Obama Okays Keystone XL

File under "half pipe pipeline". In a move that defies the rules of Corynomics, the Obama administration has signaled that it will support the construction of part of the Keystone XL pipeline. From The Hill:

TransCanada said Monday that it will begin construction on a section of the pipeline that runs from Cushing, Okla., to Texas. It would carry crude oil pumped from land in the Midwest and surrounding areas to refineries in Texas…

The Oklahoma-to-Texas project "will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight year high," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement, echoing Obama's previous endorsement of the pipeline segment.

In a departure from the Administrations usual procedure, Carney failed to blame Bush for the increase in oil production. He might well have, since almost all of the increased production is the result of permits extended before Obama took office.

"Today on federal land, the area where the president has control, production in the Gulf of Mexico is down 30 percent. Lease sales in Rocky Mountains on federal lands are down 70 percent," Jack Gerard, head of the American Petroleum Institute said.

He says the president has put 85 percent of the outer continental shelf off limits and overall, is only making 3 percent of the areas under his control available for development.

Numbers from think tanks and the federal Energy Information Administration confirm those numbers.

Let us sum this up: the Administration says that increasing our domestic oil production is a very good idea and takes credit for the increase. It has also done everything in its power (minus three percent) to block any increase in domestic oil production.

It is difficult to see how the Administration's various decisions add up to a policy. Why did the Administration suddenly decide that part of the Keystone XL pipeline might be a good idea? Were the benefits of removing bottlenecks not just as evident months or decades before now? The Hill has a suggestion:

By supporting the southern portion of the pipeline, the White House was able to blunt Republican criticism of the administration's energy policies. But the move quickly re-opened a rift with the president's environmental base, which condemned the project.

That is the only thing that makes sense. The Administration didn't pull the plug on KXL because of any new information or arguments that came to light. The review process had been going on for three years, about twice as long as such a review usually takes. Obama nixed KXL because he was worried about soft support on the environmental left. Why did he check the box next to "partial Keystone construction" on one of those forms by means of which he conducts the nation's business alone, in the dead of night? Right now his campaign is worried about the effect of rising gas prices. Of course Keystone light won't affect energy prices until 2013, but perhaps it will "blunt Republican criticism."

This may be good campaign rhetoric but it is incoherent as policy. The same economic principles that Carney appeals to in order to justify Keystone light also indicate bringing Canadian oil down.

A big part of the opposition to KXL was motivated by an opposition to harvesting the Canadian oil sands. Blocking the pipeline won't stop oil sands exploitation, however. It will just mean that the oil will go west rather than south. It will cut through a lot more wilderness. It will be loaded onto freighters and shipped across some of the most perilous sea lanes on the planet. It will be refined in China where, to put it mildly, environmental scruples are not stronger than they are in the US. Not only will oil be exported to China, so will a lot of American jobs.

This makes no sense economically. It is far more risky for the environment than shipping the oil south. It makes no sense as foreign policy, as it decouples Canadian energy from the US and ties Canada more closely to China.

It makes sense only in terms of campaign strategy, which is apparently all that is important to the Administration at this stage. Even on those grounds, the recent decision looks dubious. If it blunts "Republican criticisms," it also numbs the tingle in the legs of the environmental lobby.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune blasted the TransCanada plan to build the pipeline segment. "TransCanada is hell bent on bringing tar sands, the world's dirtiest oil, through America to reach foreign markets," Brune said in a statement.

If we could just hook some cables up to Obama himself, alternative energy might deliver on its promise. He's spinning faster than any wind turbine ever could.

The Elements Line Up Against the AGW Agenda

The anthropogenic global warming agenda has had a worse month than Mitt Romney. I have considered the Peter Gleick scandal. Now consider the fact that the green energy evangelism of European governments has lost its Holy Ghost. Germany, one of the biggest promoters of solar power, seems to be about to pull the plug out of the socket. Bjørn Lomborg at Project Syndicate:

According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany's minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a "threat to the economy."

Germany's enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world's energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun's energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe's energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6% of the Sahara Desert.

Unfortunately, Germany – like most of the world – is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.

And then there are the winds. Germany has been committed to alternative energy, so if the sun doesn't shine maybe the wind will blow. Except when it doesn't. From Der Spiegel:

Germany's plans for a radical expansion in offshore wind power generation are at risk of failure because of delays in hooking the wind farms up to the power grid, German power company E.on warned on Tuesday.

Mike Winkel, head of the company's Climate & Renewables division, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that E.on and other power companies will stop investing in offshore power if the grid operators don't speed up their construction of power lines to transport the power generated by the wind farms.

Viable sources of power attract honest investments and honest investments encourage ruthless efficiency. Sources of power that are attractive only because they sound nice encourage, well, something other than honest investments and efficiency.

If the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine on alternative energy in Germany, well…

But for heaven's sake, at least the AGW folks could depend on the glaciers to keep melting. Apparently they cannot, according to the Guardian:

Researchers are said to be shocked by a new study published in Nature that has found the world's largest mountain chain, which stretches from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, has lost no ice over the past decade.

Scientists had previously claimed that climate change is causing a net loss of ice and water from the glaciers and ice caps that straddle the Himalayas and other mountain ranges around the world.

Of the four basic elements, air, fire, and water seem to have abandoned the global warming agenda. Dirt could not be reached for comment.

On the other hand, the ether seems to be weighing in. From the Wall Street Journal:

Scientists have been speculating on the relationship among cosmic rays, solar activity and clouds since at least the 1970s. But the notion didn't get a workout until 1995, when Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark came across a 1991 paper by Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, who had charted a close relationship between solar variations and changes in the earth's surface temperature since 1860.

Svensmark had an idea and physicist Jasper Kirby checked it out. From Nature:

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: 'cosmic rays' from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth's atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

Here's the climate change connection.

For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet's atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.

The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.

Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.

So if you find it plausible that periods of high solar activity (when the sun turns the knob up to eleven) would warm the earth, you might be right for the wrong reason. A hyperactive sun means a stronger magnetic field, which means fewer cosmic rays, which means fewer clouds, which means a warmer earth, if Svensmark is right.

Did the earth warm significantly over the last century? Almost certainly. What caused that warming? I don't know and neither do you. Will the massive investments in alternative energy in developed countries have any effect on the climate? No. Do they make sense on any other grounds? Almost certainly not. If we are going to have a realistic policy, it might be a good idea to pay some attention to reality.

Spotlight@Northern with Peter Augustine Lawler

On Wednesday, all going as planned, Spotlight@Northern will be entertained an educated by Peter Augustine Lawler. This is some of what The New Atlantis has to say about him:

Peter Augustine Lawler, a New Atlantis contributing editor, is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means for Our Future (ISI, 2010).

I have had the pleasure of Peter's company at a Liberty Fund colloquium. He is a first rate scholar and thinker.

For excellent samples of Professor Lawler's work, see the numerous articles in the New Atlantis in the link above. He also produces a blog: Rightly Understood.

Pharmacists & Free Exercise

A Federal District Court in Tacoma, Washington, handed down a notable decision this week, Stormans Inc., v. Selecky. Here is the question, from the case summary:

This case presents a novel question: can the State compel licensed pharmacies and pharmacists to dispense lawfully prescribed emergency contraceptives over their sincere religious belief that doing so terminates a human life? In 2007, under pressure from the Governor, Planned Parenthood, and the Northwest Women's Law Center, the Washington State Board of Pharmacy enacted regulations designed to do just that.

The District Court concluded that

Based on the evidence presented at trial, the Board's regulations, while facially acceptable, are in practice unconstitutional.

I was at first inclined to be skeptical of the District Court's holding. I think that the law should not force pharmacists or doctors to participate in abortions (or what they consider to be abortions) or to dispense or proscribe contraceptives in violation of their religious beliefs. However, I am not convinced that such a law necessarily violates the Free Exercise Clause. I hold, with the Court in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), that religious motives do not confer any immunity to otherwise permissible laws.

After a quick reading of the Stormans case, I think the District Court has a serious argument. In Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a law that burdens a religious practice does not collide with the Free Exercise Clause if:

1. The law is generally applicable (applies to everyone the same regardless of religious identity or motive) and
2. Is neutral with regard to religion (does not take sides with one faith against another or faith against absence of faith).

I think that that is the right test and when the Tacoma court says that the Washington State Board of Pharmacy's rule is "facially acceptable," that is apparently what the court meant. All pharmacists, regardless of their moral and religious views, would be legally compelled to dispense contraceptives including "Plan B."

In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah (1993), however, the high court struck down a law that pretended to be a public health ordnance but was in fact an attempt to run a disfavored religious community out of town. The law prohibited the slaughter of animals for specifically religious purposes while allowing the slaughter of animals for a wide range of other purposes. It was clearly aimed at the Santeria religion. The Tacoma Court found that the Washington Pharmacy Board's 2007 regulation was much the same.

Critics of conscience clause exemptions for pharmacists will frequently say that anyone who is not prepared to dispense all legal products to their customers should choose another line of work. In fact, pharmacies decide all the time not to stock certain legal products. They may do so because they judge that there is no market for them, or because they are not covered by Medicare, or for a host of other reasons. Here is a telling quote from Stormans:

Mr. Saxe was asking, rightfully, why the Board did not simply draft clear language to do exactly what it was attempting to do with vague language—bar pharmacists and pharmacies from conscientiously objecting, while at the same time allowing pharmacies and pharmacists to refuse to dispense for practically any other reason. Doing so would be easier, of course, than "trying to draft language to allow facilitating a referral for only . . . non-moral or non-religious reasons," the ultimate goal of the proposed draft. Pl.'s Ex. 157 (email from Mr. Saxe to Ms. Hulet). Indeed, Mr. Saxe's division of reasons not to dispense into illegitimate (i.e., moral reasons) and legitimate (i.e., any other reason) highlights the goal of the Board, the Governor, and the advocacy groups: to eliminate conscientious objection.

There we have the problem. The Board, the Governor, and the advocacy groups were specifically targeting religious objectors. The rule would allow a pharmacist to refuse to dispense a product for almost any secular reason. It would require the pharmacist to dispense the product only if his objections were motived by religious conscience.

That looks like a free exercise violation to me. If the District Court's account of the facts is accurate, the State of Washington was trying to do to conscientiously objecting pharmacists what the City of Hialeah tried to do to the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc., run them out of town. That is precisely what the Free Exercise Clause was designed to forbid.

Spotlight@Northern with Ron Bailey, Now Online

You can view it here. The sound is a little buzzy, but you can hear it well enough. I think it is a very interesting conversation. I invite you to email us at spotlight@northern.edu. You are also welcome to comment here.

 

The Gleick Scandal 2

I am replying here to several interesting comments to my last post. From reader D. E. Bishop:

I haven't seen any Proof of forgery yet. Does it exist? I don't mean opinions or suggestions or insistences, or even, "Everybody knows... Proof. Is there any proof?

I reply that the burden of proof lies solely on the person who disseminates the document. Meagan McArdle has done a masterful job of presenting the internal evidence against the document. What does Peter Gleick have to say in defense of it?

At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the Institute's apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.

In the absence of further evidence of the "anonymous document's" authenticity, a person with any sense of honor is not only entitled but obligated to regard it as fraudulent. Others have pointed out that no one else claims to have received the same document. Gleick is the only source.

Reader A.I. posted this:

The pot would be the climate change skeptics and deniers that have their undies in a bunch over alleged "fraud" in the kettle outing possibly forged documents from the Heartland Institute. They/you seem to be forgetting their/your total lack of outrage at the way information was obtained by HACKING emails in the episode I reference while gleefully distorting the contents of those emails in an effort to discredit the findings of climate scientists.

If I have yet to express outrage over the release of the East Anglia emails, it is largely because no one has yet discovered how they were obtained or who obtained and first disseminated them. The problem with emails is that they travel around in bundles and often end up in the wrong hands. It is not impossible that the emails were legitimately obtained.

It is more plausible to assume that the University of East Anglia email system was hacked. That would be a serious invasion of privacy and perhaps a crime. In previous comment I conceded that "If a credentialed critic of AGW were found to have stolen the East Anglia files, that would be a deep wound to his or her reputation."

By contrast, we know everything about the Gleick case except who produced the suspicious document. Here is what Gleick himself has admitted, continued from above:

Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues.

So Gleick fraudulently obtained genuine documents and attempted to use them to support the "anonymous document". This is scandalous behavior: scientifically and intellectually dishonest. It is more and less amusing that, until very recently, Gleick was the chair of the American Geophysical Union "Task Force on Scientific Ethics."

Friend and infrequent supporter Bill Fleming has this:

I agree with KB's post here if I understand what he's saying correctly. Integrity is essential in this debate. Positively essential from those who wish to affect change in our energy practices. And further, they need to convince the world, not just the Republicans. It's time to be impeccable. It could be past time.

Thanks, Bill. That was indeed my point.

Climate Science Shenanigans

The phrases "climate change" and the older, still serviceable "global warming," both indicate two different things: a scientific argument and a political controversy. Folks on each side of both frequently and often intentionally confuse the two.

The scientific argument concerns global changes in climate: how much, how fast, in what direction, and why? The political controversy is over what beliefs are to be considered orthodox and what actions are to be advocated. The greatest difficulty in the current political and intellectual climate is that, often, the same people who speak with the authority of science are simultaneously practicing political activism.

The Heartland Institute has been advocating free market solutions to environmental problems for almost thirty years. A few days ago, the Institute was the subject of an attack. From Meagan McArdle:

The climate blogs have been swept by quite a scoop in the past few days. An anonymous leaker identified only as "Heartland Insider" has dumped a cache of documents on climate blogs purporting to reveal the inner workings of the Heartland Institute, a vigorous promoter of skepticism about anthropogenic global warming…

According to Heartland, someone contacted them pretending to be a board member, and requested that the organization "resend" their annual meeting board package to an alternative email address. And apparently some gullible staffer actually complied.

What you think about fraudulently obtaining documents and then publishing them usually depends on whom you want to see embarrassed. In this case, the embarrassment seems to have fallen largely on Heartland's attacker. From the DOT Earth blog at the New York Times:

Peter H. Gleick, a water and climate analyst who has been studying aspects of global warming for more than two decades, in recent years became an aggressive critic of organizations and individuals casting doubt on the seriousness of greenhouse-driven climate change. He used blogs, congressional testimony, group letters and other means to make his case.

Now, Gleick has admitted to an act that leaves his reputation in ruins and threatens to undercut the cause he spent so much time pursuing.

Gleick has admitted that he was responsible for the fraud that resulted in the release of the Heartland documents. That alone would, perhaps, leave his reputation in ruins. However, it gets worse for Dr. Gleick. Again from McArdle:

Much of the attention has centered around an explosive document titled "2012 Heartland Climate Strategy", which contains stuff like their plans for "dissuading [K-12 teachers] from teaching science".

As McArdle demonstrates in detail, the "Heartland Climate Strategy" document is almost certainly a forgery. It was not obtained from Heartland but produced by one of Heartland's enemies and slipped into the cache. Gleick claims to have received it from an anonymous source but, given his admission above, suspicion has to fall on him.

Fabricating documents in order to incriminate or blacken the reputation of an enemy is one of the most scurrilous of devices. It has a long history, dating back at least to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If the HCS document is indeed a fabrication, it hardly matters whether Gleick himself produced it. He was intentionally implicit in its dissemination.

Here we have the problem. I have written for several years now on the science and politics of climate change. I believe that global warming is real and I regard the view that human activity is a contributing factor as something that has to be taken seriously. Those beliefs depend, however, on some confidence in the scientific community. That confidence is deeply wounded by obvious examples of political corruption.

Peter Gleick is corrupt. He prostituted his scientific credentials in order to perpetrate an act of fraud. His act not only condemns himself but cast doubt on climate science in general. How many Peter Gleicks are out there?

The integrity of science demands a very strict moral code. Precisely if climate change is a grave threat, climate scientists must scrupulously confine themselves to what the science actually says and eschew all temptations to cook the books. Right now, it is hard to trust the climate science community.

Spotlight@Northern with Ronald Bailey

Ronald Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason magazine. I have had the pleasure of knowing Ron for several years. He is the very model of a modern libertarian: gentle and entertaining in presence and astonishingly well informed. I find it very frustrating to reason with Ron. He is always confusing me with arguments and evidence.

Last week Professor Schaff and I interviewed Ron on Spotlight@Northern. I believe the show is running now on channel 12. It isn't up yet on the NSU TV website, but it will be soon. You can find it here. This was our first interview recorded by means of Skype. Ron was coming to us from his living room in Charlottesville, Virginia. The very fact that this was possible tends to confirm some of Ron's views about technology, a fact that he was not too shy to point out.

I would direct your attention to his recent post on Reason about fracking.

Citizens who are concerned that fracking -- pumping a mixture of water, sand, and small amounts of chemicals into deep wells to break open natural gas and oil supplies -- should be happy with the findings of a new study just released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference today.

Ron is being a bit funny here. "Citizens who are concerned" about fracking includes people living near the wells and environmental activists who are basically opposed to any new sources of fossil fuels. Neither is likely to be much interested in good news about fracking. Still, the good news is good news.

I would also direct your attention to a debate at The New Atlantis, a remarkable journal on science and politics. You can find Ron's article "The Case for Enhancing People" here. See also Benjamin Storey's reply. Here is Bailey's closing paragraph:

The very good news is that the history of the last two centuries has shown that technological advance has been far more beneficial than harmful for humanity. The development of age-retardation and other enhancement technologies will be further steps along that encouraging progressive path. We should all have the right to choose to use or not use new technologies to help us and our families flourish. Is humanity ready for enhancements like radically longer life spans? We're about as ready as we'll ever be. In other words: yes.

Ron combines a robust optimism about technological progress with a profound commitment to individual liberty. That is a powerful mix. Conservatives are not known for their optimism. I once took a political identify survey which identified me as a conservative with libertarian leanings. I think that was about right.

I certainly agree with Ron that technological advance has been far more beneficial than harmful for humanity. I would go so far as to say that the only viable way out of the problems that that advance creates is through the further advance. There is no going back without catastrophe. Still, I am more concerned than he is about the delicate conditions of human dignity and flourishing as they are affected by radical change. I know a lot of conservatives who are much more doubtful. For anyone who shares these concerns, Ronald Bailey is required reading.

Who’s Killing Social Security?

Last December the Republicans in Congress tried to insist that an extension of the payroll tax cuts be paid for. They got their heads handed to them. This week both chambers approved another extension. From The Hill:

In the House, the measure was approved in a 293-132 vote that split both parties. The vote was 146-91 among Republicans, and 147-41 among Democrats.

The Senate acted less than an hour later and approved the bill in a 60-36 vote. Senate Republican and Democratic leaders agreed the bill would not require a 60-vote supermajority for passage, a move intended to allow more Republicans to vote against the measure. In the end that procedural maneuver didn't matter.

The passage secures an early-year election victory for Obama, who has seen his poll numbers rise during the fight over the payroll tax cut, which began last year.

Notch one up for the President and Congressional Democrats. They won the battle of appearances and got what they wanted in substance. The only price they had to pay was inflicting yet another injury on the Social Security system. Here is one flaming right winger making that case, from the Huffington Post:

"This Congress will be making a grave mistake -- a grave mistake -- and reinforcing a dangerous precedent," Harkin said in a dramatic Senate floor speech late Thursday. "And I'm dismayed that Democrats, including a Democratic president and a Democratic vice president, have proposed this, and are willing to sign off on a deal that could begin the unraveling of Social Security."

Harkin argued that Social Security had always been strong and protected because it was funded by its own dedicated tax stream that ensured every American would be guaranteed a basic income in their retirements, and that the program added not "even one dime to the deficits or the national debt."

But he said now that Congress was going to pay for this cut with borrowed money from the general treasury funds, the best argument of the program's defenders was gone.

"With this bill, we can no longer say that. We can no longer say that Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit," Harkin said.

He argued that a far better plan would have been to simply grant working Americans rebates on their income taxes, the way Presidents Obama and George W. Bush had done in recent years.

No, wait! That was Senator Tom Harkin, left wing firebrand from Iowa. Harkin's objection looks odd at first glance. He seems to be mostly worried about the precedent. Democrats have let the cat out of the bag: Social Security is one more expense that has to be paid for the way everything else is paid for.

In fact, Harkin knows exactly what the problem is but is more courageous than anyone else about saying so. Social Security is funded primarily through the payroll tax. Money flowing in from that source flows directly out to recipients. For decades the system ran a surplus. The extra cash went directly into the treasury in exchange for "special issue securities, which are in effect IOUs. Those securities constitute the trust fund. As long as the surplus lasted, there was a net flow of money from the Social Security system into the treasury.

Now that the system is no longer running a surplus the securities are automatically being paid back by the treasury, which means that the flow of money is reversed. Until the trust fund is exhausted, the treasury will continue to fund the Social Security deficit without Congress needing to bother about it. Contrary to Harkin's argument, Social Security no longer enjoys a sufficient "dedicated tax stream" and is now adding a great many dimes to the national debt.

What happens when the trust fund runs out? At that point Congress will have to authorize payments into the system to cover its liabilities. The trust fund will no longer disguise the fact that Social Security is one more burden on the national treasury and that its expense has to be balanced against every other thing that Congress wants to spend money on. That is what Harkin fears.

The Senator realizes that the payroll tax cuts reduce the dedicated revenue stream and thereby the trust is being exhausted all the faster. Who is killing Social Security? President Obama and his Party in Congress are doing so, with the help of accomplices on the other side of the aisle. Harkin might exhorted our President and the Democrats to stop being fiscally irresponsible. He has not the courage for that, apparently; nor is he stupid.

The Routes to Same Sex Marriage

Two routes to legalized same sex marriage are in collision in New Jersey. From The Politico:

The New Jersey Assembly passed a bill recognizing gay marriage on Thursday, setting the stage for a veto by Gov. Chris Christie.

The state Assembly vote, 42-33, came after more than two hours of debate, The Associated Press reported. Christie, a Republican who favors a statewide referendum on the issue, has vowed a veto. On Tuesday, he said he would take "swift action" against the bill if it hit his desk.

The legislature would have until January 2014 to muster enough votes for an override.

Here is my list of the possible routes to legal same sex marriage, from most to least democratic.

1. A state-wide initiative passed by the voters.
2. A state law passed by the legislature.
3. A national law passed by Congress and Presented to the President.
4. A judicial fiat instituting same sex marriage issued by a state supreme court.
5. A judicial fiat instituting same sex marriage issued by a federal appeals court.
6. A judicial fiat instituting same sex marriage issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Governor Christie prefers #1 to #2 as a means for deciding the question. If you like the initiative and referendum process (I do not) you should be with the Governor, at least on this one. I prefer #2. If we are going to bother to elect legislatures, it were best to hold them responsible for legislating.

Given that #3 is exceedingly unlikely and constitutionally dubious and that #5 is both too broad, too narrow, and inconclusive, the only alternatives to the first two are #4 and #6.

There are in fact no constitutional grounds for deciding which two persons may marry. Age restrictions, degree of relatedness, etc., all depend on custom and judgment calls that are more appropriate to the democratic branches. Judges who pretend otherwise are merely writing their own judgments into the margin of constitutions.

If you think you like that, imagine the switcheroo scenario: after a sudden economic stall in May 2012, Republicans surge in the polls. President Santorum gets to submit three or four new Supreme Court nominees to a veto proof Republican majority in the Senate. The new court decides to remake the Constitution in the new President's image. You can decide how frightening you think that would be. Perhaps you can appreciate the idea that judges should confine themselves to judicial questions an leave political ones alone.

I am in favor of same sex marriage but I think that it should be won in the old fashion way: by persuasion and voting. This has the advantage that it forces everyone to confront the issue and over time builds support. Consider Governor Christie's remarks in the clip above. Although he has religious objections to homosexuality, he clearly thinks that same sex couples should enjoy the basic benefits of the institution of marriage. That is rather remarkable.

I respect the opinions of my friends and colleagues who are opposed to same sex marriage, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument against it. The weakness of the case is likely to become more manifest to everyone if it has to be made publicly by legislators and other advocates.

Obama Plays Dodgeball With the Budget

Moody's has downgraded adjusted the credit ratings of nine European countries. China is deferring action on its own debt crisis. Fortunately the U.S. enjoys sound fiscal leadership. It being February, the President has released his budget. Here is how Dana Milbank describes it at the WaPo:

The White House's budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions. Even then, the proposal would add $1 trillion more to the national debt than Obama contemplated a few months ago — and it is a non-starter on Capitol Hill, where even Senate Democrats have no plans to take it up. It is, in other words, exactly what it was supposed to be: a campaign document.

The broken promise refers to the President assuring us, at the beginning of his term, that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of it. Was it really a promise if no one believed it at the time? In fact, the President's current budget would look depressing enough even if it weren't a fraud. That it is fraudulent means that the reality will be much worse.

Let's, for a moment, stick with the merely depressing.

The budget calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. It shows deficits exceeding $600 billion in every year but one over the next decade, while the debt grows to $18.7 trillion.

And add these bits from Veronique de Rugy at The Corner.

Debt held by the public in 2012 will stand at $11.5 trillion, and by 2022 it will reach $19.4 trillion. That's a $7,900,000,000,000 increase in our debt.

By 2022, annual interest payments will be $1 trillion annually.

The Washington Post itself is conflicted. It doesn't like Republican plans because they slash spending, but it challenges the imagination to guess how the problem could be addressed without doing precisely that. Still, the WaPo is disappointed with the President.

To reduce debt, the first order of business must be Medicare. As he recommended with his debt reduction package last fall, Mr. Obama would introduce useful changes such as a premium surcharge for new Medicare beneficiaries who purchase first-dollar Medigap coverage. Still, most of the envisioned cuts fall on Medicare providers and do not go far enough to restructure the system. On Social Security, once again Mr. Obama fails to propose a strategy for putting the program on a sustainable path.

As Dana Milbank observed, the President's budget is not really a budget; it's a campaign document. He is "playing was dodgeball: evading anything resembling a serious budget proposal."

I have no confidence that any Republican can do better. The last time we balanced the federal books, there was a triangulating President in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress. That was in much more favorable economic conditions with a much more modest deficit to contend with.

This much seems certain: Barack Obama is either unwilling or incapable of dealing with the solvency crisis. He may be both. If he is reelected, which seems unlikely but no more unlikely than a Republican victory, we will get four more years of nothing resembling a serious budget proposal.

The Oglala Sioux Sue Anheuser-Busch

Submitted for your approval: two haunting memories. One comes from a Sherman Alexie short story. Alexie, for any reader who does not know him, was born on the Spokane Reservation in Washington and writes incomparable stories about Native American life and especially life on the reservations. If you haven't read his stories, you have much to look forward to. In the story I am thinking of, the main character buys a case of bottled beer. He drives away, opens a bottle and puts it to his lips. As soon as the beer hits his tongue he hurls the bottle out of the window. He does this with every bottle in the case.

The second memory comes from many years ago when I spent a summer working in a liquor store in Poinsett County, Arkansas. Craighead County, where I was born and grew up, was dry. Every evening a long line of cars made the trip from Jonesboro to the county line. You could tell a lot about the customer from his or her purchase. The guy who comes in every day or two and always makes the same purchase, say two bottles of Smirnoff Vodka or two bottles of White Port, was a high end or low end alcoholic. That was a blood level management strategy: one bottle for work and one for home. The guy who buys twenty half pint bottles of Jim Beam was (often quite literally) a bootlegger headed for ASU.

Such are the existential and economic tracks of that peculiar thirst. I thought of these things when I read the Argus Leader's description of recent lawsuit.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe is suing some of the world's largest beer brewers, saying they knowingly have contributed to devastating alcohol-related problems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court of Nebraska, seeks $500 million in damages for the costs the tribe has incurred in dealing with crime and providing social services and health care as a result of rampant alcoholism among the 20,000 tribal members…

It also targets four beer stores in Whiteclay, Neb., a tiny town near the reservation's border that sold almost 5 million cans of beer in 2010 despite having only about a dozen residents.

Equally as important as the damage award the tribe wants is the fact that the lawsuit seeks a ruling of how much beer Whiteclay retailers can sell, White said. This is the key to stopping the trafficking of beer at Pine Ridge.

Trying control alcohol abuse by limiting the supply has always been a losing battle. It often seems to have perverse consequences. Alcohol consumption in dry counties is frequently higher than elsewhere. However, when the problem is this bad maybe it's worth another try.

I am also skeptical of the idea that companies that sell a legal product in legal ways are responsible for the abuse of that product. However, asking the producers and distributors to bear some of the cost of alcohol abuse doesn't seem like asking too much.

This lawsuit, whatever its outcome, won't make a visible dent in the problem. I honestly do not have a clue what would do so. It is a truth that Americans do not easily acknowledge that some problems have no solutions. This does not excuse inattention. We ignore such problems at our moral peril. If the Oglala Sioux Tribe manages to remind us of what we choose to forget, that alone will be worth the billable hours that their lawyers put in.

 

Corporate Personhood & the 2nd Amendment

Intrepid reader and commenter Donald Pays (I don't pay him enough!) left this comment on my last post:

The freedoms in the Bill of Rights are freedoms to individuals, not to organized groups of people.

I have pointed out before that this is nonsense as far as the law is concerned. Corporations both private and public have enjoyed rights under the Constitution from the beginnings of constitutional law. Churches can own property and make contracts.

I point out now that the last amendment in the Bill of Rights is explicitly designed to protect the rights of corporate bodies. From ePublius:

Article [X.]: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10^th Amendment explicitly recognizes powers that belong to "the states" or "to the people". If "the states" aren't "organized groups of people", I cannot guess what they are. It has been rather difficult to determine exactly what powers are reserved by the states. In U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), the Court ruled that the states reserve only such powers as they enjoyed before the Constitution was ratified. Justice Thomas disagreed, reading the 10^th in a more natural way to mean that the states reserve all powers not explicitly granted to the Federal Government or denied to the states. Either way, it is clear that the states as corporate bodies have rights protected in the Bill of Rights.

But let us for a moment consider Mr. Pays' view as it would apply to the Second Amendment.

Article [II.] A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Most Americans who have bothered to read those words think that it protects the rights of individuals to own, possess, and carry firearms. Gun control advocates have argued to the contrary that it protects only the power of states to organize militias and, perhaps, the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms for the purpose of membership in a militia.

In short, the only argument against a constitutional right of individuals to possess and carry firearms requires that we read the Second Amendment as a corporate right rather than an individual right. If Donald were correct that "The freedoms in the Bill of Rights are freedoms to individuals, not to organized groups of people," then that argument is refuted. It would not be necessary even to consider the legislative record or the history of the legal terms in the amendment. The 2^nd Amendment could be nothing other than a guarantee of the rights to individuals to own guns.

In DC v. Heller (2008) the Court ruled that the 2^nd Amendment

protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self- defense within the home. The Court based its holding on the text of the Second Amendment, as well as applicable language in state constitutions adopted soon after the Second Amendment.

I would add that Scalia delved into the relevant language in English law and history to make an overwhelming case for the majority's interpretation. That said, the majority never imagined that the 2^nd Amendment could not have been a grant to "organized groups of people", i.e., the states. The dissenters explicit argued that it was only a corporate and not at all an individual right.

I think that the Court was clearly right in Heller. If Donald and other critics of corporate personhood are correct then the only contrary argument, that the 2^nd Amendment does not protect individual rights to own working guns, is not even wrong. It is incoherent. I would never go that far. Those who refuse to acknowledge the obvious legal fact of corporate personhood have already gone that far. I thought it germane to point that out.

Is the Catholic Hospital Rule Unconstitutional? No.

Reactions to the Supreme Court's Hosanna-Tabor ruling were predictable. Conservatives liked it and liberals mostly did not. You might file this one under: "be careful what you wish for."

In Hosanna-Tabor, the Court carved out a "ministerial exception" to employment discrimination laws. The Free Exercise Clause gives churches a complete discretion to appoint and dismiss ministers and other religious functionaries, free from government interference. I think the unanimous decision was correct. See my posts on the decision here and here.

The recent ruling by HHS that, under the Affordable Care Act, church-affiliated hospitals must cover free contraceptives as part of their health care coverage for employees has ignited a firestorm of opposition. The Sibelius rule (let's call it that) was anticipated and there were already lawsuits in the works against it. I expect that more will follow. The lawsuits will challenge the rule as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause.

I argued previously that the rule is bad policy and dreadful politics. I also suggested that it was not unconstitutional. I make that case in more detail here.

Hosanna-Tabor seems to work against the argument that the new rule violates Free Exercise of Religion. Pastors and "called teachers" are religious functionaries and thus enjoy the ministerial exception. The Court left open the possibility that, even in a Church, certain employees might be coverable by anti-discrimination laws if their mission was purely secular. I suggested the example of a gardener. I think that that was the point of this passage in Justice Thomas' concurrence.

The question whether an employee is a minister is itself religious in nature, and the answer will vary widely. Judicial attempts to fashion a civil definition of "minister" through a bright-line test or multi-factor analysis risk disadvantaging those religious groups whose beliefs, practices, and membership are outside of the "mainstream" or unpalatable to some. Moreover, uncertainty about whether its ministerial designation will be rejected, and a corresponding fear of liability, may cause a religious group to conform its beliefs and practices regarding "ministers" to the prevailing secular understanding. See Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327, 336 (1987) ("[I]t is a significant burden on a religious organization to require it, on pain of substantial liability, to predict which of its activities a secular court will consider religious…"

I think that Justice Thomas wants the ministerial exception to cover all church employees and I think he was right.

However, if a pastor is a religious functionary and even a gardener hired by a church may be such, doctors and nurses in a church-affiliated hospital manifestly are not religious functionaries. One might argue that they certainly are covered by all relevant employee discrimination laws for precisely the reason that pastors are not.

A stronger case can be based on the Court's Free Exercise jurisprudence. In Sherbert v. Verner (1962), the Court ruled that Adeil Sherbert, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, could not be denied unemployment benefits because she refused to work on Saturdays (her Sabbath). This imposed a "significant burden" on her ability to freely practice her religion.

If Sherbert were still the test, a Free Exercise challenge to the Sibelius might succeed. The trouble with the test is that it might amount to a blanket license to ignore any law to which one claimed a religious objection. To avoid this, the Court insisted that the burden to free exercise must be "significant", but that in turn meant that the Court would have to decide which religious practices were significant. Inevitably, the Court would be tempted to bless practices it approved of and deny blessing to those that it did not approve of. That looks problematic under the Establishment Clause. The Sherbert Test was bad jurisprudence.

It was replaced in Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith (1990). The question in that case was this: can a state deny unemployment benefits to a person fired because of the use of illegal drugs (peyote) for religious purposes. The Court said "yes." As long as a law is generally applicable (meaning that it applies to everyone equally, regardless of religious motive or affiliation) and is otherwise constitutionally valid, then it does not run afoul of the Free Exercise Clause. The Free Exercise Clause only blocks laws that specifically target religious practice.

I think that the Smith Test is the right one. The Free Exercise Clause is not a "get out of jail free card" for the religiously motivated. It is designed to prohibit legislation that targets unpopular religious practices. To see a rare case of a genuine violation, look to Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah (1992). The City of Hialeah in Florida drafted an ordnance designed to push the Santeria church out of town.

I think the State of Oregon and all other states should allow the ceremonial use of peyote. I don't think that any state should allow female circumcision. Those are judgment calls which the Free Exercise Clause cannot control. They are best left to legislatures.

Similarly, I think that the Sibelius rule is bad policy. Forcing church-affiliated hospitals to pay for birth control against their founding principles is not worth offending the donors and managers of institutions that do an immense amount of public good. Arranging the laws to maximize religious liberty is a bedrock part of American policy. However, just because I think that the rule is bad policy doesn't mean that it's unconstitutional.

These are preliminary reflections. We will have to see how this plays out if, as I expect, it lands before the High Court. I am inclined to think that the rule is not a violation of Free Exercise and I expect that the Court will agree.

Al Hunt on Obama the Insular

Al Hunt is a flaming liberal with snowy white hair. I think he was born with the latter, for I remember watching him on the tube back when I was still in grad school. He has a piece today on Bloomberg.com: Team Obama Shows Dangerous Penchant for Hubris.

The hubris that Hunt is worried about concerns Obama's reelection, which Hunt is worried about. I note that his story confirms what I have been arguing about the President's exercise (or lack thereof) of his office.

Today, the administration's chest-thumping over the State of the Union address is illustrative. It was a good political pitch, putting Republicans on the defensive on the fairness issue. It also was devoid of governing substance, something political handlers and White House spin doctors have tried to deny.

The president didn't mention the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. He appointed that panel two years ago. Then, when it issued a bipartisan report on how to fix the government's books in December 2010, the president went silent. Privately, the White House's explanation was that they kept quiet because they wanted to smoke out the budget proposal of the House Republicans, which was being drafted by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. That was unveiled almost a year ago, and the Democrats got lots of political mileage out of it.

The Bowles-Simpson commission was Obama's one good chance to actually address the debt issue. The President created the commission and then studiously ignored its report. Apparently, "smoking out" House Republicans was more important than actually tending to the public business. Or perhaps there wasn't a Bowles-Simpson box for the President to check on one of his midnight memos.

Hunt has another revealing story.

Another illustration of presidential hubris involved the Bush family. The White House put out a picture of a private meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 27 that included former President George H.W. Bush and his son, Jeb, the former governor of Florida.

The Bushes were in town for the annual black tie dinner the next night at the Alfalfa Club, a gathering of business and political elites. The two featured speakers, both intended to be brief and humorous, were Obama and Jeb Bush. The president spoke to good reviews. He left before Bush spoke.

Obama hates such dinners. Some of his aides, in particular his political adviser David Plouffe, urged him not to spend an evening mingling with the 1 percent. Yet he chose to go, and attendees said it was the first time they could recall a speaker leaving before the other side had its fun. In addition, Obama's 87-year-old predecessor was present.

Imagine the criticism five years ago if President George W. Bush had walked out on a dinner before Hillary Clinton spoke, with Bill Clinton in the audience.

Hunt is honest enough to admit the Press's double standard and that the President was being unprecedentedly rude. But why should anyone expect Obama to stick around? That isn't his M.O.

Most revealing, however, is this:

The most dangerous sign of arrogance is Team Obama's insularity. It's an exclusive club, with no room for outsiders. Inside the White House, that dynamic is personified by Valerie Jarrett, the president and first lady's longtime confidante, who conducts the loyalty litmus tests…

The same generally applies to the political team. Conversations last week with five of the smartest and most experienced Democratic political strategists -- none associated with the Obama campaign -- yielded the same bottom line: They're only consulted occasionally and the outreach is pro forma. If it's a runaway election, that approach will work out fine for the White House; if it gets tight, Obama may need some other counsel.

You have to love that bit about "loyalty litmus tests." This supports the argument I have been making: that the culture of White House is a series of concentric circles, increasingly insular as one nears the man in the center.

As I noted, Hunt is worried only that this might put the President's reelection in jeopardy if the election is close. There might be more important things to worry about. The President's inner circle is just as insular with respect to Congress. If they consult "the smartest and most experienced Democratic political strategists" only a occasionally and in a pro forma way regarding the campaign, they likely do the same with smart and experienced strategists on policy issues. What if something more important than an election needs attention? Perhaps part of the problem is the Obama inner circle cannot conceive of anything more important than that.

The Man Who Wasn’t There 3

I have noted the general dismay among both Republicans (expected) and Democrats (not so much) over the President's aloofness. He doesn't stick around after the photo shoots. He has done very little to cultivate personal relationships with key members of Congress. Allow me to repeat a quote from the New York Times:

This week, for example, Mr. Obama is ensconced in the protective bubble of the Secret Service. With him are his closest outside-the-Beltway-friends, including Eric Whitaker, a Chicago doctor, and two of Mr. Obama's Hawaii friends from Punahou School: Mike Ramos, a businessman, and Robert Titcomb, a commercial fisherman whom Mr. Obama has stuck by despite his arrest in April on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute. Mr. Obama bolted from Washington last Friday barely an hour after he had signed legislation extending the payroll tax cut after a grinding fight with House Republicans whose result is widely viewed as a big win for him. His relationship with Washington insiders is described by members of both parties as "remote," "distant" and "perfunctory."

That seems like a big problem for any presidency. How can a president provide leadership when he is never around? You might think, however, that he cannot be equally aloof within his own administration. You'd be wrong.

Ryan Lizza has a must read piece, "The Obama Memos", in The New Yorker. Lizza is no friend to Republicans and accordingly he strives, with rather limited success, to tell a story of a President frustrated by an intransigent opposition party. However, he is too good a reporter not to tell the much more interesting and disturbing story that he has at his disposal. It concerns the way that Barack Obama does his job.

Each night, an Obama aide hands the President a binder of documents to review. After his wife goes to bed, at around ten, Obama works in his study, the Treaty Room, on the second floor of the White House residence. President Bush preferred oral briefings; Obama likes his advice in writing. He marks up the decision memos and briefing materials with notes and questions in his neat cursive handwriting. In the morning, each document is returned to his staff secretary. She dates and stamps it—"Back from the OVAL"—and often e-mails an index of the President's handwritten notes to the relevant senior staff and their assistants. A single Presidential comment might change a legislative strategy, kill the proposal of a well-meaning adviser, or initiate a bureaucratic process to answer a Presidential question.

Apparently, the President begins his work day after his wife goes to bed at ten. Lizza does not tell us when the President retires. I am sure that President Bush "preferred oral briefings." I am pretty sure that every other man who occupied the Oval Office preferred oral briefings. One advantage of oral briefings is that you can ask questions. Another is that you can monitor and maintain relationships with members of your team. President Obama is not interested in any of that.

Lizza provides a wealth of examples. Let this one suffice. The Administration had to decide how Democrats would move the healthcare legislation. Here is how that decision was made.

There were two ways for the Senate to approach Obama's health-care plan: the normal process, which required sixty votes to pass the bill, or a shortcut known as "reconciliation," which required only a simple majority and would bypass a possible filibuster. Baucus and several other key Senate Democrats opposed reconciliation, and Republicans decried its use on such major legislation as a partisan power grab. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, complained that using reconciliation would "make it absolutely clear" that Obama and the Democrats in Congress "intend to carry out all of their plans on a purely partisan basis."

On April 10th, Obama's aides sent him a memo asking him to decide the issue. The White House could still fashion a bipartisan bill, but it was important to have the fifty-one-vote option as a backup plan, in case they weren't able to win any Republican support and faced a filibuster. They recommended that he "insist on reconciliation instructions for health care." Below this language, Obama was offered three options: "Agree," "Disagree," "Let's Discuss." The President placed a check mark on the line next to "Agree."

The President is as aloof within his own administration as he is generally. He governs by checking boxes and making brief notes "in his neat cursive handwriting."

I cannot argue any longer that the President provides no leadership. He provides leadership by means of written notes that make a twit look prolix when, that is, he is not merely checking boxes.

This is our man. He could govern from a more remote position only if he were to move his quarters to Newt's moon base. He leads, as Lizza has written before, "from behind." Now we have an idea of how far behind that is.

Wislawa Szymborska 1923-2012

Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska passed away on February 1^st. I note this with double regret.  Szymborska has long been one of my favorite poets but I don't think I have read any of her poetry for years. There are at least two kinds of death: the moment that the heart gives up its charge and all the moments of neglect and inattention that precede the final event. It is a basic fact about human beings that we use the occasion of death to remember, thus fighting a losing but perhaps heroic battle against the little deaths.

In her honor, I offer a poem that I occasionally use in my biology and politics course.

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.

The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.

When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.

If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

 

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.

Lions and lice don't waver in their course.

Why should they, when they know they're right?

 

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,

in every other way they're light.

 

On this third planet of the sun

among the signs of bestiality

a clear conscience is Number One.

It's hard to beat that line "if snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean." What does it mean to say that lions and lice "know they're right"? Perhaps only this: that to know one is right is not angelic but beastly.

Szymborska doesn't include any primates in her list, which may be deliberate. She was a very scientifically astute poet. At least some traces of a moral sense have been detected in monkeys and apes.

The essential task of all art is to see, to respond to what Robert Penn Warren described as the sense that the world is trying to tell us something. What the poet demonstrates here is that the bad conscience is not only uniquely human but is about striving to be or become human. That's not bad for twelve lines.

Nazis With Nukes

The preferred method for dealing with unruly nations is to bring international pressure against them and deploy sanctions. This method is preferred in part because it is relatively cheap in lives and treasure. It is preferred for the most part because it allows one to defer difficult decisions almost indefinitely.

That doesn't mean that it can't work. Sanctions brought an end to White rule in South Africa and an end to Gaddafi's nuclear program in Libya. It is possible that it will work in Syria.

The Assad regime is fighting an armed insurgency similar to the one that brought down Gaddafi. On the ground, the facts do not favor the insurgency. The regime has a professional army with lots of mobile armor. The army is manned by Alawites, the Shia minority that rules the country. If the regime fails, the Alawites will be at the mercy of the Sunni majority (70%), so they have a very clear motive to keep fighting. The insurgents, meanwhile, depend on smuggled and recovered small arms. Unlike the Libyan rebels, they aren't getting American air cover.

Russia has been intransigent in its support of the regime. There are some signs that Russia might go along with serious UN sanctions. The Arab League likewise has said a lot of harsh things about the Assad Regime without yet being willing to do anything. If Assad is really isolated, it is difficult to see how he can hold out.

There is also some evidence that sanctions are beginning to bite in Iran. The difference there is 1) the absence of any insurgency or even a significant protest movement; 2) the Iranian nuclear weapons program; and 3) the fact that the Ayatollah is a Nazi.

As for item 3, let the following money quote from a recent speech by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suffice:

"The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off," the supreme leader said. "And it definitely will be cut off."

That is clear enough that anyone who ignores it puts his soul at risk. The Iranian regime is dedicated to the eradication of Israel. That ideal is the essence of Hitlerism. The Iranian regime cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

If the Israelis are prepared to take action, we should encourage them to do so. It may be politic to deny that we are encouraging them, but we should be prepared to be impolitic. If the Israelis need some assistance, it should be forthcoming. If Israel cannot do the job alone, they should not have to do it alone.

Iran is a great threat to the stability of the region. We would have the support (implicitly at least) of her neighbors if we took action or encouraged Israel to take action. This is, however, no matter of ordinary policy. The Ayatollah is an evil man at the head of an evil regime. It would be nice if some gentler policy like sanction can contain that regime. We must not seduce ourselves with wishful thinking.

Spotlight@Northern with Pete Carrels

Here is a link to the current show. 

Obama Betrays His Catholic Allies

Republicans have given Nancy Pelosi plenty of grief over her infamous comment that we would have to pass the health care reform bill to find out what's in it. In fact, this is true of almost all pieces of federal legislation. A lot of the details in a bill are left for bureaucrats to fill in. This is done for both good reasons and bad ones. One of the latter is the desire on the part of legislators to evade responsibility.

I wonder how many members of the House and Senate knew or wanted us to know that they knew that the Affordable Care Act would require Catholic and other church-affiliated institutions to "cover free birth control to their employees". The new rule issued by the Administration would include, presumably, contraception, sterilization and abortifacients.

Well, we passed it and now we are finding out. In typical ACA style, the Administration has issued a one year waver of the rule, putting the actual blow off until after the election. Like that will help. Catholics are a pretty reliable voting bloc for Democrats. Now some of Obama's staunchest allies in that bloc feel betrayed. From Michael Gerson's column in the WaPo:

Consider Catholicism's most prominent academic leader, the Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. Jenkins took a serious risk in sponsoring Obama's 2009 honorary degree and commencement address — which promised a "sensible" approach to the conscience clause. Jenkins now complains, "This is not the kind of 'sensible' approach the president had in mind when he spoke here." Obama has made Jenkins — and other progressive Catholic allies — look easily duped…

Consider Catholicism's most prominent clerical leader, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, head of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolan had pursued a policy of engagement with the administration. In November, he met face to face with Obama, who was earnestly reassuring on conscience protections. On Jan. 20, during a less-cordial phone conversation, Obama informed Dolan that no substantial concession had been made. How can Dolan make the argument for engagement now?

Strikingly, even E.J. Dionne, an uncompromising liberal if ever there was one, recognizes that the President betrayed his allies and exposed his previous moderation as a facade.

Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus, strengthened the very forces inside the Church that sought to derail the health care law, and created unnecessary problems for himself in the 2012 election.

This might not have mattered if Obama had presented himself as a pure secular liberal. Before he was elected and after, he held himself to a more inclusive standard, reassuring many religious moderates.

Perhaps there is a reason that the Administration could not have delayed this business until after the election but it strikes me as a disastrous move. In addition to deeply offending those who stuck their neck out for him, it is guaranteed to open up a new front in the legal war against the healthcare act. Law suits are in motion as I write.

If all that weren't bad enough, it supports the most fundamental critique of ObamaCare: that it represents a massive federal power grab and an assault on constitutionally limited government. Forcing the Catholic Church to pay for abortifacients surely looks like that.

I am not convinced that the new rule is unconstitutional. Under the Smith Test, the Free Exercise Clause affords no immunity to generally applicable laws. Religious exemptions to such laws are not generally constitutionally required but they are frequently good policy.

Denying a conscience clause exemption in this matter looks like a horrendously bad policy. Church-affiliated hospitals are an essential part of the American health care system, a fact that apparently irritates progressives. Kevin Drum has this at Mother Jones:

If Catholic hospitals don't want to follow reasonable, 21st century secular rules, they need to make themselves into truly religious enterprises. In particular, they need to stop taking secular taxpayer money. As long as they do, though, they should follow the same rules as anyone else.

Contrary to Drum, Church institutions come under this rule not because they take federal money but because they provide services and employ people. Meagan McArdle replies at her Atlantic blog:

I've seen several versions of Kevin's complaint on the interwebs, and everyone makes it seems to assume that we're doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public. Why, we're really coddling them, and it's about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we've done for them!

These people seem to be living in an alternate universe that I don't have access to, where there's a positive glut of secular organizations who are just dying to provide top-notch care for the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed.

In the universe where I live, some of the best charity care is provided by religious groups--in part because they have extremely strong fundraising capabilities, in part because they often have access to an extremely deep and motivated pool of volunteers, and in part because they are often able to generate significant returns to scale and longevity. And of course, the comparative discretion and decentralization of private charity, religious or secular, makes it much more effective in many (not all ways) than government entitlements.

Yes. Religious institutions funnel billions of charitable dollars and tap inestimable reservoirs of unselfish industry toward charitable causes. A conscience clause exemption seems like a small price to pay for that. They also provide a flexibility and responsiveness that is difficult for government institutions. That, however, requires some measure of independence from the government. That independence is what progressives cannot tolerate.

The Affordable Care Act has been consistently unpopular. The new rule seems to be making for new enemies. It makes no sense as a political strategy or as policy. It is explicable only as an expression of progressive ideology.