Iraq

Financial Times:

Many of Iraq's predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to a prominent Sunni politician.

Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads Iraq's main monarchist movement and is in contact with guerrilla leaders, said many insurgents including former officials of the ruling Ba'ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against US troops and Iraqi government forces since the January 30 election.

I'm Telling You For The Last Time

One last post on Terry Schiavo, and then I’ll let it go. Let me cite from the predictably wrong-headed Brown County Democrats (although, given the byline Rock Island, IL, it isn’t clear if this represents original writing by the BCD’s or if they are reprinting from another source. Evidence that this is original is the presence of the word “malignancy,” which standard fare for the usual BCD analogy of “people we disagree with” and “cancer”):

As of this morning, twenty court decisions have supported the contention of Michael Schiavo that Terri's wish would be for her to be let go. No court decisions have supported prolonging the life form she finds herself trapped in. Those of us who have not heard all the evidence would assume that twenty court decisions would represent well-considered and analyzed judgments, not the efforts of a "liberal" judiciary to deny the "right to life," as claimed by the right wing, but a decision to uphold the right to a dignified and humane death, the right to be released from a helpless and humiliating state.

And then they go on to say:

To us, the real culprits are the preachers of intolerance, close-minded invective, and those who detest democracy, because it requires the coexistence of contending ideas.

It seems odd that those who take the opinions of judges to be gospel when it comes to the thorny questions of “what is human life and how should we protect it” should then question others’ commitments to democracy.

(An aside, since when does right to life need the scare quotes?) 

I think it is fair to say that in this case many have been revealed as hypocrites on the subject of federalism. While I myself would like the government to step in and protect Terry Schiavo’s life, it is hard for me to find a federal case here (although a 14^th Amendment Due Process claim is a possibility). But let’s call many pro-life Republicans hypocrites as they find newfound love of federal intervention into state jurisdictions, and then call many pro-abortion Democrats hypocrites as they rediscover state’s rights. After all the pro-lifers would prefer a state’s rights abortion regime to the present abortion arrangement, while it is an article of faith on the part of the pro-abortion left that it is up to the Supreme Court to write the nation’s abortion code. But there is one consistency. Whatever their varying thoughts on federalism, one side is consistently on the side of life, while the other is consistently on the side of death. This is not to say that those who advocate for abortion and euthanasia are giddy executioners sending people off to their deaths. I would not call them “executioners” and “murderers” as the Brown County Democrats claim they are called (and no doubt are from time to time). Indeed, as the passage above indicates, the Culture of Death thrives on its perceived humanity where people die in a “dignified” manner and are freed from a “helpless and humiliating state.” It is precisely by cloaking itself in the garb of compassion that makes the Culture of Death so attractive.  It’s not about denying protection of the law to the unborn and the infirm, that’s just the result. They are for compassion for women who need to be liberated from childbearing to reach equality with men; compassion for the sick who must be freed from pain; compassion for the “unwanted” child who would be better off never having been born.

No one denies that these are difficult moral and legal questions. But what is of concern to this writer are not just the rights of those whose lives are forfeit because they don’t live what we consider to be a “quality life,” but also with what it does to all of us as we come up with argument after argument as to why this or that person does not deserve to live.

In the 1990s feminist author Naomi Wolfe, who would go on to consult for the Gore campaign in 2000 (remember the “earth tone” shirts?), argued medical science was catching up with the “pro-choice” movement. It was becoming clearer each day that abortion kills a human being. Thus, Wolfe argued, feminists simply have to start coming up with arguments as to why it's acceptable to kill human beings. This perhaps reached its pinnacle in the 2004 election when John Kerry told Peter Jennings of ABC news that persons have rights, not human beings, and not all human beings are persons.  The unborn, for example, might be biologically human, but not persons with rights. One shudders to think which other humans John Kerry considers “non-persons” who do not deserve protection of the laws.   Is it not clear by now, and haven’t the most sober defenders of Terry Schiavo’s life (and there are many sober defenders) made it clear that what is needed is a consistent Culture of Life? The advance in medical science will only make these decisions more and more difficult. Does it not make sense to have as an overarching principle the defense of innocent human life? Individual choice, state autonomy from federal power, the professional discretion of doctors, the rights of families: these are all good things and one ignores them at one’s own peril, but it seems to this writer that they are all secondary goods to the primacy of the right to life. As we form our laws, we must have our priorities straight.

A Shark Must Keep Moving

Here is a story from today's Aberdeen American News about how Aberdeen sometimes gets in its own way when it comes to economic development.  This is a matter of some scholarly interest to me (in fact I have just returned from a conference where I delivered a paper on the subject).  The costs of economic progress are there, namely instability, and apologists for progress often tout the "creative destruction" of the market, emphasizing all "creative" and none of the "destructive."  That said, I would argue that this is a problem for much of South Dakota.  The state seems so committed to protecting an evaporating agrarian way of life that we make no plans to bring our economy and state into the 21st Century.

Jeffersonian Nomads

CQ:

The people of Kyrgyzstan don't actually have a tremendous drive towards any form of government, except that Jeffersonian model of the one that governs least, governs best. The Kyrgyz uprising appears to be a corrective towards decades of statism that has seriously undermined their nomadic culture and forced the Kyrgyz into an industrialization they don't particularly want. In fact, those of us who grew up in the western US will recognize a glimmer of our brand of political conservatism in how MacWilliam describes the political impulse in this Central Asian country:

It is the nomadic sprit perhaps which sets Kyrgyzstan apart from its more authoritarian neighbours.

When you live in a tent in your own mountain valley and can up sticks at will, you develop a sense of personal freedom that even 70 years of communism cannot eradicate.

Of course, it is precisely this freedom that communism hoped to stamp out with agricultural collectives and industrialization. Apparently, Akayev continued this process with only a moderate amount of liberalism thrown in, but the Kyrgyz still don't like the results: widespread corruption, disruption of their traditional culture and freedom, and nagging unemployment. It also explains why the Kyrgyz haven't thronged to Bishkek and remained to occupy the capitol as we have seen in Ukraine and Georgia.

Beef

Meade County Times-Tribune:

One of the major pieces of legislation to come out of the 2005 South Dakota legislative session doesn't affect that many people in Western South Dakota n yet. However, in years to come, it might, according to House Majority Leader and District 29 Rep. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center.

The Dakota Certified Beef measure calls for cattle producers to market under that label animals born, raised, fed and slaughtered in the state.

"The measure doesn't affect that many ranchers here because most of them sell their calves in the fall. This bill, in the future, could have more of our local ranchers holding on to the animals until it is time to slaughter," Rhoden said Thursday.

Sioux Falls Goths Speak

Argus Leader:

When Sarah Kenzy goes to the mall with her husband, she gets comments from strangers.  "It's not Halloween anymore," they'll say.

Kenzy, 22, is goth. Raven hair winds down her back, and deep purple lipstick covers her pierced lower lip. On a bright Friday morning, the Platte resident is dressed all in black.

"You just have to turn your cheek and ignore it," Kenzy says of people's comments.

Now her appearance could attract more negative attention. Since the school massacre on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota on Monday, headlines have dubbed the 16-year-old shooter, Jeff Weise, "goth."

People have their own definitions of goth, which often includes dressing in black and finding beauty in darker subjects such as death.

Daschle to participate in election reform commission

From the AP today:

WASHINGTON -- Former President Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III will head a study commission that will recommend changes in the nation's federal election system.

The bipartisan panel, announced Thursday by American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management, is charged with examining such matters as the disputed 2000 presidential election.

***

Besides gauging how federal reforms worked in the last election, the panel will come up with ways to "restore full confidence of the American people in the inclusiveness and integrity of the U.S. electoral system," Munro said Friday. "It's kind of a tall order, but some very distinguished folks are appointed."

Other members of the privately funded panel include former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who lost his seat in last year's election, former Reps. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., and Robert Mosbacher, the first President Bush's secretary of commerce.

Hmmm....

Rice in the Wash Post

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is featured in an article in today's Washington Times: "Rice Describes Plans  To Spread Democracy".  Check it out.

Vermillion as Berkeley?

Tokala Resistance: "On the Plains, Resistance is Growing Exponentially": 

The resistance is everywhere. There are now dozens and dozens of people in small South Dakota towns organizing and agitating-with unbelievable success. After only one year of existence, the Vermillion Community for Peace and Justice is providing its own transportation with a Veggis Bus-a full-size school bus converted to run on vegetable oil from fast food dumpsters.

Also, by working with Sharing the Dream, the CPJ will soon host its own coffeeshop/infoshop in downtown Vermillion, tentatively named the "Underground."

And there is so much more going on in this tiny community! Gardens, squatting, music, dumpster diving brigades, DIY EVERYTHING! Its so exciting.

Could Vermillion be the next Berkeley?

Wal-Mart

The Rapid City Journal is featuring a story about the Wal-Mart battle out West.  Meanwhile the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, on the other side of the state, has a story about the Wal-Mart debate in Huron. 

Pressler Amendment

If you were following international news in the 1980s and early 1990s, you might remember the famous "Pressler Amendment," which limited arms sales to Pakistan if the US concluded they were organizing a nuclear program.  With that background, you might be interested in the following story mentioning Pressler in The New York Times:

The United States will sell F-16 jet fighters to Pakistan in a deal that State Department officials said Friday would improve regional security. But the decision was immediately denounced by India as adding a fresh element of instability to relations between the nuclear neighbors. ...

But Larry Pressler, a former Republican senator from South Dakota who gave his name to the amendment that halted the F-16 transfers to Pakistan in the 1990's, said Friday that the decision to go ahead with the jet-fighter deal "is a mistake."

"I know that we want to be friends with Pakistan because of the terrorism thing, but you don't fight terrorism with F-16's," he said in a telephone interview. "F-16's are capable of nuclear delivery. That's about the only reason Pakistan wants them. The only people they are in a fight with are in India. India now will have to get the same thing somehow. So it raises tensions and stakes without meeting any of our objectives."

TDAXP looks very promising

Jon Lauck has just posted notice of a new blog, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/, by Daniel Abbot.   It focuses on foreign affairs, exclusively as far as I can determine, and it looks very good.  Some of our readers prefer that we keep our attention closer to home, but I think that an exclusive focus on regional affairs would paint a misleading picture of the region.  Residents of the upper Midwest have a lot to say about world affairs, and there's no reason not to say them.

Welcome to the Blogosphere Dan!

Another Blog

Dan of tdaxp, another South Dakota expatriate (although just across the border), is blogging away.  Welcome Daniel.

Jon Lauck Leaving!

The news has been released that our captain here at SDPolitics is going to join Senator Thune's staff.  How we will do without him is anyone's guess.  I for one certainly intend to keep this blog going.

I congratulate Jon and Senator Thune.  Be sure to look at Todd Epp's comment on SDWatch/Thune Watch.  I note this remark:

While Jon and I are on separate sides of the political fence, he has always been polite and cordial to me, both in person, and, I should add, in his blogs.

The hostility that has been directed against us by a certain blog that will remain nameless (Northern Valley Beacon) should not teach the lesson that persons on different sides of the fence cannot respect one another.  Todd's comment was gracious and I would like to think it speaks well of SDPolitics as well as his own SDWatch.

Models

KELO-Land News:

Catalog Uses Lakota Models
The world's next super model could be from South Dakota.

A European clothing company is crossing the sea in search of models for their upcoming clothing catalog.

For years, Aigle , a French clothing company, has been using models who come from exotic countries.

The company now wants the exotic look of the Lakota people

For some it's a chance of a lifetime-- to be in front of the camera as a model.

Borlaug

Instapundit it noting that this is the 91st birthday of Norman Borlaug, a name anyone interested in agricultural history knows.  Here's more, which notes his Iowa home, his contributions to farming, preventing 20th century famines, and comments on the Dakota drought of the 1980s:

As Borlaug was growing up on a small farm in Cresco, Iowa, first the Depression Era, and then the Dust Bowl of the Midwest, were formative experiences.

However, counter to the popular mythology about the Dust Bowl as the creation of "excessive technological resources" applied to agriculture, Borlaug surmised that it was actually the result of insufficient application of technology. He noticed that in places where techniques of high yield agriculture were being systematically applied, Dust Bowl conditions never developed with the same severity. (This was to be proven again in the Dakotas in the summer of 1988, where no Dust Bowl materialized despite severe drought conditions identical to those that triggered it earlier.)  ...

According to Gregg Easterbrook writing in The Atlantic, "perhaps more than anyone else, Borlaug is responsible for the fact that throughout the postwar era, except in sub-Saharan Africa, global food production has expanded faster than the human population, averting the mass starvations that were widely predicted. The form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths."

Miner County

South Dakota Magazine noted today that the Wall Street Journal had a story about Miner County.  As you may recall, I posted an essay I'm working on about the history of the county (thanks for your comments).  Excerpt from Wall Street Journal story:

Howard and the surrounding Miner County are at the center of an unusual campaign to rescue farm towns from extinction.  Backed by $6 million in foundation grant money, residents here have adapted a survival strategy that is both radical and modest.  They plan to let some of the dying pieces of the economy die and focus instead on niches in which small businesses can compete--like organic beef and wind turbine repair.  ...

"We don't need to be a Watertown or a Madison," says Randy Parry, a former basketball coach and high school teacher who leads the revitalization effort, referring to towns with populations of 20,000 and 6,500, respectively.  "We don't need to be big."

Hey, always nice to see my hometown of Madison get mentioned in the WSJ!

The Other Sweet Sixteen

Whew.  UNC survives by one, so I'm still alive in the pool.  And the Big 10 can boast 3 teams in the Elite Eight, which isn't bad. 

Another Revolution

A South Dakota woman I know who is from Canton was in the Peace Corps in Kyrgystan but fled with the other volunteers after 9/11.  She was quite pleased to hear the news of the revolution.  Here's a BBC story updating the situation.  Excerpt:

The police fired shots in the air and called on the crowd to go home. Then came news of a curfew imposed to help restore order. Earlier Kyrgyzstan's new acting President, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, had promised tough measures to maintain stability.

The revolution in Kyrgyzstan may be complete but the threat of violence remains in this central Asian state.

The people on the streets are determined to make sure their revolution holds but there is still anger on the streets, the people are impatient for change, determined for their lives to improve.

And Roger Simon is noting this about Iran:

Who knows, but the invaluable website Regime Change Iran is reporting:

There are reports of massive demonstrations in Iran following the Iranian win over Japan in an important soccer match in Tehran.

Pro-democracy forces have used such events in the past to demonstrate their hatred of the regime. Massive security forces have been mobilized around the country to keep the demonstrations from getting out of control.

Kansas

Finished reading for a second time Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?  I'll have more comments and criticism soon, but let me just say now that it is a fascinating book, despite its flaws.  Anyway, some readers were asking what happened to the previous thread on the book.  More soon.

Sweet Sixteen

With only a few hours to go, Thune was ahead by a few points in his Sweet Sixteen matchup.  In a huge last minute surge, he lost.  A lot of late voters apparently. 

Move

Yes, Todd Epp is correct.  After finishing some academic papers and book reviews that are coming due and presenting at a few academic conferences and finishing the semester, I'll be joining Senator Thune's staff.  I'm very much looking forward to it and staying in touch with you all.  Thanks for the best wishes Todd.  Good luck on the trial in Kansas. 

Thune 50%; Tancredo 50%

Senator Thune is locked in another tight race.  He has advanced to the GOP Sweet Sixteen--defeating General Tommy Franks and Senator Coleman of Minnesota--and is now locked in a tight race against immigration critic and Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo (featured in this week's New Republic).  Don't forget to vote here. 

Glickman and Hollywood

CQ thinks that Dan Glickman, former Kansas congressman and Secretary of Agriculture and now head of the Motion Picture Association (such differing roles always seemed a bit odd), is going to have a hard time in GOP Washington given Hollywood's partisan leanings:

No sir, that is how the public reacts when it is given a steady diet of films and television entertainment which relentless portrays Republicans as Snidely Whiplash characters and Democrats as the heroes. Watch such highly-regarded fare as West Wing, The American President, and The Contender -- all well-financed and A-list productions -- and tell me that Glickman can't see a trend. Michael Douglas provides the stirring climax at the end of TAP by loudly proclaiming every leftist talking point known to mankind in response to Richard Dreyfuss' one-dimensional portrait of a comic-book Republican attack dog. Gary Oldman -- who later complained that his attempts to moderate his portrayal were edited out of The Contender -- gets to play a creepy, loutish, and hyopcritical GOP leader while Joan Allen portrays a martyred VP nominee and Jeff Bridges plays a courageous, cigar-chomping Democratic president in one of the most politically biased A-list dramas I've ever seen. And those are just the political dramas. Let's not forget last year's The Day After Tomorrow, with its ridiculous disaster-flick treatment of global warming, complete with its own eeeeeevil Dick Cheney clone.

And Glickman ignores completely where the power brokers in Hollywood put their money. We're not talking about a "handful of liberal actors" supporting Democratic candidates. People like Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and others who have the money and power to get films made put big money into Democratic coffers while Hollywood Republicans have to hide in the shadows to get work. Michael Moore strings together a series of lies and dishonestly edited clips to make his paean to Leni Riefenstahl, Fahrenheit 9/11, and the Hollywood community hails him as a hero, while conservative Mel Gibson makes an apolitical movie about Jesus Christ -- and gets figuratively crucified for it.

Red Lake

Washington Post:

RED LAKE, Minn., March 24 -- In the months before he killed his grandfather, his classmates and himself, Jeff Weise painted an utterly nihilistic -- and often eloquent -- word portrait of life here on the Red Lake Indian Reservation.

He described the reservation in Internet postings as a place where people "choose alcohol over friendship," where women neglect "their own flesh and blood" for relationships with men, where he could not escape "the grave I'm continually digging for myself."

In his dark and self-pitying depictions of life on the reservation, Weise appears to have drawn from his troubled personal history: When he was 8, his father committed suicide on the reservation after a standoff with police. About four months later, his mother suffered severe brain damage in an alcohol-related car accident. ...

Still, Weise was not all wrong in his assessment of Red Lake. Like many Indian reservations, especially the poor and isolated ones in and around the Great Plains, this can be a dangerous, soul-crushing place to grow up.

Compared with the tidy Denver suburb where two teenage boys went on a well-armed rampage at Columbine High School, killing 13 people and then themselves in 1999, Red Lake exists in a distant and exponentially more dismal dimension of the American experience. ...

Compared with other reservations in Minnesota and across the country, Red Lake appears to have had an especially toxic history of violence, drug problems and gang activity. The curriculum now includes courses in anti-gang training, anti-bullying training, drug and alcohol abuse prevention, and instruction in fetal alcohol syndrome. ...

The tribe's geographic isolation here in the northwest corner of Minnesota has been exacerbated by a long tradition of self-enforced isolation. For more than a century, the tribe has resisted federal programs that would open up the reservation to private land ownership. "We have just not ever been too crazy about white people coming around the reservation," said Lee Cook, a former member of the tribal council.

Canada and Hinzman

The Globe and Mail in Canada is following the story Jeremy Hinzman, who is from Rapid City, and published this editorial today:

Jeremy Hinzman, the 26-year-old U.S. army deserter who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq, has been denied refugee status by the federal Immigration and Refugee Board. The board reached the only sensible conclusion it could. Yet there is no need for Mr. Hinzman and his wife and young son to pack their bags any time soon. He plans to appeal, and court actions could drag on for years, thereby demonstrating how Canada's system for refugee claimants is still open to abuse.

That system has already been extremely generous. The board weighed every argument Mr. Hinzman presented, no matter how weak or irrelevant. He and his family entered Niagara Falls, Ont., by car in January of 2004. He says he is a conscientious objector who did not want to be forced to participate in a criminal war in Iraq. He also fears cruel and unusual punishment if he returns to the United States. But in a 170-paragraph ruling, the board laboriously detailed the inconsistencies in Mr. Hinzman's own record and testimony, and the faulty legal reasoning underlying it.

First, he falls well below the United Nations refugee-convention standard of having a well-founded fear of persecution by reason of race, nationality or membership in a social or political group. ...

As for his views on the legality of the Iraq war, the board had already ruled that they could not be used to support his claim. In any event, his testimony showed that his opinions and actions over the past several years have been confused at best.

Unlike the roughly 50,000 Vietnam-era draft dodgers who fled to Canada in the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Hinzman was a volunteer. He signed up in December, 2000, hoping to obtain financial assistance to go to college. He then volunteered to become a paratrooper. In 2002, he was sent to Afghanistan. At that point, he said he was becoming more interested in pacifist teachings and applied to be relieved of duty as a conscientious objector. Yet he said there were instances in which he would kill. "I have a weapon and it would be my duty to defend this airfield," he said. ...

The board found his position "inherently contradictory." Even in a non-combat role, he would be assisting the U.S. war effort. And even the UN's refugee handbook says a person is clearly not a refugee if his only reason for desertion is his dislike of military service or fear of combat.

As his appeals proceed, however, Mr. Hinzman will likely remain a poster child for Canadian and U.S. opponents of the Iraq war. His 15 minutes are far from over.

500 Miles Per Gallon on South Dakota Corn?

Max Boot/LATimes has a strong piece urging the U.S. to reduce dependence on foreign oil by moving to flexible fuel cars.  I don't know enough to second guess his technology predictions, but this sure sounds good:

Hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius, which run on both electric motors and gas engines, already get more than 50 miles per gallon. Coming soon are hybrids that can be plugged into a 120-volt outlet to recharge like a cellphone. They'll get even better mileage.

Add in "flexible fuel" options that already allow many cars to run on a combination of petroleum and fuels like ethanol (derived from corn) and methanol (from natural gas or coal), and you could build vehicles that could get — drum roll, please — 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. That's not science fiction; that's achievable right now.

What's the catch?  The cost of converting the industry. 

Moving to hybrid electric cars won't be cheap. Automakers would have to retool their wares, gas stations would have to add alcohol-fuel pumps, parking lots would have to add electric outlets. Set America Free puts the price tag at about $12 billion over the next four years. It sounds like a lot of money, but it could easily be financed by slightly raising U.S. gasoline taxes (currently about 43 cents a gallon), which are much lower than in Europe and Japan. Higher taxes could also be used to encourage more domestic oil exploration and production, given that petroleum will never be entirely eliminated as an energy source.

Again I am taking this with a grain of salt.  But if one could turn ethanol into a cost efficient rather than subsidized fuel, it would be a great boon for the Dakotas.

Diversity = Atheism???

With a tip of the hat to James Taranto's Best of the Web, here are Princeton Reviews criteria for ranking colleges according to diversity:

Diversity University	Monochromatic Institute
Lots of Race/Class Interaction	Little Race/Class Interaction
Diverse Student Population	Homogeneous Student Population
Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis	Students Pray on a Regular Basis
Gay Community Accepted	Alternative Lifestyles Not An Alternative

As Taranto points out, three out of four contrasts make sense.  But what about number 3?  Isn't this a contrast between two sorts of Monochromatism?  I would have thought that a campus population divided between Hasidic Jews, Shiite Muslims, Chaldean Christians, etc., would be at least a diverse as Reed College. 

Martin Lawsuit

Argus Leader: "City of Martin prevails in ACLU voting rights case":

A federal judge has sided with the city of Martin in a voting rights lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in 2002, Martin Mayor Bill Kuxhaus said Thursday.  The lawsuit accused the city of violating the federal Voting Rights Act in the way it created its voting district boundaries.

Again, it would be nice to have a summary of all these recent ACLU cases. 

ICT

From a column in Indian Country Today (link not working at present):

There's an old Ojibwe saying: Gego baapiineminaken gidaabinoojiiyug. Never laugh at your children. That motto invokes a sacred Anishinaabe value: manaaji'idiwin, or deep respect. We are to respect others, no matter how young or weak or strange, in part because what goes around eventually comes around. This especially holds true for children. Not only because they have power - as elders will tell you, the only person who ever tricked the Trickster was a child - but also because that child will one day be an adult.

I thought of this ancient Ojibwe wisdom when I heard about the horrifying and tragic school shooting at Red Lake Nation. It was reported that during the assault the shooter, Jeff Weise, was waving his arms and laughing.

Laughing.

Who, I wondered, had laughed at him?

Daschle in Vermillion Next Month

Former Sen. Daschle will be making his first public appearance in South Dakota, since the election, next month at USD according to the Volante. 

Daschle's speech, titled "The Politics of Freedom: A Progressive Vision of American Liberty," will begin at 4 p.m. on April 5 in Farber Hall. The event is being co-sponsored by the W.O. Farber Center for Civic Leadership and is open to the public.

I've already marked the date on my calendar and I'll make sure I cover the event for anybody who is interested but not able to attend. 

Elite Eight

In the GOP tourney, Senator Thune has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen.  Vote here if you want him to advance to the Elite Eight.  So far, he's beaten Tommy Franks and Senator Coleman. 

Open Minded Liberal Watch

As Muir's daybyday has it above, Michelle Zipp, the editor-in-chief of Playgirl, came out of the closet in a recent issue of the magazine. She admitted she was a Republican.   She was promptly forced to resign. 

When our neighbor the Northern Valley Beacon says this:

To us, the real culprits are the preachers of intolerance, close-minded invective, and those who detest democracy, because it requires the coexistence of contending ideas.

maybe they mean the folks at Playgirl. See Wonkette. 

 

Thune Ethanol Bill

From the Argus Leader this week:

Ethanol is booming, but its trajectory now depends more on Washington than on the Midwestern farmers and businesses who make the corn-based fuel.  Congress is making its third attempt to pass a national energy policy, and ethanol proponents say including a "renewable fuels standard" could ensure the industry's future by more than doubling consumption by 2012.

That debate has an audience in South Dakota - the fifth-largest producer in the country - where a majority of corn growers are involved in ethanol cooperatives. Economists say the plants increase corn prices by 10 to 20 cents a bushel, while making fuel is an example of what backers call "value-added agriculture."

Virtually every Midwestern politician favors ethanol, but newly elected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota is trying to make it his signature issue. He won office in November partly on the claim that he could win passage of the new standard. ...

Last week, [Thune] pointed out that his RFS bill - at 6 million gallons - passed a committee headed by Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, no friend of ethanol because of the his state's stake in petroleum.

"We figured out what the traffic would bear and pushed that as hard as we could, and I think getting him to agree to that was a significant concession," Thune said.

The Argus report is a bit weak on the sad history of the last ethanol bill.  See "The Ethanol Moment" for more.  I talked to a big ethanol investor this weekend and he was giddy about the the Thune bill moving to the Senate floor.  He said the bill was the only "legislative vehicle" for the ethanol bill in the Senate and that any other bills are window-dressing or posturing.  He didn't know the timeline of a vote, but let's watch for that. 

Senate Race

Dave Kranz:

Native Americans are traditionally a sure vote for Democrats in South Dakota, but this year, Republicans count them as one of the many fathers of John Thune's Senate victory.

Thune and state Republicans will gather tonight in Murdo to thank those voters and volunteers who helped improve on their usually dismal totals.

Democrats still have a clear dominance, but Republicans realized about a 7-point increase in the larger reservation counties over 2002, when Thune lost by 524 votes to Sen. Tim Johnson.

When credit is awarded, Elli Schwiesow of Rapid City should take the first bow. Schwiesow, vice chairwoman of the state Republican Party, was at the center of the effort to mobilize volunteers and communicate the mission.

Dairy Fight

Argus Leader:

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday considered how to balance two treasured South Dakota traditions - the right of referendum and the state's business-friendly policies.

The text of the arguments was over the legal distinction between "administrative" and "legislative" decisions, but the subtext was the familiar debate about where communities should allow large animal feeding operations, and who should decide. Specifically, whether citizens may vote on permits issued to two new dairies in Moody County last year.

Former U.S. Sen. James Abourezk, arguing on behalf of John Bechen of Flandreau and Dakota Rural Action, said it is a legislative action virtually any time a county government issues a permit, and all legislative acts are subject to referendum.

Want to know a lot more about the corporate farming debate in the post-WWII midwest?  See the chapter about it in my book.

FEC Restrictions on Bloggers to be "light"

Washington Post:

    

Its "notice of proposed rulemaking," as it is known, indicates that the FEC is focusing much of its attention on whether to apply federal contribution limits on online political advertising campaigns. It also indicates that the six-member panel has not decided to impose, but is leaning against imposing, restrictions on independent bloggers or bloggers who work for political campaigns.

    

"I think that we're trying to use this document as some sort of broad hint that, at least at this stage, we don't plan to regulate the vast majority of what individuals do [online] and the vast majority of what bloggers do," said FEC Chairman Scott E. Thomas (D).

    

"It is designed to give people a pretty clear signal that the FEC never did have any intent to overregulate citizens who want to use Internet technology for communicating in the area of politics," he added.

So they only want to take away a wee little bit of our freedom of speech.  That's a relief. Here, I suspose,  is an example of overregulation:

BEIJING, March 23 -- Universities across China are tightening controls on student-run Internet discussion forums as part of a Communist Party campaign to strengthen what it calls "ideological education" on campuses. The crackdown has caused widespread resentment among students and prompted at least two demonstrations in recent days.

Kyrgyzstan government hijacks newspaper websites

The news from Kyrgyzstan changes minute-by-minute, but a blogger and Journalist Hans Henrik has pointed out that the Kyrgyzstan government has started hijacking newspaper websites.  Obviously the current government is imploding and hopefully this revolution will bring change to the country.  Stay tuned...

Hat tip to bOING bOING.

Regents OK huge R&D contract at Tech

From the RC Journal:

RAPID CITY -- The Board of Regents approved a contract between South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and an industry leader in micro-engineering R&D Wednesday while meeting on Tech's campus.

"This is better equipment than any institution in the United States including MIT has," Tech president Charles Ruch told regents.

The Regents approved a lease purchase agreement between Zyvex, a Texas-based supplier of nanotechnology materials and research and development tools.

Zyvex manufactures a third of the materials available for micro engineering, according to Paul Gough, Regents director of policy and planning.

With this contract, Tech will be in a position to build relationships with some of the best in the electronics industry, Gough said.

The agreement provides research and development opportunities through the 2010 Center for the Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale (CAAN) on the Tech campus, according to Julie Smoragiewicz, vice president of University Relations at Tech.

SDSM&T is hitting nanotechnology pretty hard and I'm excited what this contract with Zyvex may bring.  Definitely great news for West River and the state in general.   

Another ABC Problem.

Powerline and The Agora have been doing good work on another possible document scandal.  ABC reported obtaining a GOP talking points memo, supposedly circulated by Republicans.  It includes these items:

  This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

Not exactly finger prints on a murder weapon, though it does make the Republicans look like they're exploiting a tragedy for political gain.  But now ABC is apparently backing off any implication that the memo was authored by Republicans.

And then there is this from the New York Times' article describing the Schiavo issue on the Senate floor:

As tensions festered among Republicans, Democratic aides passed out an unsigned one-page memorandum that they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans. "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," the memorandum said.

 

This looks a whole lot like a dirty trick by Senate Democrats. 

Insurgents Suffer Defeats!

Fox News has this story:

BAGHDAD, Iraq  — Iraq's insurgency has suffered steep losses in recent days, including Wednesday's announcement of 85 guerrilla deaths in a joint U.S.-Iraq raid on a suspected training camp. Officials said citizens emboldened by recent elections are increasingly turning in tips against the militants.      

In three days, U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed at least 128 militants nationwide, and the Wednesday announcement that 85 insurgents died in an attack by Iraqi commandos, backed by U.S. air and ground fire, marked one of the heaviest single-day tolls suffered by Iraqi militants in the two-year insurgency.

The WaPo has a misleading first page- "More than 80 Die in Iraq Attack."  That makes it sound like another suicide bombing.  But the inside story by Caryle Murphy tells it right. New York Times has a good on line header.  And Edward Wong 's piece emphasizes the string of victories. 

The battle was the second one in recent days in which American forces fought a large, highly organized group of insurgents. On Sunday an American convoy fended off an ambush by 40 to 50 insurgents in Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast Baghdad. The American military said 27 attackers were killed in that fight.

The LATimes apparently doesn't think the story is as important as the Jacko trial. 

The ABC Schiavo Poll

I haven't weighed in on the Schiavo matter yet, for the main reason that I am much less clear about it than some of my colleagues.  But I do know a biased poll when I see one.  ABC announces that 63% of respondants favor removing Teri Schiavo's feeding tube, while 28% are opposed.  But the polls includes the following language as a preface to that question:

Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years.  Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible.

As Kausfiles points out, "life support" to most people means someone in an an old fashioned Iron Lung, which is definitely not Schiavo's situation.

Ron Bailey, science correspondant for Reason, has a very good description of the diagnostic questions involved. 

More on Social Capital

Here is a PDF of a draft of an essay I'm working on entitled "Community, Social Capital, and Democracy: The Case of Miner County, South Dakota."  Download MinerCountyDraft3-23.pdf  Again, I'm very interested in your comments, thoughts, references, dissents, memories, or whatever.  Let's have a conversation about this.  Everyone join in. 

Red Lake

Monica Davey, who covered the Jankow trial, has a report in today's New York Times about the Red Lake Indian Reservation shootings entitled "Behind the Why of a Rampage, Loner With a Taste for Nazism."  The Argus Leader story is entitled "Goth style, Internet, zombies captivated Red Lake shooter; Motive elusive for rampage in which teen killed 9, self 'I like to write horror stories, read about Nazi Germany,' he wrote."  The Washington Post story makes much less of the neo-Nazi angle, which might be wise.  It seems a bit sensational and perhaps distracts a bit from why he was attracted to such radical ideologies in the first place.  But that angle is certainly more interesting.

Miner County and Social Capital

As I mentioned, I'm working on an essay about Miner County and trying to put it in the context of the current debate about "social capital," or the notion that democracies function better with lots of community organizations and civic spirit.  I'll post the whole essay soon, but here's a teaser, which should give you an idea where it is heading.  As I was in the bar in Miller this last Saturday night I watched the state basketball final between Miller and Milbank (Miller lost a close one), it was a reminder of how closely knit SD small towns are.  Those who weren't at the game in Rapid City were downtown watching it.  Small town basketball is a measure of social capital, it seems to me.  Excerpt:

“Democracy must begin at home,” argued John Dewey, “and its home is the neighborly community.” [1]  The erosion of communities, many believe, undermines America’s long-term democratic prospects.  The debate over the decline of community activities, associations, and participation, what Robert Putnam collectively refers to as “social capital,” is really a debate about democracy’s ability to function.  When citizens retreat from civic participation and community affairs, democracy shrivels.  Putnam, whose first interest is Italian political culture, fears that America will become Sicily, where “[e]ngagement in social and cultural associations is meager.  From the point of view of the inhabitants, public affairs is somebody else’s business—that of i notabili, ‘the bosses,’ ‘the politicians’—but not theirs.” [2]  The worry is that as community recedes in places like Miner County, the broader danger of the Sicilization of the American republic increases. 

Concerns about Miner County should be particularly acute because it is one of the capitols of social capital.  Although not disclosed in his book, Robert Putnam’s conclusions about the rich social capital of the northern plains are based in part on his survey work in Miner County.  Putnam’s research found that the Dakotas ranked highest in the nation in social capital. 

[1]  Dewey quoted in Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1991), 314. 

[2]  Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, Touchstone, 2000), 345.

Here's a picture of what was formerly the Masonic Temple in Iroquois, South Dakota.  The Masons were a common fraternal organization in small towns and an obvious indicator of Social Capital (watch for the location of the old Masonic Temple whenever you're in a small town--it's often the most sturdy structure in town):

Here's the little church North of Miller where I went to a wedding this weekend.  Often, the churches were the first major buildings to go up in small town Dakota and the structures that have lasted the longest.  They are another obvious example of social capital:

Another aspect of social capital is civic spirit and patriotism.  All through Eastern, SD you now see signs thanking the SD National Guard troops for their service in Iraq.  This picture is from DeSmet.

Daschle

One of the lefty blogs in SD, Dakota Today, takes former Senator Daschle to task:

Well, I heard former Senator Tom Daschle talking on NPR TOTN as indicated in previous post.

Daschle indicated he just could not believe Bush would lie about serious matters like war.

Daschle is just too damn proud to admit he was snookered by the Texas Twit. That pride prevented him from making any attacks on Bush in his SD campaign and probably made it impossible for Daschle to win in South Dakota. Or, made his losing campaign a complete waste since it did nothing to educate the nation on how Bush lied and deceived.

I can't believe Daschle is so naive that he does not believe Bush would lie. I find it hard to believe that Bush would tell the truth about anything unless some tiny bit of the truth had some potential partisan advantage.

I guess when you are working for a lobbying outfit it doesn't make any sense to change positions that did not work in the past.

Blogs

LGF:

Here’s the letter (slightly edited; I didn’t write “made a bald-faced lie”) that I sent to the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the dishonest attack on Little Green Footballs they published on March 19: Letters from readers.

I'm still waiting for a response to the letter I submitted in response to the Argus Leader editor's assault on SD blogs which contained so many mistakes. 

Deadwood

When working throught the piles on my desk, I ran across Mark Singer's article about Deadwood creator David Milch (of NYPD Blue fame) in the February 14-21 issue of the New Yorker: "The Misfit: How David Milch got from 'NYPD Blue' to 'Deadwood' by way of an Epistle of St. Paul."  The show is about Dakota Territory in 1877.  Article excerpt:

The central premise of "Deadwood" is that a populace of exiles--wily misfits, dim-witted misfits, bloody-minded opportunists, gamblers with nothing to lose, abused abusers--have gathered in a gold-mining settlement where trustworthiness and love are the rarest of commodities.  Inexorably, they must curb some of their tendencies toward anarchy and savagery and embrace certain rudiments of civilized society; otherwise they will destroy themselves (or, almost as dire a prospect, be subjugated by the federal government). 

Several readers are fans of the show and send in comments from time to time.  Someone in Spain also asked me about the show, so it's getting some traction.  What's funny is that we don't hear more about it in SD. 

Bogus Numbers II

Professor Schaff posted below on the infamous Lancet study that estimated the number of civilian deaths in the Iraq war.  His post was a reply to an Northern Valley Beacon post on the same topic. 
With typical maturity, one of the NVB regulars referred to us as the South Dakota Scurrility Blog.  They don't take kindly to being challenged over there.

This piece by Fred Kaplan of Slate explains the significance of the number pretty well: 

The report's authors derive this figure by estimating how many Iraqis died in a 14-month period before the U.S. invasion, conducting surveys on how many died in a similar period after the invasion began (more on those surveys later), and subtracting the difference. That difference—the number of "extra" deaths in the post-invasion period—signifies the war's toll. That number is 98,000. But read the passage that cites the calculation more fully:

We estimate there were 98,000 extra deaths (95% CI 8000-194 000) during the post-war period.

Readers who are accustomed to perusing statistical documents know what the set of numbers in the parentheses means. For the other 99.9 percent of you, I'll spell it out in plain English—which, disturbingly, the study never does. It means that the authors are 95 percent confident that the war-caused deaths totaled some number between 8,000 and 194,000. (The number cited in plain language—98,000—is roughly at the halfway point in this absurdly vast range.)

This isn't an estimate. It's a dart board.

In short, the News sources that NVB cites did not report this number faithfully because it isn't a number.  It's a range so broad as to be altogether meaningless.   

A Race in North Dakota?

Robert Slorby:

Mike Jacobs, the editor of the Grand Forks Herald, had a column in the February 20th Herald Sunday paper about the possibility of Hoeven challenging Conrad in 2006. Lip service is given to the positives in favor of John Hoeven, but being a liberal Democrat like nearly all of the writers for the North Dakota daily newspapers, a good 80% of the article pours cold water on the governor’s prospects. One is left with the idea that Mike is writing personally to Hoeven with the hope of dissuading him from running for the Senate in 2006. ...  I get the idea that Jacobs, Conrad, and the Democrats fear a Hoeven race. ...  Jacobs articles serves mostly as an outline of what Conrad and his media friends in North Dakota will do to attack Hoeven in a campaign. Fortress Conrad sure looks to be vulnerable. Let’s bring it on and have a good old fashioned real race for the US Senate for a change.

Via Taking Back North Dakota.  Is the North Dakota blogosphere coming to life?