The politicization of government

Last month, reports said the administrator of the General Services Administration was under investigation for possibly violating the Hatch ACt, which makes it illegal to use federal resources for partisan purposes.

Turns out that might have been the tip of the iceberg.

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.

The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.

Informational briefings? Fine. Pressure, encouragement or collusion to use their positions to try to influence the outcome of particular races? Illegal.
In a sign of the seriousness of the questions, the agencies' responses are being coordinated:

By the end of yesterday afternoon, all of those describing the briefings on the record had adopted a uniform phrase in response to a reporter's inquiries: They were, each official said, "informational briefings about the political landscape."

And then there's this adorable little slip-up:

At the Department of Homeland Security, spokesman Russ Knocke at first said "there is no indication that any meeting on election targets, congressional districts or candidate support or assistance took place at the department." He then called back to alter that remark, saying he had no indication that such a meeting was held at department "offices." A department official said employees were briefed on "morale" but did not elaborate.

Translation: "We did talk about political use of government agencies, we just did it out of the office."

For now these are just another set of questions regarding the Bush administration's politicization of government functions. But they are credible questions deserving answers.

And regardless of what those answers turn out to be, this provides an excellent example of why such politicization is a bad idea. While the president and Congress set policy, the American people have to trust that government is working for everyone, regardless of political party. At a minimum, revelations like this call that trust into question, which in turn erodes faith in government and undermines government's legitimacy. A certain amount of political influence is unavoidable and even desirable: after all, you don't want unelected mandarins ignoring the wishes of our elected representatives. But once appointed their job is to serve the people. It's a lesson that was lost on Alberto Gonzales, and it appears he was not alone.

corruption, politics, midtopia

McCain calls for Gonzales to resign

The "throw him out" chorus keeps getting louder.

Presidential contender John McCain joined the growing number of Republicans calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down in the furor over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

"I am very disappointed in his performance," McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday when asked about the attorney general in an interview with CNN's Larry King. "I think loyalty to the president should enter into his calculations."

When pressed about whether Gonzales should resign, McCain responded: "I think that out of loyalty to the president that that would probably be the best thing that he could do."

Translation: you're hurting your boss and the entire GOP, Al. Knock it off.

Things should be very interesting for Tony Snow when he returns to work next week.

McCain, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Senate passes war-funding bill

As expected, the Senate passed the timetable-laden war-funding measure. It now goes to Bush for an almost-certain veto. After which the real politicking starts.

A foretaste:

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said Democrats were still considering what to do after Bush's veto. One option would be funding the war through September as Bush wants but setting benchmarks that the Iraqi government must meet, he said.

Murtha chairs the House panel that oversees military funding.

"I think everything that passes will have some sort of condition (placed) on it," he said. Ultimately, Murtha added, the 2008 military budget considered by Congress in June "is where you'll see the real battle," he said.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Rice will reject Congressional subpoena

Secretayr of State Condoleeza Rice says Congressional questions about Iraqi WMD have already been answered, so she doesn't intend to appear before Congress to discuss the matter.

Rice said she respected the oversight function of the legislative branch, but maintained she had already testified in person and under oath about claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa during her confirmation hearing for the job of secretary of state.

"I addressed these questions, almost the same questions, during my confirmation hearing," she said. "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered."

While this could still become an issue -- Congress doesn't really like having its subpoenas ignored -- Rice made a move to defuse the issue, offering to answer their questions in a letter.

That's hardly the same thing as being there in person, where answers can themselves be questioned in order to get more clarity or detail. But given her previous testimony, Rice's offer is reasonable. Let her send the letter, and then let Congress explain why the letter is insufficient and an appearance is necessary.

Meanwhile, use that subpoena power for a far more promising subject, the aluminum tubes issue.

Rice, Iraq, politics, midtopia

People are stupid

Two examples from the shallow end of the human gene pool today.

In Japan, a couple of thousand people bought sheep as pets, thinking they were poodles.

Flocks of sheep were imported to Japan and then sold by a company called Poodles as Pets, marketed as fashionable accessories, available at $1,600 each....

The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food....

One couple said they became suspicious when they took their "dog" to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.

This is so over the top, especially the last example, that I'm waiting for this to be exposed as a hoax. But so far, it appears legit.

On the upside, Rex the Poodle will make a nice (if expensive) meal now that he's turned into Kabob the Sheep. (h/t: Sad-Sav)

Lest you suspect I think Americans are somehow better than the Japanese, let's go to Washington, D.C., and the case of the $65 million pair of pants.

When the neighborhood dry cleaner misplaced Roy Pearson's pants, he took action. He complained. He demanded compensation. And then he sued. Man, did he sue.

Two years, thousands of pages of legal documents and many hundreds of hours of investigative work later, Pearson is seeking to make Custom Cleaners pay -- would you believe more than the payroll of the entire Washington Nationals roster?

He says he deserves millions for the damages he suffered by not getting his pants back, for his litigation costs, for "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort," for the value of the time he has spent on the lawsuit, for leasing a car every weekend for 10 years and for a replacement suit, according to court papers.

Pearson is demanding $65,462,500. The original alteration work on the pants cost $10.50.

By the way, Pearson is a lawyer. Okay, you probably figured that. But get this: He's a judge, too -- an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia.

The case is going to trial in June.

I guess it can't simply be thrown out, because Pearson does appear to have a legitimate claim -- just not a $65 million one. But at what point do his antics become grounds for dismissal -- or for harassment charges?

Loony cases like this don't justify calls for tort reform -- especially because such calls usually make no effort to distinguish between legitimate suits and obviously frivolous ones, relying instead on blanket solutions like damage caps. But the court system definitely needs to come up with better ways to handle these outliers -- like ordering them to arbitration, summarily reducing the allowed claim, or otherwise insisting that the case remain within the bounds of reality -- or, in this case, small-claims court. (h/t: Moderate Voice)

Update: The poodle story is, indeed, a hoax. Too bad.

, humor, law, politics, midtopia

House OKS troop withdrawal bill

The House has passed the conference committee version of the war-funding bill, complete with veto-attracting timetables. Two Republicans voted for the bill. 13 Democrats voted against -- six of them because it didn't go far enough. It goes to the Senate tomorrow, and could hit Bush's desk by Monday. If it reaches his desk: he might just scrawl "return to sender" across the front and give it back to the Congressional courier.

The details for the curious:

The bill passed yesterday sets strict requirements for resting, training and equipping troops but would grant the president the authority to waive those restrictions, as long as he publicly justifies the waivers. The bill also establishes benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet: Create a program to disarm militias, reduce sectarian violence, ease rules that purged the government of all former Baath Party members and approve a law on sharing oil revenue.

Unless the Bush administration determines by July 1 that those benchmarks are being met, troops would begin coming home immediately, with a goal of completing those withdrawals by the end of the year. If benchmarks are being met, troops would begin coming home no later than Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the troop pullout by April 1.

After combat forces are withdrawn, some troops could remain to protect U.S. facilities and diplomats, pursue terrorist organizations, and train and equip Iraqi security forces.

As well, Congress killed some of the $20 billion in pork they had padded the legislation with. They should have killed it all, especially given that Bush's promised veto makes it moot. Pork greases the wheels of politics, but $20 billion is just obscene.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Wednesday Gonzales roundup

Just when you thought things might die down a little in the Gonzales case and other Congressional probes, they heat back up.

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

This strikes me as a little bit of rehashing old news, as Republicans were quick to point out. And obviously there's a political factor here -- the opportunity to embarass the administration by reminding voters how badly they got things wrong in Iraq. But a lot of these issues should have been investigated at the time, and weren't. I'd much rather see a probe into the aluminum tubes evidence, since that seems to be a much clearer example of spinning intelligence to justify a war; but this is an okay place to start.

Moments earlier in the committee chamber next door, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-6 to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liaison, for her testimony on why the administration fired eight federal prosecutors. The panel also unanimously approved — but did not issue — a subpoena to compel her to appear.

This was expected, and should be interesting. Goodling was heavily involved in the decision to fire the prosecutors, and may be able to shed light on who actually drew up the list and why -- a question that remains oddly unanswered, as if the list just magically appeared one night on Kyle Sampson's desk as a gift from the Pink Slip Fairy.

Simultaneously across Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved — but did not issue — a subpoena on the prosecutors' matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

This will ratchet up the confrontation with the administration over executive privilege.

And then the topper:

And in case Gonzales thought the worst had passed with his punishing testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman and top Republican issued a new demand: Refresh the memory that Gonzales claimed had failed him 71 times during the seven-hour session.

"Provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday," Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote to Gonzales on Wednesday.

The hot seat remains hot for Gonzales. They issued a similar request to Kyle Sampson, who outdid his boss by claiming "I don't know" 122 times. We'll see if anything comes of it. Either way it will continue to fuel the controversy -- either with the content of his answers, or the implications of his refusal to answer.

As if that weren't bad enough for Gonzales, there's this, from the Wall Street Journal. Turns out there was more to the recent FBI raid on Rep. Rick Renzi's house than there appeared:

As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.

The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations. The Arizona U.S. attorney then overseeing the case, Paul Charlton, was told he was being fired in December, one of eight federal prosecutors dismissed in the past year. The dismissals have triggered a wave of criticism and calls from Congress for Mr. Gonzales to resign.

It's important to note that this is speculation at the moment; there's no evidence of wrongdoing. But the timing is interesting:

Mr. Renzi, first elected to Congress in 2002, was fighting to hold on to his seat. In September, President Bush hosted a fund-raiser in Scottsdale on his behalf. About the same time Mr. Charlton was added to a list of prosecutors "we should now consider pushing out," wrote Mr. Gonzales's then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, in a Sept. 13, 2006, email to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. The email is among thousands that the Justice Department has released in response to congressional inquiries into the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.

In November, Mr. Renzi won re-election to a third term, beating his challenger by 51% to 44%. A month later, on Dec. 7, Mr. Charlton was told he was being dismissed.

Why did they decide to add Renzi to the "to be fired" list at that point? Coincidence? Could be. And as Gonzales backers like to point out, it wasn't like this particular investigation was going to be derailed. But that wouldn't have been the point. It could have been intended to send a signal to other prosecutors who might consider investigation high-profile Republicans.

Certainly needs some explaining.

Iraq, Rice, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Assymetrical information warfare

I've been noticing signs of the approaching Apocalypse lately.

Yesterday, for instance, CNN devoted an hour of prime-time programming to.... Larry King and Dr. Phil dissecting the Alec Baldwin voicemail brouhaha.

Today, though, the earth really shifted. I find myself agreeing -- in substance, if not in tone -- with the conservative whackjobs Little Green Footballs.

They wrote about a Harvard study examining the media's coverage of last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The upshot: Hezbollah tightly controlled media access to its side of the conflict, and thus controlled how it was portrayed. The Israelis, on the other hand, allowed far more unfettered access, and were victimized by it -- in part by the sheer number of images showing Israelis shooting at things, and the paucity of images showing Hezbollah doing the same thing. The result: Israel looked like the aggressor, even though Hezbollah started the fight by kidnapping two Israelis and killing eight others.

At this point LGF and I part company, because they see it as proof positive of willing media cooperation with terrorists, and also wax obsessive about the infamous doctored photos from a Reuters photographer in Beirut -- ignoring some facts in the process, such as 1) the doctoring was amateurishly obvious, 2) All it did was add more smoke (and buildings!!) to a scene that already had plenty and 3) the photographer was quickly fired and all of his photos re-examined.

In addition, while Hezbollah did indeed start things, Israel's (IMO, justified) response was also an attack: invading Lebanon. So it's hardly bias to depict Israeli troops relentlessly attacking Hezbollah when that, in fact, was what they were doing.

But the Harvard study does point up some serious problems, notably the failure of many media outlets to recognize and account for the effect of the Hezbollah restrictions. The blame can be assigned freely: The journalists on the ground were too willing to accept them, their editors didn't do enough to highlight those restrictions as they passed stories and photos up the chain, and wire editors at many news organizations here in the States didn't make a point of adjusting their coverage to correct for the imbalance in access.

Bias? Perhaps. I'm more willing to suspect bias among the reporters on the ground, many of whom were local stringers (with local biases) hired by news agencies. But bias doesn't really explain the failings higher up the food chain. Editors at all levels should have known better, because it's their job to know better.

So what caused it? I'm inclined to believe several things:

1. Laziness. Journalists, like everyone else, are more apt to cover things that are easy to cover. If Hezbollah is willing to drive you to the scene of a bombing, are you going to refuse? Nope. You should balance that out by noting the restrictions and limitations and trying to find other sources of information, but that's hard to do in normal times, much less during a war. At some point you shrug and accept that it's just another dog-and-pony show, like the briefings put on for journalists in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Further up, the stories and photos roll in as if by magic, each imbued with the authority of a wire service and a "just the facts" tone. Unless you have independent reason -- and the initiative -- to question whether what you're getting reflects the truth, you don't think much about it: you simply accept it and give your readers a representative sampling.

2. Excessive trust. As an editor, you're supposed to view things with a skeptical eye and ask a lot of questions. But you don't expect your reporters or photographers to keep important details from you. That trust may be misplaced when you're talking about local stringers (who can be expected to have their own political opinions) in the midst of a religious and ethnic war.

3. Lack of time. Employment in U.S. newsrooms has been steadily declining, as the Internet drains readership and an advertising slump cuts into traditionally fat profit margins. Newspapers are still cash cows, but they're not growing cash cows. Good journalism is expensive, and increasingly newspapers are unwilling to pay for it in any great numbers. So there's a lot less time for editors to look for not-so-obvious questions and angles, especially when it involves a story that is occurring overseas and they have no direct contact with.

Even on a good day, moreover, the fighting in Lebanon would have been just one of dozens of stories your typical wire editor handled on a given night. Most of those get no more than a few minutes' editorial attention: enough to get the gist of the story, assign a length and location and pick which wire piece to run. Then it's on to the next. Daily journalists work with the clock ticking remorselessly like a gun to their head: there would have to have been something about the Lebanon fighting that raised red flags in order for nonobvious problems to be noticed.

4. Lack of knowledge. A corollary to #3 is that knowledge and experience cost money, too. When newsrooms cut staff they often do it through buyouts, which disproportionately remove senior staff. This is great for the bottom line -- the most expensive warm bodies leave -- but it's not so good for journalism because you lose institutional memory, years of cultivated sources and life experience. It's intangibles such as those that often lead to the discovery of major mistakes because something just doesn't smell right, or the editor happened to visit the place in question 10 years ago.

If the above sound like excuses, they're not: they're laments. The media does not do the hard work often enough, or think about the big picture often enough, or communicate clearly to its readers the shortcomings in the data presented. And we all suffer for it, because democracy cannot survive without a free flow of quality information. So while I sympathize with the industry's troubles of late, there is no excuse for editorial timidity or laziness. The first question when covering something like the Lebanese war should be "how am I (and my organization) being manipulated by the various parties?" And then a plan developed for dealing with that -- even if the answer is simply to tell readers "here's how it is." Many outlets do that; too many do not.

It's a lesson the industry has learned before -- during Vietnam, and more recently with the often uncritical coverage of the Bush administration's WMD hype. Those lessons apparently didn't sink in in a lot of places, or else it's the kind of lesson that must be relearned by each individual reporter. But it's a lesson that will be even more important in the coming era of diminished resources. Perspective, hard work and a functioning BS meter can make up for a lot of missing dollars.

media, journalism, politics, midtopia

Wow. Impressive.

This has been a big week for religious open-mindedness.

First, the Vatican decided that kids who die before they're baptized aren't necessarily doomed to an eternity in Limbo. Very big of them, I must say. I always find religions that punish the innocent to be particularly attractive, but I suppose it was time for them to finally move out of the 12th Century. And it only took them 800 years.

Okay, Limbo wasn't official church doctrine and has been informally repudiated for decades. And Limbo itself was an improvement on the thoughts of St. Augustine, who decided that such luckless kids ended up in Hell instead. But come on.

Then today, the Veterans Adminstration yielded to a lawsuit and decided Wiccan veterans could have their own symbol on their tombstones.

For nearly a decade, the department had refused to act on requests for the pentacle, without a clear reason. VA spokesman Matt Burns said that approximately 10 applications were pending from adherents of Wicca, a blend of witchcraft and nature worship that is one of the country's fastest-growing religions.

In yesterday's legal settlement, the VA agreed to grant all the pending requests within two weeks and to approve new ones on an expedited basis for 30 days. The department will also pay $225,000 to the plaintiffs for attorneys' fees.

How big of them, letting soldiers choose which religious symbol they would like to have on their own grave. I realize there have to be limits -- otherwise I'd want a pirate suit on mine, to honor the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- but it's hard to deny that Wicca fits whatever criteria you could name for a religion. So one is left with the notion that the opposition was based on simple prejudice.

In that regard, this is interesting.

The settlement stipulates, however, that the plaintiffs must not keep or disclose any documents handed over by the government during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Lawyers familiar with the case said that some documents suggested the VA had political motives for rejecting the pentacle.

So the VA goes to discovery, then capitulates completely -- and wants the evidence kept hidden. Nah, nothing going on there.

And people wonder why majority religions are sometimes looked upon sourly by nonadherents.

religion, politics, midtopia

An excellent take on gun control

Today I stumbled across this excellent take on gun laws. It was written by John Casteen for Slate in response to Dick Cheney's lawyer massacree, but it's eerily relevant to the Virginia Tech case, revolving as it does around Virginia gun laws.

First, the ugly from the gun lobby side:

The roster of proposed gun bills in Virginia reads like a long series of bad jokes: One bill would do away with the concealed-weapons permit altogether; anyone at all could carry one, as long as they so inform the police if they're ever detained. This law is a shootout waiting to happen, since one can't exactly reveal a weapon without reaching for it. Another bill would prohibit health-care professionals—in the course of educating parents about home safety hazards like drain cleaner and gateless staircases—from suggesting a family may want to keep its guns away from children. And the states also legislate downward: Two proposed laws would repeal all gun ordinances passed by localities before 1995 and forbid them any further regulation of the discharge of weapons within their jurisdictions.

Then, the good:

The gun lobby does, in fact, present solid statistical evidence that armed people defend themselves and others against significant numbers of violent crimes. It also argues, correctly, that terrorist incidents in public buildings and rampage shootings in schools might be resolved more quickly by armed citizens within than by SWAT teams entering from without. There are good reasons for a decent, law-abiding person to own and carry a gun for purposes of recreation or self-defense. Her rights are just as precious as those of a non-gun-owner, and she shouldn't be treated like a criminal until and unless she behaves like one. No good law can erode her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of skeet merely in the interest of keeping others with darker motives from getting their hands on a gun.

The core of the problem:

Evaluating the various bills proffered by the gun lobby should simply be a matter of totting up these rights and measuring them against issues of public safety. But such evaluation currently relies on a risk-benefit analysis that's skewed by state politicians' reliance on the gun vote. Perfect honesty, for instance, might force us to acknowledge that the threat to public safety these pro-gun laws pose probably far outweighs whatever value they may hold in preserving individual liberties, since criminals would be as likely as lawful gun owners to avail themselves of their right to bring a gun on their next trip downtown.

Now, the bad from the gun-control side:

Two examples of poorly conceived gun-control tactics are the federal assault-weapons ban and liability lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers. Even the nomenclature of the former—which expired in September 2004—is misleading, since Americans legally bought and owned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and combat accessories for the duration of the alleged "ban." The bill did nothing to keep these weapons off the street, but the gun-control community claimed it as a major victory; the law didn't need to be effective in practice to be helpful in raising money from the left-leaning public. Again in the interest of candor, one would have to agree that's a cynical and dishonest approach.

The same is true of liability suits, which simply don't target criminals; they target companies, American ones, who provide skilled jobs to American workers. Suing Smith & Wesson as a result of a shooting is like suing GM because of a drunk-driving arrest (or Prada because someone wears white shoes after Labor Day … ). Responsibility should fall to individuals who make dangerous decisions, not to corporations that make inanimate objects.

Finally, his proposed solution:

Universal background checks. The Brady Law already mandates FBI background checks when anyone buys a gun from a federal firearms-licensed gun dealer. There's no question that Brady is constitutional, and that Congress had the right to pass it. Given sufficient legislative spine, then, it follows that they could mandate the same check on all private sales as well.

These off-the-books sales in the secondary market account for roughly 40 percent of annual gun transfers. They make possible the gun-show loophole and straw-man purchases like the one that gave the Columbine killers the semiautomatic pistol in their cache. In fact, the only lawmakers who could possibly oppose universal checks are those who'd argue that known terrorists, sex offenders, felons, maniacs, drunks, drug addicts, and domestic abusers should be able to skip the FBI check and buy their guns from private sellers. That's what our current law allows, which raises the question: Why is the gun-control community not focused on a straightforward law that would directly address one of the main sources of guns used in violent crimes?

I can imagine several practical obstacles to such a measure, mainly the difficulty of enforcing it and the bureaucratic hurdles it puts in the way of a gunower trying to get rid of a gun. Can Joe Citizen call the background check database and get a quick answer? And if so, what happens to privacy? What's to keep Mrs. Kravitz from calling up, pretending to have a gun she wants to sell, and checking on the criminal and mental status of all of her neighbors?

Given that, I'd be satisfied with a law that applied to gun shows and other semiformal venues, which accounts for most of the problem anyway. The idea is simple: Make it more difficult for guns to get into the hands of people who should not have them, without unduly hampering the rights of the rest of us to own and carry guns if we wish.

I'd also advocate laws that have nothing to do with gun ownership and everything to do with gun safety. For instance, you should not be able to buy a gun -- especially a handgun -- without undergoing training in its use or showing you have had such training. It might also include an "is a gun right for you?" section, where alternatives -- door locks, an alarm system, guard dogs, baseball bats, whatever -- are discussed, along with their advantages: less dangerous, cheaper, etc. The goal is to have only educated gunowners, who understand clearly why they own a gun and how to use it.

That education should include information on safely storing the weapon. If it's a gun intended for recreational use, then I think it's fine to mandate that it be stored unloaded, or in a locked case, or with the ammo separate, or with a trigger lock, or all of the above. If it's a gun intended for self-defense, however, when it's needed it's needed fast, and you don't want to be fumbling with a lock or loose ammunition. In such a case, the law should be more flexible: mandating that the gun be stored out of sight with the safety engaged and the chamber empty, perhaps, but otherwise simply urging the gunowner to store it as safely as possible while still meeting their needs.

I also think certain crime-solving measures -- like chemically marking the powder in bullets and explosives to help identify their origin -- are reasonable and unobjectionable if technical hurdles can be overcome at a reasonable cost.

The point is, again, to make punishing perpetrators easier without unduly inconveniencing the rest of us.

What about accidental shootings? Sadly, we cannot expect to eliminate them entirely, and attempting to do so could render the gun unusable when you need it most. I think the best we can do is require gunowners to attend safety classes, then hope that their sense of responsibility and love of their children will do the rest. That, and prosecuting them when they are negligent with their firearms.

Concealed carry? Fine, if the applicant otherwise qualifies to own a gun and passes additional classes and more stringent background checks.

These measures aren't going to solve the problem. But it's doubtful the problem is solvable in a conventional sense anyway. It is clear that people are constitutionally allowed to have guns. And given that, it's clear that there will always be a certain number of gun-related accidents and crimes. Gunowners need to accept reasonable restrictions in the name of accountability and public safety; gun-control advocates need to recognize the legitimate concerns and rights of gunowners. And all of us should hope that continued improvements in forensics and policing will make much of this debate moot by continuing to reduce crime overall.

gun control, politics, midtopia

Nobody's going to win with Virginia Tech

It's time to apply some math to the Virginia Tech shootings.

Gun-rights advocates point to it and say, "If one of those students in Norris Hall had had a gun, this might have been prevented."

Gun-control advocates point to it and say, "If guns weren't so easy to get, Cho wouldn't have been able to kill so many people."

But both arguments miss the point. Because such massacres are extraordinary events, and not particularly relevant to the debate.

I have no doubt that armed citizenry have, on various occasions, stopped or prevented crime. But a school shooting is less than a once-in-a-lifetime event for any given town or location. The odds of any of us being in one are vanishingly remote; the odds of being in more than one are so astronomical as to be zero.

Wait, you say: I know of at least a dozen school shootings in recent memory. What do you mean, "they're rare"?

This is where the math comes in.

There are 94,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. Add in the 28,384 private schools, and then arrange the 4,100 colleges, community colleges and universities as a garnish. That gives us a total of 126,000 schools.

There have been 36 school shootings in the United States in the past 11 years, for an average of about three per year.

If my math is correct, that works out to a 0.002 percent chance in any given year that your school will be attacked.

Over the course of an 80-year lifetime, the odds increase to 0.2 percent.

Over 1,000 years, the odds of any given school being attacked reach a whopping 2.4 percent.

Thus by any rational measure, a shooting at your neighborhood school isn't something to worry about except in the context of developing contingency plans as you would for any other highly-unlikely-but-very-bad-if-it-happens event -- like an asteroid strike.

So the question is not "can a gun (or gun control) stop a shooting rampage." We all can envision scenarios where both do just that.

For gun-rights folks, the question is, "Given that such rampages are vanishingly rare, how much carnage are we willing to put up with in the meantime in order to ensure that there's an armed citizen on the scene if and when such a rampage occurs?" The carnage is not small: Each year, firearms are used in about 10,000 homicides, 17,000 suicides and 800 or so accidental deaths. Another 75,000 are injured but not killed.

For gun-control advocates, conversely, the question is, "Given that such rampages are vanishingly rare, how many restrictions on gun ownership are we willing to impose on the population at large in order to keep a potential mass murderer from carrying out such an attack?"

And at base, the question for all sides is: "Does gun control (or armed citizenry) actually reduce violence (or crime) overall?" That's a far more complex question, of course. It's quite possible, for instance, that increased gun ownership reduces crime overall, but at the price of increased violence or accidental deaths. It's possible that gun control reduces deaths but at the price of increased crime. It's also possible that neither is actually a major factor in crime or violence.

I won't pretend to have the answer, but in my next post I discuss some reasonable gun laws that I think most people would support.

gun control, politics, midtopia

Another Abramoff casualty

Mark Zachares, a former aide to Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, apparently is preparing to plead guilty to conspiracy charges.

In exchange for helping Abramoff get clients and business, Zachares was supposed to receive "credit" that would be applied when he landed a job at Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig. (The plan never got that far.)

According to prosecutors, Zachares helped Abramoff get an advance copy of a Justice Department threat report on Guam. He also provided Abramoff information about the Department of Homeland Security reorganization and helped Abramoff develop strategies to win DHS business for clients. Zachares also advised Abramoff's Sun Cruz venture on bureaucratic regulations.

He was a loyalist to the core. In emails Zachares reiterated "his willingness to use his position to retaliate against individuals or entities who had retained competing lobbying firms," according to the filing.

His loyalty came with perks. Zachares accepted trips, money, meals drinks, golf and tickets to sporting events. Many people have taken sports tickets from Abramoff, but Zachares' tally hits high on the list: between August 2002 and February 2004 he racked up more than $30,000 worth of tickets on more than 40 occasions. He also traveled with Abramoff to Scotland in August 2003. And in January and February 2002 Zachares received two $5,000 payments from Abramoff through a wire transfer from the Capitol Athletic Foundation, one of Abramoff's nonprofits.

Added to the Hall of Shame.

Update: As expected, Zachares pleaded guilty. He's expected to get about two years in prison.

politics, midtopia

Spitzer to introduce gay-marriage bill

I love Eliot Spitzer. He's got courage.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer will introduce a bill in the coming weeks to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, his spokeswoman said Friday, a move that would propel New York to the forefront of one of the most contentious issues in politics.

That's gay marriage, not civil unions. And it's not the most popular thing he could have done. It'll play well in New York City, but not so much upstate.

Prospects for passage are uncertain.

Legislation to allow same-sex marriage has never made it to a floor vote in either the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority, or the Republican-controlled State Senate. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, has declined to take a stand on the issue. Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, has supported legislation to outlaw hate crimes and workplace discrimination against gays, but he remains opposed to same-sex marriage.

Even among lawmakers who say they favor the legislation, there is some division over the best strategy to get it passed. Two legislators from Manhattan, State Senator Thomas K. Duane and Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, both Democrats, have tried for several years to shepherd a gay-marriage bill through the Legislature and are trying again this year. That bill has at least 14 sponsors in the Senate and 42 in the Assembly.

So it's a start, but it might be a symbolic one.

I also like the other initiative mentioned in the story: pushing a constitutional amendment requiring nonpartisan legislative redistricting. I've written about the general idea here and here, but it's nice to see a state taking actual steps to get it done.

Spitzer, gay rights, redistricting, politics, midtopia

Backtrack: No wall in Baghdad

The wall that Americans were building to separate neighborhoods in Baghdad will apparently be unbuilt because the Iraqis don't like it.

The American ambassador said Monday the U.S. would "respect the wishes" of the Iraqi government after the prime minister ordered a halt to construction of a three-mile wall separating a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad.

Any plan to build "gated communities" to protect Baghdad neighborhoods from sectarian attacks was in doubt after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said during a visit to Sunni-led Arab countries that he did not want the 12-foot-high wall in Azamiyah to be seen as dividing the capital's sects.

This being Iraq, however, communication is not always the clearest:

Confusion persisted about whether the plan would continue in some form: The chief Iraqi military spokesman said Monday the prime minister was responding to exaggerated reports about the barrier.

"We will continue to construct the security barriers in the Azamiyah neighborhood. This is a technical issue," Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said. "Setting up barriers is one thing and building barriers is another. These are moveable barriers that can be removed."

Al-Moussawi noted similar walls were in place elsewhere in the capital — including in other residential neighborhoods — and criticized the media for focusing on Azamiyah.

Including, apparently, his boss. Which may be where the real communication issues lies.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, indicated that there may have been a miscommunication.

"Discussions on a local level may not have been conveyed to the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Garver said.

It could also just be grandstanding, giving al-Maliki an opportunity to show his independence from the United States.

The Shiite leader is on a regional tour seeking support for his government among mostly Sunni Arab nations. His comments about the barrier may have been aimed at appeasing them and Sunnis at home, despite his assurances to the Americans that there would be no political influence over tactical decisions.

Al-Maliki has a tough line to walk between political and military objectives, no doubt. But any military plan must take those political realities into account. And if that creates an impossible situation, then something has to give on either the military or the political front. And we would need to evaluate or continued presence in Iraq in light of that revealed reality.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Will nobody blink?

I realize that escalating rhetoric often has little to do with what will finally happen, but the bellicosity displayed in the Bush/Congress set-to over Iraq funding is pretty remarkable.

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations."

The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said.

So what's emerging from the conference committee is, remarkably, harder-line than either the House or Senate versions. The House version had hard deadlines but an 18-month timeframe; the Senate version had a shorter timeframe but no deadlines, only "goals." This hybrid version appears to combine the Senate's timetable with at least some of the House deadlines.

As such I think it's a bad idea. I didn't mind either individual version, because they were either very soft limits or the timeline was sufficiently long not to have an immediate effect. But the new version simply moves too fast.

If you truly believe that what's going on in Iraq is an intractable civil war, the bill makes sense: we have no business being there in that case. But if you believe, as I do, that Bush deserves one last chance to show he can win this thing, then an Oct. 1 deadline is simply too soon at this point.

All this may simply be attempts at blame-placing for the veto everyone knows will be coming by the end of this week. What happens after that will depend, in part, on who is more successful in the framing effort. Most likely result, I think, will be a "clean" spending bill that only runs through, say, Sept. 30. That means Bush will have to make another funding request in late summer -- right about when we should be starting to get a verdict on the surge.

But what if they're both serious? What if neither backs down? If no bill is passed, no more money is appropriated, and the war ends unless Bush can find ways to fund it out of discretionary monies -- which just isn't going to happen.

One would think that Bush would rather sign a bill with timetables than accept that. But there are other factors at work here. Neither side really wants an immediate, precipitous pullout, so each is hoping the other will blink first. Beyond that, Bush might see such a pullout as politically advantageous, because the effects would be more calamitous than a gradual pullout over the next year. He could then blame Congress for all the attendant trouble, instead of accepting that blame himself.

But much as I dislike Bush, I'm not cynical enough to believe he would do that to the Iraqis. I think he truly believes we need to stay in Iraq and can win in Iraq. So he's not going to abandon the war just to make political points at home.

So if it comes to pure stubborn, expect Congress to blink first. And then expect a short-term funding bill that will see this debate renewed -- with firmer Congressional resolve if the surge is going badly -- in the fall.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Gays and abortion caused Virginia Tech shootings

At least, that's what Donald Wilmon and the American Family Association are saying.

Bleh.

Hopefully the video works; it's my first attempt to embed a YouTube link.
(h/t: No More Mister Nice Blog)

Update: Wilmon has company. Rush Limbaugh said the shooter had to be a liberal, while both the American Thinker and Newt Gingrich say liberalism is to blame.

crime, religion, politics, midtopia

Life in the bubble

President Bush today reiterated his strong support for Alberto Gonzales.

The president said that Gonzales' testimony before skeptical Judiciary Committee senators last week "increased my confidence" in his ability to lead the Justice Department. Separately, a White House spokeswoman said, "He's staying."

Of course, he didn't actually listen to or watch that testimony. And the White House acknowledged that it wouldn't have mattered if he had.

Q. So is it fair to say that no matter what the testimony, no matter what the back-and-forth, that the President plans to stick with Attorney General Gonzales?

MS. PERINO: I think -- yes. I think the President has full confidence in the Attorney General and whenever that changes for any public servant, we'll let you know, and I see no indication of that.

That sound you hear is Bush sticking his fingers in his ears and going "Na-na-na-na-na. I can't hear you!" It doesn't bother me that he supports Gonzales. It bothers me that he is so obvious about his refusal to listen to things that may contradict his own viewpoint. Bush appears unable or unwilling to recognize two concepts:

1. There's a difference between "fierce loyalty" and "blind loyalty."

2. There's a difference between "loyal" and "competent."

Oh heck, let's add a third:

3. What's good for Bush is not always what's good for the government or the country.

His devotion to an incompetent lapdog AG is a prime example of all three. And it doesn't really achieve anything, because most of the rest of the GOP wants to be shut of the whole mess.

Rep. Adam Putnam, chairman of the House Republican Conference, called on Gonzales to step down -- echoing a position that a group of top House GOPers privately delivered to Bush earlier in the month. "He's done something I didn't think possible. He's lost the confidence of almost all the Republicans in Congress," said one top GOP strategist who is close to the White House.

This isn't a Dem-Rep thing; it's a Bush-vs.-everyone-else thing.

Update: Gonzales vows to stay on the job. Republicans everywhere shudder inwardly.

Bush, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Maybe we are all sheep

Like a lot of people, I've often wondered why "popular" often doesn't equate to "quality" in books, film and the like. There are a lot of explanations -- marketing, the lowest common denominator at work, or simply shrugging it off as evidence that the American public, by and large, are a bunch of dunces who really like fart jokes.

Turns out, though, that we're simply not the independent thinkers we think we are. Almost as important as reading a book we like is knowing that other people are reading it, too.

[Conventional marketing wisdom] makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.

Oh sure, you say. Nice theory, but c'mon. How do you prove that?

Like this.

In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

It turns out that an independent assessment of "quality" is a factor; quality songs tended to be popular in all the worlds. But it turns out it's only a factor, not the factor or even the biggest factor.

So "Bridezilla" and it's ilk isn't going to disappear from the airwaves anytime soon. But we can take comfort in the knowledge that it's not because we're Philistines; it's because being part of a group experience is more important to our brains than the fine details of what that experience is. Opera or "Jackass": as long as you've got company, it's all good.

science, psychology, politics, midtopia

D.C. representative bill passes House

A bill that would give D.C. an actual voting representative in Congress has passed the House.

Don't hold your breath waiting for it to become reality, though. It faces tough sledding in the Senate, a possible presidential veto and almost certain Constitutional challenges.

Update: Here's a fascinating, funny history of the founding of D.C. You can imagine how such a debacle would be portrayed if it occurred today, what with its mix of hubris, corruption, speculation and scheming.

D.C., politics, midtopia

Laugh of the week

It's Friday, and I'm done blogging for the week. Let's close out with what might be the funniest collection of comic-book covers and panels in existence. It's called Superdickery.

H/t to Liberty for a related link that led to the treasure trove.

humor, politics, midtopia