough to build the bombs in during construction, but then dumb enough to leave the det cord trailing across the street so it could be found easily?

We'll see if there are follow up reports, especially the results from questioning the Iraqi contractors that were building the place.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Pocketbook Christianity

I got a really unusual letter in the mail today.

On the front it said, "Two homes are about to be blessed.... then it must go to another dear friend."

Odd, I thought. I'd never gotten a Christian chain letter before.

On the back it said: "Dear Jesus, We pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically & financially. And please dear Lord, bless the one who's hands open this letter. Make good changes in this one's life and give them the desires of their heart. We pray over and bless this letter in your holy name. Amen."

Well, of course I had to open it.

Inside was a cheap paper "prayer rug" and very specific instructions: I was to kneel on the rug, pray for what I wanted, put the rug on a Bible open to Philippians 4:19 ("And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus"), then mail the rug back to them the next morning along with a form on which I was to check off everything I wanted them to pray for me to get.

Among the choices: A new car, a better job, and a fill-in-the-blank option with the words: "Pray for God to bless me with this amount of money."

I've always been alternately amused and disgusted by the peculiar subset of Christians who follow "prosperity gospel" -- who believe that not only is it appropriate to pray for material things, but that God will actually reward them with a big-screen TV or a new car or what have you because they did so. But this was a new one for me: don't just pray for money yourself, but have an entire church pray for you, too!

As an extra bonus, the eyes of Jesus on the rug are closed, but on the eyelids are painted, very faintly, a pair of open eyes. So if you stare at the rug long enough it will appear that he opens his eyes. Apparently cheap optical illusions are evidence of divine presence.

Finally, the letter included a "sealed prophecy" for me and me alone. It was generic gobbledygook that didn't actually contain a single prophetic word.

By this time I knew I was not reading a Christian chain letter; I was reading Christian spam.

Turns out it was from a group known as Saint Matthew's Churches. While it appears to be a real church (and finally owns a church, too, having bought the former Memorial Baptist Church in Houston in 2004), it also appears to be a longstanding mail scam.

That dubious distinction hasn't stopped the founder, James Ewing, from advising various televangelists on how to scare up donations. The church uses a Tulsa lawyer, J.C. Joyce, who has represented Oral Roberts and the disgraced Robert Tilton.

Many Christian groups have condemned Ewing, and he and his ilk do not represent mainstream Christianity. But they do provide a stark example of how religion is not an absolute good. It is a tool, and as with any tool it can be abused to bad ends. Ewing's pitches debase Christianity in order to prey on the poor and the elderly. For me, it was an amusing bit of absurdity that helped color my day; but for others it has serious negative consequences.

I still haven't decided what to do with my prayer rug. I should just throw it out. But I'm tempted to do something a little more splashy than that. Problem is, it contains a picture of Jesus. And while I don't subscribe to Christianity, my gripe is with Ewing, not Christ. So some of the more obnoxious possibilities -- like using it for a dartboard -- don't seem appropriate.

Perhaps I'll ask God to smite Mr. Ewing. That ought to cause some metaphysical difficulties back at church headquarters.

scams, religion, politics, midtopia

Oregon approves gay partnerships

Oregon has become the latest state to approve some form of gay unions.

A bill giving Oregon's gay and lesbian couples the benefits of marriage through domestic partnerships won final legislative approval Wednesday.

The Senate endorsed the measure 21-9, sending it to Gov. Ted Kulongoski. The governor is a gay-rights supporter who says he will sign the bill along with another one passed last month to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The domestic partnership bill, set to take effect Jan. 1, would enable same-sex couples to enter into contractual relationships that grant them the same benefits that state law offers to married couples.

This is the purest "technical" form of gay unions out there. It's not marriage, it's not even civil unions. It just lets two same-sex people sign contracts giving them the legal benefits of marriage.

What's interesting is the reason for that approach: In 2004 Oregon was one of 11 states that adopted constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Which demonstrates that such amendments, while preventing full marriage rights for gays, are not a serious barrier to providing basic legal fairness -- unless you're in one of the states that banned not only gay marriage but also civil unions or anything that provides benefits resembling those of marriage. Those broad measures weren't just about defending the institution of marriage -- they were flat-out spiteful.

That makes seven states that have civil unions or partnerships -- California, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and now Oregon. In addition, New Hampshire will adopt civil unions once the governor signs a bill now sitting on his desk. And, of course, Massachusetts allows outright gay marriage.

Many cities -- notably New York and Washington, D.C. -- also recognize domestic partners.

That's nine states covering 67.8 million people -- nearly a fourth of the U.S. population. If New York, against the odds, adopts Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposed gay marriage law, that would surge to 10 states covering 87.1 million people, or nearly a third of the population.

Of course, such state-level actions do not address things like federal tax benefits, which is why the federal government eventually needs to step up and recognize same-sex unions as well. But it's a start.

gay rights, politics, midtopia

Here's your chance to balance the budget

Well, the Minnesota budget, that is.

Minnesota Public Radio has a semi-nifty interactive feature that lets you decide priorities, taxes and spending for the state. Even if you're not from Minnesota, it's still an educational exercise.

This biennium the job is made easier by the state's projected $2 billion surplus. You're making decisions on whether to increase spending or cut taxes, not making tough calls about where to cut back.

There are a few drawbacks that make it less than satisfying. First, you only have certain choices for how much to spend on each item. For instance, you're given a choice between sticking $50 million in reserves or $700 million -- nothing in between. And the particular programs funded at each spending level is decided for you, so you don't get to choose your priorities as specifically as I would like. For instance, if you want to increase the number of public defenders, you also have to increase judicial salaries.

With those caveats, here's how my budget ended up. All numbers reflect changes from current spending, not totals.

OVERVIEW
It turns out I'm something of a tax-and-spend kind of guy. I used up the surplus and added another $465 million in income tax increases. But that's somewhat misleading. It's mostly because I chose to greatly increase budget reserves. Had I not done that, I would have avoided raising taxes and been left with a $300 million surplus.

E-12 education: Mostly unchanged. $38 million extra to help poor families send their kids to pre-school. Not only is this good for the kids, it's essentially subsidized day care for working families.

Health and human services: $300 million to provide health insurance coverage to most of the state's uninsured kids and low-income adults, as well as giving small businesses a break on insurance costs. COLA increases for nursing homes, and $48 million to child welfare programs.

Tax relief: $300 million to restore Pawlenty's cuts in local government aid. No direct property tax relief or rebates. The Jesse Checks drew down our rainy-day funds and led directly to the budget crunches of recent years. I have no desire to repeat that.

Higher education: $155 million to the University of Minnesota for merit pay and research, $125 million to community colleges (which offer a more affordable education to a larger swath of students) and a minor $25 million to student aid to help offset expected tuition increases.

Debt, state agencies and veterans: $200 million to provide COLA increases for state workers.

Agriculture and the environment: I dislike agricultural subsidies, but this didn't let me slash those. I boosted spending by $200 million to fund the Clean Water Legacy, a 10-year effort to clean up polluted waters.

Jobs, housing and the arts: No increase.

Transportation: $65 million more to the Highway Trust Fund. No more trying to build critical infrastructure on the cheap as Pawlenty has attempted -- and failed.

Prisons: $100 million for maintenance, COLA raises and rehabilitaton programs for prisoners.

Courts and public defenders: $120 million boost. I mostly wanted to increase funding for public defenders, a critical shortcoming in our legal system. To do that I also had to increase judicial pay.

Budget reserves: Socked away $700 million to get the reserves up to where they belong: 5 percent of the two-year budget.

Personal income taxes: Raised the top personal income tax rate from 7.85 percent to 8.5 percent, generating an extra $465 million. I could have left taxes alone and settled for a smaller contribution to the budget reserves. But I chose this option for two reasons: It merely returns tax rates to where they were in 1998, and the additional burden is very small: $90 a year for a single taxpayer earning $100,000.

Corporate income taxes: No change. Not needed.

Sales and sin taxes: No change. Not needed, and these taxes are regressive.

ANALYSIS
So while I spent the surplus and then some, what did I spend it on? Budget reserves, local government aid, prisons/courts, the environment, higher education and health coverage for the vulnerable. All appropriate places for government spending, IMO. This was because I saw an opportunity to make investments that will pay off in the long term. If I had not chosen that route, it would have been easy to balance the budget and provide a tax cut while still improving services in key areas. I would have been fine with that outcome.

Beyond the raw numbers, the exercise is useful in making you think about the tradeoffs between taxes and services. But it also assumes our tax money is being spent efficiently and wisely. That's not always a safe assumption.

Once you complete the budget, you can compare your budget to others'. I was in the mainstream in most of my choices. The exceptions were:

I spent more than most: health care, local government aid, paying state workers, environment, public safety, budget reserves.

I spent less than most: K-12 education, property tax relief, jobs/housing/arts.

The most interesting stat: More than 80 percent of participants agree that rebates are bad idea.

Give it a try and let me know how you make out.

budget, minnesota, politics, midtopia

Prosecutors' boss was out of the loop

Today it's the House's turn to air embarassing revelations in the prosecutor firing scandal.

The Justice Department's former No. 2 official testified Thursday he was unaware of plans to fire underperforming U.S. attorneys and praised all but one of the eight whose dismissals are now being investigated by Congress.

Jim Comey, a Republican appointee who served as deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005, said he had one 15-minute conversation during his tenure about prosecutors who were considered weak managers. Only one of the eight who were ultimately fired — Kevin Ryan, the former U.S. attorney in San Francisco — fit that description, Comey said.

There's a bit less here than meets the eye. In February 2005, Gonzales' team had just come on board and Comey would announce plans to leave the department two months later. Knowing that he would be leaving, it's not surprising that Gonzales and Sampson would exclude him from much of the planning -- and thus he wouldn't know much about it.

That said, completely ignoring Comey is just weird. Put yourself in Gonzales' shoes for a moment: You've just taken over the Justice Department, and one of the first things you want to do is evaluate prosecutors for possible replacement. Neither you nor your chief deputies have firsthand knowledge of the prosecutors' performance during the five years preceding your arrival. So how best to get a handle on their effectiveness?

You would, of course, examine their arrest and trial statistics, as well as seeking feedback from homestate politicians and other observers. But you'd also talk to the man who was the prosecutors' boss for the period in question, wouldn't you? Doesn't that seem like a logical move?

It does -- if your evaluation is grounded in their legal performance. But it's pretty much unnecessary if your criteria is something else -- like political reliability.

On the other hand, Comey said he never spoke with Karl Rove and had only limited contact with Harriet Miers, suggesting that -- prior to Gonzales' arrival, at least -- the White House had limited contacts within Justice.

All in all, Comey came across as a standup guy who wasn't interested in politicizing the department. He's also, by the way, the guy who as Acting Attorney General refused to certify certain aspects of the NSA eavesdropping program in 2004 because he considered them illegal. In retrospect it's too bad he didn't stick around at Justice. It sounds like he was one of the few adults in the building.

Comey, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

The second war-funding bill

Outlines and trial balloons have begun appearing as the White House -- represented by three senior aides -- and Congress begin negotiating a compromise following Tuesday's veto of the previous bill.

Democrats started out, unsurprisingly, by dropping the timetables that most irked President Bush. But other options are being considered.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) indicated that the next bill will include benchmarks for Iraq -- such as passing a law to share oil revenue, quelling religious violence and disarming sectarian militias -- to keep its government on course. Failure to meet benchmarks could cost Baghdad billions of dollars in nonmilitary aid, and the administration would be required to report to Congress every 30 days on the military and political situation in Iraq.

There's bipartisan backing for something along those lines, even among Republicans who voted against the first bill.

By the way, you've got to love the White House response: They're okay with benchmarks, as long as there are no penalties for missing them -- only rewards for meeting them. Once again, the administration demonstrates its congenital opposition to even the most rudimentary forms of accountability.

I'm all for positive reinforcement. But given that we're already pouring money and blood into Iraq, there has to be some negative reinforcement as well. Otherwise the Iraqi government can do absolutely nothing and nothing happens: They still get the money and blood.

I really wish the world worked the way Bush thinks it does. "If you run this business well and make it successful, you'll get a $10 million bonus! If you run it into the ground, you'll have to make do on your $2 million salary."

Anyway, that wish won't fly in Congress. Hard benchmarks apparently have the support of large numbers of moderates in both parties, enough to make up for the most liberal members who will oppose the new bill on the grounds that it doesn't go far enough.

Also under consideration is the proposal I predicted: a measure to fund the war through July or so, but cut off funding unless benchmarks are met. The Senate supports funding through September, but the basic idea is the same: a short-term funding bill now, and a long-term bill in the fall only if we see progress from both the surge and the Iraqi government.

It'll be interesting to see what Bush's reaction will be to either proposal. But I like the Democratic options. I'm okay with hard benchmarks, funding only through September, or a combination of the above. And I hope they keep the waivable readiness requirements for our troops. The more they make Bush face up to the damage being done by the war, and the lack of progress therein, the better.

And if Bush actually pulls this off -- the surge works, the Iraqis suddenly get serious about governing -- he can make the Democrats dance naked on hot coals while getting slapped with ostrich feathers by the D.C. madame's fantasy sex squad.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Leahy subpoenas Rove e-mails

Things are heating up in the "executive privilege" confrontation between Congress and the White House.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) issued a subpoena Wednesday for all e-mails from White House adviser Karl Rove that relate to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The subpoena is actually aimed at the Justice Department, not Rove, so it only covers communications he would have had with Justice. It'll be interesting to see if that gets around privilege objections, since communications with other departments don't usually count as confidential advice to the president.

He gave the Justice Department until May 15 to comply.

Meanwhile, Gonzales is scheduled to go before the House Judiciary Committee on May 10 and get the same grilling he got from the Senate a couple of weeks ago. His appearance will come amid a Justice Department probe of Monica "I plead the Fifth" Goodling, this time examining whether she sought to place Republicans in career prosecutor spots -- a violation of both tradition and civil-service law.

Much as the White House may not savor the prospect of replacing Gonzales, can that experience really be worse that the endless drumbeat of bad news they're going to endure if they keep him?

Goodling, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Donklephant hacked

Calling all tech types:

My other home, Donklephant, has been hacked by a brainless script kiddie. A vanilla version of the main site is available, but the admin controls are blocked, meaning none of the contributors can post.

If you've got tech skills that could help resolve the problem (WordPress knowledge would be particularly helpful, I gather), please e-mail Justin Gardner, Donklephant's maestro.

Update: Justin got it back up. Justice and humanity are safe once more.

gutless worms, politics, midtopia

McDermott loses again

Rep. James McDermott lost another round in the legal battle over his leaking an illegally obtained tape of GOP leaders 10 years ago.

In a 5-4 opinion, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that McDermott, D-Seattle, should not have given reporters access to the taped call....

The ruling upholds a previous decision ordering McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs.

McDermott claims there are serious whistleblower and First Amendment issues at stake here, and I'm sympathetic to that -- as are 18 news organizations that filed briefs supporting him. We do not want to overly restrict the ability of people to expose government wrongdoing -- as the revelations of NSA eavesdropping, CIA prisons and FBI abuse of National Security Letters attest.

But whistleblower exceptions generally involve matters of great public interest. This leak, besides being based on an illegally obtained tape, involved little more than partisan advantage -- an effort to embarass Congressional Republicans and Newt Gingrich in particular. While they deserved to be embarassed -- talking about ethics in public while conniving in private is never pretty -- such petty score-settling isn't worthy of the same protection as a government worker exposing crimes and corruption.

In this case, it's hard to see how the public interest could trump the legalities of the matter.

So good for the court, and let's hope the Supreme Court declines to hear the case and brings this saga to an end. A $700,000 payout appears to be a fitting punishment for what in the end was a relatively minor offense -- as evidenced by the awarding of just $60,000 in actual damages. Political embarassment is only worth so much.

Hall of Shame has been updated.

politics, midtopia

Senate doubles over laughing at wiretap proposal

Well, okay, they didn't. But I wish they would.

At least they were skeptical.

Citing FBI abuses and the attorney general's troubles, senators peppered top Justice and intelligence officials Tuesday with skeptical questions about their proposal to revise the rules for spying on Americans.

Senate Intelligence Committee members said the Bush administration must provide more information about its earlier domestic spying before it can hope to gain additional powers for the future.

Man, I love divided government. Rubber stamps suck.

The debate revolved largely around NSA wiretapping authority. By way of confirming everyone's worst fear, the administration witnesses admitted that Bush would submit to warrants only as long as it was convenient:

"There is nothing in this bill that confines the president to work within" the surveillance act in the future, said Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif. The same issue was raised by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

McConnell said the administration wants to work under the surveillance law now, but acknowledged "that does not mean the president would not use ... (constitutional powers) in a crisis."

I'd be interested to see how the administration defines the word "crisis." And why they think the court would be a problem in such a situation, given that in 2006 it rejected exactly one eavesdropping request -- while approving 2,176.

Congress should not let politics and suspicion get in the way of adapting legitimate surveillance methods to modern technology. But neither should they simply trust the administration, because it has proven itself manifestly unworthy of such trust. The administration bill should be a starting point, but Congress should decide for itself how to adapt to modern times -- and what restrictions to place on so doing.

Meanwhile, a court report gives a sense of the scope of non-NSA wiretapping. It's at record levels, but still pretty small: 1,839 taps were authorized in 2006. And that's entirely due to a big jump in state-authorized taps. Federal wiretaps actually have been falling since 2004, and there were fewer in 2006 than there were in 1996.

Two caveats:

1. A given wiretap can cover more than one person, and of course a wiretap subject typically talks to multiple people. The average number of people monitored under a wiretap order was 122. So a grand total of 225,000 or so Americans had police listening in on all or some of their conversations. That's a lot, but it's still just 0.07 percent of the population. NSA aside, 99.93 percent of us were not monitored.

2. The Justice Department says the drop in federal wiretaps is entirely due to several large, ongoing investigations that could not be reported in the 2006 figures. Had those taps been counted, Justice claims, there would have been no decrease in wiretaps.

Also of interest: Not a single wiretap request was denied -- and not one had anything to do with terrorism.

Fun party trivia: On average it costs $52,551 to install a wiretap.

civil liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

DeLay's PAC packs it in

Gradually, the last vestiges of Tom DeLay's presence in Congress are fading away.

The political action committee for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was quietly closed last week after a decade-long run as one of the most influential - and infamous - PACs run by members of Congress.

With a final $1,400 payment to the Federal Election Commission last month settling an audit dispute, Americans for a Republican Majority then filed its termination papers with the commission April 24.

Soon his Congressional committee will follow suit.

The last remnant of DeLay's political career in federal government, the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee, is just about completely empty as well, reporting just $7,015 left in its coffers as of March 31. DeLay spent almost $1 million last year from this committee defending himself. A separate legal defense fund, which folded when he left Congress, doled out an additional $1.1 million to DeLay lawyers in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

No need to start lamenting, though. He's got a blog, a book and continues to opine on politics, with a predictable take (Bush's only mistakes have been giving in. Rumsfeld shouldn't have been fired, for instance.) Those of us slightly less admiring of the Hammer (time once again to plug my hit song, "ConBoy") have his upcoming trial to look forward to -- assuming there's actually a case at the bottom of it.

I strongly hope that the rest of the body politic have taken note of the lessons of DeLay, and we shall not see his like again for a very long time.

DeLay, politics, midtopia