Why an independent press is important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

When your own rhetoric is turned against you

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

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

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

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

Khalilzad, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Putting Iraq's WMDs to rest

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

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

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

The relevant bits:

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

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

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

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

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


Saddam, WMD, iraq, politics, midtopia

Equality ride gets results

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

The response has generally been pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Privacy vs. openness, continued

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

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

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

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

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


Hatch, Pawlenty, privacy, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Shakeup at conservative think tank

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

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

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

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

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

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


Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Early 2008 Republican contenders

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

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

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

John McCain continues to disappoint:

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

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

So much for being a maverick.

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


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

Another Mars probe arrives

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

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

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

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

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

And coming up:

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

Let's get it on.


science, space, Mars, NASA, midtopia

What to do about Iran

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

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

Any confrontation with Iran will point up:

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

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

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

So what can we do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens if we fail to reach a diplomatic solution?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bush, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

A truly radical federal budget

The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative GOP lawmakers, today released their version of the 2007 federal budget, titled "Contract with America: Renewed."

Their budget would cut the deficit by $358 billion over five years, compared with $60 billion in Bush's budget. But as you might imagine, the devil is in the details. Their proposal is a mixture of solid ideas and conservative fantasies.

NEUTRAL IDEAS

Increase defense spending to match Bush's request for 2007. Defense spending shouldn't be sacrosanct, but adequate funding is a must. Reserve judgement on this pending a detailed look at where the money goes.

Eliminate the Mars initiative and the space shuttle program. The Mars program is great, but not the way it's being funded: by gutting everything else NASA does. If the Mars mission doesn't come with extra money, it should die. The space shuttle needs to be retired, but we should have its replacement in hand before that happens.


BAD IDEAS

Gut foreign aid. This is a huge mistake. The war on terror demands *more* foreign aid spending, not less.

Dept. of Energy. Eliminate federal funding for energy conservation research, and arbitrarily cut the department's size by 35 percent. In an era of high oil prices and searches for alternatives, this makes little sense.

Interior and Agriculture. Arbitrarily cut the size of the Depts. of Interior and Agriculture by 10 percent and impose a wide variety of cuts in environment and natural resource programs, including eliminating the Energy Star program (that logo that lets you know if you're buying an energy-efficient appliance).

Transportation. Eliminate Amtrak and mass transit subsidies and transfer a whole bunch of responsibilities to the states, including railroad safety and regulation and (the biggie) highway construction spending. Eliminate the subsidies that maintain the U.S. merchant marine. Privatize the FAA.... Dumping funding on the states merely shifts responsibilities. Maintaining the merchant marine is a security issue. Privatizing the FAA would harm its regulatory function.

Deep cuts in education spending. Eliminate the Reading Is Fundamental program and programs to encourage learning a second language -- this at a time when a shortage of foreign-language speakers is hampering our security efforts. Freeze spending for Head Start. Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities and cut the Dept. of Education by 30 percent.

Health. Cut National Institute of Health budget by 10 percent, eliminate family planning programs and turn Medicaid and SCHIP into a block-grant program -- cutting $36 billion a year from it in the process, largely by capping spending increases without regard to actual need.

Aid to the poor. Save $13 billion a year by arbitrarly restricting eligibility for Section 8 housing (cutting the number of vouchers in half) and eliminating heating-bill assistance for low-income households. Again, arbitrary cuts that evince no concern for the impact of those cuts.

Social Security. Doesn't touch Social Security at all. This may be politically expedient, but even minor tweaks -- raising the eligibility age and lowering the income limits for benefits, for example -- would save huge amounts of money.

GOOD IDEAS

Agriculture. Cut lots of subsidies and programs at the Dept. of Agriculture. The whole agricultural subsidy structure could be thrown overboard and the country would be better off for it.

Medicare. Cut $63 billion a year from Medicare, by raising premiums and means-testing benefits. This is a reasonable approach and politically courageous. But they also propose limiting cost increases to a percentage point below medical inflation. Hospitals and doctors are already reluctant to take Medicare because it pays so little; this will just make that worse.

Legislative reforms. They advocate a line-item veto, earmark reform, strict sunset provisions on most federal programs, a discretionary spending cap and restoring pay-as-you-go provisions. All of those are excellent ideas. Which raises the question: "why aren't they already in effect?"

Bad programs. One of the strengths of the document is specifically identifying a lot of wasteful or useless programs that could be eliminated. Doing so usually doesn't free up a great deal of money, but it should be done on principle. Of course, people will disagree on what's wasteful or useless. I would recommend establishing a bipartisan committee whose sole job was to eliminate bad programs. Objective criteria would be used whenever possible; a committee vote could settle more contentious cases, with a tie meaning the program lives.

Once you read the budget, you can see why they didn't trumpet the specifics. Budget cutting, of course, will require pain, and they do have some good ideas; but by ignoring defense and Social Security and heaping the cuts on social programs and other conservative pet peeves, they undermine their credibility. It's a start, but it's only a start.

Technorati tags
deficit, budget, politics, midtopia

Water found on Saturn moon

A NASA spacecraft has detected water on Saturn's moon Enceladus, raising the possibility that it could harbor life.

"Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy and perhaps a severe chemical environment,'' said Jeffrey Kargel of the hydrology and water resources department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "Nevertheless we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost.''

That makes three places in the solar system that are thought to have -- or have had -- liquid water: Mars, Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.

I hope I live to see the day that we explore both Europa and Enceladus, and find out if life exists outside of Earth. But that requires adequate funding for NASA's space exploration program. Space probes are relatively cheap; it would be a real shame if budget concerns or the effort to mount a manned mission to Mars caused projects like this to fall by the wayside.

Technorati tags
Cassini, Mars, Saturn, space, NASA, extraterrestrial, Europa, Enceladus, politics, midtopia

Welcome to the 21st Century

The tiny island of Sark, in the English Channel, has decided to exchange feudalism for democracy.

After around 450 years of rule almost exclusively by landowners, the smallest independent state in the British commonwealth will allow each of the 600 residents to stand for election.

(snip)

Since around 1565, 40 heads of the island's farm owning families have raised taxes and decided on matters of law, part of an independence agreement brokered with Queen Elizabeth, after the English seized control of the island from France.

In 1920, 12 non-landowning deputies were appointed, voted for by all islanders over 18 -- the last concession made to democratic government.

I bet you didn't know there was an independent nation in the English Channel, much less a feudal one.

Still, the feudalism couldn't have been too bad. There were 40 landowners and 12 deputies overseeing an island of 600 people. That works out to one government official for every 12 people. Now *that's* representation!

The new system will cut that down to 28 officials, so representation will get diluted -- one representative for every 22 people. It still probably won't be too difficult to get an appointment with your elected legislator, though....

Technorati tags
Europe, feudalism, Sark, politics, midtopia

Give Bush the line-item veto

President Bush, who has yet to veto a single bill, has asked Congress for line-item veto authority.

He should get it. Though I doubt it will make much difference in his hands, given his lack of vetoes to date, it's one of the most effective ways to keep Congress from slipping bad legislation into "must pass" bills. It should be enshrined into law for the sake of future presidents who might actually use it.

Here's what Bush has proposed:

The legislation would allow the president to defer spending on items with which he disagrees, while signing the rest of a bill. Congress would then have 10 days to vote up or down on whether to fund the disputed items, without amendment or filibuster. Passage would be by majority, not the two-thirds margin traditionally required to override a veto.

It's a bit more cumbersome than most people would like, because it's trying to get around the problems with the last line-item veto, which the Supreme Court decided was unconstitutional in 1996. But it's probably the best we can do at the moment.

To *really* fix the problem would take a Constitutional amendment granting the president line-item authority. That's one of the few amendment proposals I could get behind.

Technorati tags
Bush, veto, politics, midtopia

Congress caves on NSA spying

A proposed Senate compromise would allow warrantless eavesdropping on Americans as long as the executive branch asserts it has probable cause.

The Republican proposal would give congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of congressional leaders.

So much for holding the executive branch accountable.

The "probable cause" standard is better than the "reason to believe" standard the administration was using, but it's toothless because the administration will not have to prove "probable cause" before a court; they can just assert it.

Because the FISA court standard for issuing a warrant is also "probable cause", the only logical reason to bypass the court is because the executive branch doesn't think it's assertion of probable cause will stand up to scrutiny.

The bill does impose more Congressional oversight:

after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new subcommittees why it could not seek a warrant.

So what is essentially happening is that we're extending the period where the government can eavesdrop without a warrant from three days to 45. But instead of then having to prove its case before the FISA court, the administration can simply explain itself to a subcommittee. There's no indication that the subcommittee has any power to end a surveillance if the "probable cause" is found lacking. So there's really no effective limitation on government spying.

This is what impresses me the least:

the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.

"The administration was intransigent, and this was the best we could do." Well, nonsense. Consulting the executive branch is a good idea, but Congress should be deciding for itself what the law should be and enacting it, not seeing how well they can do in negotiations with the executive branch. It's an abdication of power.

Congress should investigate the program and then have a full and open debate on how we should handle eavesdropping on Americans. This attempt to squelch the issue should be rejected.

Technorati tags
terrorism, nsa, eavesdropping, politics, midtopia

Redefining success

I found a couple of interesting takes on how we've begun defining success in Iraq: anything short of disaster.

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune writes:

There is good news in Iraq: The chaos of recent days has not led to all-out civil war. At least not yet.

Never mind that one of the major Shiite religious shrines was blown up Feb. 22. Never mind that about 500 Iraqis have died in the ensuing frenzy of sectarian violence. Never mind that if this is not civil war, it's not very far from it. In Iraq, the Bush administration has learned to set the bar low: Avoiding the worst possible outcome now passes for success.

For nearly three years, Americans have been told that we are making progress in bringing stability and democratic government to Iraq. But that state of affairs, like the horizon, keeps receding as we approach. Lately, the carnage has been waxing, not waning. Last month, for example, Iraq suffered 39 "multiple fatality bombings." The previous February, there were 18.

But the administration feigns nonchalance about events that once would have been considered disastrous.

Some of that is human nature: as events occur, you reevaluate your objectives to account for the new reality. But only the most self-deluded continue to call a venture a "success" once you start doing that. So it's instructive to see how low the bar has fallen in the last three years.

WesPac -- Wesley Clark's political action committee -- had a similar but broader take back in December:

This President is unrivaled at using worst case scenarios to make himself look good. Here we are, three years after America invaded Iraq, and almost no Iraqis got slaughtered on their way to the polls. We have George Bush to thank for that.

(snip)

So what about Iraq? Almost everything that could possibly go wrong with our invasion of Iraq has gone wrong already. Almost yes, but not quite, which leaves George Bush plenty to still take credit for. Al Quada, essentially non-existent inside Iraq before our invasion, hasn't fully secured a theocratic terrorist free state within it's borders yet. Guess who takes credit for that?

To listen to George Bush is to enter an alternate universe in which everything that's failed so far is inconsequential, while any disaster not yet upon us is a tribute to his leadership, and a result of his steely resolve. The costs America pays for his misguided policies are always well worth it, because Bush doesn't calculate those costs against how little if anything America actually gains, he measures them against how much more we stand to lose in a worst case scenario, one that allegedly can only be averted through Bush's continuing leadership.

I'd never really thought about it in precisely those terms, but they have a point.

Technorati tags
Bush, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Bush is channeling John Kerry

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that Bush's current policy on Iran -- provide them with closely monitored nuclear fuel so they don't enrich it themselves -- is pretty much exactly what John Kerry suggested we do back in 2004. A suggestion, by the way, that was roundly panned by Republicans, who labeled it "appeasement."

Then I found this article in the New York Sun.

President Bush's endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

(snip)

Republican commentators accused the senator of favoring "appeasement" and warned that the Iranians could divert nuclear fuel to make bombs.

A Pentagon official under President Reagan, Frank Gaffney Jr., skewered the plan in a column entitled, "Kerry's Nuclear Nonsense." Mr. Gaffney, who did not return a call seeking comment for this story, declared, "Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route."

Writing in National Review, a Defense Department official under President George H.W. Bush, Jed Babbin, called Mr. Kerry's proposal "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong."

Of course, now that Bush supports it, I'm sure these fine folks think it's a dandy idea.

Technorati tags
bush, kerry, iran, politics, midtopia

Half-mast in Minnesota

Kirby Puckett, perhaps the most beloved and well-known sports figure in Minnesota history, died yesterday of a stroke. He was 45.

He led the Twins to their World Series victories in 1987 and 1991 before glaucoma forced him to retire. He struggled a bit after that, but for many of us he will always be the smiling, hard-working example of what a baseball player should be.

RIP, Kirby.

Technorati tags
puckett, baseball, midtopia

Everyone should want the military on campus

The Supreme Court has ruled that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus. The case involved some law schools who had banned the recruiters because the military's policy on homosexuals violates the schools' own policies.

Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law schools and their professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.

The ruling was unanimous, so there's not a lot of room for interpretation: if you want federal money, military recruiters come with it.

I sympathize with the schools to some extent. There's a fairness issue: Why should the military be exempt from rules that apply to every other recruiter or company that has access to a given school? In addition, there's the appearance of condoning discrimination.

But I bring another perspective to the case, having been commissioned through ROTC and witnessed the same debate and protests while I was in college in the late 1980s at the University of Minnesota.

First, let me be clear: I think the military's policy on gays is asinine, the discrimination both unfounded and unnecessary. The military has plenty of rules on conduct and fraternization that would maintain discipline even if soldiers were openly gay, just as they manage to maintain discipline in a military where heterosexual men and women serve alongside each other. And in an era when the military is having difficulty meeting recruiting goals, turning away thousands of otherwise qualified (in some cases, highly qualified) soldiers makes no sense from a national-security standpoint.

The problem, as I see it, is one of relative weight. Military access to college campuses is simply too important to be derailed by the military's gay policy. Protest? Fine. Work to change minds? Fine. Declare and demonstrate support for military gays? Of course. But banning ROTC and recruiters goes too far, doing real damage to our security and further isolating the military from mainstream society.

When I was in the military, 70 percent of officers received their commissions through ROTC -- including some of the brightest and best-educated soldiers. Simply put, that is an irreplaceable source of military leaders. If we ban ROTC and recruiters, we cripple the future of the military -- and thus our security.

A second point that opponents should consider is a bit more subversive. Soldiers recruited from college campuses tend to have a broader education and life exposure than those who are educated in the hothouses of service academies and military schools. They bring that with them into the military, forming the main part of what might be considered the "liberal" wing of the military. They help ensure that mainstream American values continue to be represented in military culture.

This is crucial, coming as it does at a time when fewer and fewer people know someone who is in the military. If military culture grows too separated from civilian culture we risk a "Prussification" of the military: turning it into an insular society led by elites that have little in common with the people whom they ostensibly serve. That would be a disaster on many levels.

The military must be given access to college students both to maintain our physical security and to save the military from itself.

Technorati tags
ROTC, recruiting, supreme court, military, politics, midtopia

Held for two years without trial

Amnesty International reports that of about 14,000 detainees in Iraq, nearly 4,000 have been imprisoned without charge for more than a year -- 200 of them for more than two years.

"To hold this huge number of people without basic legal safeguards is a gross dereliction of responsibility on the part of both the US and UK forces," said Amnesty UK director Kate Allen.

Many Iraqis report they were tortured or abused, often at the hands of Iraqi guards, not coalition forces.

Here's our response:

Each detainee is given a form explaining the reasons for their imprisonment and their files are reviewed every 90 to 120 days, U.S. detention command spokesman Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill told AP in an e-mail response to questions.

That seems woefully inadequate to me.

The allegations of torture are just that -- allegations. The sheer number of them indicate that the problem should be taken seriously, but allegations alone do not constitute proof of abuse.

What is undisputed is that we are holding people for years without charge. If they are prisoners of war, document it and transfer them to a POW camp where the Geneva Conventions apply. If they are not, then charge them in a timely manner or release them.

Technorati tags
amnesty, terrorism, iraq, politics, midtopia

The Oscars were last night?

I suspect I'm the only blogger on the Internet who didn't actually care.

After putting the kids to bed, I spent last night watching a tape of Wednesday's episode of "Lost" -- much closer to "must see" television, IMO. Then my wife got home, and we watched the tail end of the Oscars -- in between flipping over to "Scary Movie III".

My sole commentary: Reese Witherspoon blew it with that acceptance ramble.

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oscars, midtopia