Federalist 10 in Iraq

Mark Steyn is one of the most interesting and entertaining journalists writing on international politics, at least if you share the views of most or all of us here at SDPolitics.  He is at his best in this piece from the Spectator.  He notes the objections of many that Iraq is too demographically complex and artificial to ever make it work as a functional nation, let alone a democracy.  The unspoken corollary of this argument is that dictatorship is just the thing for such a place.  Steyn argues, to the contrary, that

the artificially cobbled together country is one reason it’s worked so well. The Shia are the biggest group, but, even if they were utterly homogeneous, which they’re not, they’re not so big that they can impose their will easily on the Kurds and the Sunni. When the West’s headless chickens were running around squawking that there were more than a hundred parties on the ballot, it was all going to be one almighty mess, they failed to understand that the design flaw of Iraq is paradoxically its greatest strength: the traditional Arab solution — the local strongman — was not available. Instead, in the run-up to the election and in the month since, we’ve seen various groupings come together, hammer out areas of agreement, reach out to other coalitions, identify compromise positions, etc. — in a word, politics. The sight of eight million Iraqis going to the polls was profoundly moving to their neighbours in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt etc. But it was all the pluralist multi-party smoke-filled-room stuff that caught the fancy of the frustrated political class in those other countries. It would have been possible to find a friendly authoritarian Musharraf type and install him on one of Saddam’s solid gold toilets, but it would have been utterly uninspiring to the world beyond Iraq’s borders. It would have missed the point of the exercise.

This is right out of James Madison's Federalist 10.  If you want a republic, a people divided into a multiplicity of interests and sects is better than one that is homogeneous.  In the former, the different factions must somehow learn to negotiate with one another, and it is precisely out of such negotiations that a stable democracy can emerge.

I would add one thing to this argument.  One fear shared by Middle East strongmen and Western governments alike is that of a militant Islamist revolution.  There is no question that this fear has long moved us to turn a blind eye to the "Musharraf types," who, however nasty they may be, were thought to be better than the alternative.  But it may be that is precisely the strongmen, and strong Houses (as in House of Saud) who are now realizing that representative government may be their salvation.  The radicals are always a small number of the folk even among the most radicalized ethnic groups; in a truly inclusive government, they will be pushed to the fringe.  And sooner or later it will break the back of any armed insurgency when it becomes clear that its agenda is not shared even among its very own slice of society.

Ward Churchill visits with Bill Maher

In case you missed it last night, ol' Ward Churchill was on Bill Maher's show last night.  Jeff Jarvis live-blogged it and Crooks & Liars has the video clip.

Meanwhile, back at CU-Boulder, President Betsy Hoffman has warned the faculty over a "new McCarthyism" related to the Churchill fiasco.  She also noted that Churchill won't be let go over his comments.   

Thune to introduce Flag Protection Amendment

From the Aberdeen News:

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - South Dakota's new U.S. senator, who defeated a politician who didn't think a flag desecration amendment was needed in the Constitution, says he will sponsor just such an amendment.

Congress has debated a flag amendment nearly every year since the Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that flag burning is a form of speech protected by the Constitution.

But things will change if Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has his way.

Thune said that he, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and others will introduce the amendment soon and that both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to co-sponsor it.

"What it does is, it gives Congress the power, essentially, to protect the flag through legislation," Thune said.

"It doesn't necessarily in the Constitution ban it, but it allows Congress to have the power that then could be, if it were ever challenged in court, if Congress enacts legislation that would protect the flag, it would make that legislation constitutional."

Middle East News

Quck hits: Syrian PM Assad has called for consensus for pullback from Lebanon.  CNN is claiming they have new photos of Al-Zarqawi (see "Gallery").  And Iran says it won't stop its nuclear program.  Also, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is pledging for unity in Iraq.

The Lefty Blogs Lay an Egg

The complaints from the lefty blogs about Jeff Gannon actually reporting and writing stories about the SD race--gasp!--and perhaps being gay--double gasp!!--have become more absurd and shrill as time goes on.  Nobody has said anything that was reported was wrong or that anything was illegal.  It's just that they didn't like it.  Others complain that the stories weren't "objective" unlike, say, the reporting of CBS News and CNN and other stalwart defenders of objectivity.  Anyway, in case you're looking for another reason to indicate that this first major venture by the lefty blogs in Dakota was a fool's errand, note the following.  The magazine The Nation is as left-wing as they come, so you'd think they'd be happy to pile on the whole Gannon deal.  Not so.  David Corn of the magazine looked at the Gannon deal after lots of jumping-up-and-down by lefty bloggers and concluded that the whole thing was trivial and ridiculous (remember also that the New Yorker, that bastion of right-wingers, also called it "nothinggate"). Because Corn actually exercised independent judgment and rationally concluded that the story was absurd, he is being berated by lefty bloggers in South Dakota for not adhering to the party line:

Thanks for selling us out on the Left concerning "Gannon", particularly those of us in South Dakota who are fighting an uncaring press and a well-oiled GOP machine on the dirty tricks John Thune, "Jeff Gannon", and Thune's cabal of bloggers perpetrated against Sen. Tom Daschle, the press, and the public in the 2004 election.

The Nation should be supporting this effort to raise the issues about "Gannon's" "work" in South Dakota and elsewhere. This is particularly so when Thune considers himself a "godly" man who wouldn't stoop to the politics of personal destruction.

I have been a fan of The Nation for many years; I have also been a fan of yours. I cannot believe that Alexander Cockburn would be so cavalier in throwing cold water on progressives trying to get to the truth.

I am terribly disappointed in both you and The Nation's recent stories belittling our efforts. We need support from respected Left publications in both covering the story and for moral support.

Todd D. Epp, Esq.
Harrisburg, SD
http://thunewatch.squarespace.com

Ah yes, 'don't let facts get in your way Mr. Corn.  Just pile on, like you're supposed to do!  Don't you know we're trying to undermine Senator Thune!?'  How dare Mr. Corn not supply the Dakota lefty blogs with the "moral support" they need.  Mr. Corn is "sellout" for not being blinded by anger.  Remember, some of the Dakota lefty blogs pushing this story also think the Bush administration is "fascist," think that Republicans are led by a "fuehrer," that Social Security reform is akin to Hitler's "gas ovens," that the war in Iraq was a "war of atrocity," and, in an odd twist, that the Bush administration is also "Stalinist."  One of the Dakota blogs also featured a "cartoon" comparing Senator Thune to not only Hitler, but also to a KKK leader to boot.  Many of the Dakota lefty blogs are run by former Daschle staffers and supporters and it was "Daschle staffers" (according to Roll Call) who spread the lie that Thune was getting divorced after the fall election.  Such is the level of anger and irrationality that exists on the other side, I'm afraid to say.  I can't believe Senator Daschle would approve of all this.  If his big speech at Kansas State University in May about the "startling meanness" in American politics meant anything, it surely meant that denouncing your opponents as "fascists" and "Stalinists" and spreading lies about them was wrong. 

A Disclosure

In the slowly mounting heap of bile that is the Northern Valley Beacon, we rake forth these gems:

Posing as a bona fide reporter, as in the case of Jeff Gannon, is not against the law. It is nevertheless fraudulent. Especially when the sole purpose is to contrive some basis for defamation and character assassination.

It is equally as fraudulent when people who claim to be independent-thinking bloggers get paid by a political campaign to advance some candidate's malicious agenda against an opponent and all who might speak well of that opponent.

The bloggers will assume righteous indignation as they sift through other blogs for quotations to be used out of context and without any mention of points they develop or facts they state in order to justify themselves. But the person who ultimately must answer for them is the person who put them on his payroll.

Just below readers will see to what extent I agree with this statement.  But I insist on a couple of replies.

1)  When we quoted from their blog, we not only quoted liberally and accurately, we always include links so that any reader could see for herself whether we were quoting out of context or not.  What the NVB objects to is simply this: we believed they meant what they said, and we raised questions about it.  The NVB regards any criticism whatsoever as malicious. 

2)  I can speak only for myself, but I have never been paid a cent for any of my blogging activities, nor have I at any time worked in coordination with any campaign or political organization.  I do not say this to criticize or claim any superiority over anyone.  I state it simply as a fact, which our readers are free to accept or ignore as they please.   

The New Republic and SDPolitics

SDPolitics has blogged below on the New Republic Article, "Local Yokels," in which this blog and its activities in the recent election were prominently featured. 

The story is a hair jaundiced in places, and perhaps misleading in a few, but for the most part it is a competent telling of the story.  A few comments:

1) On the Jeff Gannon angle:

In summer 2004, the sometime male escort--his decidedly un-conservative past still unknown--wrote a series of articles targeting Kranz, whom he called a liberal Democrat sympathetic to Daschle. Gannon was cozy with the Thune campaign from the start, hosting the candidate on his Internet talk show. And he worked in tandem with the local bloggers, picking up on their complaints about the Argus Leader.

If a news outlet or a reporter pretend to be independent when in fact they are working in close coordination with a campaign, the opposing side is entitled to complain about it.  Conservatives complained at the coordination of CBS News and the Kerry Campaign in the infamous Memogate scandal, and Daschle's people are well within reason to want to publicize Gannon's partisanship.  But as Dan Rather would insist, this doesn't mean that the stories circulated were false.  So far no one has shown or even tried to show that the information put forth by Gannon and the various pro-Thune blogs was not accurate.

2) The real effect of the anti-Daschle blogs was not to discredit Daschle, but to keep the Argus Leader on its toes, and force it to be scrupulously honest, if it wanted to maintain the appearance of an independent broker of information. 

With Gannon's stories spreading across the Internet and local conservative talk radio, the Argus Leader felt the heat. A "siege mentality" developed at the paper, as one staffer explained to National Journal last year. And, when it came time to assign a reporter to the Daschle-Thune race, Daschle aides were shocked to learn that Kranz--who had routinely covered the state's biggest political stories for decades--would not be on the beat. Instead the race was primarily covered by a reporter named Jon Walker.  Daschle aides felt the Thune campaign exploited Walker's political inexperience and that the reporter gave Daschle undeservedly rough treatment.

One can well sympathize with the Daschle aides when a reliably friendly reporter was replaced with another not so reliable reporter.  But Kranz was, in fact, altogether too cozy with the Democrats from way back to be given this story.

No doubt the Democrats will be developing their own blogs for precisely the same purpose.  And that is precisely the way it should be.

3)  Finally, with regard to blogs, the situation is different from that of mainstream news organizations.  The whole point of blogging is the freedom it affords.  Bloggers do not need to use their own names, nor are they under any obligation to divluge any other information.  A blog is worth only as much as attracts any reader, and must be judged by solely by its content.  With regard to the motives or interests of the blogger, the reader is always advised to beware.  And with regard to biases, let me shock you.  We are all of us biased.  Without that, politics would not work

 

Our Nearest Relatives

Whatever  you think about evolution, human beings and chimpanzees are clearly variations on the same biological theme, which makes this story from USAToday as interesting as it is appalling.

HAVILAH, Calif. (AP) — Investigators said Friday they are trying to figure out how two chimpanzees that viciously attacked a visitor at an animal sanctuary escaped from their cages.

		A man searches the area near the Animal Haven Ranch for two chimpanzees that escaped into the wooded area Thursday.
		Henry A. Barrios, AP

The chimps chewed off St. James Davis' nose and severely mauled his genitals and limbs Thursday before the son-in-law of the sanctuary's owner shot the animals to death, authorities said. (Related video:Man critically injured in attack)

Davis, 62, and his wife had gone to there to visit another chimpanzee that had lived with them for decades before they were forced to give the animal up. LaDonna Davis, 64, was bit on the hand.

Most people have a very misleading idea of chimpanzees formed from  TV and movies.   But the chimps that appear on film are usually very young and/or female.  A full grown male chimpanzee is strong enough to tear your arm off and just about smart enough to beat you with it.

Why did the two chimpanzees, both male, attack Mr. Davis?  Why not Ms. Davis?  As I teach a class in evolutionary ethics, I can hazard an answer.  They saw an older male with two new primates standing next to him.  The two newcomers were sharing food with the older male.  The adolescents feared an alliance was forming and they moved to break it up. 

Anyone who is interested in this might read Chimpanzee Politics, by Franz de Waal. 

 

The Committee to Protect Bloggers

LGF:

The Committee to Protect Bloggers points out that in the last week, totalitarian regimes have been arresting and threatening numerous bloggers:

Malaysian blogger Jeff Ooi questioned by police.

Bahraini blogger Ali Abdulemam arrested with two of his fellow moderators on the BahrainOnline bulletin board.

Iranian blogger Nasjeh Omidparvar arrested.

Omidparvar, who is pregnant, is the wife of recently convicted blogger Mohamad Reza Nasab Abholahi.

This is the down side of the recent media focus on blogging; the repressive theocrats and dictators of the world also read our media. They perceive a threat to their control of information, and they’re reacting the way these atavistic monsters always do—by attempting to crush the threat at its source.

Kerry talks at Clinton fund-raising event in DC

From the Boston Herald:

WASHINGTON - Nobody's calling them the 2008 Democratic dream ticket, but Sen. John F. Kerry delivered the keynote speech at a fund-raiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that raised a whopping $180,000.

"Tonight makes history,'' Kerry joked to the crowd, according to a friend who attended the event on Wednesday. "It's the first time in four years (former Democratic National Committee chairman) Terry McAuliffe and I haven't been the ones asking you for money.''

I find this an interesting twist for Kerry, backing Sen. Clinton.  The Dems are indeed focused on 2008.

[Hat tip to the Political Wire].

Anonymous

In the hippest development in the SD blogosphere since the start of "Mt. Blogmore," the blog "SD Blog Watch" has been launched.  This person is apparently anonymous, but since he's planning to live-blog from Green Mill maybe you can spot him if you hurry.  Stay tuned, because Anonymous is close to breaking open a "Massive Scandal involving the whole South Dakota Blogosphere, the Main Stream Media, the Crow Bar, Ward Bushee, Al's Oasis and Karl Rove."

$5M pension for Daschle?

From the Heartland Institute:

Thirty-eight former senators and representatives from the 108th Congress qualify for taxpayer-funded pensions, with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) leading the pack at a projected lifetime payout of more than $5 million, according to a study released January 6 by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF).

"Even as most Americans face high taxes and other roadblocks to their own retirement, members of Congress have paved a smooth path for their golden years," said NTUF President John Berthoud. "Too bad taxpayers are supplying most of the gold."

Daschle is eligible to start drawing a pension of $121,233 this year, the highest amount among those studied. Assuming Daschle lives to the actuarially projected age of 82.1 years and receives a 4 percent cost of living adjustment (COLA) annually, his total lifetime pension amount could reach $5.077 million.

Book deals and speaking engagements will undoubtably earn Daschle even more in his retirement years.

Bush, Gonzales interviews

Two interviews to read: President Bush sits down with the NY Post, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales talks to FOX (with video). 

More from The New Republic

From the new article about Dakota blogs in the current New Republic entitled "Local Yokels":

A "siege mentality" developed at the paper [Argus Leader], as one staffer explained to National Journal last year. And, when it came time to assign a reporter to the Daschle-Thune race, Daschle aides were shocked to learn that Kranz--who had routinely covered the state's biggest political stories for decades--would not be on the beat.

Daschle aides were "shocked," eh?  Well, hey, they knew they had a good thing going.  They were simply used to never being scrutinized.  Then there's this confusing part of the article:

[Daschle campaign manager] Steve Hildebrand, believes that Gannon was leaked a blistering memo from a local bishop denouncing Daschle's position on abortion and questioning his standing as a Catholic. "Gannon wrote a piece, and [local conservative talk-radio host] Greg Belfrage talked about it, and [local station kelo's] newsroom took it off his show. Then every news source in the state covered it--TV, the AP, newspapers." Including the Argus Leader.

I have no idea what he's talking about here.  As I recall, the Bishop, in the August issue of the Bishop's Bulletin, expounded on how Catholics should handle the life issue.  I've never heard about secret "memo" from the Bishop on this issue.  As for the Argus, I think they mentioned this issue in paragraph 41 of an article three months after the Bishop's Bulletin was published, so they weren't exactly spreading the news.  Anyway, I'm sure there are number of topics the Daschle campaign simply didn't want discussed and they probably assumed they wouldn't be.  But some stories snuck by the news filter they typically enjoyed.  One last thing:  in none of these stories about blogs and the last election has anyone said what the blogs reported was wrong or inaccurate.  What the blogs reported were items the Daschle campaign didn't want the public to know about.  And many of these items were quite boring, like his positions on the balanced budget amendment and his 1986 tax pledge etc...  Unlike previous elections, the discussion of the news was more democratic and not simply determined by a couple of individuals who would decide what the public should hear.  Another win for democracy.

The New Republic

Our friends over at The Blog Formerly Known As Dayton v. Kennedy (TBFKADVK) in Minnesota are noting that The New Republic mentions the old Daschle v. Thune site this week:

Michael Crowley of the New Republic writes about the influence of South Dakota bloggers on the Daschle v. Thune race and notes their offspring:

There are already signs of such activity. A few months ago, a Minnesota-based blog appeared called Dayton v. Kennedy, dedicated to supporting GOP candidate Mark Kennedy against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Dayton. (Dayton has since announced he won't run; the blog awaits the new Democratic candidate.) Sure enough, the blog has targeted local media outlets like the Minneapolis Star Tribune, leveling charges of liberal bias. The blog's author, Gary Matthew Miller, claims in an e-mail that he is no GOP plant. But, he says, "I will acknowledge inspiration from Daschle v. Thune." He's surely not going to be the only one.

Times

From a column in The Times of London:

Little more than three years after US forces, backed by their faithful British allies, set foot in Afghanistan, the entire historical dynamic of this blighted region has already shifted.

Ignoring, fortunately, the assault from clever world opinion on America’s motives, its credibility and its ambitions, the Bush Administration set out not only to eliminate immediate threats but also to remake the Middle East. In the last month, the pace of progress has accelerated, and from Beirut to Kabul.

There's even a Monty Python reference for you fans out there.

Military Recruiting in SD

A lefty blog in South Dakota is trying to stop military recruiters at USD and took an opportunity yesterday to launch an ambush: "Immediately we saw the opportunity to start our counter-recruitment campaign off with a real BANG!" 

Taxation Lawsuit

From the Rapid City Journal:

The South Dakota Chamber of Commerce is considering going to court to test the objectivity of the state's property tax system, chamber president Dave Owen said.  Changes in state law have taken certain properties out of the assessment system and left the system "out of kilter," he said.  Owen said businesses pay property taxes at twice the rate of homeowners and four times the rate of agriculture.

Legislature's Last Day

From the Argus Leader:

The Legislature is scheduled to finish its main run today. A final day of the 40-day session, March 22, has been set aside to consider vetoes. In some past years, lawmakers have allowed a few issues to hang fire until the veto day, but the result has generally been a rehash of the same arguments swirling through the Capitol halls at first adjournment.

Thune Visits ANWR

From the Argus Leader:

Extracting oil from federally protected land in Alaska could bolster national security and provide some much-needed relief to energy-dependent South Dakotans, Sen. John Thune said Thursday.

The freshman Republican senator said opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration should be a key part of any energy policy that Congress enacts. He noted that the House passed an energy bill while he was still a member, but the measure died in the Senate.

MN Bill aims to stymie profs' political views

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune (annoying registration required):

A national movement that supporters say protects college students from indoctrination by college professors but opponents say stifles debate made its way to Minnesota on Wednesday when two legislators proposed legislation that they call the "Academic Bill of Rights."

Sen. Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, and Rep. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, said their bill would require the state's publicly funded colleges and universities to adopt policies that would mandate that professors not use their classrooms to promote their personal political or ideological beliefs. It also says that students would not be punished for disagreeing with their instructors' politics.

While Bachmann, who has announced that she is a candidate for Congress, said the law would apply across the political spectrum, the focus nationally has been complaints from conservative students that left-wing professors have tried to use their classrooms to indoctrinate young minds with liberal propaganda.

At a morning news conference, speakers included students and professors who talked of feeling punished for their conservative views. No speakers complained about conservative instructors.

Lawmakers in 21 other states have introduced similar bills, part of a national movement spearheaded by Students for Academic Freedom, a Washington-based student network founded by conservative activist David Horowitz.

Seems like Mr. Horowitz's campaign targeting liberal professors is gaining steam...

What the Media Did to Itself

Media critic Howard Kurtz in today's Washington Post:

Are the Bushies at "war" with the Fourth Estate? Is there an insidious plot to weaken the media establishment, to carpet-bomb its credibility like the Saddam regime?

I wouldn't go that far. People forget that every administration tries to neutralize the press. There was much hand-wringing about Clinton circumventing the White House press corps when he started going on Larry King and other talk shows. And much talk of stonewalling over the way his White House handled its various scandals.

I would argue that nothing the White House has done has damaged the media's credibility more than what the profession has done to itself. Bush wasn't responsible for the fraud by Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley, or for Dan Rather's botched National Guard story (though I know some have theorized that the administration lured CBS into some kind of trap). Bush didn't force the media to go overboard on Kobe and Michael. He didn't force a CNN executive to make some ill-considered comments about the U.S. military targeting journalists. He didn't force various journalists to keep engaging in plagiarism. He didn't force Armstrong Williams to take $240,000 from the Education Department (though paying conservative pundits is one of the administration's innovations). He isn't responsible for declining newspaper circulation and network news ratings or the sinking poll numbers when it comes to trusting the media.

Dems name building for Daschle

From today's Argus Leader:

WASHINGTON - Tom Daschle has left the Senate, but when Democrats try to take control of the chamber in the future, he'll be on their minds.

The Democrats will be running their Senate campaigns out of a building named for Daschle, the South Dakotan who led them in the Senate from 1994 until his defeat last fall. The Capitol Hill office will be known as The Senator Thomas A. Daschle Building.

Indeed, quite an honor for the former Senator from South Dakota.

Blogmore

From Rapid City Journal reporter Kevin Woster, writing on Mt. Blogmore:

I also think one of the saddest things that happened in the 2004 campaign was that Dave Kranz didn’t get to cover the biggest election of his lifetime. He deserved to, but couldn’t because he became so much a part of the story.

Wow, that seems like a rather big revelation.  But I thought Argus Leader editor Randell Beck said the blogs caused no changes in Argus coverage?  Readers are urged to review this before Beck's Sunday column on blogs.  Maybe he'll address the matter above in his column. 

Fascism Watch: Top to Bottom

There's a little blurb in today's Argus Leader entitled "Byrd criticized for Nazi comment."  Apparently, long-serving Democratic Senator Robert Byrd said Republican strategy to confirm judicial appointments was how Hitler would have acted.  Jewish groups are not impressed (and, as Insty notes, Byrd broke Godwin's law).  Byrd's comments might find some support in SD, where some lefty blogs call the Bush administration "fascist" and "Stalinist."  Another lefty SD blog, not to be outdone, is today calling SD state legislator John Koskan "a Taliban Theocrat Republican," following his party's leader Tim Johnson, who denounced the Republicans as the "Taliban" in May.  Also, note this from last summer's Boston Herald:

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore yesterday unleashed another verbal assault on President Bush, comparing him to Richard Nixon and his staff to Nazi ``Brown Shirts.''

Some say that the Democratic Party should not be held responsible for some of the radical positions advanced by the Democratic base.  What these people fail to realize is that the Nazi/Hitler references have come from the top, i.e. VP Gore and Senator Byrd, as did the Taliban reference, which came from Senator Johnson.  That doesn't make the Democratic Party leadership responsible for the absurd statements from their base.  But it surely doesn't make them innocent either.  And such extremisim will probably hurt them politically.  Note the following from MSNBC:

Democrats must shore up their standing on national security, say the folks at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, who urge the party to "reject Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd" and focus on ideas and becoming the party of reform again.  They also caution Democrats that blogosphere is "not representative of most of the American people" and that it could actually have a "pernicious effect" on how the party is viewed because it's polarizing and getting too much media attention. 

Ryne:

Extra credit assignment: another shining example of what I've dubbed the South Dakota corollary to Godwin's Law.

I think maybe we need to amend the SD corollary thusly: If the subject amongst South Dakota Democrats is George Bush or John Thune, Republicans or conservatives, the probability of a Hitler/Nazi/fascism comparison becomes equal to one.

Daschle to Kennedy During Election: "just stay a million miles away from South Dakota"

From today's edition of Roll Call:

Of all the roasts given to former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) at his farewell tribute dinner Tuesday night, one stood out.

Daschle and his wife, Linda Daschle, were said to be “so pleased” by the performance of Dave Nelson, a member of Daschle’s former security detail, who sang his own version of Bob Hope’s “Thanks for the Memories.”

As Daschle’s longtime friend and national finance chairman Kappy McGarr put it, Nelson is “a lot like

‘American Idol,’ but with talent and a semi-automatic weapon.” Nelson has performed at several Congressional ceremonies and funerals, including that of the recently deceased Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Calif.), where Nelson sang “God Bless America.”

McGarr, the master of ceremonies for the Daschle dinner at the National Building Museum, explained why Nelson wouldn’t be singing that particular song on this night. “Not because Democrats don’t believe in God,” McGarr said. “In fact, if you carefully read the Bible and assume God was an American — and why shouldn’t we? — she would have been a Democrat.”

The Texas Democrat got even bigger laughs out of the assembled Democrats when he said: “I’m living proof that politicos from Texas can speak in full sentences.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) brought down the house when he recalled a conversation he had with Daschle during the South Dakotan’s brutal campaign last year: “I told Tom I’d do anything to help him. He smiled and he hugged me and said, ‘Thanks Ted — just stay a million miles away from South Dakota.’”

Video of KELO-Land report

My friend Trey at Jackson's Junction has graciously posted and hosted the video of the KELO-Land report on South Dakota Politics tonight, in case you missed it.

Trey has really found his niche in the blogosphere, regularly posting the short news items/clips that you might have missed during the day.  He's a daily read for me (and usually check him multiple times each day).  Check him out!

KELO-Land

KELO-Land TV is going to have a story on blogs tonight.  Sibby doesn't think it will be fair.  Others, including people in the KELO-Land newsroom, have informed SDP the story will be a hit piece.  I guess we'll have to see.

UPDATE:  Well, I have to disagree with our readers, which I hate to do.  I thought the story on TV tonight was fine.  Nothing that interesting.  The only thing that caught my eye was Daschle's former campaign manager saying the blogs were "filled with inaccuracies."  WHERE?  At long last, what was inaccurate?  Nobody has come forward with a single item that was inaccurate.  If they do, we're happy to correct it.  But, again, they haven't.  Note to Daschle's former campaign manager: because you don't agree with a statement or don't like a statement doesn't make it "inaccurate." Other than that comment from Daschle's former campaign manager, the story seemed fine to me. 

UPDATE II:  One correction.  The reporter Jodi Schwan said the blog started with 8,000 readers per day.  That's not what I said.  The final couple of months there were about 8,000 per day.  In the beginning there were a few hundred readers.  Over time, with lots of help from the national blogosphere and national newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal writing about the Dakota Blog Alliance and the blog conference last summer, the readership grew. 

UPDATE III:  The other thing I should mention is that Argus Leader editor Randell Beck was quite reasonable and magnanimous about the whole blogging phenomena.  Hopefully, his Sunday column on the matter will be the same.  Blogs and newspapers can learn much from one another and can make each other better.

Death Penalty for Juveniles

I wanted to say something about the Supreme Court case yesterday that held as unconstitutional the execution of those under the age of 18 who commit capital crimes. First, let me state that while I believe capital punishment to be morally justifiable (working from an “if it’s good enough for Thomas Aquinas it’s good enough for me” theory), I think it is imprudent for a nation so confused about the value of human life to be executing anyone. So I favor a complete ban on capital punishment. Still, I find yesterday’s decision by the Court to be wrong headed for the following reasons:

1. Just because something is wrong, even horribly wrong, does not mean it is unconstitutional. I think capital punishment is bad policy (although not morally wrong in itself), but it is clearly allowable under the Eighth Amendment.

2. Just because MOST minors might not have the moral capacity that would make them responsible enough to be eligible for capital punishment, it doesn’t mean ALL minors are in such a state. Every state that made juveniles eligible for capital punishment had age as a mitigating factor in the capital phase of sentencing. So who should decide if each particular person is responsible? I say each jury, not the Supreme Court.

3. The age of 18 as the age of minority has no basis in the Constitution so it isn’t clear why that age should have any particular constitutional import. Nowhere in the Constitution does the age of 18 have any special meaning, the 26^th Amendment excepted.

4. The Court partly bases its decision on social science, which is dubious at best. This always reminds me of Brown v. Board of Education, a case with the right decision but for all the wrong reasons. The Brown opinion hinges on a particular piece of social science.  The social science said that black children who went to segregated schools had feelings of inferiority, therefore separate in education is inherently unequal. Well, what if the social science had found that those black children were perfectly well adjusted? Would that make racial segregation perfectly acceptable under the 14^th Amendment? I think not, but by the Court’s logic it would. The point is that social science is untrustworthy and is not the law, and the law should guide the Court. I'll also note that the methodology of the social science cited in Brown was dubious, at best, and so probably didn't even prove what it claimed to prove.  But the point is that one can get to desegregation by looking at the text of the 14th Amendment rather than for extra-constitutional arguments from social science.

5. The Court partly bases its decision on the consensus of international law. I was not aware that Supreme Court is charged with interpreting international law. I thought it was the US Constitution.

6. Finally, the Court pays precious little attention to the actual case law involved, spending most of its time on spurious (and inaccurate in many cases) estimation of the domestic consensus, the international consensus, and social science. This decision looks more like an act of will, not an act of judgment, and a cursory look at Federalist #78 tells us that this is an abuse of judicial power.

Scholarships

A thoughtful reader chimes in on the scholarship issue:

Like you, I am disappointed in the dropping $1000 from the last year of the scholarship.  I was at legislative coffee this week and heard one of the legislators talk about that.  He noted that there was not much incentive for college seniors who get the extra $1000.

This does lead me to another question, however.  Who should be responsible for paying for a college education?  I have had a son attending a state school and quite frankly, I thought $8500/year, all inclusive was a bargain. When you consider the fact the state is already subsidizing the education of our university students, adding another $5000 (or now $4000) is very generous.

Don't get me wrong.  I believe education to be an excellent investment, but I would submit to you the responsibility should be more on the students.

As a conservative publication, this must be one of those horns of a dilemma issues for you.

This actually isn’t that tough of a dilemma for me, as I am not a doctrinaire fiscal conservative. Let me make the following points. First, let’s make a distinction between the federal government and state government. If the federal Department of Education went away tomorrow I wouldn’t cry a bit as we’d save a lot of money, but more importantly it’d probably help our educational performance. Second, from a role of government view, it isn’t clear that education is something that is proper for the federal government, although a case can be made for it. But certainly education is at the heart of what state and local government does, and so it seems that they should fund it adequately. Next, we all know (or should know) that the relationship between educational spending and education outcome is uneven, at best. If Washington DC were a state it would be near or at the top in per pupil spending, but it’d be at or near the bottom of educational attainment. Still, there is a floor beneath which you can’t reach “educational subsistence.” I think South Dakota tends to hover around that floor. At a school with many education majors, I can tell you that most of our best a brightest will leave South Dakota because they know that they can make more money elsewhere, even with the higher cost of living in other places. I am an educator, so I know I am an interested party, but I think there is some objective truth in what I say. A side note, all too much of our education spending, especially k-12, goes to administration and bureaucracy, thanks to the aforementioned federal Department of Education. Finally, we just had a bunch of prospective scholarship students on our campus today. It is imperative to South Dakota’s future that our best students see South Dakota colleges and universities as an option. We can do that through the help of scholarship monies and also by promoting excellence on campuses. While I too want to be careful with the public dollar, these goals cannot be met “on the cheap.” 

I thank the reader for an intelligent email. 

Valley City State player to be charged

ESPN  is reporting that Matt Klabo will indeed be charged for his assult on SDSM&T's Korey Kirschenmann.

Afghanistan's First Female Governor

I think this is pretty big news, via Australia's News.com:

AFGHANISTAN today named its first female provincial governor, a step forward in the slow political progress of women since the fall of the Taliban more than three years ago.

The appointment of Habiba Sorabi as the new governor of Bamiyan was announced in a brief statement on state-run Kabul Television.

Ms Sorabi, who was picked from an all-female short list, served as women's affairs minister in the previous interim administration of President Hamid Karzai, which approved a constitution enshrining of equal rights for women last year.

Conditions for women in Afghanistan have gradually improved since the overthrow in late 2001 of the Taliban regime, which barred women from education and from venturing out of doors unveiled.

Or, how about when the Taliban was executing women in broad daylight in soccer stadiums?  The reforms in Afghanistan continue to amaze me (even though MSM doesn't want to report it).

Go Wolves

As long as we are bragging on our schools, the NSU Men Indoor Track and Field team won the NSIC conference title over the weekend, with the women coming in second.  Congrats to all. 

Sen. Salazar vs. Bush

Freshman Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) certainly seems bold.  Yesterday, he urged President Bush to withdraw all of his renominated judicial candidates. I don't see his letter going very far, especially with the "nuclear option" being discussed to get the President's nominees passed...

Memogate developments

Two interesting developments in the Memogate scandal.  First, Mary Mapes is planning a tell-all book about the scandal, the NY Observer notes. Also, CBS President Les Moonves says Dan Rather could have stuck around for a 25th year, but Memogate pushed him out early, NY Post reports.

Daschle Farewell Party

There was a farewell party for Senator Daschle in Washington last night.  Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post story: 

Elected to the Senate from the House in 1986, Daschle, now 57, was credited with unifying fractious Democrats in the mid-1990s and pushing a more centrist philosophy. Under his leadership, the Senate passed campaign finance revisions. He helped save the presidency of Bill Clinton by engineering acquittal at the impeachment trial, a feat that Democrats heralded and some conservatives never forgave.

Those speaking last night preferred to speak of his work for veterans exposed to Agent Orange, for farmers and Native Americans and seniors.

There were flashes of resistance. Maryland's Barbara Mikulski looked around at the strong showing of her Senate colleagues and pronounced them "an army of opposition."

There were fragments of strategy. New York's Chuck Schumer leaned in toward Daschle and whispered that Mikulski's fellow senator, Paul Sarbanes, "is really thinking of you, and Maryland . . . " He went inaudible. (Hmmm. A South Dakotan running for senator in the Free State? It worked for a native Illinoisan who moved to New York.) One consultant said to another, "I have a plan for rebranding ourselves in the South. I'll send you a position paper."

Ted Kennedy mustered some of his thunder to borrow from Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Old Ironsides," saying "Old Tom" was a "champion for working folk who will take their crap no more." And he meant the Republicans, of course. And Max Cleland, whom party lore lionizes as the first Democratic senator to fall to Republican character assassination, in 2002, also delivered a poem that was hardly gracious. "This message to those who attack you," he warned; "you reap what you sow, so watch your back. We're still following the leader, and you can all go to hell."

Lady Hardrockers win Conference!

I would like to congratulate the SDSM&T Lady Hardrockers (20-10) who defeated  U of Mary (28-2) tonight at the DAC-10 Conference Championship, 75-73!  It was a nail-biter. Both U of Mary (who won the conference outright) and Tech head to the NAIA Division II National Tournament in Sioux City, IA March 9-15.

What will Beck do?

I heard snippets of the radio shows today (part of the reason I was distracted is that a squirrel got loose in the furnace and the furnace fixer ended up getting bit by it after a full-basement chase) and didn't hear anything new, with one exception.  Apparently Argus Leader editor Randell Beck is writing his column about blogs this weekend.  Also, Beck said that the blogs had no impact whatsoever on the Argus.  Of course, that's not what his assistant managing editor told the National Journal--see here.  He said there was no doubt the blogs had an impact and others at the Argus said there was a "siege mentality," whatever that means.  And Dave Kranz said blog claims about him had some validity.  Anyway, one assumes that in his column this weekend Beck will have to address how the current controversy started, i.e. with criticism of the Argus, and then address the merits of that criticism.  Hopefully he won't go down his previous path by talking about how 'even Hitler would have a blog' (the comment which prompted the former editor of The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, to write a post entitled "An Editor Loses It").  Maybe he'll even address how he made up something on the Argus blog and refused to correct the mistake when asked politely several times.  Most know how Beck feels about blog criticism of the Argus (it is "crap" driven by a "violent" internet "cabal" of "yahoos" and "jokers," who are full of "hatred" and "vitriol" and lack "guts" because they hide "behind their computer screens" and won't face him "man to man").  To be fair, I'm sure Beck wasn't happy about blog criticism and to a certain extent did his duty defending his newspaper/reporters and may have said some barbed things that he now regrets or would now say differently.  No problem.  But now he has a chance to actually respond to substantive criticism made by the Dakota Blog Alliance.  He can actually respond to arguments with counter-arguments.  The criticism of the Argus, after all, is how the SD blogosphere took off, gained national attention, and sparked the current controversy about Gannon, who first wrote about the Argus.  Beck can also explain what the Dakota blogs got factually wrong, which no writer has ever done.  If Beck simply launches another Howell Raines-ish 'blogs are evil' diatribe, then the whole discussion will remain stalemated and circular.  Seriously, Mr. Beck, please elevate the debate by responding to specific criticisms of the Dakota blogs and spelling out what they got wrong factually.  One would think that a newspaper which has been accused of "vituperative" treatment and "hysterical bashing" of Republicans by The New York Times and Roll Call and whose coverage has been questioned by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial about Rathergate (the WSJ questioned the control "Tom Daschle's pals at the Argus Leader have long had on [South Dakota's] political dialogue") and by the Economist ("Local bloggers also had an effect; in South Dakota, for instance, they repeatedly highlighted Tom Daschle's partisan record in Washington, DC, something that the Democratic Senate majority leader's friends in the local print media had never laboured to expose.") and other publications would want to clarify the record.  Beck might also want to address why Senator Daschle's former media advisor Karl Struble has explained in a magazine article how his media operation has used the Argus in the past: "The press ate it up. Our campaign systematically doled out the information piece by piece to reporters in D.C. and South Dakota. The result was a series of damaging articles. ... We used the headlines generated as validators for our ads." Again, in all seriousness, this a real opportunity to move the debate to the next level.  Let's hope that happens. 

UPDATE:  Sibby has more on the radio commentary today (and notes how some SD bloggers on the left still think the CBS National Guard documents could be true).  Ryne has even more.  The Chief also has comments from Colman.

Friendly Fire

I just finished an appearance on Friendly Fire on WNAX 540 AM.  We discussed blogging the past election cycle and Jeff Gannon for about an hour.  Guests included myself, Todd Epp from Thune Watch and Rounds Watch, and Argus editor Randall Beck.  If you've never had the opportunity to listen to Friendly Fire I encourage you to do so it was a very interesting program and airs at 4:00 PM on weeknights.  Thanks go out to Ben Hanten for the invite and both Todd Epp and Randall Beck for the discussion, it was an enjoyable experience.   

On another note, I'm leaving for Richmond Virginia for a negotiations tournament tomorrow morning so posting will be sparse or non-existent until next week.

Dems on Daschle, blogosphere

From MSNBC:

Democrats pay tribute to Tom Daschle tonight at 6:30 pm at the National Building Museum.  Speakers include the party's Hill leadership, Ted Kennedy, and former Sen. Max Cleland, the Vietnam vet who in 2002 lost his seat after the GOP charged him with being weak on national/homeland security, scarring the Democratic party and helping to pave the way for the nomination of Kerry in 2004.  More below on possible lessons for the party in Daschle's loss.

The article goes on to say:

Democrats must shore up their standing on national security, say the folks at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, who urge the party to "reject Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd" and focus on ideas and becoming the party of reform again.  They also caution Democrats that blogosphere is "not representative of most of the American people" and that it could actually have a "pernicious effect" on how the party is viewed because it's polarizing and getting too much media attention.

Heh.

[Hat tip to the Scribe Journal].

No flirting either

To follow-up my last post about the "Pink Revolution", Iranian "hardliners" don't want boys and girls flirting in public either.

The Arab Street Suddenly Gets Colorful

The New York Times, amazingly enough, and less grudgingly than expected, acknowledges that the winds of change are blowing in the Arab world, and that you know who from Texas is largely responsible.  Sure, there's still a lot of violence going on. 

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

That's about as fair as anyone could expect the NYT's to be.  Richard Cohen, writing in the Washington Post, makes a similar concession.  In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine, "the music is unmistakable."  But he sounds a sensible note of caution.

This is emphatically not Eastern Europe, where in some cases democracies were restored, not created out of whole cloth, and where draconian population shifts had largely eliminated the region's version of tribalism. In a word, Cairo is not Warsaw -- and the Iranian revolution proves that reactionaries want change, too.

He's right, of course.  The trouble with democracy is, the people do what they want.  But Ukraine was not exactly "restoring" democracy, nor was the rest of Eastern Europe doing so. Nor is today's middle east the same place as Iran in the 1970's.   It is just possible that people everywhere want a say in how they are governed and some basic protections, and that the lesson of Iran has been learned by most folk in the Middle East.

The L.A. Times view is similar to Cohen's:

Quandt recalled how, during his tenure at the White House, President Carter had nudged the shah of Iran to loosen his hold on the country's political system and how, after the shah's fall, some of the administration's most respected experts on Iran had predicted that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would be a Gandhi-like spiritual advisor to a moderate new Iranian government.  "You get something that looks pretty good at the time, but then it eventually turns out very differently," he said.

And finally there is the gallant Christopher Hitchens, bulldozing the notion of the Arab Street.

In retrospect, it's difficult to decide precisely when this annoying expression began to expire, if only from diminishing returns. There was, first, the complete failure of the said "street" to detonate with rage when coalition forces first crossed the border of Iraq, as had been predicted (and one suspects privately hoped) by so many "experts." But one still continued to hear from commentators who conferred street-level potency on passing "insurgents." (I remember being aggressively assured by an interviewer on Al Franken's quasi-comedic Air America that Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army" in Najaf was just the beginning of a new "Tet Offensive.") Mr. Sadr duly got a couple of seats in the recent Iraqi elections. And it was most obviously those elections that discredited the idea of ventriloquizing the Arab or Muslim populace or of conferring axiomatic authenticity on the loudest or hoarsest voice.

 

Iran's "Pink Revolution"

USA Today has an interesting article on the "Pink Revolution" in Iran:

TEHRAN, Iran — In a city that only a few years ago was almost monochromatic — full of women draped head to toe in black — women and girls this winter are sporting pink coats, pink sweaters, pink head scarves, shoes and bags.

Iran's Islamic rulers appear to have given up trying to make women observe more than the letter of the hijab, the Koran's admonition that Muslim women outside their homes should cover everything but their faces, hands and feet. The change has been gradual, but this year coats have gotten shorter, brighter and tighter, heels higher and scarves have slipped farther back to reveal most of women's hair.

Freedom is indeed "on the march."

Blanchard on Noon Forum Today

I'll be talking about blogging.  You can listen online: Live Radio Webcast.

Objectivity and the Press

SD Public Radio (at noon central time) and WNAX (at 4:00 central time) will be discussing the issue of objectivity, the press, and bloggers etc...  This seems like a good opportunity to discuss how objective the SD press has been in recent decades.  If you want a primer, see this.  Also see the bombshell memos posted over on the right side of this page.  Several national commentators and other local analysts have concluded that some Dakota blogs did a good job of providing a reasonable and fact-based analysis of problematic media coverage in SD in recent years.  The fact that no critics of the blogs can point to any flaws or factual mistakes in the blog reporting speaks to the power of the blogs' argument.  It seems like a good time to review all that the blogs reported and analyzed given that some on the left have now taken a strong interest in whether some right-leaning reporters were "objective" during the last campaign.  What's revealing is that a few in the SD press now seem interested in this question when it might discredit some reporters on the right.  Where were all these reporters when literally the whole world was writing about the bias problems of certain SD reporters on the left?  You know, when the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, National Journal, etc...were writing about blog criticism of some in the SD media, which even The New York Times and Roll Call in previous years had criticized for their "hysterical bashing" of Republicans.  Anyway, just as an example, take note what the London-based Economist wrote in late November about the Dakota blogs:

Local bloggers also had an effect; in South Dakota, for instance, they repeatedly highlighted Tom Daschle's partisan record in Washington, DC, something that the Democratic Senate majority leader's friends in the local print media had never laboured to expose.

It's very interesting that a prominent London-based magazine was better at reporting on what was actually happening on the ground in SD than the SD media was.  It may be that lefty blog advocacy has now caused some in the local media to pay attention because it may mean scoring some points against a conservative reporter, but whatever the motivation, the time has now come for a complete review of the facts and history relating to who is and who is not an "objective" reporter in SD. 

Keep Your Promise

The Argus has picked up the story about the South Dakota Legislature reneging on scholarship money promised to out best students.  Because more students qualified for the "Opportunity Scholarship" than was anticipated, the legislature wants to cut the last year of the scholarship from a $2,000 award to $1,000.  Essentially what the legislature is saying is because they screwed up in estimating the number of qualified students, they must take away money that we promised to these young people.  So the students must pay, literally, for the legislature's mistake.  And what is the nature of this mistake?  This is an academic scholarship.  Now the best students have to pay the price because, gosh darn it, we have too many smart kids in this state.  Only in South Dakota do we consider it a problem that we have too many smart kids who just cost so dang much money.  Spending on these students, legislators, is not money spent one time, but an investment that will pay off in the future.  But this is South Dakota where we do everything on the cheap, which is why we get such cheap stuff, like education.  The legislature on this issue is pennywise, but pound foolish.  If the legislature wants to scale back the last year of the scholarship for future recipients, that would be reasonable, but it is obnoxious to make these young people have to pay because the legislature miscalculated.

Blogmore on Gannon/Kranz Controversy

Kevin Woster of Rapid City Journal's Mt. Blogmore is wondering if the Gannon/Talon bit is newsworthy and has generated this response from a Blogmore reader:

Kevin,

If you do cover the Gannon issue, and don’t cover all the evidence he produced on David Kranz, then the bias would stick so bad that you can cut it with a knife. What did Gannon do that was so mean spirited? Did he did up stuff on Kranz’s personal sex life? Or was the allegations based solely on his ties to the Democrat Party?

Isn’t there some unwritten rule that journalists cannot hold other journalists accountable? I have written letters about Kranz in another paper and the publisher refused to print it saying: we do not want to promote our competition. I don’t think exposing the lack of the competition’s credibility is promotion. There must be another reason.

Woster responds:

There’s no rule about not covering other journalists, if they have a real news impact outside a normal reporter’s role. I can tell you that from what I’ve seen and know, the alleged impact of Dave Kranz’ past Democratic affiliations was dramatically overblown by people with a political agenda. Does that mean Kranz didn’t make some ethical mistakes in years past. It does not. He did, just as many other reporters, including me, have made mistakes. I think Dave Kranz made a serious and successful effort to overcome those mistakes, and has done some remarkable reporting since then. I haven’t seen any substantial evidence that what he did while in college (Lord, don’t start talking about what we did in college, PLEASE), and in a couple of instances or poor judgment later on have affected his coverage in recent times. Still, that’s something I’d look at, if I did the project. — KW)

First, since Gannon's first stories about SD were apparently about claims of Argus/Kranz bias by a potential US Senate candidate, then the basis of those claims and the reason the national blogosphere and MSM paid attention must also be reviewed.  After all, the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Guardian, National Journal etc...have all written about the bias controversy at the Argus, but SD outlets haven't.  The root of this whole controversy is the Argus, so any serious reporting about it has to review Argus criticism in detail.  Second, isn't Woster conceding that the blog criticism of the Argus/Kranz had some basis in fact when he talks about Kranz's past "ethical mistakes"?  It would seem that the past criticism of Kranz by The New York Times and Roll Call for his "hysterical bashing" of Republicans had some merit.  See here for details.  One obvious story from the last campaign is why the South Dakota media never delved into this controversy which many of the nation's key political analysts were closely observing.  Kranz has written hundreds, perhaps thousands of articles/columns about SD politics for decades.  So who's more important, Kranz or Gannon?  What's the real story?  As Woster says, any story about this matter must deal with the Kranz background.  Again, Kranz is a great guy personally, he really is.  He just has a habit of favoring the Democrats because that is where his heart his.  And good for him.  He has an opinion and that's fine.  I'm all for expressing your opinion.  It's just that if the Argus wants to be balanced, they should label his columns opinion, put them on the opinion page, and hire someone to write from the other side of the aisle.  A very simple, reasonable solution, which the alliance has proposed for a long time.  Anyway, if reporters are going to delve into Gannon, they have a lot of Kranz history to review first.  He's the reason, apparently, that Gannon started writing about South Dakota in the first place. 

Clint Eastwood and the Death of God

I am a big fan of the work of Thomas Hibbs and used his book when I taught Political Philosophy in Film a year ago.  Here's his take on Million Dollar Baby.  Warning, he gives away the ending.  I largely share his viewpoint. 

Internet Licensing

Radio Active Chief corrects me.  The proposed ban on the selling of hunting licenses by  South Dakota Game and Fish over the internet only applies to those currently available retail, which would not include deer tags.  I still would like to know how many licenses are being sold over the internet to see if internet sale of licenses has any impact on retailers.  I suspect not, but am willing to be proven wrong.  I get my waterfowl license (actually small game, which I use for ducks) and stamps from a retailer and I suspect most other bird hunters do as well.  Until it can be shown that there is actual harm being done to retailers, I see no reason to change the law.  If it ain't broke... 

And now Lebanon

For those keeping score at home: Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Palestinian Authority, Egypt (maybe) and now a people's revolt in Beirut asking for the Syrians to get the heck out.  I ask again, do these things occur with President Gore or President Kerry?  I don't think they do. Which is not to say the Bush policy is above criticism, but there is a democratic revolution going on in the world and George Bush is its biggest cheerleader.

Here is an interesting passage. One wonders what will happen if Syria refuses to comply with UN resolutions calling for the removal of its military from Lebanon? 

Earlier, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield met Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud.

He said he reiterated Washington's demand that Syria comply with UN resolution 1559, passed in September, calling for the withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon.

"We want to see free and fair elections take place [in Lebanon] this spring," he said.

"It's important that steps take place on the ground prior to those elections including the beginning of the implementation of Resolution 1559."

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa has rejected calls for a full withdrawal from Lebanon, saying this is something not even the Lebanese want.

            Damascus said last week that it would draw it troops back from western Lebanon to areas nearer the Syrian border, though it did not specify when.