Blogging & Freedom

The advent of blogging is one of the most significant events in the history of modern journalism. This is not because blogging can replace traditional journalism. Many critics of blogging (including our esteemed Keloland colleague David Newquist) point out that bloggers are heavily dependent on the main stream media for their original source material. This is quite true.

It is also true that the MSM continues to enjoy the power of validation. As long as a story remains confined to the blogosphere, it will be noticed only by the blogosphere. When a story jumps from the blogs to the MSM, then everyone who watches the news will see it. That kind of jump is what most bloggers hope for when they push a story. Some nationally important blogs, like Powerline, became important by pushing a single story that the MSM was later forced to cover.

The rise of blogging is not important because it can replace the traditional media. It is important because, unlike traditional media outlets, it is radically democratic. Anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can publish his or her writing in a media that anyone else in the world can get access to. Precisely because it is so easy, it is difficult for any government or any other establishment to get control of it.

That has been demonstrated by the recent report of the Committee to Protect Journalists. From Joel Simon at Slate:

From Tibet to Tehran, more and more front-line reporting is being carried out by freelancers and published online. But the revolution in newsgathering—brought about by new technology and the downsizing of traditional media outlets—has a down side. For the first time, half of all journalists jailed around the world worked online as bloggers, reporters, or Web editors. Most of them are freelancers with little or no institutional support.

These are the key findings of a report released Dec. 8 by the Committee To Protect Journalists. The annual census of imprisoned journalists was conducted on Dec. 1 and includes every journalist who was in jail on that day. All told, there are 136 journalists on the list, an increase of 11 from the previous year. Sixty-eight of them worked online, the vast majority of them freelancers.

So far as opposition journalism is concerned, imprisonment is the sincerest form of flattery. China and Iran have gone out of their way to flatter bloggers.

A closer look at the numbers in China reveals just how dramatically the Internet has transformed both newsgathering and the dissemination of critical commentary in repressive societies.

A decade ago, when China first topped the list, most of those jailed were print reporters for mainstream media outlets who had gone too far in their criticism of government officials. The Chinese media are much more open today, but there are still clear limits, and journalists who displease the authorities face consequences. The difference is that they are more likely to be fired than thrown in jail.

But online journalists can't be fired, blacklisted, or, in most cases, bought off precisely because most work independently. They don't have employers who can be pressured. Chinese authorities have few options when it comes to reining in online critics—censor them, intimidate them, or throw them in jail. This explains why 18 of the 24 journalists imprisoned in China worked online.

That, gentle readers, is what freedom looks like. Bloggers and journalists in these United States don't have to worry about ending up in the slammer. But the current Administration doesn't like dissenting media anymore than Beijing or Tehran. See my last post for an example.

That the Obama Administration failed miserably in its ham-handed attempt to marginalize Fox News is a testament to the professionalism of Fox's fellow news organizations and to such genuine journalists as Mara Liasson.

But whatever pressure the Administration can bring to bear on a cable news network, or whatever power the major news networks have over a story, they can't do a damn thing about Powerline, let alone South Dakota Politics or the Northern Valley Beacon. That is a significant advance in the cause of freedom of thought.

NPR on Front Lines in War Against Fox News

While the Obama Administration was boycotting Fox News, National Public Radio was apparently engaged in its own campaign against Fox. From the Politico:

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network's top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network's political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR's executive editor for news, Dick Meyer, and the network's supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox's programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she'd seen no significant change in Fox's programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

Of course, NPR denies that there is any "relationship" between the White House campaign against Fox, and "any discussions" NPR has been having about Fox. Of course not. I am sure it's a mere coincidence that these things were going on at the same time. And if not, I am sure the most transparent Administration in history will quickly and honestly let us know what really went on.

Obama’s Afghan Indecision

Conservative critics of the President's Afghanistan speech have generally applauded his decision to deploy more troops while writing scathingly about his timeline for withdrawing American troops. One argument is that by announcing an 18 month limit for the surge, he will encourage our enemies to lie low for that time and come out when we are gone. I hope that that is true. It will give us a year and a half to accomplish our objectives with little resistance.

The more serious argument is that the time limit indicates a lack of commitment on the President's part. Ralph Peters put it best:

It's as if, during WWII, we'd told the Japanese and Germans that we really meant business, but intended to quit by 1944.

The depth of the President's commitment is the real question. The Washington Post has a fine piece on the process from which the President's policy emerged. From this piece, by Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung, we learn just how the President took all those months to reach a conclusion. The WaPo piece tries to make the President look heroic, but does not quite succeed.

Last summer it looked like the President was at odds with his generals. General McChrystal was saying in public that a big increase in troops was necessary, which was apparently not what the President had in mind. The press reported this as a case of generals getting too big for their britches and forgetting who was in charge. The WaPo piece explains what really happened.

In June, [General] McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population."

"Is that really what you think your mission is?" one of those in the Situation Room asked.

On the face of it, it was impossible -- the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a significant part of the population. "We don't need to do that," Gates said, according to a participant. "That's an open-ended, forever commitment."

But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan -- the execution orders for the March strategy, written by [Obama's own] NSC staff.

In short, the Obama Administration didn't know what its own Afghanistan strategy was. General McCrystal did know. He was only doing and saying what the President had instructed him to do and say, even if the President had no idea what that was.

The WaPo story explains in great detail how the present policy was developed. But it contains another tidbit that is rather worrisome. Here is how the final "decision" was made:

Just after twilight on Nov. 29, Obama gathered Biden, Gates, Petraeus, Jones, Emanuel, Cartwright and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Oval Office. He had called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier.

He had made his decision.

Thirty thousand additional U.S. troops would arrive in Afghanistan by summer, and NATO would be asked to send at least 5,000 forces. …

Obama then went around the room asking one question: Do you support the strategy?

"If they didn't support the decision, he was going to issue another decision" until there was unanimity, a senior administration official said. "But it was his assessment that everyone could and should get behind it." Each of them did.

Now look at those words carefully. He had made his decision. Except that he hadn't. If "they" didn't agree, he was going to make another decision. He got unanimous agreement. Did it have to be unanimous? What if Secretary Clinton had expressed reservations on the phone?

The President is supposed to make such decisions. That is his job. President Obama prefers to outsource his most important decisions to other people. This is a bad sign. Suppose the President confronts a real national security crisis, one in which his advisers are divided. What will the Hyde Park Hamlet do?

For now, the commander of insurgent forces in Afghanistan, if there is one, need only worry about which of the President's decision makers he has to turn when the moment of truth comes.

Political Science

In 2000 a book was published, briefly, accusing one of the most famous anthropologists of a number of grievous sins. The book was Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney. It focused on the activities of Geneticist James V. Neel and Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon in their dealings with the Yanomami, an indigenous people in South America.  You will note that it was a "New York Times Notable Book," and a National Book Award Finalist.  Maybe that should have tipped off the wary. 

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Among other things, Mr. Tierney asserted that Mr. Neel had worsened a measles epidemic in 1968; that the two scholars had failed to obtain full informed consent when collecting blood samples from the community; that Mr. Chagnon had tacitly encouraged violent conflicts among the Yanomami; and that Mr. Chagnon had collaborated with an unscrupulous gold miner in an effort to create a research reserve in Venezuela.

Within a year of the book's publication, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Society of Human Genetics, and committees at Michigan and Santa Barbara issued statements that generally exonerated Mr. Chagnon and Mr. Neel.

As I recall, the book was withdrawn by the publisher. At this year's meeting of the American Anthropological Association, passions still smoldering after nine years have kindled new fire.

During a panel session on Wednesday evening, a Northwestern University scholar presented new evidence of distortions in the book, and she charged that the anthropological association had badly mishandled the entire affair.

In a spirited, at times blistering critique, Alice Domurat Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, questioned why any academic would want to be a part of the association, considering how, in her estimation, it had unfairly harmed the reputations of two scholars. "I can't imagine how any scholar feels safe at the hands of the Triple A," she said.

How bad was Darkness in El Dorado?

One of Ms. Dreger's findings concerns a 1995 incident that is recounted at the beginning of Mr. Tierney's book. That year Mr. Chagnon intended to travel to the northern Brazilian state of Roraima, and he allegedly planned to collect blood samples without proper permission from the Brazilian government. According to Mr. Tierney, that plan was stifled after indigenous activists circulated a "dossier" of material about various controversies that had dogged Mr. Chagnon.

In Mr. Tierney's account, that dossier was written by Leda Martins, a Brazilian-born scholar who was then a graduate student in anthropology at Cornell University. (She now teaches at Pitzer College.) But Ms. Dreger says that Ms. Martins admitted to her in an interview that the actual author was Mr. Tierney himself, and that Ms. Martins merely translated it.

Tierney's book was not only riddled with inaccuracies, it was an intentional act of fraud. The scandal is that the American Anthropological Association not only embraced the book at its publication, but continued to defend Tierney's accusations long after they were discredited.

Why was such a dreadful piece of writing published at all, and why did the "Triple A" champion it? Anthropologists are generally left-leaning in their politics and sentiments, and they want to believe that "indigenous," isolated peoples are better than modern people and especially better than modern people in Europe and America. Chagnon's work with the Yanomami shattered that charming myth. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be much more violent than modern societies, and are every bit as given to social pathologies. The discipline of anthropology has never forgiven Chagnon for delivering this message.

Scientists are people, and people are subject to political passions. This sometimes results in the corruption of science. That is a good thing to remember when considering the current debate over global warming. At stake in the Tierney scandal was the reputation of two honest scholars. At stake in the latter controversy is world economic development.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT 

I once had the pleasure of drinking with Napoleon Chagnon in a Chicago hotel lounge.  That may bias my view of this matter. 

Inconstant as the Weather

If you don't like the weather in South Dakota, just wait a bit; it will change. Apparently much the same is true about our President. Originally the President had planned to attend the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change. Then the Administration said he would not be attending. Then he announced that he would show up, on December 9^th. Now we learn that plans have been changed. President Obama will indeed grace the Danes with his presence, but on December 18^th. One wonders how many times he met, for how long, with how may advisers, before his Copenhagen attendance policy was finalized. If it is indeed finalized. With thirteen days to go, I figure he can change his mind about three more times.

The Hyde Park Hamlet is, as another Shakespearian character put it, inconstant as the moon. He is not entirely to blame, however, for his difficulties when it comes to climate change policy. A policy consists of a purpose and a means to achieve that purpose. The international community is not very good at making collective policy. No one but Iran wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, but getting Russia and China to agree on a common policy to prevent that looks hopeless.

On climate change, all the major nations seem to agree that global warming is a problem and that we should all do something about it. But no one is willing to do anything that would make a difference. For that reason, the Copenhagen Conference will produce no treaty, regardless of whether or on what day the President shows up.

I have been writing and blogging about global warming for several years. My original position was this:

1. The Earth has been warming for some time.

2. It is very likely that human activity is contributing to that warming.

3. It is very difficult to tell what consequences will follow from continued warming, for human beings or for the environment generally.

4. Economic development in China and India will overwhelm any reductions in greenhouse gases that the developed world could possibly achieve.

5. The developed world is not in fact going to voluntarily achieve any significant reduction in greenhouse emissions, because that would mean hobbling their own economies.

6. The only reasonable policy is to accept that global warming is happening and plan for it.

Propositions 3-5 have stood up very well. As for propositions 1 and 2, I trusted the scientists and just right now that trust has been greatly compromised. Consider this news, from the National Post:

Millions of measurements, global coverage, consistently rising temperatures, case closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU's average temperature data doesn't jibe with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. Last year he and three colleagues plotted an average temperature chart for Europe that shows a surprisingly different trend. Aside from a very cold spell in 1940, temperatures were flat for most of the 20th century, showing no warming while fossil fuel use grew. Then in 1987 they shot up by about 1 C and have not shown any warming since. This pattern cannot be explained by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, unless some critical threshold was reached in 1987; nor can it be explained by climate models.

If this were ordinary science, it would be back to the drawing board. But it is politicized science, where retreat is now allowed. The global warming meme is as basket case. Anyone who cares about these things needs to go back to formula on the whole business. As for the President, neither attending nor non-attending will do any good.

Marching in and out of Afghanistan

Concentrating on its parts last night, I thought the President's speech was pretty good. I still like a lot of it, but a criticism is surfacing today that is hard to get around. Here is an example from Der Spiegel:

It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

And here is how Richard Just puts it, in the New Republic:

[A]s much as I agreed with Obama's essential argument, something bothered me about the speech. It had less to do with Afghanistan than with the larger principles involved. The speech may have been, as Mike pointed out, remarkably consistent with an earlier Obama address. But it was also weirdly inconsistent with itself.

In a speech dedicated to explaining why our national security depends on our ability to help provide safety and good governance for people half a world away, Obama nevertheless felt the need to take not one but two swipes at the concept of nation-building…

Having attacked nation-building and strained unconvincingly to cast his Afghanistan policy in opposition to it, Obama then reversed course and offered this paean to human rights at the end of the speech: "We must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the source, the moral source, of America's authority." In the course of a few paragraphs, Obama had gone from the rhetoric of quasi-isolationism to the rhetoric of democracy promotion.

That's all pretty devastating. Obama is marching boldly into and out of Afghanistan at the same time. It is hard to do that sort of thing with grace. I am not sure the President pulled it off.

Obama’s Latest on Afghanistan

Last night I went shopping for Christmas decorations and politics was the last thing on my mind. That changed at the checkout counter, when a voice behind me boomed out a questioning, "Hello?" It seemed almost indignant, so I spun around to make sure I wasn't blocking or offending the voice's owner inadvertently. But to my relief, he was simply shouting into his cell phone.

"OBAMA? YEAH, HE GAVE A SPEECH TONIGHT!" he thundered. "I LOVED IT. HE'S GOING TO DO EVERYTHING HE'S EVER SAID HE WOULD!"

Since my fellow shopper evidently thought the speech was important enough for everyone in the store to know about, I supposed I ought to at least read through it. I have to admit that I was impressed. Not enough to go shouting about it in public places and not enough to believe that it meant that Obama would be keeping every promise he had ever made, but impressed nonetheless.

What made, perhaps, the best impression on me was the president's response to those who have suggested that Afghanistan might become another Vietnam. He said the following:

First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.

And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now — and to rely only on efforts against al-Qaida from a distance — would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al-Qaida and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.

I think this was an able and eloquent defense. I do, however, have a quibble with part of the president's speech. Towards the end, he declares:

It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan. As president, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our interests.

In my view, the president's goals for healthcare and climate change go beyond all of these.

The President makes Policy on Afghanistan

It is tempting to rake the President over the coals once again on the duration and many false starts of his decision making process. How many weeks did it take to decide that troop withdrawal would begin in July of 2011 as opposed to June or August? But beyond that, I will resist the temptation.

The Speech

I haven't had time yet to go over the speech in great detail, but it looks pretty good to me. It begins as it certainly should have with the central fact: the United States was attacked by forces operating in Afghanistan and intertwined with the Taliban government. I especially liked this part:

Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them - an authorization that continues to this day. The vote in the Senate was 98 to 0. The vote in the House was 420 to 1. For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5 - the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an attack on all. And the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network, and to protect our common security.

Republicans have pointed out that the bad faith of Congressional Democrats on the Afghan war. While Bush was President and Iraq was going poorly, the Democrats constantly referred to Afghanistan as the war we should be fighting and complained that our commanders in that theater were starved of troops because of the Iraq war. Once those two facts changed, the core of the Democratic Party in both houses suddenly opposes sending in more troops.

Obama rightly points out that, in the only expression of sentiment that really matters, Congressional support for military action in Afghanistan was nearly unanimous.

He also did a good job of reconciling his opposition to the Iraq war with a justified praise of our troops and their achievement in Iraq.

The Policy

The President's policy was no surprise.

I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

The President is going to increase troop strength in Afghanistan by 30,000 soldiers, bringing the total American commitment to about 100,000. This force will concentrate on securing vital areas in the center of the country, and aggressively targeting insurgents in the border areas. He also announced, rather vaguely, that we will begin withdrawing troops a year and a half from now.

The first thing I notice is the President's vindication of George W. Bush's surge policy, which he and his party opposed. The spectacular success of that policy made no impression at all on Congressional Democrats, but Obama is now Commander in Chief, and he cannot afford to so blithely ignore reality. Obama is engineering a virtually identical policy in Afghanistan.

This puts the President at odds with his party in Congress and with the activist base of his party at large. I don't think that Barack Obama is nearly so comfortable doing this as was Bill Clinton; and that, I think, is largely why it took him so long to reach a decision. This might be the first time in his life that he has intentionally departed from the party line.

His difficulty in doing so has real consequences for his policy. Why send in 30,000 troops rather than the 40,000 General McCrystal requested? I don't know which number is the right one, but I doubt that anything in his lengthy policy review process would justify the reduction. He needed to show that he was bending a little to the left of his generals.

Likewise, the schedule for withdrawal looks political rather than strategic. Can he really predict that 18 months is the right amount of time to accomplish all that he says must be accomplished? If so, that was some awesome strategic review he conducted. That bit is another salve for the Left. I doubt that it will be very soothing, for no one here can believe it. It doesn't commit him to much of anything either, unless you think that all our troops will pack and board planes on the second next Independence Day. All he has to do is "begin" withdrawing on that date.

The real risk in the speech is that our foe will see the sops to the Left as signs of weakness. Critics like Charles Krauthammer will seize on that, but I don't think it matters much. What will matter is the effectiveness of our troops on the ground. At least for now the President is acting Presidential. Who knows, but it might grow on him.

Swiss Breeze against Islam

The Swiss people have approved a ban on the construction of new minarets, the towers that are a characteristic feature of the architecture of Islamic mosques. From SwissInfo:

In a major upset the proposal by members of rightwing parties won 57.5 per cent of the vote, despite recommendations by the government and a majority in parliament that the initiative be thrown out.

The government says voters' approval of a ban on new minarets reflects fears among the Swiss population of Islamic fundamentalism.

Well, yeah.

However, [the government] considers a ban is not the right way to prevent extremist tendencies. In an apparent effort to downplay the impact of the result, cabinet ministers maintained religious freedom for Muslims was not at risk and said inter-religious dialogue would continue.

There are two issues here that cut at odds with one another. One is religious freedom. Modern liberal democracy is in large part a reaction to the religious wars that tore Europe apart and killed millions only a few centuries ago. The issue was largely resolved, so far as the Protestant schism was concerned, by a simple social contract. So long as each citizen respected the laws of the state, including the rights of other citizens, he or she could believe and practice his or her own faith. A ban on minarets looks to me like a violation of the contract. It strikes directly at what Americans call free exercise of religion.

The other issue is that the peoples of European nations have lost confidence in the willingness of their governments, let alone the EU, to protect their liberal democracies against the illiberal strains of militant Islam that have immigrated into Europe. An Aramaic priest in Belgium is prosecuted for "incitement to racist hatred" because he said this in a TV interview:

Every thoroughly Islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority.

Well, that's over the line. It should be illegal to say such a thing, unless you think that people have a right to express their opinions.

But Père Samuel is only one of a number of Christian priests to face such a prosecution. If any radical Muslim Imam has been hauled before a European court for saying similar things about the Jews, I have missed it.

The Volokh Conspiracy has the best thing I have seen on this, by David Kopel:

Back in 2003, after I visited Geneva, I wrote the following for my Rocky Mountain News media column: "Local investigative reporting appears weak. A Swiss television station recently exposed a secret deal between the Geneva police and the Iranian government: The Iranians would not commit terror in Switzerland, while the Geneva police would turn a blind eye to Iranian terror bases in Geneva. In the United States, such a revelation would set off a frenzy of newspapers advancing the story with further investigation about a gigantic local police scandal, but the Geneva papers did little with the story."

This is just one of many examples of the Swiss elite's feckless and amoral dealing with the Islamonazis of Tehran.

Europe's Muslims should have the right to build Mosques, just as Europe's priests and Imams should have the right to express their opinions no matter how politically incorrect they may be. But all Europe's people should have the right to equal and vigorous protection against threats to their lives and liberties. If you want to stem the tide of "Islamaphobia," a little backbone on the latter might be in order.

Constitutional Democracy in Honduras

Appears to have survived Chávezism, at least temporarily. From the New York Times:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Porfirio Lobo, a longtime conservative politician, appeared to have won on Sunday in the Honduran presidential election, which many hoped could help the country emerge from the crisis caused by last summer's coup and end its isolation.

The Times, of course, distorts the story. What happened last summer did not fit the definition of a coup. A coup is when one government is overthrown by another. In Honduras the military, acting at the request of the Supreme Court, blocked President Manuel Zelaya from conducting an illegal election. The interim government that replaced Zelaya will be replaced in January by the winners of yesterday's election. Some coup.

Zelaya was seeking to become another Hugo Chávez, which is to say, another half-quart Castro. Naturally, Venezuela backed Zelaya, as did the Organization of American States. To date, only Panama and Costa Rica among regional states have agreed to recognize the elected government as legitimate. The U.S. initially supported Zelaya, but the Obama Administration has come around to supporting the new government.

The Left in Latin America and the U.S. instinctive supported Zelaya. The failure of Chávez-style socialism in Honduras is good for the interests of the United States and good for the future of Constitutional Democracy in the region.

Where the Public Option is the Only Option

One of the curious things about the healthcare debate in America is how little attention has been paid to healthcare systems in other countries. You might have thought we would be hearing about how public healthcare functions in Canada and Europe. That, after all, is what we will be moving toward if the Democrats get their way. In fact, such attention is scrupulously absent from the debate, at least on the Democratic side. Conservatives have tried to bring it up, mostly without success.

Maybe that's because the story of healthcare in Europe is a very mixed bag. In the Mother Country, it's a scandal. From the London Times:

An immediate investigation to uncover the true extent of death rates across the NHS has been ordered by the Health Secretary after scandals at two hospital trusts.

Amid claims that patients are dying due to poor care in at least 27 hospitals around the country, Andy Burnham said that patient safety was paramount and must take precedence above all else.

His comments come after the head of a foundation trust in Colchester, Essex, was sacked over concerns about high death rates, leadership and waiting times.

Failings in patient care had previously been linked to the deaths of between 70 and 400 patients at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Foundation Trust, also in Essex.

Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph, is brutally clever about the NHS's brutality:

One of Labour's great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

It is a further achievement of our monitoring, regulating culture that even the monitors and the regulators don't seem to have a clue how bad things are – or they certainly didn't in Basildon. This exposes one of the great pretences of the NHS: that it is there first and foremost for the benefit of patients. It isn't. It exists these days mostly for the benefit of various trade unionists who are fully paid-up members of the Brown clientele, and who earn good money as petty bureaucrats trying to "manage" things that, if they need to be managed at all, could be far better done by fewer people in much more efficient systems.

It's not just the English government, let alone the English people, who might want to know how bad the NHS really is. Our Congress seems determined to turn the entire American healthcare system over to the HHS. Is Health and Human Services really prepared to control a sixth of the U.S. economy? Will HHS be more attentive to patients and less solicitous of public employee unions than Britain's NHS?

One thing we know about the House and Senate healthcare bills: protecting lawyers and health worker unions comes first. That might matter if, ten years of so down the road, you find yourself in a hospital bed.

Something to be Thankful For

"Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell

Hat tip to Powerline

Happy Birthday to the Origin of the Species

One hundred and fifty years ago this week, Charles Darwin's magnum opus was published in England. It was certainly one of the most important works of science ever written. If one listed the competition, it would include the seminal works by Copernicus, Newton, and of course the papers of the young Einstein. All of those concerned physics. Perhaps Watson and Crick's work on DNA would compare.

But judged by its impact not only on science but on world culture as well, The Origin of the Species is second to none. Darwin did not think up the idea of evolution. That idea was familiar enough by his time. Darwin addressed two closely related and fundamental questions about living organisms: why is there such an astounding diversity among the many species, and how did the various organisms come to be so admirably adapted to their environments? What he did in his book was to make "one long argument," and a compelling one, about the mechanism underlying both the diversity and the design of living things.

The mechanism that shapes and maintains the forms of the various species is natural selection. If an organism inherits a physical structure and a range of behaviors that promote successful reproduction (what we call inclusive fitness), then the factors of inheritance responsible for those traits (what we call genes) will be well represented in future generations. If the organism's traits inhibit successful reproduction, then to that degree its genes will be less well represented. That's the whole idea.

It is an astoundingly powerful idea. The environments within which the various organisms do their business are very diverse and frequently change. The factors of inheritance also change, due to random mutations. As the many organisms fill the various environmental niches, the organisms diverge from one another in form and segregate themselves into distinct species. Thus Darwin's idea explains the diversity of life. As minute variations in traits, the shape of a wing or the size of a brain, prove better or worse in terms of inclusive fitness, so the organisms come to be meticulously designed for their various environments. Thus the Darwinian idea explains adaptation.

It is both the curse of Darwinism and a source of its enormous strength that it came along just as Western intellectual culture was slipping out of the grip of Biblical religion. Whatever you think about modern secular culture, Darwinism was not responsible for it. It was well advanced by the time his book was published. But secularists would increasingly seize on Darwinism as an argument against natural theology (the attempt to prove the existence of God by reference to natural and logical facts). Accordingly, those of traditional faith came to see Darwin as an enemy.

Darwinism remains controversial to this day because so many people of faith see it as inconsistent with the idea of Divine creation. This is a great mistake. In understanding the mechanisms of evolution Darwinism is no more inconsistent with Genesis than the sciences of astronomy or chemistry. Yet only Darwinism is seen as a problem.

Darwinism has become controversial recently on a very different issue. Many modern social scientists, especially on the political left, are deeply committed to the idea that all human behavior is determined by learning and so is "socially constructed." Modern Darwinian biology is showing that many human behaviors are deeply influenced by inherited factors, shaped by natural selection.

Here, Darwinism reinforces the conservative side of the argument. Conservatives, both religious and secular, see human beings as dangerous by nature. Darwinism tends to confirm this. I have written as much in the book I recently edited: Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question.

Anyone who writes a book probably would like to think that a century later everyone will still be talking about it. By that standard, The Origin of the Species was a spectacular success. Happy Birthday to the Origin.

Pay No Attention to the Climate Scientists behind the Curtain

In case you hadn't noticed, the esoteric deliberations of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Orthodoxy were exposed for all the world to see when someone hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center. Now this hacking was an invasion of privacy and probably illegal, so I deplore it. But that doesn't mean I can ignore it now that it's public!

That there has been a change among the MSM of late is very interesting. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times report the story, more or less honestly. Could it be the influence of Fox News? Better get it out, before Glen Beck goes postal.

These emails tell us what prominent scientists who are campaigning to stop anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are saying to each other in private. In one juicy tidbit, a climate researcher describes how he intentionally distorts the data to hide the recent decline in global temperatures.

In other released messages, global warming alarmists discuss how they can bring pressure on peer-reviewed journals and IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) to suppress any papers or reports that contradict the orthodoxy. From the WaPo:

In one e-mail, the center's director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University's Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Well, that's a solution to peer-reviewed research that contradicts the orthodox view: redefine "peer-review literature" so that it excludes certain inconvenient findings.

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes.

"I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.

This is not science. It is an established church conducting an inquisition. Many legitimate and credentialed researchers who are skeptical of AGW have complained of brutish campaigns to marginalize and exclude them. Their complaints are now confirmed beyond reasonable doubt.

Powerline today points out something even more interesting: global warming activists acknowledging to one another that they don't know at all what the climate is doing. Industrial activity in China and elsewhere emits green house gases like carbon dioxide. But it also admits other substances, some of which have the opposite effect of green house gases, and promote cooler temperatures. How does it balance out?

Sulphur dioxide, like carbon dioxide, is emitted as a result of industrial activity. Unlike carbon dioxide, it is actually a pollutant. But whereas carbon dioxide tends to warm, sulphur dioxide tends to cool, and MacCracken suggests that SO2 emissions from China and India may well be offsetting the temperature impact of CO2. The net effect of human activity, therefore, may be much closer to neutral than the alarmists have been claiming.

That's Powerline's summary of a long quote from the emails. These are the scientists at the very center of the global warming orthodoxy, and they don't know whether their own climate models are any good or not. Are we really going to suppress economic activity all over the globe, at a moment when the world is experiencing a grave economic downturn, over such as this?

I have loved science since I was ten years old. Science always faces serious threats from people who don't want to know that the world isn't what they think it is. It is clear which side of that divide the global warming alarmists are on.

Ladies, Feminists and Women of Ill Repute

Britain is making quite a fuss over Dr. Brooke Magnanti, who recently revealed herself as the infamous Belle De Jour. Magnanti as Belle ran a blog called “Diary of a London Call-Girl” that gained her a substantial following. It became a best-selling book and later a TV series.  The BBC’s Clive James observes in this article that some critics suspected that “Belle” was actually Salman Rushdie. James himself says the following:

My own guess is that she will marry a future crowned head of Europe...There is nothing this woman can't do, and you can tell by the history of her blogging. She has been blogging since blogging was invented. Fresh out of school, she blogged about restaurants. After that, by a sequence of events that will no doubt be explained to us in due course, she blogged about autopsies.

This was such great praise that I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about. Did this woman really write like Salman Rushdie? What does a woman who “can do anything” blog about? Why was Magnanti getting such positive press while many women of better repute were received so negatively? These were among the many questions in my mind as I headed over to Magnanti’s blog.

I surfed in expecting either high-brow smut (can there be such a thing?) or perhaps some sort of progressive rant about a woman’s right to prostitute herself. Instead, I found an argument against feminists that I sympathize with. Here is an excerpt:

 

Bottom line, it takes a particular kind of self-consciously middle-class gynecentric view of the world to imagine that the only physical danger men face is in a war zone. As someone who has lived in more than a few dodgy neighbourhoods - because sponging off my parents was categorically Not An Option - and been privy to the secrets and fears of my male friends, I do not think they have it easier than we of the XX-type. Different, yes. Easy, no.

Magnanti mentions that one of her friends sustained skull fractures after being jumped in a situation that she would never have had to face, because she is a girl. She ends her blog with these cutting words:

And let us not forget that the sort of men who exercise violent dominance over women do not only do that to women. But then, it must be beastly difficult to see that from the point of view of a B.A. in Women's Studies surfing broadband in your parents' spare room. Very difficult indeed.

I don’t much like prostitution. Catching the Swine Flu is more appealing to me, and I dislike the fact that women are willing to accept payment to help men betray their wives. But in my view, feminists have done more to hurt the relationship between men and women than prostitutes have.  

Feminists teach women to rail against men who advance more quickly than they do in the workplace. Women are taught to discard men who do not treat them exactly the way they want to be treated. Men must not only work to support their families, but they must also pamper women with flowers and chocolate and perform every handy-man service a woman desires. If they don’t do it, they’re jerks.

Empowered women have spoiled day to day activities too, by suing men for complimenting them and screaming at men who try to pay them respect by opening the door for them. One New York woman screamed at my brother for doing her that favor when he travelled to the state for a college debate tournament. If women treat men so badly for being respectful, how can we expect them to be anything but disrespectful?

These days, women who might have enjoyed receiving compliments from male co-workers often don’t get them, as men who might have given them now must be careful not to provoke lawsuits. It’s a pity, because women often have low self-esteem and compliments from the opposite sex might have helped with that. Maybe the knowledge that we can now, thanks to feminist crusaders, hold the door open for ourselves is supposed to make up for that loss. Thank you, feminists. What a victory for womankind!

Comparing feminists and prostitutes reminds me of the scene in Gone With The Wind, where Rhett Butler explains to Scarlett why he took Solace with the Madame Belle Watling. Here’s what he says:

 

If you had only let me, I could have loved you as gently and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. But I couldn’t let you know, for I knew you’d think me weak and try to use my love against me. And always—always there was Ashley. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t sit across the table from you every night, knowing you wished Ashley was sitting there in my place. And I couldn’t hold you in my arms at night and know that—well, it doesn’t matter now. I wonder, now, why it hurt. That’s what drove me to Belle. There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a woman who loves you utterly and respects you for being a fine gentleman—even if she is an illiterate whore. It soothed my vanity. You’ve never been very soothing, my dear.”

Neither have the feminists. Magnanti certainly seems to have more heart than many of them.

The NEA: Teachers First, Children Second

In a baffling act of candor, retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin explains just what kind of organization the National Education Association is. From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

The NEA is not about education; it's about power and money, period. The power depends on the money, and the money depends on the Union serving the interests of "education employees," not pupils. If that interpretation of the paragraph sounds harsh, see Mr. Chanin's next paragraph:

This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

That, I think, is about as clear as it can be. Protecting the interests of teachers is more important to the NEA than making sure that students receive a good education. The NEA will always sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former.

No one who is familiar with the NEA will be surprised to learn that this is true. I am very surprised to hear someone from the NEA actually come out and admit it.

60 Votes to Debate Healthcare Bill

From the LA Times:

Democrats and their allies formally moved their healthcare bill to the Senate floor tonight, rebuffing Republicans and ensuring that lawmakers will get a long and acrimonious debate on the overhaul of the healthcare system.

All 58 Democrats and the two independents who usually vote with them backed cloture on a motion to proceed, a needed procedural step to bring the Democratic-backed healthcare bill to the floor and open formal debate. Thirty-nine Republicans opposed the motion.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that it signals a willingness on the part of sixty Senators to see something like the current bill passed into law. That might well be true and if it is, then we are going to get a radical restructuring of the American healthcare system. Another way to look at it is that Harry Reid had to pull out all the stops just to get this procedural vote passed, and that he had not a single vote to spare. Michell Bard at the Huffington Post is in no mood yet to uncork the champagne.

The procedure for passing a bill once it comes out of committee consists of four steps. First, there is a vote to open debate. That is what passed today. Second there is the debate. During this time, Senators are allowed to offer amendments and nervous Democrats will certainly offer a lot of those. Third, a vote of cloture (a vote to end debate) must be passed by sixty votes. The Fourth step is for the Senate to actually vote the bill up or down. This requires only a majority.

The decisive step is step three. If Reid loses a single Democrat, or Joe Liebermann, then he can't get a vote on the bill. If he gets sixty votes for cloture, he can surely come up with fifty-one for passage.

But that makes the debate dynamic very complicated. Any one of the Senators who voted yes today can offer an amendment and demand its passage as a price of his or her continued support. Liebermann has said that he will vote against cloture if the public option is still in the bill at that point. It cost the United States $300 million to get the vote of Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. That's being called the "Louisiana Purchase."It is possible that some of the Senators have irreconcilable demands. One Senator might refuse to vote for cloture unless stronger anti-abortion language is added while another might refuse if such language is added.

What is really going to determine the outcome is the judgment of a number of vulnerable Democratic Senators. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is viewed as the most vulnerable.

What is rather striking right now is how consistently bad the news is regarding public support for the reform effort and for the Democrats in general. President Obama's approval rating is now below fifty in several polls. Moreover, according to Charlie Cook, the President has become "worse than radioactive" in many Democratic districts, meaning that support or association with President Obama may cost a Senator or Congressman reelection.

But a CNN poll just out spells worse news. More Americans blame the Republicans for the recession than blame the Democrats. But the allocation of blame has been steadily shifting for months from the GOP to the Dems.

"The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold the GOP exclusively responsible for the recession has been steadily falling by about two to three points per month," said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. "At that rate, only a handful of voters will blame the economy on the Republicans by the time next year's midterm elections roll around.."

So far the Democrats are behaving very courageously, or foolishly, depending on your perspective. They seem to assume that they're going to take a bath next November, and are taking their one chance to move America closer to Canada. But a vote for the Senate bill may cost some Democrats dearly come next fall.

The Right to Know v The Right to Privacy

The Aberdeen American News ran an interesting “Our Voice” column recently.

Here is an excerpt:

A judge has decided the person who donated $750,000 to an anti-abortion referendum can remain anonymous. The state should continue efforts to bring this name to light and protect the public's right to know.

 

It is ironic that today’s abortion rights came about because proponents believed that the right to privacy was incredibly important. Indeed, in Griswold V. Connecticut,  we were assured that the right to privacy was protected by the first amendment. Here is Justice Douglas giving the opinion of the Court:

In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion.  The right of "association," like the right of belief (Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

 

So, while the constitution might not have explicitly guaranteed this pro-lifer the right to privacy, it is not hard to imagine that such a right emanated from Douglas’s penumbra.  Does the right to know now trump the right to privacy? If so, perhaps Griswold ought to be reversed.

So How’s Obama Doing?

Just some random thoughts about He Who Blessed the Waffle.

President Obama went to China. He said lots of nice things about Chinese Civilization. He spoke to a small group of Chinese students, which event was blacked out on Chinese TV. He got nothing in terms of agreements or cooperation from the Chinese.

The President hasn't decided yet when he will decide whether he is going to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. But the Conference has been declared dead in advance. The world is blaming Obama for not getting a U.S. climate change bill, as if that would have helped.

The President sold Poland and the Czech Republic to the Russians. That, at least, is how the Czechs and the Poles see it. In return he got from the Russians… well, nothing so far.

The President extended an open hand to the Iranians and got his hand spit on. The spit clicks on a Geiger counter. It might have helped if he had gotten some cooperation from the Russians and/or from the Chinese. See above.

The President hasn't decided yet when he will decide what his Afghanistan strategy is, but it will be soon. "Soon" means in the next several weeks. It remains to be seen what "several" means.

The President has decided that terrorists who target the American military will be tried in military courts, where they are more likely to be convicted. He has decided that terrorists who target American citizens will be tried in civil courts where they will get the same rights as the American citizens they blew out of their socks.

The President has insulted our British and French allies. He has also convinced Europe in general that he is not very much interested in Europe in general.

So much for foreign policy.

The President got a stimulus package passed that did wonders to stimulate government jobs. It also apparently created jobs in Congressional districts that do not exist. As for real unemployment, that stands now at about 17%, at least in Congressional districts that do exist.

The President made climate change a major part of his agenda, but no climate change bill is forthcoming. See above.

The President is planning on gargantuan deficits into the foreseeable future.

The President might yet sign health care legislation that will dramatically expand the size and power of government, and just as dramatically expand the federal deficit. See just above.

That's how he's doing.

Was the Ft. Hood Shooter an Obama Advisor?

No. An internet rumor circulating to that effect, and it landed in my email. There is an interesting footnote here, but so far as I can tell there is no evidence at all that Nidal Malik Hasan had any connection to the Obama campaign or to the Administration.

Here is the meat of the email I received:

Now we have a little insight into why Obama said to not jump to conclusions about Nidal Hasan. This man who killed and wounded the people at Fort Hood, Texas was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team.

Well, that would be a pretty sexy story if it were true. It would not of course mean that the Obama organization had any idea what kind of man Hasan was, but it would be a reason for the Administration to be particularly embarrassed by this episode.

But it isn't true, at least according to the evidence at hand. The rumor is based on this document published online by the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. The HSPI looks to be a typical think tank. They spend a lot of money getting a lot of people with credentials together to talk things over and publish reports.

No doubt the folks at HSPI hoped to have influence in the Obama Administration. The document is a report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force. I do not know what connections HSPI or their PTTF had with the Obama organization. I note that Ed Meese, Reagan Administration Attorney General, was on the Task Force. The document presents a lot of boilerplate about homeland security issues. I confess that I didn't study it closely.

But on page 29 of the list of "Task Force Even Participants" was one Nidal Hasan, of the "Uniformed Services University School of Medicine." That is indeed our man, as the GW Hatchet reports.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the HSPI, said Hasan was not affiliated with the HSPI.

"There have been a lot of erroneous stories," Cilluffo said, adding that Hasan has "no affiliation [with HSPI], was not a member of the task force, but participated in some of the meetings as an audience member."

Cilluffo said Hasan RSVP'd to these HSPI events "in his capacity as a disaster and preventative psychiatry fellow with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences" – a federal health sciences university which trains its students for "military medicine, disaster medicine and military medical readiness."

It looks like Nidal Hasan used his credentials to get a place on the HSPI proceedings. That will no doubt be of interest to the investigators in this case, and to those Congressional Committees doing their own investigations. It surely tells us something about Hasan.

But there is no scandal here. I can understand that this is a little embarrassing to HSPI, but the Institute had no reason to be suspicious of Hasan. More importantly, there is no link between Hasan and the Obama organization. The claim that Hasan was "was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team" appears to be a canard.

The Hasan Scandal Gets Deeper

The scandal behind the Fort Hood shooting keeps getting deeper. It should have been clear to the army that Nidal Malik Hasan was a security risk long before he launched his personal jihad. Christopher Hitchens summarizes some of the details in his characteristically devastating piece at Slate.

On his business card, [Hasan] described himself as "SOA" or "slave," or possibly, "soldier of Allah." Neither would be especially reassuring in this context.

He had attracted considerable attention by repeatedly using his postgraduate classes at the Uniformed Service University in Bethesda, Md., for the purpose of Islamic proselytizing, for a version of Islam that, to say the least, did not overemphasize it as a "religion of peace."

He had, in spoken and written communications, demonstrated a fascination with the love of death and the concept of suicide martyrdom (better described as suicide murder) that is the central concept of Bin Ladenism.

If none of this came to the attention of his superiors, then they weren't looking or they were ignoring what they saw.

But NPR has a report that adds a new dimension to this story. Hasan was not only a jihadist waiting for his moment to board the paradise express, he was also a dreadfully bad psychiatrist.

On May 17, 2007, Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, "Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan." More than a page long, the document warns that: "The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan's career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

"Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview," says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt's psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

If anything, that understates the matter.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

Whether the Army missed the "Slave of Allah" stuff, it did not miss the fact that Hasan was an absolute disaster as a psychiatrist. And yet they kept him, promoted him, and sent him to Fort Hood to work with men and women who deserved a lot more than a competent psychiatrist.

Whether this was a result of the military culture of sensitivity or of mere incompetence on the part of Hasan's superiors, it is something Congress should put on his schedule of hearings as soon as possible.

Chris Cillizza Nominates John Thune

Coming hard on the heels of David Brook's column on John Thune is this piece by the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:

For months -- if not years -- the Republican/conservative smart set has been looking for a fresh face on which to hang their hopes and dreams. South Dakota Sen. John Thune may be that person.

Well, he may be. With the next Presidential election three years away, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are the only big names on the board. Senator Thune has been quietly enlarging his role in the Republican Party, mostly on the basis of his defeat of former South Dakotan Tom Daschle. He is also showing up on a lot of cable TV shows, as Cillizza notes. Whether he intends to or can assemble a coalition for a national bid remains to be seen.

But wouldn't it be fun? If Thune runs for President it would prove that South Dakota is the little engine that could. It would also irritate some persons in the local blogosphere to the point of collapse. That alone would be worth a hefty campaign contribution.

I have had the pleasure of meeting both Tom Daschle and John Thune on several occasions. I liked both of them, and I thought that both deserved their status. John has certainly proved himself to be a very valuable asset to the Republican Party. I say watch this space.

Doctors, Sums, & Money

I have posted below on the billions that the Democrats are willing to spend to protect lawyers. The Washington Post raises the alarm on something else I have posted about: billions more spent to protect doctor's fees. The WaPo focuses on the right issue, as it seems to me: the Democrat's fiscal shenanigans.

HAVING PASSED a health reform bill that is, at least theoretically, paid for, the House of Representatives is poised this week to blow a quarter-trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget involving, you guessed it, health care. This is the so-called doc fix, to prevent scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians from taking effect.

A "quarter-trillion-dollar hole"! Since the new "expensive" is a cool trillion, that's a quarter expensive at least. Here's the trick: the House counted on scheduled reductions in doctor's fees as part of its cost control measures, thus making the House healthcare reform bill look less expensive. But they are about to restore the cuts in a separate bill. Mendacity, as Big Daddy says, is the rule we live by.

Don't be fooled by the incredible shrinking "cost" of the fix. The official Congressional Budget Office estimate used to be $245 billion over 10 years. Now it's $210 billion. In fact, the real hit to the budget will be closer to $300 billion. The lower CBO numbers stem primarily from the administration's move to change the rules about which physician payments are subject to the cuts. The administration proposed a regulation to exempt drugs administered in doctor's offices, such as chemotherapy, from the spending ceiling. That has the effect of making the cost of the fix look smaller, but it doesn't change the ultimate drain on the treasury: Medicare will end up paying out the same amount of money.

The House bill is a fiscal con job. Meanwhile, there is this from the WaPo:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

That is another half-expensive thing in the bill. It depends on a massive cut in Medicare spending, which is something that Congress has never had the courage to do before. They ain't gonna suddenly get starch.

Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade.

Now it is reasonable to point out, as Ezra Klein does, that Medicare costs are, sooner or later, going to be cut. But the question right now is whether the House Bill or anything likely to come out of Congress is going to be not just expensive but ruinously expensive. To make the House bill look merely expensive requires a lot of sleight of hand. We have to believe that they are going to cut Medicare substantially in the near future.

But can a Congress that can't say no to the Trial Lawyers or the American Medical Association say no to the most powerful voting bloc in America? Guess.

Your money or your life?

The recent sentencing of Former Congressman William Jefferson is notable, not only because it shows the face of government corruption, but also because it illustrates what looks to me like a growing disparity between society's willingness to punish financial offenders and its willingness to punish certain violent offenders. Jefferson will face 13 years in prison, though the justice department was seeking 33. Jefferson's crimes ranged from accepting bribes to embezzlement.

Compare his case to the case of Roman Polanski. Polanski, who raped an under aged girl in several different ways, might face two years in prison if he is extradited. But, OK, some celebrities have assured us that it wasn't rape-rape. So let's look at another case. James Malecin, who killed his stepson, UFC heavyweight champion Justin Eilers, was given a sentence of 6.5 to 15 years for the act. But, alright, he was drunk, so that wasn't murder-murder. So let's consider the 1994 case of Curtis Martin, who was convicted of beating a three-year-old boy to death and was given only 11-years in prison. He was released and is now suspected of killing another child. Well, now, that looks bad. But apparently the crimes of Bernie Madoff are worse, because Madoff is serving a sentence of 150 years.

I am not arguing that these cases are the norm. I know they are not, but in day to day conversations as well as in the news, I have seen more people defend Polanski than I have Madoff. So I can't help wonder which is worth more in today's society? Your money or your life?

Climate Policy Fails the Reality Test. Again.

An environmental policy can aim to achieve one or both of two things. One aim is green marketing. It can sell us things that make us feel virtuous and chic. The other is that it can at protecting the environment both for our sake and for the sake of the world itself. Just right now, the two aims are diametrically at odds with one another.

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger has a typically interesting piece of South Dakota's share of the nation's carbon emissions. Oddly, South Dakota comes out rather well while North Dakota is among the highest emitters per capita. Cory rightly points out that we get a lot of our power from "squeaky clean" hydroelectric generators. I note that such power requires dams, which had done a lot of damage to local environments. He also points out that we get a lot of power from out of state.

Cory is also a big fan of green technologies like wind power. But it is quite clear that wind power is, at present, rather bad for the environment. Studies of nations that have heavily invested in wind power show that leads to increased carbon emissions overall. It is also rather bad for the various economies. Maybe wind power will be viable at some point in the future, but right now it is a bust. That matters if, as Al Gore keeps saying, we have to do something right now. Well, at least it's sexy.

So called green technologies are often gangrene technologies when it comes to the environment and job growth. We invest in them because we prefer ideas to environmental and economic realities. Another reality that is frequently ignored in environmental policy is political reality.

Next month world leaders are meeting at Copenhagen for a "global climate conference." But they have decided in advance that there will be no "politically binding agreement" at that conference. What then are they meeting for? A lot of pious speeches, I am supposing.

At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

No wonder the world likes Obama. A conference to decide when to decide sounds like our man! But one wonders whether this process really has anything to do with protecting the environment, as opposed to pretending to care about the environment.

The best example of backward thinking I have seen is this: a bunch of models stripping as global warming heats up.

I don't know about Cory, but this makes me want to leave my car running all night.

Hugo Chavez’s Three Minute Shower

Poking fun at Hugo Chavez is like shooting a really fat fish in a pretty small barrel, but, hey, it's Sabado, so why not? Here is what life in Venezuela is like, from Newsweek:

Venezuelans are inured to a certain amount of economic dysfunction. They already suffer some of the worst traffic jams on the planet, thanks to heavily subsidized gasoline, which goes for the petropopulist price of about 17 cents per gallon. But lately the privations have become severe, due in large measure to waste and economic mismanagement. Eggs and milk are hard to find. The government is scrambling to replace medicine imported from Colombia. Despite vast domestic stores of natural gas, Venezuela must pipe in gas from Colombia because it lacks infrastructure and cash to mine its own reserves.

The droughts that drained the reservoirs of hydroelectric plants—and provoking rolling blackouts in homes and factories—recently led Chávez to scold Venezuelan "elites" for such indulgences as air conditioning, switching on the lights in the bathroom, and loitering in the shower. "Some people sing in the shower for half an hour," he reportedly admonished his ministers at a cabinet meeting. "What kind of communism is that?"

Excellent question. Here's another: what kind of government has a policy on singing in the shower? Answer: a socialist one. That's also the answer to a lot of other questions, such as 'what kind of government turns oil and gas reserves and lots of hydroelectric resources into a power shortage?

Wedged between the Andes, the Amazon rainforest, and the Caribbean, and swimming in crude oil, Venezuela ought to be an energy powerhouse. It boasts one of the largest hydroelectric power matrixes in the world. But it has been plagued by electrical failures, including a half dozen nationwide blackouts since 2007. Now homes in some rural areas are dark for four hours a day, and steel mills have had to get by with reduced electricity and water.

Drought is the immediate cause, but the real culprit is a collapse in investment in infrastructure, despite the flood of petrodollars from Venezuela's oil fields. A 2,200-megawatt power plant currently in the works would help, but the $4.6 billion plant touted to begin operation next year, won't be ready before 2014. Worse, the infrastructure failures have come as Chávez has tightened state control over the Venezuelan economy by seizing private energy and utility companies in the name of the Boliviarian cause.

All this explains why Venezuela is threatening to go to war against Colombia. The Colombians are vaguely amused. Venezuela has a toy army. Colombia has a real army. If Colombia were to really go to war against Venezuela, it would be over before Chavez finished his shower.

Nothing serious here. Just a bit of Saturday fun.

Bringing the 9/11 Terrorists Back to New York

The President is not incapable of making a decision. From USA Today:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other alleged accomplices will be moved from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay to New York City so they can stand trial just blocks away from the scene of the deadliest terrorist assaults in American history.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that he plans to seek the death penalty against all five men. He said it is important that the alleged 9/11 planners be brought to justice near the scene of the crime and in U.S. civilian courts that would be "open to the public and open to the world."

That's a decision. It's hard to see what sense it makes. KSM is the highest profile terrorist we have yet captured. We waterboarded him, and he gave up his cronies, some of whom we have since nabbed. That fact looks to make a civil prosecution rather difficult. Nothing that KSM said under duress is likely to make it into evidence. By the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, nothing that we learned as a consequence of what he said can be used in Court. Nonetheless, Attorney General Eric Holder is confident that he can get a conviction.

The Administration is justifying this move on the grounds that the American justice system is the best in the world and that this will demonstrate our rectitude to the world. Well, okay. But I see a couple of problems.

One is that a civil trial will give KSM and his legal team the opportunity to make a circus of the trial. They won't be worried about the outcome. KSM and his henchpersons are more than ready to die. Indeed, they are rather looking forward to it. They will try to use the trial to paint a picture of demonic torturers victimizing heroes of the true faith. The press in every Islamic state will publicize and exaggerate every tidbit. All the instruments of American Constitutional Law will be at their disposal.

They will also try to force the exposure of our security apparatus, in the sure knowledge that their counterparts out there are taking notes. Since President Obama has put us in the position that we must have a conviction, it will be hard to withhold information that might damage national security if it got out.

A second problem is that, in a civil trial, we cannot guarantee a conviction. Att. Gen. Holder reassures us on this score, but does that really help the argument that our system is fair? Doesn't fairness mean there is a chance that these bad guys will get off?

What if they do manage to escape conviction? I agree it is not likely. But if it happens, we will be faced with a very uncomfortable choice. We could let KSM and his cronies go. That would be unthinkable. Or we could arrest them again on some pretense and put them back in Gitmo or wherever. What would that do for the image of our justice system?

This is nuts. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a gangster, he is a war criminal. He violated the international laws of war by intentionally murdering thousands of innocent civilians. He is a mortal enemy of the United States. The way to deal with this monster is to put him before a military tribunal and then kill him.

That is how the Nuremberg Trials dealt with the surviving leaders of the Third Reich. The point wasn't to protect their rights. They had forfeited that protection. The point was to let the world know what they did and then to make sure they would not live to do it again. Another point was to let the leaders of all nations know what would happen if they behave like Nazis and end up in our custody.

The President has made a decision. He decided to risk the security of the United States and the very laws of war on the outcome of a civil trial. He had better be as lucky as he is shallow.

David Brooks Nominates John Thune for President

Okay, so this is one of those say it first just in case it happens stories. But it is something for South Dakota to take notice of. From the New York Times:

As you may or may not know, Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who beat Tom Daschle in an epic campaign five years ago. The first thing everybody knows about him is that he is tall (6 feet 4 inches), tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome (John McCain jokes that if he had Thune's face he'd be president right now). If you wanted a Republican with the same general body type and athletic grace as Barack Obama, you'd pick Thune.

South Dakota continues to punch well above its weight in national politics.

Just When You Thought He had Decided to Decide

NPR reported this evening that the President had narrowed his list of options regarding Afghanistan to a mere handful, all of them involving the insertion of more troops. Finally a decision was forthcoming!

Not so fast. Politico reports this:

POTUS will not accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, and instead will push "for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government," AP is reporting.

Obama held his 8th Afghan meeting today, to discuss how long it would take to implement the various options for troop increases he's considering. The White House stressed that no decision has been made yet, and that the president is insistent that any new commitment will not be open-ended.

So it's back to the drawing board. Meanwhile our soldiers in Afghanistan soldier on.

A Salute to all Veterans and Heroes of the Republic.

My favorite veteran. 

Republicans Gallup Ahead of Democrats

Speaker Pelosi's healthcare bill passed in the House by 220 to 215. If three Congresspersons had switched sides, the bill would have been defeated. That is in a chamber dominated by Democrats. Of course, it may be that Pelosi had more votes than that; it's just that a lot of her troops begged to be allowed to vote no. But that in itself is a very bad sign.

Why the matter is so difficult is simple. Just right now, the Democrats are in deep doo doo with the people of these United States. One test of party strength is the so called "generic ballot." Voters are asked to say whether they will vote Republican or Democrat in the next House and Senate elections, without regard to individual candidates. As long as I can remember, the generic question always tends to overstate Democratic strength. If the Republicans poll close to Democrats on the generic question just before an election, they tend to win a net gain.

Right now, Republicans are well ahead of Democrats on the generic ballot. Rasmussen has been showing this for some time. Gallup has now confirmed it.

That is the result of five months of public attention to the healthcare reform effort. Gallup has much worse news for the Democrats.

Self-identified Democrats and Republicans predictably favor their own. But look at those numbers for self-identified independents. That is a twenty-two point gap favoring the GOP. If anything like that holds next year, the Republicans will take every seat in the country that isn't tied down. They might even pry a few safe seats up from the floor.

What might change between now and next November? The economy might certainly be looking better, and maybe job growth will have started. But economists do not expect the latter, and it had better happen fast to make a difference. Some Democrats imagine that, once their program comes fully online, the people will like it and reward them accordingly. Even if they are right, it won't come online in time to help. In order to look a little less fiscally irresponsible, they front-loaded the fiscal gains and put off the real benefits (and costs) until much later.

What won't change is this: the Democrats will either fail to pass any significant reform, or if they do pass something significant, it will involve a dramatic expansion of government's size, powers, intrusiveness, and expense. Those are just the things that are driving independents towards the GOP. 

UPDATE

From Quinnipiac:

For the first time, Republican Rob Portman is inching ahead of the two Democrats in the 2010 race for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Also for the first time, Ohio voters disapprove 50 - 45 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, down from his 53 - 42 percent approval September 16 and 49 - 44 percent approval July 7. 

Also Republican Simons is ahead of Senator Chris Dodd by a good ten points. 

Where the Wall Was & the President Wasn’t

November 9, 1989, was the most significant historical moment since the end of the Second World War. Indeed, it is easy to argue that that was the date on which WWII really ended, as the division of Germany and the Soviet occupation of Central Europe meant that hostilities never really ceased. I would go further than that, and say that the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the close of "Modern European History." From the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) until 1989 a series of powerful states sought dominion over Europe: first France, then Germany, and finally Russia. That story, one of great tyrannies opposed by alliances led by Great Britain and later the United States, lasted more than three hundred and fifty years. Barring some unforeseen event, such as the resurgence of Russia, it ended twenty years ago.

It ended in a way that might make one believe in God's grace. No final war had to be fought. No fresh millions had to perish. A lot of keyboards have been worn down with arguments over who gets the credit. But this doesn't look to me like a difficult question. Credit has to be divided by three. First of all one has to give credit to the Eastern Block for more or less deciding to commit suicide. A massive and rather sudden loss of confidence seized all the Warsaw Pact governments, including the Soviet Union, rendering them unable to bring any of their terrible power bear even for self-preservation.

The greatest credit has to go to the peoples of East Germany, Poland, and other Middle European nations, for seizing the moment. When Hungary allowed Germans to flow through its borders to the West, and the tyrants failed to stop it, other crowds of Germans showed up at the Berlin Wall and began to manually dismantle it. Shocked security guards called their masters repeatedly, but no orders were issued. Thus did the most ordinary people, armed only with hammers, put an end to one of the most repressive and spiritually impoverished regimes.

Finally credit has to go the United States, and to Ronald Reagan in particular. No, Reagan did not destroy Leninism by calling on Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." He did it by building up American military power and so compelling the Soviets to try to match him. They couldn't, and trying broke their bank. He did it by putting American short range nuclear forces into Europe to match a similar move by the Soviets, and remaining steadfast against a fierce campaign by the Left in Europe and America to stop the West from acting. In the face of that act of will, Gorbachev backed down and found the ground sliding out from under him. Reagan's portion of the credit has also to be shared with Margret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and François Mitterrand. But the United States protected Western Europe against the Soviet threat for forty five years, and so the final victory was very much our victory.

Well, some of the heirs of Reagan's great allies, along with a representative of the losing side, gathered in Berlin this week to celebrate the moment. From the Voice of American News:

Representatives from East and West were on hand - from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish labor leader and later president, Lech Walesa, to current Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

What about Ronald Reagan's heir in the White House? Well…

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton represented the United States and President Barrack Obama made a surprise video appearance.

A surprise video appearance. This is a President who can find time to travel to Copenhagen to personally lobby the International Olympic Committee on behalf of the City of Chicago. He is going to make it to Norway to accept his Nobel Prize. As for celebrating one of the greatest victories of the greatest alliance in Western history, that wasn't on his agenda.

It is possible, of course, that the President doesn't consider 1989 to be important. A victory of free peoples, supported by great democracies, just doesn't float his boat. Unfortunately, the only more charitable interpretation of his absence is that he is merely shallow. Perhaps, as Tony Harnden put it in the London Telegraph, he didn't go to Berlin because "it wasn't enough about him." After all, he has been to Berlin.

Surprisingly enough, it's President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as "People of the World, Look at Me". This time, Der Spiegel has reported it as "Barack Too Busy".

The United States stood for a century against the world's greatest tyrannies. Our current President is uninterested in that legacy. That might matter.

Anita Dunn Steps Down

White House Communications director Anita Dunn, best known, perhaps, for her joke about admiring Mao Tse Tung, is stepping down. After Glenn Beck aired a video clip of Dunn's joke (perhaps she could have varied her tone a little to tip the audience off that she meant it as a joke), Dunn waged a war against Fox News, famously calling it a "wing of the Republican Party."

Dunn's comments may have resonated with some on the left, but I do not think they did much to help Obama appeal to those who did not already like him. Unless her replacement Dan Pfeiffer is as radical and careless as Dunn, this change may help the administration.

Political Correctness vs. National Security. Update

The Fort Hood shooting story had quickly developed into a scandal. From the day of the shooting the U.S. Military and the FBI seemed more concerned with speculative threats to Muslim servicemen and women than they were with preventing terrorist attacks. From the LA Times:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. warned of "a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," adding that "it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."

The press followed suit by weaving a tale of a man cracked under stress, thus turning the spotlight away from the theological-political element in Hasan's carefully planned murders.

Then came the real shocker. Apparently, there were plenty of advance warnings that Nidal Malik Hasan had radical religious views and that he was in fact trying to make contact with al Qaeda. We do not yet know who may have been aware of these facts, and who failed to act or failed to warn someone who might have acted. It has been reported that some of Hasan's fellow soldiers were aware of his radicalism, but were afraid to report it lest they be accused of racism.

This is a very serious scandal. It has cost us the lives of more than a dozen men and women in uniform. Joe Liebermann was right to come out and demand Congressional investigations.

The Military is right to be concerned that one of our servicemen or women might be discriminated against because that person is Muslim. But there is something deeply wrong when Chief of Staff Casey says, over and over, that his first concern is to prevent discrimination against Muslims in the Army. That is a pathological confusion of priorities.

UPDATE.

David Brooks has this:

A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.

There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors. This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion.

But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage. Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility.

The Fallen At Fort Hood

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