South Dakota Politics

Merry Christmas from SDP

To all our readers, our contriubtors and alumni, our detractors and critics, and even that old Scrooge at the Northern Valley Beacon.  And to all a good night.

Hagel

A letter to the editor from the Omaha World Herald:

Now that U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel has joined the liberal Democrats (our own Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson is not one) and voted to filibuster the Patriot Act, it is time for him to go.

Since President Bush has been in office, Sen. Hagel has done everything in his power to hurt the president's initiatives so Hagel can be called a "maverick." Now he is so arrogant that he doesn't even care if he is hurting us.

It is obvious even to the casual observer that Sen. Hagel is cut out of the same political cloth as Bill Clinton, who moistened a finger and stuck it in the air to decide what to say on any particular day. Nebraska deserves better.

Chuck Hagel is an embarrassment. I'll bet he can find a job back on the East Coast somewhere. I'm sure he and his politics would fit in much better there.

John Larsen, Elkhorn, Neb.

Radiation and the Separation of Powers

A new warrant-less search issue has broken the surface of the news cycle.  From US News and World Report:

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.

I won't comment yet on the legality or lack thereof in this case.  I will point out some facts about the Constitution that are in danger of being forgotten in the commentary.  Government, constitutional or otherwise, controls the behavior of individuals mostly through sanctions.  Break the law and you may pay a fine, or go to jail, or be strapped into a large wooden chair and fried like a piece of Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage. 

Constitutional Government controls the behavior of institutions by an entirely different means: the separation of powers.  If a policeman seizes a piece of evidence illegally, without a required warrant for example, the policeman doesn't go to jail or pay a fine.  Instead some court, part of a distinct branch of government, will refuse to admit that evidence into a trial.  This involves a contest of wills and the power to admit or exclude evidence is part of the system of checks and balances.

The complex system of rules governing police searches evolved precisely from a long series of cases where the police stepped up to or over the line.  If the Bush administration has crossed the line in its pursuit of national security, this is not a sin against the Constitution.  It is in fact the way the Constitution was designed to work.  Probably new rules will be necessary as the government adapts to new threats, and the courts will play their role.

Another control on the executive branch is Congress.  Congress basically has two weapons to deploy against the Administration.  Most importantly, it can refuse to release funds upon which the executive branch depends.  Less dramatic and for that reason more effective, it can refuse to do business that the Administration deems vital.  For example, it can refuse to renew the Patriot Act, or stall important nominations until it is satisfied with the FBI's behavior.  Of course some amply jowled Senator will shout that the President is behaving like "King George," while the Administration will accuse Congress of neglecting national security.  But again such contests are the dynamic life of the constitutional system.  Step back for a moment, and its the greatest show on earth.

Now I don't know how effective the above program might be.  I'm guessing not very, if only because, thank the Lord, nobody has yet smuggled dangerous radioactive materials into the US.  But suppose that such materials were found by means of this program.  Can one imagine for a moment that some judge is going to exclude a pound of enriched uranium from court and let a would be mass murderer walk free?  Not in this universe. 

Congress may well take steps to ensure that effective security measures do not unnecessarily trample on basic rights.  That's its job.  Its part of the Administration's job to make sure that those protections do not allow a terrorist to set off a dirty bomb over Judiciary Square.  That's what we pay these guys for.

SDP Mind of Mystery Competition

Go to this website and try out the Flash Mind Reader.  Then e-mail us if you can figure out how it works.  If nobody e-mails in, I'll award the prize to myself and reveal the solution, say, by the end of January.  Send your posts to [email protected].  Winners will be mentioned by name and their sagacity praised.  Plus they will win none of the following prizes: a new car, a yacht, or, best of all, an all expenses paid trip to beautiful and scenic Clichy-sous-Bois, on the outskirts of Gay Paris.

Voter Fraud

Yankton Press & Dakota:

A Pine Ridge man has pleaded guilty to voting more than once in the November 2004 general election.

Rudolph Vargas, 51, entered the plea Thursday in U.S. District Court in Rapid City, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Mandel.

Vargas also goes by the name Rudolph Running Shield.

He is out on bond and scheduled to be sentenced March 6. The maximum penalty is five years in custody.

Daschle & NSA

Tom Daschle was leader during the time when many of the decisions on the NSA surveillance program were made, so it should be interesting to see what comes out.  Excerpt from the New York Times:

As members of Congress seek more information about the eavesdropping program authorized by President Bush, their requests are being complicated by the fact that Congressional leaders in both parties acquiesced in the operation.
...
At least seven Democratic lawmakers are known to have been briefed about the program since its inception in 2001, and only two, Mr. Rockefeller and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, are known to have expressed written concern about it. A third, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Senate Democratic leader, said in an e-mail message on Thursday that he too had expressed "grave concern for this practice" of eavesdropping on American citizens inside the United States.

Intelligent Design II, the Sequel!

I posted recently on the Dover School Board Case.  I note a couple of interesting commentaries on the question of what is religion and what is science.  John West weighs in at USAToday.  John is the associate director of the Discovery Institute, a think tank largely devoted to promoting intelligent design theory.  He is also a grad school buddy of mine. 

Contrary to Judge John Jones' assertions, intelligent design is not a religious-based idea, but instead an evidence-based scientific theory that holds there are certain features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause. No legal decree can remove the digitally coded information from DNA, nor molecular machines from cells. The facts of biology cannot be overruled by a federal judge. Research on intelligent design will continue to go forward, and the scientific evidence will win out in the end.

While I find Intelligent Design arguments unconvincing, I think John is quite right they do not constitute a religious doctrine.  I agree on a further point.

Evolutionists used to style themselves the champions of free speech and academic freedom against unthinking dogmatism. But increasingly, they have become the new dogmatists, demanding judicially-imposed censorship of dissent.

Now, Darwinists are trying to silence debate through persecution. At Ohio State University, a graduate student's dissertation is in limbo because he was openly critical of Darwin's theory. At George Mason University, a biology professor lost her job after she mentioned intelligent design in class. At the Smithsonian, an evolutionary biologist was harassed and vilified for permitting an article favoring intelligent design to be published in a peer-reviewed biology journal.

I have presented Darwinian theory to church goers, and have defended religion before Darwinists.  On the whole, the parishioners were fairly open-minded, and the Darwinists, pig-headed.  But of course that doesn't settle any important questions. 

Philosophy Professor Alexander George argues, in the Christian Science Monitor web page, against the view that Intelligent Design is not science.

This week, a federal judge ruled that intelligent design may not be taught in the science classrooms of Pennsylvania's public schools. I agree with the verdict, but we need to be careful about our reasons for supporting it. Most critics of intelligent design seek to undermine it by arguing that the doctrine is not science. It's actually religion passing itself off as science. Hence, its teaching constitutes religious instruction. The Constitution disallows the state's establishment of religion. Therefore, intelligent design cannot be taught in the classroom.

The problem with this argument is that it requires making the case that intelligent design is not science. And the intelligibility of that task depends on the possibility of drawing a line between science and non-science. The prospects for this are dim. Twentieth-century philosophy of science is littered with the smoldering remains of attempts to do just that.

I hesitate to endorse his view that a line between science and non-science cannot be drawn, but I agree that the line is murky.  I also agree with his  argument that Intelligent Design should not be taught in the biology classroom.

Let's abandon this struggle to demarcate and instead let's liberally apply the label "science" to any collection of assertions about the workings of the natural world. Fine, intelligent design is a science then - as is astrology, as is parapsychology. But what has a claim to being taught in the science classroom isn't all science, but rather the best science, the claims about reality that we have strongest reason to believe are true. Intelligent design shouldn't be taught in the science classroom any more than Ptolemaic astronomy and for exactly the same reason: They are both poor accounts of the phenomena they seek to explain and both much improved upon by other available theories.

Intelligent Design theory is better than most forms of Creation Science, but it is still bad science.  That is enough reason to exclude it.

Progress For America

Advocates for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito will be visiting South Dakota a few days before the Alito confirmation hearings are set to begin.

The group will send 29 of his former clerks, personal friends, mentors and former colleagues on a 19 state barnstorm during the first week of January to help build up support for the nominee.

South Dakota is being targeted because of Senator Johnson, who may provide a critical vote in the nomination process.

ANWR II

The environmental lobby:

Like rooters at a championship game, a group of two dozen environmental lobbyists whooped and exchanged high-fives in the Senate antechamber as one red-state Democrat after another fell into their column.

It was inching toward 1 o'clock in the afternoon Wednesday when the gavel finally fell on a vote that apparently killed this year's effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But as early as 12:25, Brian Moore, the legislative director of the Alaska Wilderness League, was on a cellphone in the corner telling his scattered troops: "You guys rock. We won. Nice work."

It's too bad Senator Johnson has chosen to side with the environmentalists instead of supporting ANWR and thus cutting gas prices.

The issue here isn't that ANWR will deliver immediate energy relief.  ANWR drilling is a long-term solution to U.S. energy problems.  With rising demand for oil by India and China, the oil supply will increasingly decrease for the rest of the world.  Plus, as USA Today pointed out, the hurricanes from this summer proved how domestic oil production is overly concentrated in the Gulf of Mexico.  What is the Democratic solution?  To lament high gas prices and lecture us on the importance of cutting our dependence on foreign oil, only to vote against increasing our domestic oil production?

I don't expect ANWR to be the solve-all solution to energy problems.   But it does offer a long-term augmentation of supply that offers us sovereignty from foreign oil.

Along with ANWR, Senator Johnson also voted against LIHEAP, which would have provided assistance to poor and low-income citizens--he supported it before he voted against it.  The ANWR provision would have funded LIHEAP, which Johnson has been complaining about.  But since he sided with the environmentalists, there's no ANWR and no LIHEAP money.  Instead of caving to the environmental lobby, Johnson should have stood up for South Dakota.  Will anybody in the South Dakota media take him to task for this?  By the way, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which gave Johnson a huge vote in 2002, is having an especially difficult time with LIHEAP funding this winter.  Johnson had implored the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to release a portion of LIHEAP funds to help out with winter heating costs for the residents of the reservation.  Now he's voted against it.  I wonder what they're thinking now.

End Of The Year Votes

Tim Johnson and John Thune, not surprisingly, are on opposite sides.  As one would expect, Tim Johnson is being a good soldier for the Democratic Party and John Thune for the Republicans.  The Democrats continue to turn the Artic National Wildlife Refuge into a fetish and also can't come up with any way to control government deficits other than raising taxes.  Does the Democratic Party support any spending adjustment that would yield significant savings?  I also wonder what the Democrat's tax increases would do to an economy that, despite high gas prices and hurricane Katrina, grew at a healthy 4.1% annual rate this summer.   

Coolest Addicting Game

In this game you are George Bush and Condoleezza Rice and you have to kill all the terrorists before they blow up the White House.  Careful, you only get one shot at the white van.  Make it count.  A very satisfying game for Bush fans. 

Clinton Administration Official Supports Bush on Wiretaps

John Schmidt, Associate Attorney General of the United States under President Clinton, as this to say about the NSA searches.  From the Chicago Tribune:

President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.

Warrentless Searches II: A Guide

The Democrats think they smell blood, which ought to reassure Bush supporters.  Of late, the Democratic sniffer has not been very reliable.  I offer a guide to the approaching festivities.

1.  The Political Question.  Does any evidence emerge that the Bush administration used its powers of search and seizure against Bush's domestic enemies?  If it is found that the NSA conducted warrantless surveillance of the Kerry Campaign, or Moveon.org, or the Daily KOS,  that would be a twenty-four karat scandal.  It might bring the public into line behind the Democrats in Congress.  But it has to be a clean case of Nixonian mischief.  I was in high school when Watergate broke, and I remember how reluctant most folk were to join the anti-Nixon bandwagon.  I think that this sort of scenario is about as likely as a link between Osama bin Laden and Al Gore.

2. The Legal Question.  Does the High Court or Congress determine that NSA surveillance was either illegal or unconstitutional?  My guess is that the legal and constitutional questions will turn out to be murky.  If the Administration's motives look clean (they really were looking for terrorists and trying to stop the next 9/11), then the worst that will happen is that Bush will be forced to give up the kind of warrantless searches in question.  That may or may not hurt anti-terrorism investigations, but it is more likely to be a political plus for Bush than a minus. 

3.  The National Security Question.  Does evidence emerge that the warrantless searches really helped the Administration foil terrorist's plots and monitor their activities?  There are indications that Bush will be able to make the case.  If so, it is a clean win for Bush and a pretty serious blow to the Democrats.  It may be unfair, but in such a case Democrats will not be seen as defenders of civil liberties.  They will be seen as a party that put partisan payback over national security. 

*     *     *

Let me be clear: I think that many if not most Democrats are genuinely interested in protecting civil liberties.  I also think that Bush thought he was doing everything in his power to protect these United States.  But it is often the case in politics that no good deed goes unpunished.  Bush is paying a cost for his efforts, if only in the greatly increased time and attention it now requires to defend his policies. 

But, barring some really stupid behavior on the part of the Administration, I think the Democrats are far more vulnerable.  They protest that Bush broke the law.  But so did William Jefferson Clinton, when he lied to a grand jury.  What was Clinton's motive?  To cover up his sexual misbehavior.  The Republican House impeached him, while the Democrats vociferously defended him.  It didn't go too well for the former.

If Bush too broke the law, what was his motive?  It was, apparently, to make sure that more Americans are not blown out of their socks by a terrorist bomb.  Some Democrats are already whispering the word "impeachment."  As we roll toward the next Congressional election, lets see how that debate plays out.

UPDATE

Powerline is providing excellent commentary on the legal and constitutional questions. 

Thune T-Shirts

Here is a new link for I (Heart) Thune T-shirts. 

USA Today For ANWR Drilling

A mild surprise.  USAToday advocates drilling for oil in the reserved section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  The reasons are pretty compelling:

• ANWR has at least 6 billion and maybe 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, U.S. Geological Survey says. It could provide 1 million barrels a day for 30 years, or about 5% of daily consumption. It wouldn't reduce gas prices next week or next year, but it would help ease the nation's long-term energy crunch.

• It could be done without wrecking the environment. Opponents claim drilling would ruin the pristine beauty of the refuge. But the experience with oil development at nearby Prudhoe Bay is encouraging. The caribou herd has flourished there, and newer technology means the environmental impact of drilling can be minimized.

Only 2,000 acres of the 19 million-acre ANWR refuge would be subject to drilling, in an area so remote that few Americans not associated with the oil industry will ever see it.

• Drilling would have economic benefits. It could create 250,000 to 735,000 jobs nationwide, supporters say. Energy companies would pay as much as $10 billion for the rights to drill in ANWR, to be evenly split between Alaska and the federal government, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

I have in the past leaned toward keeping the ANWR reserves closed, precisely so they would remain reserves.  But I am inclined to think that the next couple of decades will the tough ones where energy is concerned.  After that, we will probably have the technology to ease or escape our dependence on oil.  But in the meantime, India and China will begin to soak up enormous portions of the world oil supply.  We probably ought to open up ANWR now.  It will be several years before the oil is actually available.

Alito's Nomination

A new poll released by The Washington Post and ABC News reports that a majority of the nation supports the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

"The survey found that 54 percent of the public say the Senate should confirm
Alito while 28 percent say he should not be approved. That marks a modest
increase in public support for Alito since November, when 49 percent said he
should be confirmed and 29 percent said he should not. In both surveys,
about one in five Americans said they did not yet know enough about the
nominee to have an opinion."

However, just because the nation supports his nomination, it does not mean automatic qualification, with threatened filibusters and other wrangling by lawmakers. Alito though is now as popular as Chief Justice Roberts was at this point in time on the eve of his confirmation hearings earlier this year.

The poll also found that abortion is playing a role in their feelings about Alito's nomination, but is not playing the decisive roll that many thought it may have played.

"Six in 10 say they hope Alito would vote to uphold Roe while just over a
third say they want him to vote to overturn it. But a majority of the
public--55 percent--said it was only of limited importance that Alito
supported their position on abortion. Seventeen percent said it was
'extremely important' and 26 percent said it was 'very important'."

You can read the whole story here

NSA Eavesdropping

Was it illegal?  Is it impeachable?

It never has been before.  It is clear that hearings will take place over the leak to the New York Times regarding the NSA surveillance program.  However, despite the grandstanding Democrats who hoped for an ouster of the President, mounting evidence is proving that it was legal (see  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  Let's remember that we're in a war, which was authorized by Congress and allowed the president to use any means to prevent America from being attacked.  Or have we forgotten?

ANWR

The Senate is set to vote today on allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

Both sides in a U.S. Senate debate over opening an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling expected a close vote on Wednesday over the latest attempt by Senate Republicans to pass the measure, this time by adding it to a big military-spending bill.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR, which sprawls along Alaska's northern coast and may hold 10 billion barrels of oil, has been the focus of bitter wrangling in Congress for more than two decades.

Most Senate Democrats and some moderate Republicans say the frigid wilderness and its assortment of wildlife, ranging from polar bears to peregrine falcons, should be protected. Republicans contend the refuge must be opened to drilling to stop a steady slide in U.S. crude-oil production.

How will Tim Johnson vote?

UPDATE:  Tim Johnson promoted the bill in a press release, but then voted against it!  He's reminding me of John Kerry:

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

UPDATE II:  John Thune statement:

“Senate Democrats are obstructing an effort to pass legislation that provides America a chance to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This bill would not only open ANWR for oil exploration and drilling, but it would also provide a long-term funding stream for LIHEAP,” said Thune. “With energy costs at an all-time high and families going cold because of the high cost of home heating oil, it is inexcusable for the Senate Democrats to play politics with this issue.”

In addition to providing vital funding for our troops and opening ANWR, the Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Appropriations bill also provides $2 billion for LIHEAP. The bill includes a provision to allow lease sales to produce 10.4 billion barrels of oil from the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and direct 5% of revenues from ANWR to provide the long-term funding for LIHEAP.

“This winter’s freezing temperatures are putting an enormous strain on families and current LIHEAP funds, so it is irresponsible for Senate Democrats to obstruct an issue as important as this,” said Thune. “By choosing to filibuster this needed legislation, Senate Democrats are leaving South Dakota’s low income families out in the cold. I urge my Senate colleagues to put cold and freezing families ahead of protests and politics.”

UPDATE III:  The Argus Leader responds:

Sen. Tim Johnson vehemently opposed the attempt by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to attach Senate approval for oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the defense appropriation bill.

“I think we have reached the point in the U.S. Senate where we need to have the backbone to stand up to this kind of cynical bullying going on,” said Johnson, who voted to defeat the measure that failed 56-44. “It sets an awful precedent.

“If we allow pork barrel projects to be added to the defense bill at the last moment, we will see this happen each and every year.”

Defeat of the ANWR amendment on a cloture vote, according to Johnson, sends “a message to Sen. Stevens and those who want to establish this awful precedent undermining the integrity of the U.S Senate.”

Proponents of the ANWR amendment say the Senate rejection of the defense appropriation bill will force it to be reworked, and military spending will be in jeopardy, because the House will not be able to vote on a new defense bill without the ANWR amendment before it returns to session in late January.

However, Johnson predicts a bill could still be approved this week by securing the unanimous consent of House members, who adjourned for the year Tuesday

“If we got ANWR out, by unanimous consent we could approve the rest of the defense bill,” Johnson said.

Sen. John Thune, a proponent of ANWR oil exploration, pointed out the defense appropriation bill also contained $2 billion in immediate funding for the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, and it called for directing 5 percent of all revenue from ANWR oil leases to LIHEAP.

“With energy costs at an all-time high and families going cold because of the high cost of home heating oil, it is in

Speaking of LIHEAP, Johnson was recently bemoaning it, and now he votes against it.

UPDATE IV:  I just discovered this article, reprinted in my hometown paper from the Madison Daily Leader.

UPDATE V:  From the South Dakota Republican Party:

Sen. Tim Johnson voted today to block the Defense spending bill which contains important funding for our military, as well as low income heating assistance,  hurricane relief and a provision allowing for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“These are very important issues that have a big impact on South Dakotans,” said South Dakota Republican Party Executive Director Max Wetz. “For Sen. Johnson to hold up such an important piece of legislation runs counter to the best interests of the state and the nation.”

Johnson’s vote comes just two days after he touted funds set aside in the bill.

Johnson was one of 44 Senators who voted to continue a filibuster on the bill which, as a press release from his office points out, provides important Defense Department funding for projects like upgrading the communications systems of South Dakota’s B-1 Bombers.

Poll

Who is South Dakota's hottest television reporter?  Go here to vote!

Warrentless Searches

This from John Hinderaker at Powerline:

I've been working on and off on the legal issues surrounding the NSA's interception of communications directed to al Qaeda members overseas, some of which originated in the United States. I haven't had time yet to write up a full analysis of the case law. For now, let me just say that the question does not appear to be close. Under all existing authorities, the NSA program, as we understand the facts, was legal.

For now, let me simply quote the November 2002 decision of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in Sealed Case No. 02-001:

The Truong court [United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 4th Cir. 1980], as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. *** We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power.

And those are cases that deal with electronic intercepts inside the United States.  A fortiori, intercepts outside the United States that coincidentally sweep in messages sent from America would seem to be obviously within the President's inherent Article II powers. So far, I have found no authority to the contrary.

E.J. Dionne Questions Patriotism of Congressional Majority

Dionne's column on the Patriot Act ends with these words:

Because Sununu, Feingold and their allies stood up, the checks and balances we regularly praise as part of our constitutional system are, once again, alive and well. It's the act one would expect from patriots.

Its all well and good to praise those who voted against renewing the Patriot Act.  But isn't he kinda questioning the patriotism of those who voted for it?  Just asking. 

More or less Intelligent Designs

The contemporary interpretation of the Scopes trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, has reached its conclusion. Darwin wins this one.  From Michael Powell in the Washington Post:

A federal judge barred a Pennsylvania school district yesterday from mentioning "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory in a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their "breathtaking inanity" in trying to inject religion into science classes.

U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III, a Republican appointed by President Bush, did not confine his opinion to the missteps of a local school board. Instead he explicitly sought to vanquish intelligent design, the argument that aspects of life are so complex as to require the hand, subtle or not, of a supernatural creator. This theory, he said, relies on the unprovable existence of a Christian God and therefore is not science.

I haven't had time yet to read the opinion, but judging from the summaries in the WaPo, and on Public Radio, I will concur in part and dissent in part. 

First, I think the U.S. District Court was almost certainly correct in striking down the Dover School Board's policy.  Here is the policy as the Court describes it:

On October 18, 2004, the Defendant Dover Area School Board of Directors
passed by a 6-3 vote the following resolution:

Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.

On November 19, 2004, the Defendant Dover Area School District announced by press release that, commencing in January 2005, teachers would be required to read the following statement to students in the ninth grade biology class at Dover High School:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

No reasonable person can doubt that the purpose of this rule was to take sides in a controversey pitting Darwinian evolution against Biblical Religion.  As constitutional law now stands, government bodies are not allowed to do that. 

However, Judge Jones (as noted, a Bush appointee) went far wide of the mark in his characterization of the Intelligent Design argument. 

"The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote in a 139-page decision. "It is an extension of the Fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."

It is simply false to say that Intelligent Design is a religious view.  Many or even all of those who hold that view may have religious motives.  But many people who opposed slavery in the 1850's had religious motives, as did many who campaigned for civil rights a century later.  The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was, after all, a reverend.  This does not mean that anti-slavery arguments or civil rights concerns were "extensions" some Fundamentalist view. 

Intelligent Design is a perfectly legitimate position in the fields of philosophy of science and philosophy of religion.  ID proponents argue that many features of organic life display irreducible complexity, which is to say that they cannot be explained by ordinary processes of evolution.  For example, many complex molecules on which life depends exist only when living organisms create them.  They work only they are already complete.  Simpler versions or parts of such molecules would be useless.  They cannot be the products of blind mechanical forces, and only an intelligent designer could have first brought them into being.

Now, for reasons I will not go into, I think this argument fails badly.  I think most people who believe it do so because they think they have to defeat Darwinism in order to save the creation story.  It is nonetheless a rational argument based on good evidence.  I can understand that Judge Jones wanted to drive the last nails into the coffin of the Intelligent Design movement, but he has gone far beyond any expertise he might have on the subject. 

Clinton and Carter OK'd Warrantless Searches

OK, two wrongs don't make a right (and I am not suggesting a wrong has been done).  Nonetheless, Drudge reports:

CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS -- WITHOUT COURT ORDER

CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER: 'ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE' WITHOUT COURT ORDER

Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order  that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval

Clinton, February 9, 1995:  "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order"

Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order."

WASH POST, July 15, 1994: Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official -- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order."

Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

Secret searches and  wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant.

I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Here is a touching Mark Steyn column on the song White Christmas and its composer, Irving Berlin. . 

I (Heart) Thune

I have been remiss in noting that the College Republican group I advise is selling "I (Heart) Thune" shirts on Ebay.  Our auction time is almost up, so feel free to buy them quickly.  This is a fundraiser to try to bring a speaker onto campus.  Here is the Ebay link.  Any intrepid bloggers out there are welcome to further publicize this. 

Daschle

He's still sounding presidential.  Excerpt from today's Argus Leader:

WASHINGTON – The White House omitted key details about surveillance programs related to the war on terrorism during classified briefings with lawmakers, former Sen. Tom Daschle said Monday.

Daschle’s statements follow charges by former Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the White House did not reveal the scope of controversial surveillance programs.

Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said he raised significant concerns about the programs after learning about them.

“Even with some of the more troublesome – and potentially illegal – details omitted, I still raised significant concern about these actions,” Daschle said in a statement.

A reader mails in:

In this morning's Argus Leader, Tom Daschle stated that "even with some of the more troublesome and potentially illegal details omitted, I still raised significant concern about these actions".  This seems to be the Democrat leadership line.

They claim not to be told the guts of the program but were upset with it just the same.   It is exactly what would be expected of them and it just doesn't pass the smell test.  Look at that language.  "Details" were omitted.  Could you not say that about any subject at any time?

Is Sen. Daschle telling us that the President refused him more information?   Did the Senator not demand to know more about this troubling program?   I do not buy it.

You can read his statement in its entirety here.

Freedom Marches On

Here's an interesting story:

The number of electoral democracies around the world rose from 119 to 122 this year, setting a new record as freedom made inroads in the Middle East and Africa, an independent monitoring group said. But in its annual report rating every nation in the world as "free," "partly free" or "not free," Freedom House on Monday expressed concern about countries like the United States and France, where it saw "looming problems" with electoral setups and immigrant integration.

"These global findings are encouraging," said Arch Puddington, director of research at the organization.

"Among other things, the past year has been notable for terrorist violence, ethnic cleansing, civil conflict, catastrophic natural disasters, and geopolitical polarization," he added. "That freedom could thrive in this environment is impressive."

The three additions to the list of electoral democracies were the African nations of Burundi, Liberia and the Central African Republic.

The three countries afforded considerable space for political opposition and met the minimum standard of a fair vote count, the report said.

But the most significant improvements were noted in the Middle East, where Lebanon was upgraded from "not free" to "partly free," despite a series of political killings that shook the country.

Baucus Returning Abramoff Money

Montana Senator Max Braucus, a ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, is donating his money he got from Abramoff to tribal colleges in his state:

A second senator involved in the congressional investigation of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is giving away campaign donations connected to the lobbyist, including money used for a 2001 fundraiser in Abramoff's skybox.

    Montana Sen. Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, is donating $18,892 he once got from Abramoff's clients and associates to seven tribal colleges in his state. The committee is part of a wide-ranging congressional investigation of Abramoff's activities.

Included in the total is an estimated $1,892 that was never reported for the use of Abramoff's skybox at the MCI (NASDAQ:MCIP) Center in downtown Washington, D.C., in March 2001.

    Spokesman Barrett Kaiser said that Baucus has never met Abramoff and never took any contributions directly from him.

That last paragraph sounds like Steve Hildebrand, Daschle's former campaign manager.  What will Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, and the SD Democratic Party do with their money?

Thune Considered for Leadership Role

Aberdeen American News excerpt:

Freshman Sen. John Thune could be a member of his party's leadership as soon as next year.

Thune said Monday that several senators have approached him about becoming the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party's campaign arm, for the 2008 campaign cycle. That would make him the top Republican working to defeat Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, who is up for re-election that year.

"It's something I will give consideration to," Thune said. "I want to be helpful as much as I can."

Republicans say he would be a good candidate for the job because he knows elections well. He ran one of the toughest Senate races in recent years, defeating Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004. That was two years after he narrowly lost another brutal Senate race to Johnson.

"He has a lot of talent," said Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who is up for re-election in 2008. "He won a very tough race and is an excellent speaker."

A Fistfull Of FISA

Here's the WSJ on the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance of Al Qaeda operatives in the United States.  Key legal point:

The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

Update: William Kristol and Gary Schmidt have a nice piece in today's Washington Post on this matter.  They answer some of the questions I posed earlier. 

FISA requires the attorney general to convince the panel that there is "probable cause to believe" that the target of the surveillance is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. Yet where is the evidence to support such a finding? Who knows why the person seized in Pakistan was calling these people? Even terrorists make innocent calls and have relationships with folks who are not themselves terrorists...

[T]he Supreme Court has never ruled that the president does not ultimately have the authority to collect foreign intelligence -- here and abroad -- as he sees fit. Even as federal courts have sought to balance Fourth Amendment rights with security imperatives, they have upheld a president's "inherent authority" under the Constitution to acquire necessary intelligence for national security purposes. (Using such information for criminal investigations is different, since a citizen's life and liberty are potentially at stake.) So Bush seems to have behaved as one would expect and want a president to behave.

They conclude by agreeing with my point that the limit on this power of surveillance is separation of powers, i.e. the watchdog of Congress:

This is not an argument for an unfettered executive prerogative. Under our system of separated powers, Congress has the right and the ability to judge whether President Bush has in fact used his executive discretion soundly, and to hold him responsible if he hasn't. But to engage in demagogic rhetoric about "imperial" presidents and "monarchic" pretensions, with no evidence that the president has abused his discretion, is foolish and irresponsible.

Last update: The definative, for now, explanation of the legalities of this surveillance is by Orin Kerr, George Washington University Law School professor of criminal law and criminal procedure, who blogs over at Volokh.  His post is long, but worthwhile.  His conclusion? 

Was the secret NSA surveillance program legal? Was it constitutional? Did it violate federal statutory law? It turns out these are hard questions, but I wanted to try my best to answer them. My answer is pretty tentative, but here it goes: Although it hinges somewhat on technical details we don't know, it seems that the program was probably constitutional but probably violated the federal law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

One thing is clear.  All the left-wing cries that this is a sign of totalitarianism and a collapse of our civil liberties do not hold up under legal scrutiny.  This appears to be a very difficult and complex area of law.  Both sides have respectable legal arguments.  The cries of "fascism" are simply the braying of cattle. 

Pro-US Sentiment Surges Among Muslims

While I'm on this pleasant "surge of support for our side" theme, the U.S. is now beating out Jon Schaff's wardrobe in popularity among many important Islamic nations.  Hussain Haqqani and Kenneth Ballen have the story in the Wall Street Journal:

Long a stronghold for Islamic extremists and the world's second-most populous Muslim nation, Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the U.S. than at any time since 9/11, while support for al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed 87,000. The U.S. pledged $510 million for earthquake relief in Pakistan and American soldiers are playing a prominent role in rescuing victims from remote mountainous villages.

Coming to the aid of earthquake victims was of course the right thing to do in any case.  The conditions in the high altitude areas that the earthquake devastated are horrific.  But sometimes the right thing to do is also good policy. 

The number of Pakistanis with a favorable opinion of the U.S. doubled to more than 46% at the end of November from 23% in May 2005. Those with very unfavorable views declined to 28% from 48% over the same period. Nor is this swing in public opinion confined to Pakistan. A similar picture is evident in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Again that's largely because of American generosity in the wake of a natural disaster. A February 2005 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow showed that 65% of Indonesians had a more favorable opinion of the U.S. as a result of American relief to the victims of last December's tsunami. If these changes in Pakistan and Indonesia influence thinking in other countries, then we could be looking at a broader shift in public sentiment across the Muslim world.

The United States acted more effectively to bring relief to victims of these two Biblical level disasters largely because we could.  This is one advantage of the enormous military apparatus that the US has built up since Ronald Reagan's administration.  What's good for us is bad for the bad guys.

While support for the U.S. has surged, there's also been a dramatic drop in support for Osama bin Laden and terrorism. Since May, the percentage of Pakistanis who feel terrorist attacks against civilians are never justified has more than doubled to 73% from less than half, while the minority who still support terrorist attacks has also shrunk significantly. There's been a similar increase in the number of Pakistanis disapproving of bin Laden, which rose to 41% in November up from only 23% in May.

Don't look now, but something of the same thing is going on in hitherto very hostile parts of Iraq.  In Tal Afar, on the Syrian border, we have been winning friends and influencing people.  This from the London Telegraph:

Tal Afar was the site of the largest military operation of 2005, when 8,000 US and Iraqi troops reclaimed it from armed groups.

It has since been used to test a new strategy of "clear, hold, build", in which areas would be purged of insurgents and then rejuvenated to win support from local people, before being handed over to the Iraqi security forces. It is also called "ink spot" strategy, whereby one area of control would spread to another - like an ink spot spreading on blotting paper - until the entire country was covered, in a model similar to that adopted by the British in Malaya.  . . .

Unlike in Fallujah, another Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, the storming of which by US marines was the defining campaign of 2004, there is actually large-scale rebuilding in progress.

While many of the citizens of Fallujah still eke out their existence in the ruins of their former homes, in Tal Afar the streets are full of building sites. New sewers have been dug and the fronts of shops, destroyed in the US assault, were replaced within weeks. Sunni police have been hired and 2,000 goats were even distributed to farmers.

More remarkably, the approach of an American military convoy brings people out to wave and even clap, something not seen since the invasion of spring 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Liberty, Security, and Poll Ratings

In a previous post I discussed John McIntyre's argument that current Democratic attacks on Bush play right into his hands.  According to McIntyre, Republicans have a natural advantage on issues involving international security, and as long as the spotlight is on those issues, they win.  I believe I first heard this argument from Dick Morris during a speech he gave (I heard it on public radio) during the 2004 presidential campaign.  Morris argued that to win, Kerry had to get the discussion off the topic of Iraq and onto domestic issues like health care, where Democrats have the advantage.  I thought that was a plausible reading of the strategic topography of that election, and the outcome surely looks like confirmation.  McIntyre's piece begins this way:

The political pendulum is swinging back towards President Bush. The President’s   approval rating has a pattern of dipping when he takes his Crawford vacation   every August then bouncing back in September upon his return to Washington. This year, however, beginning with Cindy Sheehan, followed by Katrina, Harriet Miers, the Fitzgerald investigation, and the negative drip-drip-drip of reporting out of Iraq, Bush’s job approval continued to drop into the beginning   of November.

 

The last   days in October laid the ground work for the President’s turn around.   The Miers withdrawal and subsequent nomination of Samuel Alito staunched the   bleeding from a large part of Bush’s base, and the sole indictment from   Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald removed a major distraction for the White House. (At least that is the way the Fitzgerald inquiry looks today, barring   any future, unexpected indictment(s).) With the foundation laid, the White House launched a political counter-attack on Veterans Day with a speech by President Bush directly criticizing his opponents for rewriting the history of how the   war in Iraq began.

During the last several months Bush's critics celebrated his low poll numbers like Superbowl winners dumping ice on one another.  We here at SDP maintained a nervous silence on the topic.  Now, however, McIntyre seems to be right.  Bush's poll numbers are hardly spectacular, but they are clearly improving in a number of major polls.  This from the Washington Post:

President Bush's approval rating has surged in recent weeks, reversing what had been an extended period of decline, with Americans now expressing renewed optimism about the future of democracy in Iraq, the campaign against terrorism and the U.S. economy, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Bush's overall approval rating rose to 47 percent, from 39 percent in early November, with 52 percent saying they disapprove of how he is handling his job. His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent, while his rating on the economy rose 11 points, to 47 percent.

That's still a bit of a deficit in overall job approval, but its a lot better than two to one disapproval.  Its interesting to see that Bush's numbers on the economy saw the largest improvement.  I suspect this has little to do with any economic news or the actual state of the economy.  Its just that when a Republican president wins on his strength, he tends to do better across the board.  The ABC/WaPo poll shows that this is where the rebound is coming from.

A clear majority, 56 percent, said they approve of the way Bush is handling the fight against terrorism -- a traditional strong point in his reputation that nonetheless had flagged to 48 percent in the November poll.

Bush is hardly out of the woods yet, and a lot depends on how things go in Iraq.  But there is little doubt that Bush's counter-offensive has been effective.  Democrats continue to enjoy better poll numbers on issues raised in the abstract, but their underlying weakness is evident from the poll.

Sixty percent said the United States is making significant progress in restoring civil order in Iraq, a 26-point increase since November, and 65 percent said the United States is making significant progress in establishing a democratic government there. Almost three in four (71 percent) said last week's election brought the country closer to the day when U.S. forces can be withdrawn.

More than half the country (52 percent) said they favor decreasing the number of troops in Iraq, a five-percentage-point increase since early November. But far fewer of those anxious to bring troops home are calling for a speedy exit. Just 12 percent of those surveyed said they favor immediate withdrawal, down from 18 percent in November, whereas 40 percent said they favor a gradual withdrawal, up from 29 percent in November. Just over a third said they favor keeping troop levels where they are now.

A solid majority (60 percent) agree with Bush on his opposition to setting a timetable for withdrawing forces, whereas 31 percent would like to see all U.S. troops removed by the end of next year. The poll also found Americans slightly more receptive to a candidate for Congress next year who opposes a timetable than to one who supports a timetable.

For better or worse, Bush's strategy is playing pretty well.  The poll also suggests why. 

Americans still express doubts about aspects of Bush's handling of Iraq. Sixty percent said they do not believe he has adequately explained why the United States is in Iraq, and almost the same percentage said the administration does not have a clear plan for success there. But even more Americans (74 percent) said the Democrats in Congress do not have a plan either.

Bush has a way to go as far as public confidence in his overall strategy is concerned.  But just right now he is winning on the details.

 

 

Snoop Doggy Bush

So the government is snooping on domestic terrorists who take phone calls from Al Qaeda.  The horror.  What to think of this?  Let me dissent slightly from Prof. Blanchard, although I am in basic agreement. 

A friend who knows more about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) than I do tells me that under this act the executive is allowed warrantless searches and can obtain the warrant up to fifteen days after the fact.  This allows the executive to do what the Bush administration did: do surveillance (or as it is omniously called "spying") for national security reasons when time is of the essence and it may be impractical or unwise for security reasons to go to a court.  But the law also installs a time limit, so as to keep the executive honest. 

Apparently the Bush administration did not make use of this ability to obtain a warrant after the fact.  This is what my friend finds suspicious.  He surmises that the Bush administration calculated that the evidence the administration had was not strong enough to show probable cause, but was strong enough that they acted on it anyway.  That does seem to run afoul with the law.

Here's my problem with that scenario, and here I need a lawyer's help.  If I conduct a raid on Al Capone and I find his personal phone book, and in this book I find Jason Heppler's name and number and even find some evidence that Mr. Capone has been calling Mr. Heppler, I would think that this is enough probable cause to tap Mr. Heppler's phone.  Lawyers: Am I wrong?  Because, as Prof. Blanchard suggested, this is essentially what is going on here.  Al Qaeda guy overseas gets in touch with guy in America.  The United States captures overseas Al Qaeda guy and finds America guy's phone number in overseas Al Qaeda guy's cell phone. Because of the Al Qaeda network, it won't take long before America guy knows overseas Al Qaeda guy has been captured.  So the government, with no time to spare, starts surveillance on America guy's phone.  This makes sense. 

Let's assume this is the case, and I stress that it may not be.  The Bush administration had evidence that people domestically were getting messages from Al Qaeda.  But that evidence did not rise to the level of probable cause.  So the Bushies decide to do surveillance without court approval.  Is this wrong?  Mr. Epp opines that this is akin to "We had to destroy the village to save it."  I take it that that is not a compliment.  But is the Bush position untenable.  I point out this quote from another war president:

To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?

This is Abraham Lincoln on July 4, 1861 explaining to Congress why he had to violate the Constitution in order to save it.  Those violations included suspension of habeas corpus without the approval of Congress, spending money out of the treasury without congressional approval, and raising troops without congressional approval.  When the Constitution was threatened, Lincoln appealed to his oath to "faithfully execute" the laws and "to protect and defend the Constitution" as giving him the power and even the duty to do what it takes to defend the Constitution and the Union.  Lincoln argued that he had to violate particulars of the Constitution in order to save the whole thing.  I happen to think Lincoln was right and so did Congress, as they ratified Lincoln's actions. 

One's view of the current situation depends on one's view of the enemy.  What if Al Qaeda in particular, and international terrorism in general, is a threat to the very existence of our Union? If one sees terrorism as a serious threat to the United States, then what Bush did, even if was a technical violation of the law, may have been Constitutionally defendable.  If one has a lesser view of terrorism, one is likely to come to a different conclusion.  My partial dissent from Prof. Blanchard is that I think Bush may have actually violated the law.  But I also wish to make the point that Bush's actions are not without precedent nor are they beyond the pale.  They may even be constitutional.  That seems to be the Bush administration's position.  Using his power as commander-in-chief and in fulfilling his duty to "to protect and defend the Constitution" he did what was necessary.  If he over stepped his bounds the proper resolution is for Congress to voice it's disapproval and also perhaps adjust the law.  This is a matter where the clash between branches is a healthy thing.

Update: This DOJ document makes a legal argument that warrantless searches are allowable when a "foreign power" is involved.  It argues in footnote 30:

The [Suprme] Court in a footnote though, cited authority for the view that warrantless surveillance may be constitutional where foreign powers are involved. Keith, 407 U.S. at 322 n.20.

I have not read this document in any detail, so I cannot comment beyond simply posting the argument. 

 

A Smallish Question

Prof. Blanchard notes in an otherwise complimentary post that, unlike me, he dresses like like earthling.  The question that needs to be asked is: animal, vegetable, or mineral? 

Lap Dancing

Here is some more data about the effect of laptop computers in the classroom.  I thank Katie Newmark of AEI and A Constrained Vision for the links and much of the commentary that follows.  And thanks to Joe Knippenberg for getting me in touch with Miss Newmark.  Of course all conclusions are my own.  As you may recall, the South Dakota Legislature will consider funding for laptop computers for every high school student in the state.  It is my position that this technology will have little to no effect on student performance and thus the money ($13 million from the state and $26 million from school districts) would be better spent on other items, such as higher teacher pay.  It turns out that there is considerable data on my side. 

Take a look at this study.  As Katie Newmark put it in an email to me, "Focusing on California, [the study] found that the additional investments in technology had no statistically significant impact on test scores either one or two years after the government program began."

There is also this study (pdf alert), which is nicely summed up here. Katie writes:

University of Munich researchers studied detailed data on 174,000 students from around the world and found that once they controlled for family income and school characteristics, greater computer use led to lower test scores. They also found that, if used properly for education, computers can slightly increase test scores. But they caution that the optimal amount of computer use at school is low, somewhere between "a few times a year" and "several times a month."

Get that. Greater computer use led to lower tests scores. 

Finally this study (another pdf alert), which I was already familiar with.  Katie Nemark, once more:

Two economists studied a program in Israel that used money from the lottery to buy computers for elementary and middle school classrooms.  The program design and detailed data allowed for a rigorous methodology that controlled for many school and student characteristics. They found no evidence that increased computer use
improved test scores. In fact, for fourth grade math classes, which saw the greatest impact on classroom techniques as a result of the new computers, test scores actually had a statistically significant decline.

Let's see that one again: In fact, for fourth grade math classes...test scores actually had a statistically significant decline. 

The evidence is clear.  A pervasive use of laptops in education at best has no effect, and in fact there is some evidence that significant use of computers in the classroom actually leads to lower educational achievement. 

Book Blogging

Last night I finished Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter (book review here) and I highly recommend it.  I think the authors hit the mark when it comes to their critique of the counterculture, although I don't agree with all of their conclusions (which was to be expected since they're left of center and I'm right of center).  Next on the list is Blood Narrative by Chadwick Allen, which compares the activists texts between the American Indians and the New Zealand Maoris during the 1960s and 1970s.  You can find a book review here.

What Liberal Media?

Oh, that one:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

Read the whole thing.

You Killed Democracy! You Bastards!

Will those Bushies ever stop repressing the spirit of democracy?

Afghanistan today inaugurated its first democratically-elected parliament in decades, in an emotional ceremony that reduced Hamid Karzai, the nation’s president, to tears.

Dick Cheney, the US Vice President, and his wife, Lynne, were among the guests as the assembly opened amid tight security. He said it was "a privilege to be present" for the historic event.

I think we all know why Dick Cheney was there.  As every Michael Moore fan knows, it's for the natural gas pipeline. 

Quote of the Day

Washington Times:  "We've become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn't worked that way in 216 years." - Harry Reid

HT to John Hinderacker.

Jacks Beats Alabama

The SDSU women's basketball team is 58-5 at home in recent years and last night they beat Alabama.  Officials had to force the crowd to stop ringing cowbells!

Wins at Frost have been plentiful for the Jacks, who have now tasted victory 58 times in the last 63 outings in the friendly confines of their campus home.

Though the ever-present bell-ringers were asked by officials not to do so while the game was in progress, the showing by the Jacks (7-3), who won for the fourth time in five outings, gave the home crowd plenty of opportunities to make some noise the more traditional way.

SDSU, which plays at Marquette on Wednesday, trailed only twice in beating the Crimson Tide for the second straight year.

Alabama, which has now dropped seven straight non-conference road games dating back to 2004, led 2-0 and 4-3. The rest of the day was spent playing catch up. And each time the Crimson Tide (4-4) drew close or threatened to retake the lead, the Jacks had an answer.

Daschle & the Patriot Act

For those liberals who are happy about the failure of the Patriot Act, they might want to note how Senator Daschle passed the first version in 2002:

Only one senator, Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, broke party discipline to vote against the USA Patriot Act, a law that lowers standards of electronic surveillance by the government and chills free speech. As examples, the gag rule prevents bookstore owners and librarians from telling anyone, including the press, when FBI agents seize records of books that suspects -- including citizens in the course of broadly defined "terrorist" investigations -- have bought or borrowed.

In the May issue of The Progressive -- a national monthly magazine based in Wisconsin -- Feingold reveals an intriguing similarity between Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's attitude toward contentious dissent and Ashcroft's assertion that those who criticize the USA Patriot Act are providing immunity to the enemy.

While that bill was being rushed through Congress by the administration, Daschle asked his troops to unanimously agree to it without debating or amending the bill. Feingold refused because the bill, he said, had some "very disturbing things."

At that point in The Progressive interview, Feingold revealed that "the majority leader came to the floor and spoke very sternly to me, in front of his staff and my staff saying, 'you can't do this, the whole thing will fall apart.'"

Feingold would not be intimidated by his leader. According to Feingold, Ashcroft -- whom Feingold voted for in the Senate Judiciary Committee -- said on the phone that Feingold might be right about some of the changes the senator wanted. But, Feingold said, "the White House overruled him."

Late that night, Feingold, defying Daschle, rose to offer an amendment to the USA Patriot Act. Feingold recalls: "A lot of senators came around to me who, of course, voted for the bill, and said, 'you know, I think you're right.'

"Then Daschle comes out and says to them, 'I want you to vote against this amendment and all other Feingold amendments; don't even consider the merits.' This was one of the most fundamental pieces of legislation relating to the Bill of Rights in the history of our country! It was a low point for me in terms of being a Democrat and somebody who believes in civil liberties."

Check out the whole thing.

Some SDP News/

Dr. Schaff was featured on the front page of the Aberdeen American News this morning:. "Educator Cares for Students." 

Many educators believe students need to take responsibility for their own education.

But it also takes a teacher who cares, said Jon Schaff, who earlier this year was named Outstanding Faculty Member for 2005 at Northern State University in Aberdeen. Receiving the honor at age 33, Schaff, now 34, is among the youngest recipients.

"Students must be your No. 1 priority," said the political science and sociology professor. "You have to care enough about them to get them interested in the subject."

I find this very unfair.  I didn't make the front page under similar circumstances, and I dress like an earthling. 

On a brighter note, I will be participating on a South Dakota Public Radio Forum on January 11th.  The topic is U.S. policy in Iraq.

RCJ

John Tsitrain writes in the Rapid City Journal:

For all the hype about how politically damaging the war in Iraq has been for President George W. Bush, in particular, and Republican supporters of the war, in general, I wonder how many people stop and consider what the war is doing to the Democratic Party, which I think is getting a much tougher, and self-inflicted, thrashing over the war than the GOP.

I hesitate to use a word like "comical" when it comes to an issue of such underlying seriousness, but if ever the classic Jimmy Breslin novel, "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," needed a politically-themed sequel, "The Gang That Couldn't Get It Together," might well describe the Democratic disarray in its political opposition to President Bush on this war.
. . .
And speaking of speeches at a major University, I just read the full text of former Sen. Tom Daschle's speech at Northwestern in November and appreciated the political need for his mea culpa over voting for the war in the first place, while still in office, but was baffled by his plan to withdraw 80,000 troops from Iraq (about half the present deployment) by the end of 2006, while leaving the rest of our forces there with an accelerated training mission. Sounds to me like a political double-sop to voters who want us out and voters who want to stay until the job is done, a fence-straddling stance that adds some confirmation to the notion that Daschle is considering a run for the presidency in 2008.

To his credit, Daschle now defies the effort to put him somewhere on the support/oppose spectrum of the war in Iraq, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear him only add to the confusion every time he tries to clarify his position between now and the '08 primary season or the war's end, whichever comes first.

There's lots of good stuff among the ellipses.  Check out the whole article.

AL

From today's Argus:

PIERRE - State lawmakers will soon decide whether 2006 will be the year they chart a new course for the South Dakota State Fair - or take another step toward doing away with it.

The Legislature could also decide to give the fair a subsidy each year and forgo the annual squabbling about whether it can break even on its own.

Libety and Security

Consider the following scenario: American intelligent officers intercept a call from a known Al Qaida operative in Yemen to someone in Belgium.  What should they do?  I say listen in.  Suppose the call includes the words "the next strike."  Then the party in Belgium calls someone in Virginia.  The Virginia number belongs to a charity that sends money to Palestinians.  Then the party in Virginia calls someone in Omaha who is an American citizen but has no record and is subject to no previous suspicion.  What should the intelligent officers do then?  Wait until a warrant can be secured?  I say again, listen in.  Maybe a better scheme, more protective of civil liberties, can be devised.  But at the moment, be damn sure you know what is being said on those lines.

I made all that up off the top of my head, and it remains to be seen whether the National Security Agency monitoring of telephone conversations and e-mails fits that scenario or not.  Those critical of the war on terror are demanding that this be looked into and Congress is about to oblige.  Surely there are serious questions about civil liberties and privacy raised by these activities.  It certainly seems to me that some scheme could be devised that would include judicial oversight.  And if it turns out that the Administration is using its prerogative to monitor domestic critics, without obvious security concerns, that will count as an abuse of power.  In that case, the administration is in hot water.  Now that the cat is out of the bag, it is up to Congress to get a good look at it.  The left should be screaming bloody murder.  That's its job.

But that doesn't mean that the left will be rewarded.  If the administration has something like the above to justify its domestic surveillance, who is the public going to side with: Democrats, for trying to block such monitoring in the name of privacy rights, or Bush, for trying to prevent another 9/11?

Let me give you a hint: Bush.  John McIntyre has a piece in Real Clear Politics laying out the reasons that the current debate over Iraq and national security has shifted in favor of the Republicans. 

Democrats still do not grasp that foreign affairs and national  security issues are their vulnerabilities, not their strengths. All of the drumbeat about Iraq, spying, and torture that the left  thinks is so damaging to the White House are actually positives for the President and Republicans. Apparently, Democrats still  have not fully grasped that the public has profound and long-standing concerns about their ability to defend the nation. As long as  national security related issues are front page news, the Democrats are operating at a structural political disadvantage.

McIntyre points out, correctly I think, that this has been decisive in the past two elections.

In 2002, Republicans very skillfully were able to paint the Democrats as obstructionists on the Homeland Security bill and used the issue to bash Democrats as soft on the War on Terror. In 2004, perceptions that when it came to defending the nation, the leadership and resolve of President Bush was superior to the Democrat Kerry was always the tailwind at Bush’s back that led him to victory.

Of course, the current spying story may yet unfold in ways that are deeply embarrassing to the administration.  But the defense of civil liberties ought not to rest on such accidents.  If Democrats really believe that Bush has crossed the line it is not enough to curse him while foaming at the mouth.  The voters will surely choose the party that hates Al Qaida more than anyone to the party that hates Bush above all.  If they want to defend civil liberties, Democrats must show how terrorism can be defeated, and show some enthusiasm for it. 

Lets face a terrible fact.  The destruction of the Twin Towers did not really scare most Americans.  Disturbing as it was, it was something that happened on TV.  A more serious attack would scare us, and once we get really scared we aren't going to care much about procedural due process.  We will likely swallow anything that promises to prevent another such disaster.  If you want to secure civil liberties, you have to make sure that that next attack never happens.  Too bad the Democrats are too busy trying to bring Bush low to think about such things.  Consider this, from Powerline:

The debate over domestic surveillance issues turns on balancing our security needs against our need to protect individual rights. If the president is incorrectly analyzing the security side of the equation, Congress should tell him so. If he is analyzing the security side correctly but erring in other respects, Congress should tell him that.

But don't hold your breath. The Democrats aren't much interested in a genuine debate about the difficult trade-offs between security and privacy, and they certainly don't want to go on record one way or the other about the nature of the security threat we face. In truth, the Democrats are mostly interested in taking pot-shots at the president pursuant to whatever attack item the MSM is pushing during a given week.

 

Abramoff Continued

Daschle isn't the only one that received money from Abramoff's coffers.  Tim Johnson and the SD Democratic Party has also:

The South Dakota Democrat Party (SDDP) has repeatedly attacked Sen. John Thune for receiving campaign contributions from a Washington lobbyist, but the SDDP has failed to mention that indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's tribal clients made contributions to former Senator Tom Daschle, Sen. Tim Johnson and the South Dakota Democrat Party.

“The South Dakota Democratic Party, Sen. Daschle and Sen. Johnson received thousands of dollars in contributions from Native American tribes channeled through Jack Abramoff’s lobbying firm,” said South Dakota Republican Party Executive Director Max Wetz. “The Democrats should clean up their own house and examine their own bank accounts before they worry about others.”

According to Washington Post reports, Daschle received more than $40,000 from five tribes that were part of Abramoff's network. Johnson accepted $7,250 in 2002 from three tribes that were Abramoff clients. And the South Dakota Democrat Party lists $8,500 in donations from Abramoff clients from 2000-2004.

It's funny that the Democrats have tried to paint Abramoff as a GOP tool and to hold Republicans to a higher moral standard, while not recognizing that one-third of Abramoff's largest beneficiaries were prominent Democrats.  Of course, these facts are left out when it happens to be particularly inconvenient.  Ed Morrisey of Captain's Quarters notes:

The next time a Democrat talks about the culture of corruption, ask him or her when Harry Reid will step down from his leadership role in the Senate. The culture unfortunately pervades DC politics without regard to the R or D after the name; it relies on human nature and greed, one of our least partisan and most unfortunate impulses. Talking about it as a partisan issue may well be the rankest and most foolish demagoguery found in our political debate.

He also noted earlier:

Of course, this is the danger of playing holier-than-thou with baseless ethics complaints. The Democrats have targeted Tom DeLay not because he's committed crimes, but because of his political effectiveness. Ronnie Earle has chased DeLay for years, and still hasn't filed an indictment despite his highly partisan effort to get him behind bars. Howard Dean claims that's where DeLay belongs, and both he and Nancy Pelosi have used Jack Abramoff as a chief reason for their ire.

Now, all of a sudden, the Democrats have become very, very silent. Those that have commented claim no knowledge of Abramoff's involvement with the six Indian tribes that donated tens of thousands of dollars to their campaigns between 1999 and 2004 through Abramoff's recommendations. While the biggest winner in this handout festival was Republican Conrad Burns ($141K), one-third of the largest recipients were Democrats.

Beck editorial

Well, it seems Randall Beck is at it again. This week in his editorial, he's gone after Sioux Falls Schools Superintendent Pam Homan and his always favorite target, Governor Mike Rounds. Seems Randall Beck has gotten worried about where the Superintendent claims her place of residence in his latest condemnation of the Sioux Falls School District. As a former student of the district, and I believe speaking on behalf of many former and current students and their parents, I really don't think that most people care. The position of superintendent is un-elected, and where the superintendent resides really is not that big of a deal. Pam Homan has had a long career of working in the Sioux Falls School district, and that is the important thing, she is not a newbie to the Sioux Falls School district. Sheri Meister said it best to wrap it all up regarding where Homan lives:

"It has not impacted the quality of the job she has performed ...''

Powell

Colin Powell, during an interview on the BBC, stated that the White House was never told of doubts about WMD by the CIA: 

Mr Powell, who argued the case for military action against Saddam Hussein in the UN in 2003, told BBC News 24 television he was "deeply disappointed in what the intelligence community had presented to me and to the rest of us."

"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced to us," he said.

Mark in Mexico has more and some thoughts.  HT to Instapundit.