South Dakota Politics

James Fallows Critiques the War on Terrorism

James Fallows is no friend of conservatives, nor are the editors of the Atlantic Monthly who put Fallow's article "Declaring Victory" on the magazine's cover.   You  need a subscription to view its contents.  Fallows interviewed sixty experts on terrorism and national security.  Here is a sample:

Any assessment of the world five years after 9/11 begins with the damage inflicted on “Al-Qaeda Central"—the organization led by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri that, from the late 1990s onward, both inspired and organized the worldwide anti-American campaign. “Their command structure is gone, their Afghan sanctuary is gone, their ability to move around and hold meetings is gone, their financial and communications networks have been hit hard,” says Seth Stodder, a former official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

David Kilcullen, an Australian army officer [who] commanded counter-insurgency units in East Timor, [and who] recently served as an adviser in the Pentagon and is now a senior adviser on counterterrorism at the State Department . . .  says, “The al-Qaeda that existed in 2001 simply no longer exists. In 2001 it was a relatively centralized organization, with a planning hub, a propaganda hub, a leadership team, all within a narrow geographic area. All that is gone, because we destroyed it.” Where bin Laden’s central leadership team could once wire money around the world using normal bank networks, it now must rely on couriers with vests full of cash. (I heard this point frequently in interviews, weeks before the controversial news stories revealing that the U.S. government had in fact been tracking international bank transfers. Everyone I spoke with assumed that some sort of tracking was firmly in place—and that the commanders of al-Qaeda had changed their behavior in a way that showed they were aware of it as well.) Where bin Laden’s network could once use satellite phones and the Internet for communication, it now has to avoid most forms of electronic communication, which leave an electronic trail back to the user. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri now send information out through videotapes and via operatives in Internet chat rooms. “The Internet is all well and good, but it’s not like meeting face to face or conducting training,” says Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know. “Their reliance on it is a sign of their weakness.”  [My emphasis]. 

Or consider how someone might brief Osama on his current situation.

The Taliban were dispersed, and al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan were dismantled.” Al-Qaeda operatives by the thousands have been arrested, detained, or killed. So have many members of the crucial al-Qaeda leadership circle around bin Laden and his chief strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Moreover, Jenkins’s briefer warns, it has become harder for the remaining al-Qaeda leaders to carry out the organization’s most basic functions: “Because of increased intelligence efforts by the United States and its allies, transactions of any type—communications, travel, money transfers—have become more dangerous for the jihadists. Training and operations have been decentralized, raising the risk of fragmentation and loss of unity. Jihadists everywhere face the threat of capture or martyrdom.  [My emphasis].

The consensus of experts is that the well-organized, powerful, and international organization that Osama bin Laden managed to build up before Bush became President has been smashed to bits. No reasonable person could argue that we are not safer for that.

This does not mean, of course, that the war has been won.  Fallows goes to great lengths to wave flags of caution and to argue that we could let victory slip through our fingers in any number of ways.  He is, to say the least, no supporter of the war in Iraq.  Many of the experts cited have their quarrels with the way things have been done, as experts tend to do.  But the battle since 9/11 has been an overwhelming defeat for al Qaeda.  Only someone of flamboyant and invincible ignorance could say that "the Bush administration isn't serious about fighting terrorism."  Or put differently, if Bush could accomplish this without even being serious about it, he is a greater genius than either Chad or I suspect.

Schwangate

A few days ago Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson appointed former KELO journalist Jodi Schwan to the city's Chief of Staff position.  According to an informal Argus Leader poll, 75% of people agreed that Munson is paying Schwan too much, who is receiving $98,000 a year to run the biggest city in South Dakota.  Also, check out this cartoon noted by SDWC.

UPDATE:  Comment of the day on Schwangate:

I think this is a conspiracy!

Look at all the former KELO reporters with ties to city government.

It's a plot to officially change the name of Sioux Falls to Kelo-land, thus making Kelo-land an actual place with real people.

Kranz

Note that David Kranz, the dean of the South Dakota political reporters, finds it vitally important to chase down Senator Thune in Brookings and ask him about the death penalty issue, but he doesn't bother to ask Senator Johnson and Representative Herseth the same question.

Washington Update at SF Chamber Meeting

While in the state for the August recess, Senator Thune met with the Sioux Falls Chamber on Tuesday to discuss various issues that will be addressed when Congress reconvenes next month.  The Argus Leader reported on the meeting, article available here.  Here is an excerpt:

When Congress returns to session in September, the Senate might try again to pass legislation that fell short of attracting the 60 votes necessary to avert a filibuster, Thune told the Chamber group. Included are measures to open more of Alaska to oil and gas exploration, a medical malpractice reform bill, and a proposal that failed just before the close of the Senate session in which a minimum wage increase and extension of tax cuts such as the state and local sales tax deduction were bundled with a reduction of the estate tax.

Thune also said he will reintroduce a bill to use as much as $20 million in penalties collected from automakers whose vehicles do not meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards to help gas stations pay for installing E-85 fuel pumps. The bill Thune introduced with Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., has broad bipartisan support, he says, but it was sidetracked just before the Senate session closed when at least one anonymous Democratic senator refused to allow it to come to the floor.

Another blogger on the Schwan appointment

Rant-a-bit by Scott Hudson presents a less than supportive position on Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson's chief of staff appointment here.  A note to readers, he presents his position with flagrant frankness here.

Campaign Finance

On the 21st, the Argus Leader editorialized a bit about campaign finance and reforming the system in the state.  Here's the editorial.

Unfortunately, they missed an interesting story about campaign financing and the Democratic money funnel that involves our state Democratic Party.  Jason Heppler has extensive coverage of the topic here.

The Diaper Deficit at General Motors, Ireland, and the Democratic Party

I have been fascinated by demographics of late, in large part because of my interest in biopolitics.  A couple of articles whet my appetite.  Malcom Gladwell writing in the New Yorker argues that the worker's pension system that big auto and big steel developed is doomed to failure by the dependency ratio. This is the ratio of currently producing workers to those not working but drawing benefits.  When GM, for example, began its growth it hired a lot of young, productive people.  Inevitably those workers get older and retire, and the dependency ratio swings against the company.  The dependency ratio is now crushing many companies, who simply cannot support their pension obligations. 

The rational alternative would be to distribute the burden across many companies, so whoever is currently employing younger workers could help pay for the pensions of older ones.  This was rejected in the past because it looked too collectivist for the tastes of corporate managers.  I don't know enough to say for sure, but Gladwell's argument surely looks compelling. One half-hearted cheer for collectivism.

Of course the same thing happens to countries.  Ireland's economic miracle, Gladwell argues, is due to the legalization of contraception. 

In the past two decades, for instance, Ireland has gone from being one of the most economically backward countries in Western Europe to being one of the strongest: its growth rate has been roughly double that of the rest of Europe.  . . .

In 1979, restrictions on contraception that had been in place since Ireland’s founding were lifted, and the birth rate began to fall. In 1970, the average Irishwoman had 3.9 children. By the mid-nineteen-nineties, that number was less than two. As a result, when the Irish children born in the nineteen-sixties hit the workforce, there weren’t a lot of children in the generation just behind them. Ireland was suddenly free of the enormous social cost of supporting and educating and caring for a large dependent population.

Wealth that would have been spent on raising a lot more kids could instead be plowed back into the economy, and used to raise the standard of living for those lucky enough to be born.  Of course, if Gladwell is right, this means that Ireland has eaten its seed corn.  When the current population of Daugherty's and Cohans gets old, there won't be enough younger workers to support them.  This is as bad a long term deal as GM's pension plan, only without a larger country to bail Ireland out.  Europe certainly will be in no position to help, being far down Ireland's path.

Arthur Brooks in The Wall Street Journal has a similar caution for America's Democrats.

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.  [My italics]

Now I wouldn't put a big stake on this, but political scientists have long known that large population trends are a better indication of the political future than anything else.  Democrats would not be a viable party today if not for the concentration of people in Democrat-friendly cities.  But recently the greatest population growth has not been in cities but in exurbs, population centers disconnected from big down towns.  And the exurbs have been voting Republican.  Demographics is really interesting. 

A Wee Bit of Yellow Journalism from Newsweek

Here's the current cover of Newsweek. 

This is a clever piece of work.  By putting the airliner plot in a list ahead of two pieces of bad news, they make an anti-terrorism success look like a defeat.  It is certainly reasonable to argue that we are not on balance safer since 9/11.  George Will has argued that the "law enforcement approach," i.e., concentrating on security at home without mucking around in the Middle East trying to promote democracy, is the most effective strategy.  He may be right.  But surely the increased security since 9/11 is to be credited for preventing this plot.  It bears mentioning that the U.S. has not suffered another attack since 9/11.  The Newsweek cover is yellow journalism.

Minnesota

The St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the political dynamics in the very Blue state of Minnesota and determined they're leaning towards the GOP:

The national scene seems to portend Democratic gains in governorships and Congressional seats, possibly leading to Democratic control of Congress. Low job approval for President Bush and Congress result from a familiar litany of problems — endless conflict in Iraq, high energy prices, anxieties about international turmoil and ongoing domestic controversies over immigration and health care.

Democrats, however, have not quite closed the deal with American voters. Surveys reveal them as unpopular as Republicans. Democrats have yet to present an appealing alternative to the GOP agenda. It will be up to individual Congressional candidates — in Minnesota, most notably Senate aspirant Amy Klobuchar and 6th District House candidate Patty Wetterling — to make the case for change. So far, their national party has not carried that argument with likely voters.

Running directly contrary to this national current is the favorable trend for the GOP in Minnesota state politics. This trend is of recent vintage. Part of it stems from growing GOP party identification in the state, detected in a recent Star Tribune Minnesota poll. In addition, a peaceful state legislative session, a budget surplus, improved economic growth and job creation all help Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and GOP state legislative candidates.

Covert Enemies

Michael Barone:

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Of course, this distorts history. We are taught that American slavery was the most evil institution in human history. But every society in history has had slavery. Only one society set out to and did abolish it. The movement to abolish first the slave trade and then slavery was not started by the reason-guided philosophies of 18th century France. It was started, as Adam Hochschild documents in his admirable book "Bury the Chains," by Quakers and Evangelical Christians in Britain, followed in time by similar men and women in America. The slave trade was ended not by Africans, but by the Royal Navy, with aid from the U.S. Navy even before the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel's self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

The Death Penalty in South Dakota

The regional blogosphere has devoted a lot of attention, and reasonably so, to the approaching execution of Elijah Page.  I have hesitated to post on this because I am very ambivalent about capital punishment.  Were I a legislator (be afraid!) and the question were before me, I would probably vote for abolition.  But that's not a campaign promise. 

I do note that most of the common arguments against the death penalty are very weak.  Here is a list:

People who are pro-life on abortion should be opposed to taking life by execution.  The problem with that is that the condemned criminal has committed a crime, whereas the unborn cannot be guilty of anything except cell division.  So pro-life, pro-capital punishment folks are not involved in any contradiction.  All legitimate penalties are based on the concept of moral responsibility.  If you respect my rights, you deserve that I should respect yours.  The system of justice is built on that foundation. 

If murder is wrong, then the state should not murder a murderer.  The problem with this, as lawyers would say, is that it proves too much.  You could as easily say: if kidnapping is wrong, then the state should not incarcerate kidnappers.  The problem is that murder implies unjust killing, and this begs the question.  The state of South Dakota, like any other state, can legitimately do a lot of things that would be crimes if done by private individuals. 

Execution denies the human dignity of the condemned person.  This was Justice Brennan's favorite, but it is obviously wrong.  We don't put dangerous dogs on trial, we just put them to sleep.  The trial and penalty process are the most robust recognition of the humanity of the accused.  We treat such a person as morally responsible, which is more than we do for any other sort of creature. 

The death penalty is racially (or otherwise) inequitable.  Wrong again.  Outside the South in the earlier part of the last century, the death penalty has been amazingly race neutral.  You were a little more likely to be executed for a similar crime if you were white than if you were Black.  It's true that execution was more likely if the murderer was Black and the victim white than vice versa, but  the latter is very rare and the former is more likely to be the kind of crime (armed robbery) that is most likely to earn the death penalty. 

So what about arguments in favor of execution?

The death penalty makes juries more careful.  Juries are a lot more likely to condemn an innocent man to a long prison stretch than to death.  It has been almost impossible to find a single case where an innocent man was put to death. 

The death penalty saves lives.  Yes.  Murders who are given life sentences often go on to kill other people.  Sometimes it's other prisoners, and sometimes it's people on the outside when, in spite of the law's intent, they are released. 

The death penalty is life affirming.  Again, yes.  Precisely because we value innocent lives we think that murders sometimes deserve to die.  A man who kills two teenagers and then calmly finishes their McDonald's meals ought to die precisely because life is precious. 

So why am I ambivalent?  Mostly because I think the Supreme Court has made such a mess of the process that it is simply too expensive and complicated for most states to bother with.  I also think there is something wrong when we only execute people who really want it.  Lastly, I am sympathetic to Professor Schaff's argument for mercy.  There are so many occasions where we have to kill people, maybe we should put it off when we have a choice.  I am also sympathetic to the culture of life argument.  Maybe Mr. Page deserves to die.  Maybe saving his life gratuitously makes us a better people. 

On the other hand, Governor Rounds has more to think about than this.  He has to decide whether to overrule the decision of juries.  He is disinclined to do so, and on grounds of democracy that is the right decision. 

Munson's Appointment

In regard to the previous post about Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson's appointment of Jodi Schwann as the city's Chief of Staff, I'd heard rumors of her being placed in this position for a few weeks now.  I'd heard other names as well, but as details of the position evolved, Schwan, a now ex-KELO reporter, became the frontrunner.  A few people in journalistic circles think she may be too close to the media, and hired for public relations purposes which they oppose.

For instance, the byline of an August 2, 2006 Argus Leader article states that "[p]ublic relations should be second to administrative duties for chief of staff."  Whether or not the Argus had a hot tip on Schwan's possibility is merely speculation; however, it is an interesting coincidence.  The mayor did fulfill a campaign promise that many people have been asking for by hiring Schwan.

Anyway, this rumor that has been swirling around journalistic circles turns out to be true.  Here's the article about her hire from KELO again. 

Death Penalty

Via South Dakota Magazine comes this thoughtful piece by Steve Hemmingsen on the death penalty and the slippery slope of justice.  Excerpt:

A couple of lawyer friends (yeah, I know. It sounds like an oxymoron) were sitting around a grill a few days ago eating salmon and eggplant parmesan and having a wide-ranging discussion about, among other things, justice, like trying to define justice.

 

The abortion thing came into it. I pointed out that if God exists as most people in KELOLAND believe he does, why don’t we just leave it to him? He’s the only one who knows for absolute certain when life begins. As we dig farther into this genetics thing, who knows; maybe life begins with a teenage boy’s first “evil” thought rather than an act or a biological collision or at least concurrent evil thoughts to allow for modern, liberated thinking.

We also discussed South Dakota's death penalty with Elijah Page now wanting to die. Maybe we shouldn’t execute him. Only a guy who’s nuts would want to die and we can’t kill an insane man just because the state said he should die when it thought he was sane. Do you get what I mean here? Who decides what is “just” for any given circumstance? Any way you slice it justice is arbitrary often embracing injustice. An act of the legislature doesn’t make justice any more logical.

Check out the whole thing and discuss amongst yourselves.

Jodi Schwan

See this about Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson's appointment of Jodi Schwan as the city's Chief of Staff: 

She's been a part of the KELOLAND team for four years as a political reporter, now Jodi Schwan is moving her career to Sioux Falls' City Hall.

Monday, Mayor Dave Munson announced he's appointed Jodi Schwan as the city's Chief of Staff. Schwan will assume the position Tuesday. She’ll be responsible for providing project support, communications, and public relations on behalf of the Mayor’s office.

Schwan has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in journalism with concentrations in political science and business from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Before coming to KELO, Schwan interned as a bureau reporter in Washington, D.C. She’s also done reporting for WTOP-AM in Washington D.C. and has worked as a reporter for several Ohio and Illinois newspapers.

During her career in journalism, Schwan has received several awards for her work including being honored by the Radio-Television News Director’s Association and the William Randolph Hearts Foundation. While at KELO, she was recognized by the South Dakota Associated Press for reporting and writing.

Schwan says she is looking forward to helping to improve communication through the mayor’s office and excited about the opportunity to serve the city of Sioux Falls.

We want to thank Jodi for her hard work and wish her well on her new endeavor.

Best Court Opinion Ever

If this summary of a Ten Commandments case from Oklahoma is accurate at all, the actual opinon might be worth the read.  I guess this is what happens when federal judges get bored.  Thanks to Joe K. for the heads up. 

Energy Policy

Yesterday the Aberdeen American News published a piece I wrote with some suggestions about energy policy.  You can read all about it here. 

Argus

South Dakota War College:  "I guess all anyone ever needs now is a mailing list (with the Argus Leader on the list), a blank piece of paper and a copy machine to destroy your opponent's careers."

Iwo Jima Photographer Dies

Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who took the famous Iwo Jima Photo, has died.  In an August 11th post on fake photos, I unintentially spread what appears to have been a false story about the photo: that it was staged.  I was corrected by a reader, whose note I posted  here.  The Washington Post has the story. 

Rosenthal's iconic photo, shot on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.  The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.  . . .

Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote that he almost didn't go up to the summit when he learned a flag had already been raised. He decided to go up anyway, and found servicemen preparing to plant the second, larger flag.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know." . . .

He added that if he had posed the flag-raising picture, as some skeptics have suggested over the years, "I would, of course, have ruined it" by choosing fewer men and making sure their faces could be seen.

Here is the photo:

Here is the Iwo Jima Memorial, in Arlington.

McCain Musings

Since Senator McCain will be visiting South Dakota in the near future, I note this interesting article about his future.  H/T to Real Clear Politics for linking to the article at the NY Times.  Here's the link, McCain Mines Elite of G.O.P for 2008 Team.  From the intro:

Senator John McCain is locking up a cast of top-shelf Republican strategists, policy experts, fund-raisers and donors, in a methodical effort to build a 2008 presidential campaign machine, drawing supporters of President Bush despite the sometimes rocky history between the two men.

Mr. McCain’s effort to woo a diverse lineup of backers and scare off rivals has augmented his travel schedule on behalf of Republicans — which this week and next includes trips to Iowa, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio and Florida.

Whether or not you support him, he's working hard and will be a force in the 2008 President race.  He will be  in Sioux Falls on October 17 (RCJ link here).

Should Mike Rounds Commute Elijah Page's Sentence

There is much discussion over the looming execution of one Elijah Page.  Gov. Rounds must decide whether to commute the sentence or to simply allow the wheels of justice to turn, which will inevitably result in Page's execution by the State of South Dakota.  My colleague Mr. Adams helpfully links to the governor's ruminations on the justice of the death penalty, especially as it pertains to abortion.  Can one be against abortion and for capital punishment? 

On the justice of capital punishment, I highly commend this article by Avery Dulles, one of the foremost theologians of our time.  It is very well written.  Please read the whole thing.  Dulles concludes that there is nothing in Scripture that forbids the state from using death as a punishment and sacred tradition backs this up. 

Summarizing the verdict of Scripture and tradition, we can glean   some settled points of doctrine. It is agreed that crime deserves punishment   in this life and not only in the next. In addition, it is agreed that the State   has authority to administer appropriate punishment to those judged guilty of   crimes and that this punishment may, in serious cases, include the sentence   of death.

Dulles concentrates on the Catholic perspective (which should be of interest to our governor), but I point out that both Martin Luther and John Calvin favored capital punishment.  I believe I am right about Luther and Calvin (an Internet search was frustratingly inconclusive).  If I am wrong, someone please correct me. 

Dulles also takes seriously the arguments against the death penalty, the most serious of which is, in his opinion, the possibility of getting the verdict wrong. 

Dulles also argues that opposition to the death penalty is as likely to come from an incipient secularism rather than from an earnest religious convictions.

Many governments in Europe and elsewhere have eliminated the death   penalty in the twentieth century, often against the protests of religious believers.   While this change may be viewed as moral progress, it is probably due, in part,   to the evaporation of the sense of sin, guilt, and retributive justice, all   of which are essential to biblical religion and Catholic faith. The abolition   of the death penalty in formerly Christian countries may owe more to secular   humanism than to deeper penetration into the gospel.

I would note that opposition to the death penalty usually is based on some notion of equality, not of justice.  Death penalty opponents argue that the punishment is disproportionately used against racial minorities and the poor (both of which are true).  But this is not an argument that the death penalty is inherently unjust, but rather that it is administered unequally. 

It seems as though the preponderance of evidence from Christian sources is that the death penalty is just.  But this does not mean that it is wise.  I would advise Gov. Rounds to commute Elijah Page's sentence. 

In a society very confused about life, it sends a bad signal to the population when the state takes human life, even guilty life.  It could also stand as a remarkable gesture to the value of human life for Gov. Rounds to commute the sentence.  In a year where legislation concerning the killing of innocent human life in the womb is on our ballot, Gov. Rounds can use the commutation of Page's sentence as an occasion to speak to the people of South Dakota about the value of human life. 

I quickly add that this would be mercy for Mr. Page, not justice.  He does not deserve to live, but nonetheless we can give him life.  Also, there is a serious argument that by not executing murderers we disrespect human life.  There are some very smart and decent people who argue that it is precisely by the use of capital punishment on murderers that a society shows that it takes human life seriously.  If you take a human life you forfeit your own.  I do not share this view, but I think it is a reasonable and compelling one.

The Perfidious French

During the last Presidential campaign, John Kerry's idea of foreign policy was to work more closely with our allies.  He clearly had in mind the French, since we were already working closely with Britain.  Well, we now have a better idea of how that works out.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Most U.N. resolutions don't have the shelf-life of a gallon of milk, which isn't always a bad thing. But in the case of Resolution 1701--the cease-fire agreement for Lebanon and Israel adopted unanimously this month by the Security Council--things seem to be going sour even faster than that. And that is cause for serious unease.

On Thursday, Jacques Chirac confirmed a Le Monde report that his government was prepared to offer only some 200 combat engineers (in addition to the 200 French troops already in Lebanon) to what is supposed to be the resolution's centerpiece: A 15,000-man U.N. force that will help the Lebanese army patrol their southern border and ensure that Hezbollah will no longer use the area as a staging ground for future attacks against Israel.

Given that the French contingent was supposed to be at the vanguard of this enhanced force, it's unclear whether other nations will be willing to chip in with troops of their own. All of this after the French used the promise of a robust, French-led international force to get the U.S. and Israel to agree to a cease-fire and withdrawal. Even less reassuring is the insistence by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie that her troops will remain in the lead only until February, after which, apparently, it's salaam and adieu.

Here is what the French did: promising a large contingent of troops to police Souther Lebanon, they forced a weaker U.N. resolution on Lebanon than the one that the U.S. and Israel wanted. Now they say they can't commit more than 200 troops because the U.N. resolution was too weak.  This is treachery.  It is difficult to imagine that the French are not trying to hand a victory to Hezbollah.  Either way, that is what they have succeeded in doing.   

Here is Jules Crittenden from the Boston Herald:

French is the traditional language of diplomacy. Diplomacy is the art of saying one thing while doing another.

    In recent weeks, France stepped forward to act as a broker of peace in Lebanon. “Act” is the key verb in that last sentence, as it now would seem that the only other verifiable part of the sentence is “in recent weeks.”

    To correctly parse that sentence, one must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or “peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is true when France further suggested it wanted to “lead” a “strong” “multinational” “force” there.

    I don’t speak French, so I have no idea what the actual French words are for those concepts or what possible nuances there may be. I’ve been relying on news reports in English, which now inform me that the French do not intend to send any significant number of troops to what is supposed to be a force of 15,000 in Lebanon, like everyone thought they said they would.

    The heady moment of peace brokering having passed, uponsober reflection, the French now say they already have a general and some staff in south Lebanon ordering about UNIFIL, the U.N. monitoring entity there. That’s plenty of leadership, the French suggested: All France needs to contribute now is another 200 combat engineers.

    In tactical terms, when it comes to securing a Middle East conflict zone, that can be referred to as “squat.”

This Afternoon in the Metrodome

House Blanchard saddled up the Subaru Saturday morning, with four Twins tickets in the lock box,  and pointed the old girl east for a road trip.  Fortunately I watched the Chi Sox get beat on TV Friday, and Sunday afternoon my family and I joined 42,533 other hopeful souls at the Metrodome.  Unfortunately, I also saw a good bit of Saturday's game on TV at Stella's Fish Cafe, uptown.  The Shrimp and Sausage k-bob was excellent.  The Twins stunk like day old shrimp in the sunshine.  Today was a great game, not the least because the Twins won.  It was especially excellent because Torri Hunter hit another long ball, this one landing just a few rows past the fence, near the left field fly poll.  Like yours truly, Hunter is an Arkansas native.  Of course I taught him everything he knows.  Or I would have if I'd met him and had the talents of, say, Spiderman.  He also has the most infectious smile in the majors.  Oh, and Santana pitched seven innings and gave up one run. The Twins can catch up with Detroit, let alone Chicago.  I also think they are capable of winning a seven game series with any team in Major Leage Baseball.   

Little Green Footballs

The Washington Post article about the website Little Green Footballs to which Ken Blanchard refers can be found here.  It is not clear how valid these charges are about anti-Muslim rhetoric at LGF. What seems clear is that the rhetoric has all come from commenters, if at all, and not from Charles Johnson.  Johnson seems to be saying the the accusations are the invention of his political opponents.  It might be the the FBI indeed investigated LGF based on accusations, but in the end found nothing.  Not being a reader of LGF, I wouldn't want to comment one way or the other.

Culture of Corruption

Ed Morrissey: The Culture Of Corruption Redux

Smearing Politicians

This Rapid City Journal editorial reviews current and past attempts to smear South Dakota politicians with rumors:

Politics is dirty business. It involves emphasizing your candidate's positive attributes while highlighting your opponent's negative attributes. The other side does the same. What's known as "spin" is simply phrasing a message so your candidate looks better than his opponent.

Politics has few rules, but one rule would be that a candidate or campaign shouldn't spread outright lies about a political opponent. If it's done at all, it's done by political allies not directly tied to a politician or staff.

When Lee Breard, campaign manager for Bruce Whalen, Republican candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, sent an e-mail to South Dakota reporters and bloggers about a Wikipedia entry for Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., he made several serious mistakes.

The first was believing what he read on the Internet. Wikipedia is an Internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Someone altered Herseth's Wikipedia entry to include "facts" about her sister, her fiancé, her pregnancy and her stand on abortion rights. These "facts" are easily refutable as Herseth doesn't have a sister, is not engaged to her chief of staff, is not pregnant and hasn't had a change of heart on abortion.

Second, Breard forwarded the Web address for the information to the media and others.

Third, Breard embellished the untruths by referring in his e-mail to Herseth as a "Home Wrecker."

Fourth, Breard is Whalen's campaign manager and his communications are official.

Fifth, having been caught in the act of spreading false rumors about Herseth, neither Breard nor Whalen have apologized.

Politicians have to get used to responding to rumors. It's an unfortunate consequence of being in the public eye.

Even Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who has had to fend of rumors about himself and his family, has expressed sympathy for Herseth on this matter.

We are reminded that during the 1996 U.S. Senate race between Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., and then-Rep. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., Alexander Cockburn, author of "Washington Babylon," was invited to come to South Dakota to speak. Cockburn had alleged in his book that Pressler was homosexual, a charge that Pressler called "despicable and totally false," but which was repeated by South Dakota media. Former Democratic Sen. James Abourezk orchestrated the events, of which Johnson denied any connection. Pressler later won a libel lawsuit against the book's publisher and author, but by then he was an ex-senator and the damage had been done.

We expressed our outrage at the time about spreading false rumors about Larry Pressler; we are equally upset that Whalen's campaign would relay untrue rumors about Stephanie Herseth.

Exaggerating an opponent's faults is fair politics; lying about them is not. Bruce Whalen owes Stephanie Herseth an apology for his campaign manager's inappropriate gossip.

Governor Rounds on the Death Penalty

Governor Rounds was recently interviewed about his position on the death penalty, the Page case, and his pro-life stance as it applies to this issue.  Here is an excerpt from the interview obtained from the Argus Leader; however, I strongly urge you to read the whole thing here.  I think the Governor does a pretty good job of articulating his position with reason.

Q: What do you think of the death penalty?

A: My record in the Legislature and so far as governor is to make it extremely limited in use and do your best so that children are not in a position of being executed.

Q: Do you think Page should die?

A: Clearly this was a case where extreme cruelty was involved. This individual has most certainly proven that he is capable of some of the most cruel and inhumane treatment of another person that's ever been recorded.

Q: So you are inclined to let the execution occur?

A: The judicial activity will move forward and the statutes will be carried out unless we directly intervene. ... At this point I don't have any plans to intervene.

...

Q: You have consistently said that you oppose abortion, and you signed House Bill 1215 that would ban most abortions. Is it consistent to be pro-life on abortion and also to favor the death penalty?

A: There's a real difference between an innocent human being and someone who has been convicted in a court of law of murdering another human being and may do it again.

Q: Would this be a milestone for South Dakota?

A: Yes, it would. It would be a sad day, but not as sad as the day a mother went to find out that her child had been murdered by one of these people.

Once again, here's the story from the Argus Leader.

Sheehantics

We all have the right to peacefully assemble.  I think when Cindy Sheehan gathers a group, they forget the peacefully part.  I love seeing protestors make their voices heard, but when they cross the lines of civility it really takes away from their message.  Here is an example of the antics that are recorded when the Sheehaniacs gather to protest (from the Washington Times, AP writer A. Brown):

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Chanting "Try Rove for treason," Cindy Sheehan and more than 50 other war protesters disrupted a reception before President Bush's top adviser Karl Rove spoke at a fundraiser Saturday.

One woman was arrested during a scuffle with police after Sheehan and the anti-war demonstrators rushed toward the closed doors and kept chanting loudly after the guests went into the dinner.

Read the whole article here.

Its unfortunate that Sheehan lost her son in combat; that must have been terrible.  But we are in a war to protect our citizens and our way of life from terrorists who want to tear the fabric of our society to shreds.  I hope that she and all of her followers support our great soldiers who continue to put their life on the line for our own safety and security.

DM&E

The Argus Leader today calls the DM&E railroad project "the largest rail project in the U.S. in more than a century."  Unfortunately, Tom Daschle and Bill Janklow are sabotaging this project and killing 6,000 South Dakota jobs as lap dogs for the Mayo Clinic.

NYT

The New York Times has a pretty cool interactive map that rates the probability of Democratic and Republican victories in Senate, House, and Governor's races around the country.  Not surprisingly, Stephanie Herseth and Mike Rounds are predicted to win their respective races.

A History of Presidential Visits to Mitchell

Mitchell Daily Republic:

Preparations are being made for the planned visit by Bill Clinton, whose October visit to Mitchell won’t be the city’s first brush with a president.

Several future presidents have campaigned here over the past century, although Clinton’s visit may be the first time an ex-president has come to Mitchell.

Clinton will be the keynote speaker for the dedication of the George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service on Saturday, Oct. 7. Lori Essig, vice president for university relations at DWU, said she now expects much larger crowds and more security since Clinton confirmed he will attend.

...

It may be the first time an ex-president has visited Mitchell, but Mitchell still has had several future presidents — and possibly one sitting president — pass through.

Ninety-eight years have passed since William Taft, William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Chafin all came to Mitchell on three consecutive days stumping for the office of president during the 1908 Corn Palace Festival.

They came by train and Taft spoke from outside the Omaha Depot, now the site of CorTrust Bank on Main Street.

A photo of Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, shows him riding in a buggy outside the Corn Palace surrounded by crowds.

Mitchell Historical Society member Lyle Swenson said he has seen a photo of a visit to Mitchell by President Harry Truman, but cannot determine the date of the photo. The photo shows Truman stepping off his plane at the airport. If the visit was during his 1948 presidential campaign, that would make Truman the only sitting president to have ever visited Mitchell.

In 1960, McGovern’s influence in Congress paid off for Mitchell residents wanting a glimpse of high-profile presidential nominee John F. Kennedy. A story in The Daily Republic said 5,000 people packed the Corn Palace while another 1,500 stood outside just to hear Kennedy speak.

Eight years later, his younger brother would make the same stop on his ill-fated campaign tour and would also speak at the Corn Palace. He was shot and killed before the election.

In 1988, George Bush Sr., then vice president and Republican Party nominee for president, visited Mitchell.

The Democrats prepare to run against Wal Mart

Some clever fellow once wrote that if Apple had allowed any manufacturer to build a machine that could work their operating system, the Justice Department would have ended up suing them instead of Microsoft.  I suppose that this is the ultimate sign of success in the modern world economy: the Justice Department takes you to court.  Another is that the Democrats in Congress denounce you.  From the New York Times:

DES MOINES, Aug. 16 — Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, delivered a 15-minute, blistering attack to warm applause from Democrats and union organizers here on Wednesday. But Mr. Biden’s main target was not Republicans in Washington, or even his prospective presidential rivals.

It was Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer.

Among Democrats, Mr. Biden is not alone. Across Iowa this week and across much of the country this month, Democratic leaders have found a new rallying cry that many of them say could prove powerful in the midterm elections and into 2008: denouncing Wal-Mart for what they say are substandard wages and health care benefits.

Six Democratic presidential contenders have appeared at rallies like the one Mr. Biden headlined, along with some Democratic candidates for Congress in some of the toughest-fought races in the country.

“My problem with Wal-Mart is that I don’t see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people,” Mr. Biden said, standing on the sweltering rooftop of the State Historical Society building here. “They talk about paying them $10 an hour. That’s true. How can you live a middle-class life on that?”

Rich Karlgaard, at Forbes, has this to say:

OK, I would not want to try a middle-class lifestyle on $10 an hour. Neither would you. But a question for Mr. Biden: When in history has a store clerk had a claim on the middle class life … home ownership, a late model car or two? (Answer: never) Why must Wal-Mart uniquely bear the responsibility of supplying middle-class incomes to checkout clerks and shelf stockers?

I note that 10 bucks an hour is almost twice the minimum wage.  Wal Mart is doing what Congress doesn't know how to do.  But Karlgaard is right.  My teenage son works at KMart.  He has enough dough to eat at McDonalds whenever my wife and I prepare meals with too many exotic vegetables, and he can afford to fill his room with even more impressive audio-visual hardware.  Is it realistic to expect KMart to provide him with a house and a car of his own?  If it did, how could I persuade him to go to college? 

With respect to Wal Mart, the people vote with their feet (and occasionally, as the referendum in Aberdeen proves, by voting).  Shoppers want the big box stores.  Workers want the big box stores (well, except for union workers).  The big boxes create jobs at an amazing clip, and better still, they are astoundingly productive.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, they benefit the communities they move into.  Karlgaard again:

“After looking at 25 small towns in different states where Wal-Mart opened stores in 2002, economists Richard Vedder of Ohio University and researcher Bryan O'Keefe of the American Enterprise Institute concluded that employment growth was stronger in Wal-Mart communities than in others."

“In a separate study, economist Emek Basker of the University of Missouri found that, on average, a new Wal-Mart kills 50 local retailing jobs, but creates 100 others—a net gain of 50. And, contrary to Democrats' claims, local wages don't decline."

“Labor Department data show that labor productivity for "big-box" discount stores like Wal-Mart rose at a sizzling 7.6% pace from 1987 to 2004. And according to the McKinsey Global Institute, productivity gains at Wal-Mart alone accounted for an amazing 13% of all productivity gains in the U.S. from 1995 to 1999—smack in the middle of the so-called Internet boom.”

Now that is a menace that the Democrats can mobilize against!

False Accusations from CCK

I suspect that if Chad Shulte were shooting at you, the safest place to stand would be right in front of him.  He is a very poor reader, and a very bad shot.  I note this post:

One of the Thune bloggers' favorite websites has been investigated for anti-Muslim threats.

I am not sure who the "Thune bloggers" are, but I suspect that SDP is included.  The "favorite website" mentioned is Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson's blog.   Johnson has focused on the threat from modern Islam, and recently exposed the doctored photos that embarrassed Reuters.  I do have LGF bookmarked, but if I have ever cited it I don't remember the occasion. 

The link Chad provides leads to a parody of LGF, Little Green Fascists.  It's funny, and if I were Johnson, I'd be flattered.  It's like the Northern Valley Beacon in spirit only, well, clever.  The Faux LGF mentions a Washington Post story, but provides no links.  I couldn't find the original WaPo article from their search engine, but I did notice this in the material LGFascists provides.

The FBI, according to Hooper [spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations], recently investigated several threats of physical harm against Muslims posted by Little Green Footballs readers  [emphasis mine].

Assuming the WaPo/LGF story is genuine, at least LGFascists is honest in reporting that the FBI investigated threats posted by LGF readers, and not the LGF website or Johnson himself.  That is more honesty than you can expect from CCK. 

CCK recently required each commenter to register in order to control some of the nastier posts, if I recall the event correctly.  So Chad knows full well that he cannot be responsible for what readers post in his comments section.  This is one reason why SDP doesn't have a comments section.  No one here is interested in policing it. 

I do not think Chad was intentionally lying.  He is just a careless reader and, as usual, got it wrong.

Thune

SDWC notes an upcoming Senator Thune appearence in Brookings this Monday:

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) will be the guest of honor at the grand opening of the Brookings County GOP Office this coming Monday, Aug. 21.

The senator will preside at a 10:30 a.m. dedication ceremony at the party headquarters, located at 404 Fifth St. in downtown Brookings. Also in attendance will be local and state elected officials and candidates.

"We are honored to have Sen. Thune in Brookings to dedicate our county Republican campaign office," said Chairwoman Jackie Diedrich.

"No on Pluto" inches ahead in the polls

In case you have been following a story of truly cosmic  dimensions, the International Astronomical Union seems poised to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.  The official reason for this action is that Pluto has never really been a team player along with the eight other members of the Planatary caucus.  Its orbit is eccentric, it's smaller than Rhode Island, blah, blah, blah.  The real reason for Pluto's sudden plunge in the polls is its support for the war in Iraq.  If Pluto does lose the IAU primary next week, we here at SDP urge it to run again in November as an Independent. 

Johnson

See this about Senator Johnson, who seems to be remaining neutral about Lamont's win in the Connecticut primary:

But let's look at the Democratic Senators in our new category, which I'm calling "firm about not being firm" when it comes to the interesting situation in Connecticut.

Drey Samuelson, Chief of Staff for Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), responded quickly and very nicely saying he would get in touch with the Senator and inquire. He then got back to me, saying "Tim sees no need to endorse either candidate—it's up to the voters of Connecticut to decide who represents them."

The Lowest Blow

Chad has confused me for Ken Blanchard.  I am not sure who should be more insulted, Ken or me.  Wait.  It's me.  Pretty sure. 

Energy Independence

And emailer writes in response to my post on Stephanie Herseth's mailer on energy that many of us got this week:

I agree with your comments on the 'campaign' presentation of the newletter.  What are your thoughts on the viability of energy independence?  Is this an appropriate discussion for the blog?

If baseball, coffee and Famous Dave's are appropriate for the blog, you bet energy independence is.  I have recently penned a piece on the subject.  We'll see if it ever sees the light of day.  Let me summarize what I think we should do, leaving aside obvious objections to some of the proposals (e.g., legitimate environmental concerns). 
1. Increase domestic supply by expanding drilling in Alaska and off-shore.
2. Promote alternative energy sources.  This includes biofuel (as Rep. Herseth is rightly trumpeting), solar power, wind power, and nuclear power. We also need to promote greater fuel efficiency in automobiles by furthering tax incentives for hybrid automobiles and raising CAFE standards.  I'd like to see government policy advocating all these things. 

Americans should not be overly optimistic.  The days of sub-$2.00 gas are probably over.  And the government can do very little to effect global supply and global demand, which is what drives oil prices in the first place.  I seriously doubt we can ever be truly independent when it comes to energy.  This is not an excuse not to act where we can. 

Finally, Someone Has Said It

An enlightening piece on what it's like to drive in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  For the love of God can we get rid of "uncontrolled" intersections. 

Domestic Surveillance

After spending some time perusing the web world, it is fair to say that yesterday's ruling against the Terrorist Surveillance Program will not withstand review.  This is not to say that Judge Taylor did not come to the correct result, but that her legal reasoning is so shoddy that it will not withstand scrutiny by higher courts.  For example, here is Orin Kerr at Volokh (with my emphasis):

I've just read through the Fourth Amendment part of Judge Taylor's opinion on the NSA domestic wiretapping opinion, and, well, um, it's kind of hard to know what to make of it. There really isn't any analysis; rather, it's just a few pages of general ruminations about the Fourth Amendment (much of it incomplete and some of it simply incorrect) followed by the statement in passing that the program is "obviously" in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Or how about Bryan Cunningham:

We can sympathize with her motives, and even share some of her gut feelings of uneasiness about the program. But we cannot accept the stunningly amateurish piece of, I hesitate even to call it legal work, by which she purports to make our government go deaf and dumb to those would murder us en masse. Her bosses on the Court of Appeals and/or the United States Supreme Court will not accept it.

Much will be said about this opinion in the coming days. I’ll start with this: I wouldn’t accept this utterly unsupported, constitutionally and logically bankrupt collection of musings from a first-year law student, much less a new lawyer at my firm.

See the rest of Cunningham's excellent piece for a review of the procedural and legal abuses by Judge Taylor.

I am no 4th Amendment expert, but it seems to me that question at hand is whether the 4th Amendment even applies here.  The 4th Amendment is designed to protect our rights in regards to criminal procedure, but in this case the government is not gathering information for prosecution but rather for national defense.  Second, at least one person being monitored in TSP eavesdropping is outside the nation.  It is not clear the 4th Amendment even applies if the subject of the search is a foreigner overseas.  The case against the TSP, it seems, must be based on whether it violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Then the question becomes whether FISA restricts these kinds of searches and, if it does, does it restrict the president in ways that violate his constitutional prerogatives.  On these issues I don't feel expert enough to comment, namely because I don't know the precise content of FISA as it pertains to this program.   

Warrentless Searches

Just as a terrorist plot was thwarted by vigorous surveillance, a U.S. judge has decided that such surveillance is unconstitutional.  From the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Detroit ruled yesterday that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional, delivering the first decision that the Bush administration's effort to monitor communications without court oversight runs afoul of the Bill of Rights and federal law.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action until a Sept. 7 hearing. Legal scholars said Taylor's decision is likely to receive heavy scrutiny from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit when the Justice Department appeals, and some criticized her ruling as poorly reasoned.

I suspect that Judge Diggs Taylor's ruling will be overturned in short order, for it is not consistent with previous law on this topic.  The Wall Street Journal has this:

Before yesterday, no American court had ever ruled that the President lacked the Constitutional right to conduct such wiretaps. President Carter signed the 1978 FISA statute that established the special court to approve domestic wiretaps even as his Administration declared it was not ceding any Constitutional power. And in the 2002 decision In Re: Sealed Case, the very panel of appellate judges that hears FISA appeals 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, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." We couldn't find Judge Taylor's attempt to grapple with those precedents, perhaps because they'd have interfered with the lilt of her purple prose.

My friend at CCK has this:

The problem with Bush's practice of wiretapping anyone he wishes isn't the practice of wiretapping in and of itself.

The problem is that he's doing it without oversight.  He claims oversight, but that oversight is from within his own branch of government.

We have something in this country called checks and balances on the powers of each branch of government. And Bush and his apologists have forgotten that.

I emphatically agree that oversight is required, but the question is whether it should be judicial oversight.  Consider for example the Fourth Amendment, as brought to you by EPublius:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

When the FBI or MI5 is scrambling to stop terrorists from blowing ten airliners out of the sky, either has to be able to follow any piece of information instantly to its source.  The prior warrant regime of the Fourth Amendment is no more applicable here than in a house to house search in Baghdad. 

The only oversight that can work in this environment is Congressional oversight, which is in fact in place.  If the Democrats in Congress think the current scheme is inadequate, let them propose a new one.  But caution is in order.  I gather Judge Diggs Taylor was worried that the government might listen into a conversation between Osama and some New York Times reporter.  Maybe it wouldn't be too savvy to frame the issue as one between the next Pulitzer prize and a High School Choir from Boise returning from a trip to London. 

Vintage Jimmy Carter II

I note a response to my previous post from Chad at CCK.

Does he really believe this crap?

If Carter were President and terrorists were shooting rockets into the U.S. from, say, Cuba, would he strike back? Probably not ...

And if he does really believe it, what else is going on inside his head?

Chad seems to mistake me for Professor Schaff, and erroneously attributes my post to my colleague.  I can't come down too hard on him for this, as we at SDP have made the same mistake regarding the various bloggers at CCK.  At any rate, the quote above is mine.  Here is what else is going on inside my head. 

My comment rested on two facts.  First, when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was captured during the Iranian revolution and the embassy personnel taken hostage, that was an explicit occupation of American soil.  It was an act of war against the United States.  The territory inside an American embassy is U.S. territory.  Carter did nothing about it for over a year, and only acted when he grasped that his reelection was on the line.  Instead of bringing American power to bear in an impressive way, he attempted a Hollywood rescue that ended in disaster.  So we know what Carter actually did when American soil was attacked.

Second, in his Der Spiegel interview, Carter is clearly saying that the Israelis should have allowed Hezbollah to shower Israel with missiles without attacking "the entire nation of Lebanon."  That would mean fighting Hezbollah without trying to cut off its sources of resupply from Syria and Iran.  It would mean that Lebanon would be protected from the consequences of allowing Hezbollah to operate from its territory.  Now I took this as an honest statement of what Carter believes, and has always believed.  So I assumed that he would act as he now thinks the Israeli's should have acted (grin and bear it) were he President and were we to be similarly assaulted.  If so, we know what Carter would have done if American soil was attacked by missiles: nothing. 

Of course there are alternative interpretations of Carter's remarks.  Maybe he expects Israel to act in a way that he would never have acted if similar circumstances has arisen while he was President.  If Chad thinks so, he might have attempted to make the argument.  But that would be out of character. 

Curses!

Minnesota Golden Gopher hockey star Phil Kessel has decided to leave school and has signed with the Boston Bruins.  May his skate blades be forever dull.  Not that I am bitter. 

"I had an abortion," Ms. Magazine urges its readers to declare. How about "I wasn't aborted"?

A powerful essay by one Julia Gorin over at the WSJ.  An emigre from Russia, where abortion commonplace, Gorin discusses the personal ramifications of the abortion culture.  Her essential points are that you never know what great things the aborted child may have achieved and also that, in her experience, the regret over children aborted is considerable in later years.  I note that her essay is on the personal costs of abortion, which does not necessitate any particular legal regime. I also note, by the by, that Russia's population is currently dropping at an average of 750,000 people per year.  Here's a sample from Gorin, but read the whole thing:

My husband, also a second-born, and I were lucky to have been two such afterthoughts, each brought into the world thanks to one of two parents' change of heart. (Actually it was Anya Isaakovna, my mother's usual at the public clinic, who sensed a tinge of reservation and kicked her out.) Coincidentally, both my husband and I were to be the third abortions, each of us having had two siblings who weren't so lucky, which unfortunately was lucky for us.

Not quite so for my parents. Life's turns dealt them a hand they couldn't have foreseen 30 years ago while aborting, an act that people living in a nation of miserables can't exactly be judged for. Indeed, among Soviet émigrés from the 1970s and '80s, it's very rare to see families with more than two children, the self-imposed quota among Russians of that wave. But in hindsight, as my mother said a few months after my newlywed elder sister and her husband died in a five-vehicle collision in 2000, had she known she would outlive one of her only two children, she would have had more.

In America there is room to judge, despite what the "sanctity of choice" crowd wants us to believe. Yet rather than do that, my intention is to plant a seed of consideration that may otherwise never occur to America's reluctant with-child women and even girls. It's a consideration that, for all our endless debating, goes unspoken, but that could alleviate heartache in later life and enrich our lives in ways we can't predict.

It's A Crazy Game

Taking a look at the major league standings,  notice this little anomaly.  As was mentioned during last night's Twins broadcast, the Cleveland Indians have outscored their opponents, yet are significantly under .500.  After last night's 7-2 loss to the Twins, Cleveland is 13 games below .500 (53-66) while outscoring its opponents by 52 runs for the season (647-595).  Meanwhile, over in the National League and down the interstate from Cleveland, the Cincinnati Reds have been outscored by 29 runs (593-622) yet are three games over .500 (62-58) and in contention for a playoff spot. Who said the game made sense?

Wal-Mart

Ed Morrissey: "The Democrats have finally found a unifying theme for the mid-term elections, one that appears to unite all ends of the political spectrum in their party. Instead of fighting a war on terrorism, though, they have decided to fight a war against Wal-Mart."

History Carnival

The latest history carnival is up over at Mode for Caleb, one of my favorite history blogs.  Caleb posts some wonderfully thoughtful pieces and shares the same love for jazz music, books, and coffee that I have.  Also, check out is article "Blogging in the Early Republic."

Dean II

The controversy continues to surround Howard Dean, who was in Rapid City today fundraising for the Democrats.  There's a long discussion over at Mount Blogmore regarding Kevin Woster's report in the Rapid City Journal.  Also check out Doug Wilken's post over at Dakota Today.

And Now A Message From Stephanie Herseth

Did you receive a newsletter today from Stephanie Herseth about biofuel?  I bet you did.  Here are some reactions.
1. This is a very wise move on her part.  The price of fuel is the second most important issue to Americans, behind only Iraq/terrorism.  The mailing is well done, touting energy independence and Herseth's self-described lead role in promoting ethanol and other biofuels. Clearly this mailing was done as a bit of campaign promotion.
2. Here's an example of incumbency advantage.  This mailing is almost indiscernible from campaign literature, except that it never says "vote for Herseth."  It is instead "constituent education."  Thus she gets the federal government to pay for what is essentially a campaign document.  This is not a criticism, just an observation.  Many incumbents do the exact same thing.  If it is "official business" they can use their congressional account to pay for it.  Because this mailing is "educational" it need not be paid for by campaign dollars. 
3. Herseth has a little survey on the mailing where you can send a postcard back to her and tell her what is the most important issue facing the nation.  You get four choices: Achieving energy independence, improving health care, improving education, and "other." It is worth noting that if you want to say "securing America against terrorism" is the most important issue facing the nation, you have to put it under the "other" category.    Does this tell us something about Herseth's priorities?  Or about ours?

Vintage Jimmy Carter

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Jimmy Carter shows once again that he possesses no ordinary mind.

SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?

Carter: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

No mention of the fact that Lebanon allowed itself to be the staging ground for a proxy war wagged by Iran against Israel.  If Carter were President and terrorists were shooting rockets into the U.S. from, say, Cuba, would he strike back?  Probably not, which helps to explain the 1980 Presidential election. 

  

DakFest

If you will be in or around Mitchell today or tomorrow, be sure to stop by Dakotafest east of town.  Yesturday the four candidates for governor, Mike Rounds, Jack Billion, Tom Gerber, and Steve Willis, squared off on the Dakotafest grounds.  Mitchell Daily Republic excerpt:

Two minor-party candidates added some flavor to a gubernatorial debate Tuesday at the Dakotafest farm show near Mitchell, where all four hopefuls were planted behind vanilla milk shakes under an open-air tent.

Tom Gerber, a Libertarian, and Steve Willis, a member of the Constitution Party, participated despite being omitted from the official show program. Their statements during the hour-long debate, along with those of Republican Mike Rounds and Democrat Jack Billion, provided the estimated 200 people in attendance with a veritable buffet of political philosophies to choose from.

Rounds, 51, the incumbent governor from Pierre, said state government is doing a good job with the resources it has.

Billion, 67, a retired surgeon from Sioux Falls, said the government can and should do more.

Gerber, 81, a retired management consultant from Sturgis, said the government is doing the wrong things.

And Willis, 51, a Wells Fargo employee and small-business owner from Sioux Falls, said the government is doing too much.

Read the whole thing.  The Daily website also has the closing statements made by each candidate, so check those out as well.  If any readers attended and would like to weigh in, drop us an email and I'll post your observations.

As for the schedule for Dakotafest today, this morning a forum was held on "The Future of Farm and Fuel Policy."  At 1 p.m., they will be discussing the farm bill, and at 3 will be "How the FSA Should Look in the Future."