Estate tax still on the table

Seanate majority leader Bill Frist, his presidential aspirations in tatters and aflame, has been trying to resurrect his hopes by addressing such pressing issues as gay marriage and the estate tax.

The former is doomed to defeat, as even supporters acknowledge, which exposes the "red meat for the base" motivation behind bringing it to the floor for a vote. But the latter is still alive.

GOP leaders on Tuesday put abolition of the federal estate tax on the Senate's election-year agenda as other senators weighed ideas to shrink, but not erase, the tax.

President Bush's tax cuts eliminated the estate tax in 2010, but that temporary law expires, and the tax comes back to life, one year later.

I always admired this cute provision, designed to mask the budget implications of repealing the estate tax while increasing the political pain of letting it be restored. It has done one thing, though: it's forcing Congress to find a more palatable permanent fix.

At least the discussion is moving away from outright repeal and toward some sort of compromise:

Kyl told other GOP senators Tuesday that common ground might be found by increasing the size of an estate exempt from taxation to $5 million per person or $10 million per couple, according to GOP aides familiar with the proposal speaking on condition of anonymity while negotiations continued.

His idea would tax estates between $5 million and $30 million equal to the top tax rate for most capital gains. The remainder of the largest estates would be taxed at 30 percent, those aides said.

That's better than an outright appeal, but I still have two reservations. One, how much will this reduce tax collections? And two, my main philosophical objection remains. Why this tax cut, and why now? There are at least two budget problems more pressing than the estate tax: the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the yawning budget deficits. The estate tax cut will make solving the other two even more difficult, and that just reveals majorly screwed up priorities. However unfair you think the estate tax is, the AMT is even more unfair. And on a purely practical level, the AMT increasingly affects people who need the money, unlike the estate tax. And the deficit is a bouquet of dead roses that we're passing on to our children, regardless of their ability to pay.

Congress needs to prioritize, and shelve the estate tax until they address more pressing concerns.

Update: As expected, the Senate has rejected the gay-marriage ban.

gay marriage, estate tax, Frist, politics, midtopia

Abbas give Hamas more time

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave Hamas more time to respond to his demand that it recognize Israel's right to exist.

Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to embrace the manifesto on Palestinian statehood but delayed a showdown after what officials said were appeals by Arab leaders. Abbas gave Hamas another 48 hours.

I hope this is just a breathing space, and not a sign that Abbas may back off from his threat to call a referendum. The threat was a bold move, designed to shift the debate and try to resolve the growing crisis within the Palestinian Authority; Abbas cannot afford to have it exposed as a bluff -- or worse, to show that he can be cowed.

on the positive side, while some Hamas-Fatah fighting continues, Hamas has agreed to pull its private militia off the streets of Gaza.

Of course, it did the same thing last week and the militia remained. So time will tell if they mean it this time.

Abbas, Hamas, Palestine, politics, midtopia

It just might work

Words are cheap, of course, but Iran has reacted somewhat positively to a package of incentives designed to get it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

The package, agreed on in Vienna on Friday, includes specific rewards to Iran like new commercial planes and light-water nuclear reactors if it suspends enrichment and reprocessing activities while talks over the deal are continuing, the officials said. But it does not say just how long the suspension would last, they added.

The United States gave crucial heft to the package by offering to remove certain economic sanctions against Iran that date from more than two decades ago, and to talk directly with Iran if the country agrees to an enrichment freeze.

It's always kind of irritating to reward a country for behaving badly, but the proposals here are reasonable. The question now is whether Iran is willing to give up its enrichment program under any circumstances, or whether this is simply another stalling tactic.

I hope it works; I've got my fingers crossed and everything. But it's far from a done deal.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Brokeback Mounties

Sorry, couldn't resist the play on words.

A couple of gay Canadian Royal Mounted Policemen are getting married, a first for the storied force.

When the two constables become the first male Mounties to marry each other, the grumpiest witness-from-afar might well be Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The planned union of Jason Tree and David Connors in Nova Scotia on June 30 has cast a spotlight on Harper's pledge to his conservative backers to try to roll back same-sex marriage laws.

Harper's misgivings aside, this is just one more example of the inevitable tide of equal rights for homosexuals. Canada has same-sex marriage and it hasn't wrecked the country; Massachusetts has same-sex marriage and the state is doing just fine, thank you.

I respect people who truly, thoughtfully think homosexuality is a sin. But that's a personal value, like deciding to be a vegetarian or a pacifist. Religious belief is not sufficient basis for denying basic rights and privileges, just like it would be wrong for vegetarians to use the law to compel the rest of us to be vegetarians, too.

Good luck to the two Mounties, and may the day quickly come when no one feels that someone else's marriage is any of their business.

Canada, Mounties, gay marriage, politics, midtopia

Abbas-Hamas showdown

A week ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas challenged Hamas to accept a statement implicitly recognizing Israel.

Yesterday, Hamas refused.

Today, Abbas vowed to push ahead with a referendum -- a referendum that Hamas is likely to lose.

We're headed toward some type of resolution here -- be it Abbas backing down, Hamas backed into a corner by voter-approved recognition of Israel -- or civil war.

Abbas, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, politics, midtopia

We don't need no stinkin' Convention

The much-anticipated new Army regulations on interrogation are due out soon, and apparently they're going to decide to ignore the Geneva Convention in some cases.

The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

Good for the State Department. They understand something that the Pentagon apparently does not: that moving away from the Geneva Convention as the basis for prisoner treatment will be a gigantic PR disaster and eventually lead to problems when our own troops are captured. As the story points out:

President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines.

But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars.

"The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people," said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. "Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire."

And all for what? Do they really think that "humiliating and degrading treatment" will lead to intelligence breakthroughs? The example cited -- questioning a suspect's manhood -- sounds benign enough, but doesn't really justify a wholesale exception to the Conventions. The collateral damage done just isn't worth the intelligence advantage gained.

It's a tough job, trying to draw a clear bright line through the murky business of interrogation. But abandoning even part of the Conventions is the wrong way to go. Humane treatment of prisoners is just one more way we distinguish ourselves from our enemies; by abandoning that practice, we take one more step down the road of becoming that which we fight.

Geneva Convention, terrorism, interrogation, Pentagon, torture, politics, midtopia

The low-tax religion

Gov. Tim Pawlenty got enthusiastic support from Minnesota Republicans in his bid for a second term, easily snagging the party's nomination.

I don't mind Pawlenty running again. He's been a modestly competent governor, and his refusal to renew his "no new taxes" pledge shows he's capable of learning. Although the opening of his speech gives me pause for its raw partisanship:

"I can tell you what your worst nightmare is," he told the 1,072 delegates. "It's one of the big-spendin', tax-raisin', abortion-promotin', gay marriage-embracin', more welfare without accountability-lovin', school reform-resistin', illegal immigration-supportin' DFL candidates for governor who thinks Hillary Clinton should be president."

Retch.

That aside, what bothers me is all the self-congratulation over lowering Minnesota's tax burden.

The delegates jumped to their feet and cheered again when he cited a report that showed Minnesota's tax ranking has fallen to 16th-highest in the nation, the lowest in 50 years.

What they're referring to is this report, issued last week.

I don't like paying more taxes than necessary. But I'm really getting irritated with the belief among some conservatives that low taxes are some sort of absolute good in and of themselves. They're not. Taxes serve a purpose, providing important societal services that for one reason or other don't lend themselves to privatization. Low taxes are great if it means we're providing those services efficiently; low taxes are a problem if it means we're providing those services shoddily or not at all.

To see what that means, just look at what the lowest-tax states in the union are: In order, they are Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. Those states, not coincidentally, also have some of the worst public-school systems, fewest services, and the most social problems.

Do we really want to turn Minnesota into a northern version of Mississippi, simply so we can "enjoy" low taxes? I sure don't.

In the late 1990s, my wife and I lived in Florida. Florida brags about not having an income tax, but the state doesn't run for free: the trade off is that just about every government service comes with a fee or is funded out of property taxes -- one of the most regressive taxes available. That combined with a large retiree population means education spending, for example, doesn't really come close to matching needs. The result is overcrowded and underfunded schools. My wife and I looked around, and vowed not to have children as long as we lived in Florida. And we didn't.

High taxes are not an absolute good; they can be wasteful and, when they get too high, become a drag on the economy. But low taxes aren't an absolute good, either: they can exacerbate social disparities, increase crime and shortchange entire generations of citizens.

I've lived all over the country, and found that I prefer high-tax, high-service states: they're simply better places to live and raise families thanks to the investments they make in their citizenry. And I encounter far less of the "I've got mine" attitude that can be prevalent in low-tax states, especially retiree havens like Florida.

Thus the real question is not "how high are my taxes?" It's "what are we getting for the taxes we pay?" Taxes are too high if we're not getting enough bang for our buck, or we're paying for things that we as a society don't want; taxes are too low if we're not getting the services and social investment that we want.

So let's have a discussion about what we're willing to pay for and what we're not. But please, let's get away from the "low taxes are always good" religion. They're not, and phrasing the argument so simplistically can do real damage to the long-term quality of life here in Minnesota.

Pawlenty, tax burden, taxes, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Coulter hires lawyer for vote-fraud case

After ignoring a letter from authorities asking her to explain why she voted in the wrong precinct earlier this year, Ann Coulter has hired a high-powered lawyer to handle the case.

The attorney from the Miami-based Kenny Nachwalter firm is no stranger to Palm Beach voting. Marcos Jimenez — who was, along with the more famous Olson, one of the lead attorneys who fought for George W. Bush's side in the 2000 presidential election snafu here — was assigned to Coulter....

"Mr. Jimenez asked us to send him all the correspondence we sent Ms. Coulter," deputy dlections chief Charmaine Kelly said.

Now that Coulter has lawyered up, there will be another delay in the ongoing saga.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson gave Coulter until April 30 to explain what happened, but she has yet to answer his registered letters. Now with Jimenez, Kelly said, officials will wait "a few more weeks" before starting a procedure that could strip Coulter of her right to vote here and refer the case to State Attorney Barry Krischer for possible prosecution.

So to recap: After voting in the wrong precinct Coulter ignores queries from Palm Beach authorities until they threaten to sanction her, and then hires a lawyer to handle things.

The fun continues.

Palm Beach, Coulter, politics, midtopia

Privacy is a basic human need

Bruce Schneier at Wired magazine has a must-read discussion of the need to protect privacy.

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

That's just a taste. Read the whole thing.

civil liberties, privacy, politics, midtopia

The next step in judicial conservatism

.... is to re-argue case law that has been settled for more than 100 years.

Well, actually, it's not so much re-arguing as simply ignoring precedents that one doesn't like.

In a debate with powerful echoes of the turbulent civil rights era, four Republicans running for Alabama's Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars thought was settled in the 1800s: that state courts are not bound by
U.S. Supreme Court precedents.

The Constitution says federal law trumps state laws, and legal experts say there is general agreement that state courts must defer to the U.S. Supreme Court on matters of federal law.

Yet Justice Tom Parker, who is running for chief justice, argues that state judges should refuse to follow U.S. Supreme Court precedents they believe to be erroneous. Three other GOP candidates in Tuesday's primary have made nearly identical arguments.

"State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are 'precedents,'" Parker wrote in a newspaper opinion piece in January that was prompted by a murder case that came before the Alabama high court.

Yeah, why, if everybody followed precedents you'd have... uh... a consistent body of law.

It might dismay you to learn that Parker currently sits on the Alabama Supreme Court. But it will surprise you not at all to learn that Parker is a former aide to Roy Moore, who was forced to resign as Alabama's chief justice in 2003 over a Ten Commandments monument he had secretly installed in his courthouse.

Loons.

Tom Parker, Roy Moore, Alabama, law, politics, midtopia

"A reckless abuse of power"

This one was a bit surprising.

The Justice Department recently subpoenaed the notes of reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, as it attempted to identify whoever leaked grand jury testimony to the paper.

I've discussed before why the government should be cautious when it comes to trampling on reporter-source confidentiality. But what's interesting about this case is the source of the criticism: the former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The former spokesman, Mark Corallo ... said Mr. Ashcroft's successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, had acted improperly in issuing the subpoenas.

"This is the most reckless abuse of power I have seen in years," Mr. Corallo said in an interview. "They really should be ashamed of themselves."

The subpoenas, part of an effort to identify The Chronicle's sources for its coverage of steroid use in baseball, would not have been authorized by Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Corallo said. "You just don't ride roughshod over the rights of reporters to gather information from confidential sources," he added.

I'm not the only person who was surprised by the source of the criticism, and observers were quick to note the significance:

Specialists in journalism and First Amendment law said that Mr. Corallo's statement was itself significant evidence of a shift.

"This illustrates in an unmistakable fashion," said Mark Feldstein, director of the journalism program at George Washington University, "that the Gonzales Justice Department has moved so far away from the mainstream of established legal opinion and case law when it comes to press freedom that even judicial conservatives are disturbed by it."

I would not have believed it possible, but in Alberto "torture memo" Gonzales, Bush managed to find someone even more hostile to civil liberties than Ashcroft. That's quite an achievement.

Corallo, civil liberties, Ashcroft, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Third party fever

There's been a lot of talk lately of Unity '08, an Internet-based third-party effort being organized by moderates from both major parties, including such names as Hamilton Jordan, former Maine Gov. Angus King, and others.

But now even Peggy Noonan has gotten into the act.

The Perot experience seemed to put an end to third-party fever. But I think it's coming back, I think it's going to grow, and I think the force behind it is unique in our history.

Noonan is a reasonably sharp political observer, so the fact that she's taking this seriously is enough to make me sit up and take notice, and to believe that Unity and the other centrist-moderate initiatives will find traction in the next two years.

Of course, she tries to co-opt the trend to her own ends. When laying out the polarization she sees -- not between parties, but between Washington and the rest of the country -- it turns out that what American yearns for is -- surprise, surprise -- Reaganite conservatism. So in the end perhaps she doesn't take the third-party trend seriously at all, and simply sees potential usefulness in harnessing anti-incumbent rage.

Still, her column lends credibility to the third-party effort. I have a hard time believing a third party will succeed until we give them a fair shot with instant-runoff voting, but I will happily be proven wrong if it means moderates reclaim control of national politics in 2008.

Unity08, Noonan, third party, politics, midtopia

Estate tax lunacy

That's what Harold Meyerson calls it. And he's right.

If enacted, Kyl's bill would plunge the government another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade (2011-2021) that it would be in [/quote]effect....

A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists (brilliantly documented by Yale professors Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro in their book "Death by a Thousand Cuts") has convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense, and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats support -- raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5 million for an individual and $7 million for a couple -- it becomes more nonsensical still. Under the $3.5 million exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been just 94, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. The number of family farms that would have had to sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13.

On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million, according to the publicly available data on his net worth. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would pocket a cozy $164 million. As for the late Sam Walton's kids, whose company already makes taxpayers foot the bill for the medical expenses of thousands of its employees, the cost to the government for not taxing their estates would run into the multiple billions.

Is now really the time to blow another $1 trillion hole in the budget? If we decide the answer is "yes", is this the cause we should blow it on? I don't think so.

"Republicans" and "fiscally responsible" don't belong in the same sentence any more. And Democrat Max Baucus should be ashamed of himself:

Behind the scenes, the action has been on the Democratic side in the Senate, as the party's leadership has sought to dissuade Montana's Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, from forging a halfway-house compromise with Kyl that would deplete revenue by only $500 billion to $600 billion during that decade.

"Only" $500 billion? Boy, what a relief.

Before we repeal the estate tax, how about fixing AMT and eliminating the budget deficit? Just for starters, I mean. The list of things that should be ahead of "repeal estate tax" on the priority list is a long one.

budget, estate tax, politics, midtopia

The human price of war

Both the Star Tribune and the New York Times Magazine had good pieces this weekend about the hurdles reservists face when they return home from Iraq.

From the Star Tribune:

More than 15,000 Minnesota soldiers -- National Guard, Reserve and active duty -- have been deployed to global hot spots since 9/11.

For most of them, as was true for their fathers and grandfathers coming home from earlier wars, the euphoric family reunions were the sweet, easy part of their homecomings.

What follows is tougher: First, a kind of emotional decompression from combat to civilian life. Then the challenge of getting on with work and making a living.

It can be a difficult and sometimes lonely undertaking.

Employers worry about hiring them, knowing the military could call them away again. Some return with injuries that make it impossible to return to their former jobs.

And many come to realize that even the best of re-entries to the work-a-day world require serious attitude -- and adrenaline -- adjustments.

The Strib's web site has been screwed up for months, and here's an example. Accompanying that intro text in the paper was four profiles of reservists who faced different struggles reintegrating into the workplace. But just try to find it online.

It's worth reading, because it describes the economic costs of deployment: the injured man who may never work again; the self-employed soldier who had to sell his trucking business and is now trying to rebuild it; the difficulties he encounters from banks, who are reluctant to loan him money because he might get deployed again and qualify for an interest-rate cap; the difficulties others encounter from employers, who are wary of hiring someone who could be deployed at any time. It really captures how disruptive deployments can be economically.

The New York Times story is largely a portrait of one man's struggle with post-traumatic stress, but it captures some larger issues, too: how boring and meaningless civilian life can seem after the intensity of combat, the difficulty in shedding the hypervigilance and constant stress that kept them alive in Iraq, how hard it can be coming to terms with what they saw and did overseas. As one quote from the story puts it:

"I didn't really know what to expect," Norris said. At first, he recalled, "it all seemed kind of mellow. Nothing happened on our drive up from Kuwait, and from what I'd seen on the news about Iraq, I figured everything was pretty much under control." That assessment changed a few days after his arrival, when Norris and the rest of his eight-man recovery team were led into the back room of a maintenance shed on the base by the team they had come to replace. One veteran had a laptop on which he had stored images of the missions his unit had gone out on. "You're going to see things out there no one should ever have to see," the departing team leader told the new arrivals. "You need to tow a vehicle — you'd better be prepared to reach through a man's intestines to put it in neutral."

This is what war does to the participants. That alone is not a reason to eschew war -- combat, terrible as it is, can be a necessary evil. But it is a reason not to start wars lightly, or carelessly, or without full and careful deliberation and planning. And that is why the invasion of Iraq makes me mad. Because it was poorly planned, and because it was not a last resort, and because it was pursued relentlessly, almost eagerly, by those who thought it would mark the beginning of the American Empire. The planners, in their fantastical ignorance, embraced war far too readily. And this is the result.

If you want peace, prepare for war. But do not pull the trigger until you are certain that the cost is worth it, and there is no acceptable alternative.


Memorial Day, PTSD, veterans, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Democracy advances in the Midwest

I'm so proud!

Minneapolis voters likely will get a chance to consider instant-runoff voting in city elections, eliminating primaries and greatly leveling the playing field for independent candidates.

The idea could be a ballot question this November. But don't hold your breath after that: Because such a system means someone's ox is being gored, it will be awhile before such a system is implemented.

Even if voters approve the change, a new style of voting could be a long way off in Minneapolis because of the cost and potential legal challenges....

The earliest city election that could be affected by the change would be in 2009, but Benson said the council could push that back if the cost of acquiring the software to count the votes is prohibitive.

"I don't think anybody on the council is interested in spending $1 million to do this," he said.

To their credit, the Minneapolis DFL (that's Democrats to you out-of-staters) supports the idea. Republicans generally oppose it, for the vaguest reasons. When Roseville tried to adopt the system in 2004, State Senate Democrats approved it but the Republican-controlled House shot it down. House Speaker Steve Sviggum suggested it violates the "one person, one vote" system.

Maybe Sviggum really believes that. Or maybe he's concerned that IRV lessens the influence of parties and empowers voters to vote for the person they really want, rather than choosing the major party candidate that offends them the least.

There are legitimate practical concerns about IRV -- how to ensure the ballots aren't confusing, how to deal with races where, say, six candidates are competing for two open seats, and so on. But those are technical questions, and solvable; they do not justify slamming the door on IRV. As wielded by Sviggum and others, they are just a smoke screen.

If Minneapolis adopts the system, the next step would be to see it applied to county and state races. Minnesota governor races, in particular, have been three-way circuses in recent years; instant-runoff voting would have made those contests fairer and more accurate, with the winner truly reflecting the electorate's preferences.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, instant-runoff voting, politics, midtopia

Supreme Court whistleblower ruling

Today the Supreme Court made what is being called a significant ruling on protections for government whistleblowers.

In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs.

Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security.

Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers.

It's best to say up front that my bias in cases like this is to favor the whistleblower. There are already enough barriers to uncovering wrongdoing; why create more? And the government does not need protection from lawsuits. Lawsuits that are without merit will be dismissed, or the government will win the case. That's how it's supposed to work.

In the case at hand, the known facts are these: a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Richard Ceballos, wrote a memo suggesting that a sheriff's deputy may have lied in a search warrant affidavit. He was later demoted and denied a promotion.

The case comes down to whether the demotion was related to the memo, and if so, was Ceballos entitled to protection from such retaliation.

There's some legitimate murkiness here, as Justice Kennedy outlined:

Kennedy said if the superiors thought the memo was inflammatory, they had the authority to punish him.

"Official communications have official consequences, creating a need for substantive consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure that their employees' official communications are accurate, demonstrate sound judgment, and promote the employer's mission," Kennedy wrote.

Fair enough. The key is distinguishing actions and consequences. Was he justifiably disciplined because the memo was inflammatory? Or was he unfairly disciplined because he raised an uncomfortable question?

But this ruling is just a bit weird, because it strips protections only from employees whose speech is related to their official duties.

So, it appears that if one's duties are to expose wrongdoing in the workplace, such exposure is entitled to no constitutional protection, but that if an employee whose duties do not involve such whistleblowing makes the exact same complaint, then [protection] still applies. A somewhat odd result, at least on first glance. And odder still: Under today's opinion, if Mr. Ceballos had written a newspaper article complaining about the wrongdoing in question, rather than taking the matter to his supervisor, he would at least be entitled to whatever constitutiional protection Pickering/Connick offers. Does today's decision therefore give employees an incentive to go outside the established channels -- to take their concerns to the newspapers, instead of up the established chain to their supervisors?

So rather than providing clarity, the court has further muddied the waters.

One man's whistleblower is another woman's disgruntled employee, of course. And some whistleblower lawsuits are indeed without merit. But this ruling doesn't do anybody any favors. It practically orders government workers to go to the press instead of using established channels, and it makes true whistleblowers even more vulnerable to retaliation than they were before. Fabulous.

Perhaps this is an example of a conservative court throwing the ball back into Congress' court -- putting pressure on the legislative branch to pass a law clarifying the issue. But in the meantime we end up with a confusing precedent that will likely spur further lawsuits, thus foiling even the stated intent of the ruling's supporters.

Ceballos, Supreme Court, SCOTUS, politics, midtopia

Phone jammer back at work

Bleh; a Hall of Shame member is back at work.

Charles McGee, the former executive director of the state Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and served seven months for his part in the scheme to have a telemarketer tie up Democratic and union phone lines in 2002.

He's back at his old job with a Republican political marketing firm, Spectrum Monthly & Printing Inc., and will be helping out at the firm's "GOP campaign school" for candidates.

You know how journalists that make up stories should never work in the field again? Same goes for political operatives that conduct illegal operations.

The Democrats are rather biased, of course, but this time they're right:

Christy Setzer, a spokeswoman for a Democratic group called the Senate Majority Project, said Spectrum's clients include many of New Hampshire's most prominent Republicans.

"The very fact that they continue to associate with him and give him their money . . . speaks volumes," she said.

Yep. And again I say "bleh."

McGee, politics, midtopia

Only one Snow left in the White House

In a long-expected move, Treasury Secretary John Snow has resigned. Bush quickly nominated Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson to replace him.

It's been something of a revolving door at that position; Paulson will be Bush's third Treasury Secretary. Both of the previous ones (Snow and Paul O'Neill) did decent jobs, but that wasn't quite enough:

The administration is said to have been dissatisfied with both previous Treasury secretaries, believing that they could have done more to get credit for the administration for economic growth.

News flash: presidents aren't generally responsible for economic performance, good or bad. Yes, they tend to be held responsible, and it's better to preside over a good economy than a bad one. But it's hard for a Treasury secretary to make a case for a causal connection that doesn't exist.

There were other problems with the job.

Snow informed the White House last week that he would resign after three years as the nation's chief economic officer. The secretary's decision was intended to bring finality to a process that has played out awkwardly in public over months as Snow's job security has been a regular source of Washington speculation....

But the White House spent months trying to find a prominent Wall Street figure to replace Snow, only to run into reluctance by many to take the cabinet job when economic policy was being set inside the White House.

That left Snow hanging out in the Washington rumor mill even amid reports that the White House wanted him out.

The Washington rumor mill can be pitiless, and who really wants to be a figurehead with no real power? Well, other than Tony Snow, that is....

One might well wonder why Paulson agreed to become that figurehead, especially for a lame-duck president with abysmal poll numbers who has made it clear that the job's main duty will be cheerleading the economy. He, like Snow, received assurances that he would "play a central role" in setting economic policy, but given his outsider status and the not-so-encouraging history of the Bush administration in that regard, I'm not holding my breath.

Which is too bad. Because Paulson isn't a bad choice, and some of his other biographical details -- chairman of the Nature Conservancy, for instance -- could lead one to envision him as a conduit for breaking the ideological orthodoxy that has guided the administration since 2000.

Call me cynical, but I expect him to be quickly isolated by other administration insiders, to never gain the policy-making influence he was promised and to grow frustrated with his cheerleader-in-chief role. We may not have seen the last Treasury nomination of this administration.

Side note
For those interested, Bush outright lied about the subject on Thursday:

That timeline raised questions about the president comments on Thursday night — four days after Mr. Paulson accepted the job — that he had not spoken to Secretary Snow about his long rumored departure from Treasury.

During a joint news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, Mr. Bush was asked directly by a reporter whether Mr. Snow had given him any indication that he intended to resign soon. Mr. Bush replied, "No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job."

Tony Snow, said today that Mr. Bush was speaking "artfully," to avoid upsetting the markets with a nomination that he was not yet ready to announce, pending a background check.

"Artfully"? It was a lie. I don't want to make too much of this -- it's understandable that Bush was not ready to reveal his choice, and did not want to surprise the markets -- but a flat-out lie is never a good idea. The president should not lie to the press, because once he has done so, it makes everything else he says suspect. He can refuse to answer, dodge the question, be deliberately vague -- any of a dozen strategies for controlling the flow of information. But lying should not even be considered -- something you'd think Bush would have learned by the fifth year of his presidency.

As you might suspect, left-leaning sites are all over this.

Treasury, Paulson, Snow, Bush, politics, midtopia

The national-local conundrum

Do the Republicans deserve to lose big in November? Oh, my, yes.

Does that mean we should all vote Democrat, regardless of who the respective candidates are in any given race? Well, no.

So what are we going to do?

The GOP is starting to pull out the desperation line: "if you don't vote for us the Dems will take over, and they'll destroy the country!" The hope is that no matter how badly the Republicans have messed things up, their conservative supporters will still consider them the lesser of two evils compared to Democrats.

Sure, guys, whatever. On the face of it, it's a silly argument: I don't think either party will "destroy the country" with regards to security or other bread-and-butter issues. So that's a straw man.

But let's say the GOP is right, and the Dems will try to turn us into the Socialist States of America. So what?

Even if they lose Congress the GOP would still control the White House, still have a sizable minority in both houses of Congress, and the judiciary would still lean right. Bush might finally have to exercise his veto pen, but the worst we risk is congressional paralysis.

So for me, the upcoming election is a referendum on the governing party. And they deserve to go down in flames. Big, hot, center-of-the-sun-type flames, the ashes burned and reburned until the electrons have been stripped from their atoms, leaving nothing but a subatomic mist in their wake.

Do I think the Dems will do better? Well, they’d have a hard time doing worse. And it would be a mistake to give the Reps a pass on their proven failures merely out of fear of what Dems might do.

That said, it can get complicated. I generally like my own representative, Jim Ramstad, and may well vote for him even though he’s GOP (the weak Democratic opposition makes that decision easier). So I’m both part of the problem (voting for a GOP candidate) and part of the solution (voting for a moderate).

My excuse is that if the GOP had more Ramstads, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in. But if everybody thinks that way, the Republicans might keep control of Congress. And they really, really need to lose there.

But I'll take my chances. Because until we find a good way to elect true independents, the next best strategy is to elect moderate members of the major parties and gradually bring those parties more strongly toward the middle and away from their fringes.

Ramstad, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

A modern My Lai?

This report has been expected for a while, but it's still not pleasant to read about.

Marines from Camp Pendleton wantonly killed unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, and then tried to cover up the slayings in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha, military investigations have found.

Officials who have seen the findings of the investigations said the filing of criminal charges, including some murder counts, was expected, which would make the Nov. 19 incident the most serious case of alleged U.S. war crimes in Iraq....

First, let's note that the military appears to be handling this appropriately. You can't always stop people from behaving badly, but you can punish them afterwards.

The details:

A roadside bomb explosion killed a fellow Marine, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas. Looking for insurgents, the Marines entered several homes and began firing their weapons, according to the report.

In its initial statement to the media, the Marine Corps said the Iraqi civilians were killed either by an insurgent bomb or by crossfire between Marines and insurgents.

But after Time magazine obtained pictures showing dead women and children and quoted Iraqis who said the attack was unprovoked, the Marine Corps backtracked on its explanation and called for an investigation.

This is a good example of the media performing a vital role: uncovering an unpleasant truth that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. It's not pleasant to face our dark sides, but the fact that we do so makes our society stronger in the long run. Covering up wrongdoing does nothing but guarantee more wrongdoing. And the victims aren't fooled: If U.S. soldiers get away with massacres, the Iraqi people will know and it will undermine everything we claim to be doing in Iraq. If we punish the perpetrators, on the other hand, it builds trust.

The killings will evoke comparisons to Vietnam's My Lai massacre, and the parallels are there: Frustrated troops fighting an elusive enemy taking their frustration out on innocent villagers. But there are differences: the scale (hundreds died at My Lai), the level of command involvement (the troops at My Lai were practically invited to kill civilians) and the response (My Lai was covered up for a year before an investigation began, and then for another six months while charges were prepared).

So be wary about going too far down the road suggested by the headline on this post. Incidents like these should not be used to tar all service members. Most serve honorably, often in extremely trying circumstances. U.S. soldiers are among the most well-disciplined in the world. Unless there is evidence of widespread wrongdoing, this case should be treated as what it appears to be: an isolated tragedy that should be investigated fully and addressed swiftly and fairly. And as a cautionary tale of the dehumanizing effects of warfare, and why it should be considered an option of last resort in our foreign policy.

Update: The New York Times has a much better story on the subject.

Haditha, massacre, Marines, Iraq, politics, midtopia