South Dakota Politics

Hard, Clear Thoughts about War

John Derbyshire on The New English Review site has an extraordinarily clear and thoughtful meditation on war.  I strongly urge you to read it all the way through.  He makes two unsettling but compelling points.  Derbyshire has a book on the history of Algebra, which gives you some clue as to the precision of his reasoning. 

First, all of the subjects of any government are liable for what that government does, either to them or to some other nation.  Derbyshire has in mind something stronger than moral or legal liability.  The latter may be real and very important, but both are susceptible to forgiveness.  The liability he means is no more forgiveable than gravity or starvation. 

If the people of a nation submit to a tyranny, and if that tyranny makes war on us, as the North Korean regime may be deranged enough to do, we shall likely end by killing harmless citizens of that nation, citizens who hate the regime as much as we do. We would then assuage our guilt for this necessary injustice by telling ourselves that, well, it is their government, for which, as citizens, they must bear some collective responsibility, whatever their individual opinions.

Derbyshire's point is that a government always requires a considerable degree of cooperation and/or aquiescence from its subjects.  That is a simple fact.  Another is that if the government makes war on another nation that is capable of a robust response, then any subject of the former, along with his family, is liable to be blown out of his socks.  That kind of liability is a precise function of circumstances.  The moral conscience of folks on both sides is far more likely to accept that liability than to shape it. 

Second, the effectiveness of modern wars usually depends on how severe the cost was to the civilian population on the losing side. 

The population of a nation that has lost a war, to the point where all significant fighting has ceased, is in one of several possible collective attitudes. The following list is not necessarily exhaustive.

(a) Total denial. We did not lose the war.

 

(b) Regroup. OK, we lost a round. We’ll pull back and regroup, and be fighting again shortly.

 

(c) Stabbed in the back. We didn’t really lose militarily, and would be fighting still if traitors at home, or fickle allies, hadn’t stabbed us in the back. When we’ve dealt with them, we’ll reassess the situation.

 

(d) It’s a fair cop. All right, you beat us. We’ll fight no more, and do whatever you say. We will not, however, admit that we were completely wrong to make war on you. We will honor our soldiers who fell, as patriots who fought in a cause that was not, or not altogether, unjust.

 

(e) Full repentance. All right, you beat us. We’ll fight no more, and do whatever you say. You were right, we were wrong. In defeating us, you proved the justice of your cause. We totally and without qualification repudiate our previous regime, that took us to war, and all their arguments and methods. We shall have no public ceremonies honoring our dead soldiers, though we reserve the right to honor them privately.

The attitudes are listed according to the degree of resignation.  The further down the list a defeated population settles, the less likely it to fight again.  So if you don't like war, if you want this one to be the last one (at least with this foe), you want the other folks to end up in categores (d) or (e).  What sorts out the losers? 

Examples from the last century and a half:

(b) Iraq after Gulf War I. Saddam told his people the war had not been lost, that he had fought the Americans to a standstill, so that they went away. How many Iraqis actually believed this, I do not know, but the number surely increased as time went on. Iraqis who were schoolchildren at the time of GWI probably grew up believing the tale.
 

(b) The first two Arab-Israeli wars.

 

(c) Germany 1918.

 

(d) The Confederate States, 1865.  Japan, 1945

 

(e) Germany  1945.   

This list is sorted according to increasing degrees of trauma for the losing populations.  Because of Sherman's march to the sea, and a couple of atomic bombs, neither the Confederacy nor the Japanese needed to be beaten a second time.  The fact that German makes the same point even better.   Only the second time around did the shop keepers and clock makers really feel beaten. 

This is a terrible argument because, if it's true, the civilized way of war is altogether wrong headed.  When the U.S. fights in Iraq, or Israel in Lebanon, great care is taken to minimize the damage to civilians.  This increases the likelihood that the war will have to be fought over and over. 

But Derbyshire has another point.  WWII and the American Civil War are "crisis wars."  That is, the very existence of the victorious parties was felt to be at stake.  No war we have fought since has been such, and that so far includes the war on terror.  But given the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea and Iran, that may be about to change.  I have not the imagination to foresee the horrors to come.

Maybe the moral is that mathematically savy persons should not be allowed to write on foreign policy.  We aren't going to listen to them anyway.  And they will only make us feel guilty and more bitter when we get around to proving them right.

Hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily.

Good News on the Economy that You Haven't Heard About

Granted, it's been a pretty full news cycle lately.  But you might suppose that the following would have been noticed.  From Amity Shlaes on Bloomberg.com. 

This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent. On Aug. 17, when the more extensive annual Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook appears, that 2 percent figure is likely to show up more definitively. But neither the budgeteers' news nor the prospect of a confirmation of it is generating much discussion.         

      

This is surprising. The Economic Report of the President shows the federal deficit for 2004 was 3.6 percent. A narrowing of more than 1 1/2 percentage points in such a short time is itself a story.         

      

The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since.         

A shortfall of 2 percent of GDP is also news in the U.S. context. Sure, there was the surplus in the second half of the 1990s. But 2 percent is below the average for the federal deficit between 1980 and 1995.         

Hat tip to Real Clear Politics.

GOP Leadership and the War on Terror

This article relates to a post from yesterday about the GOP's leadership during the last five years.  Check out Senator Thune's comments below from the JournalStar.com.

This week’s dramatic new terrorism threat may help remind voters Republicans have provided “strong leadership on that issue that won’t vacillate,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said Friday.

“People will focus on that issue this November,” Thune said in a telephone interview from Grand Island.

“People recognize we’ve gone through the last five years without a major incident. It will be in the fabric of this fall’s elections.”

...

Steadfast Republican leadership  contrasts with “so much ambiguity and confusion on the Democratic side as to how to contend with the terrorist threat,” Thune said.

Read it all if you have time.

Interview with Secretary Rice

In case you missed it, the Sean Hannity interview with Secretary Rice has some interesting insight on the Administration's positions on Iran and the Israel/Lebanon Conflict.  If you have time, read the whole thing here.  Here are a few excerpts:

HANNITY: Why don't you sum up what happened today? Because I know there was a lot of contact between you and the Israeli prime minister in getting this resolution together. Where are we, and what was going on today?

RICE: Well, we've been working, Sean, for now several weeks, really, to try to bring an end so the large-scale violence that would not allow a return to the status quo ante. I know that there were a lot of people who talked about an immediate cease-fire.

We always wanted this to happen as quickly as possible, but the conditions had to be there so that you can't have a state within a state again, going across the Blue Line, attacking Israel, and then causing, sort of plunging the region into this chaos.

Today was the culmination of that. I had several conversations with the Israeli leadership, the foreign minister, the prime minister, several conversations with the Lebanese leadership, with Prime Minister Siniora. And I think we got to a good outcome for both Israel and for Lebanon, who want the same thing. They want the south to be a place where the Lebanese government and the Lebanese army -- with the help of a robust international force -- are able to prevent the kind of vacuum that led to this crisis in the first place.

...

HANNITY: What do we do about Iran? In many ways, I think that most observers think that Iran was fighting this war by proxy. The Israelis found Iranian Revolutionary Guards fighting side by side with Hezbollah. They fund Hezbollah $100 million a year. The long-range rockets, they took credit for giving it to them. And we now discovered that there had been training of the people that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers from Iran. What do we do? And, of course, [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad says wipe Israeli off the map and annihilate them. What do we do about the Iranian problem?

RICE: I've said many times Iran is a very big strategic threat. And we have to deal with that strategic threat. For instance, I think it's extremely important that, should Iran not respond to the Security Council resolution that was just passed on its nuclear program, that we go ahead with another resolution that begins to impose sanctions on Iran.

I think it's important that we begin to use financial measures to make it difficult for Iran to engage in the kinds of support of weapons of mass destruction and proliferation that it engages in. And ultimately, the international community has to stand up to an Iran that is a state sponsor of terror, really the central banker of terror, terrorism, and that is causing this destabilization in the international system.

HANNITY: If we assume that Ahmadinejad and his incendiary rhetoric continues, if his pursuit of nuclear weapons continues, must America and the world consider military force to stop him and stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power? I mean, assuming that somebody who says they want to wipe Israel off the map is not somebody you can negotiate with or that wants to go along with the world community, at some point a military option has got to be considered, no?

RICE: Well, obviously the president isn't going to take the military option off the table. He doesn't any of these options off the table.

We still believe that a robust, diplomatic response to Iran's intransigence on its nuclear weapons will work, on its nuclear program, will work, particularly if strong measures are taken that make it different for the Iranian regime to continue to argue that they're playing no price for their defiance of the international system.

I think, Sean, they were surprised that the resolution passed in the Security Council with the weight that it did, Russia voting for it, China voting for it. And so we will, if on August 31st there is not Iranian response, I think we'll move to another resolution.

Also note this short article from the AP regarding Israel halting  war efforts. 

Israel will halt its war in Lebanon at 7 a.m. Monday (midnight EDT Sunday night), a senior Israeli government official said Saturday.

Racial Profiling, Demographics, and Terror

Racists and other bigots have always been fond of arguing that certain groups of immigrants represent a slow and insidious invasion by hostile powers.  That, after all, was the basic message of Mein Kampf.  In the past, and especially in America, any reasonable person could see that this is a load of crap.  German Americans were no more likely to support the Kaiser or Hitler than the Bostonians over in little Italy were to back Mussolini.  Of course, we have not always been reasonable about this, as the incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans in WWII demonstrates. 

It may have been that having a lot of German or Japanese immigrants made it easier for the odd spy to move around unnoticed, but trying to get rid of or quarantine these groups for that reason would be like draining your rice fields because they hide the occasional snake.  No immigrant group in America has ever presented a demographic challenge to our security. 

One odd case confirms the rule.  Irish Americans, representing one quarter of my pedigree, have long provided a lot of support (meaning money) to the Irish Republican Army.  But this had the paradoxical effect of protecting America from IRA mischief.  Irish Americans could contribute to their "brothers" in Ulster precisely because they were so heavily invested in America.  An act of IRA terrorism in America would have shut off the tap  immediately and permanently.  I think the same thing is true of Muslim immigrants to America.  The dark souls who were behind 9/11 weren't from around here.

But this just isn't true in Britain.  The latest terrorist nightmare was hatched and nabbed in England for the same reason that home grown lads recently bombed English trains: because the large population of Muslim immigrants there has been a fertile ground for the recruitment of terrorists.  I think that the reason England in particular and Europe in general has this problem has less to do with the relative size of their immigrant populations (though that is of course a factor) than it does with their inability to assimilate those populations.  The Europeans just haven't been able to give their Muslim populations the same stake they gave to other immigrants.  Nothing like the American job machine works there. 

Militant Islam, and its connection to certain migrations, represents a new problem.  I suggest two principles as we search for a solution.  First, no person should ever be judged legally suspect, let alone guilty, because of his or her religion or ethnicity.  No government should penalize a person, or try to exile him, because he is a Muslim or an Arab or what not.  In court, great care will have to be taken so that religion, ethnicity, or race as such are never considered as signs of guilt. 

Second, in investigations aimed at preventing terrorism, religious and ethnic profiling are unavoidable.  MI5 would be nuts not to devote more man-hours of surveillance to Britain's Muslim population.  A housing unit full of Buddhists from Hong Kong just doesn't represent the same threat level as one loaded with Pakistanis.  Moreover, the British government does have the power to expel some persons who advocate violence and lawlessness, something that would be unthinkable in the U.S.  I like our way better, but it may be that we can afford it only because it is so far unnecessary. 

I hope that the U.S. will continue to be, in this regard, an exceptional nation.  But the old Chinese curse has come down on our heads: "May you live in interesting times." 

Cameras Never Lie

But photographers do.  Professor Schaff's post below links to a very well produced video on fake photos and videos from the war in Lebanon.  It is produced by Aish HaTorah, which Wikipedia translates as Fire of the Torah,  and describes as an "Orthodox Jewish outreach and yeshiva."  The website Aish looks like a reasonable religiously dedicated production, but Aish HaTorah obviously has a dog in the fight.  Like Wikipedia, it were well to cross check.

The first item in Aish's video, a doctored photo of Beirut, is discussed by Jim Lewis at Slate.com.  Lewis provides both the doctored version of the photo (top) and the apparently undoctored version (bottom).

On this one example, the Aish HaTorah version of the facts checks out.  However, the Aish video attributes the many examples of distorted and sometimes outright fake videos to political bias.  In each case, they argue, the purpose of the doctoring is to make Israel look worse.  This doesn't seem so clear to me.  The top photo above is a very sloppy piece of mischief, and if it was intended to make the damage look worse it didn't gain much ground. 

Moreover there is an obvious motive other than political bias for producing these doctored images.  Journalists want powerful, poignant photographs.  They have always succumbed to the temptation to stage scenes when actual events were insufficiently photogenic.  Just in case you didn't know, the most famous photo from WWII, the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, was staged. 

It's an arguable point whether there is anything intrinsically wrong with this.  The Iwo Jima photo told no lies.  Soldiers did in fact raise a flag there.  And the photo was without doubt a work of art.  It is reproduced in a magnificent statue in D.C. 

But it's surely easy to cross the line between journalistic license and journalistic malpractice.  If a more dramatic photo has the effect (intended or not) of making something look better or worse than it really was, if it depicts events that did not in fact happen as if they did, the line has been crossed.  There is indeed much evidence of political bias in the reporting on Lebanon.  But that is just a special case of unprofessional journalism.  What the story really shows is how unprofessional Reuters and other media outlets have become. 

An interesting question

Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal asks an important question relating to the Democratic position on the War on Terror.  (End of paragraph)

That was unfortunate timing this week for the Lamont Democrats, declaring themselves officially the antiwar party within 24 hours of the Brits foiling an Islamic terror plot to spread thousands of U.S.-bound bodies across the North Atlantic, or perhaps across New York, Boston and Washington as the planes descended. Yes, we know; they support the war on terror but are merely against George Bush's war in Iraq. How does that work?

This is an interesting question that gets to the heart of the problem with Democrat's and their position on homeland security.  Obviously there is terrorism in other parts of the world; however, helping the Iraqi's form a strong democracy lead by moderates will help the security of the United States. Henninger gets to the heart of his argument here:

Put it this way: From the perspective as of yesterday of getting on a U.S. airliner, who would you rather have in the Senate formulating policy toward this threat--Ned Lamont or Joe Lieberman?

Well, the Democratic Party would rather have Ned Lamont. That commitment was sealed Wednesday when Mr. Lieberman's longtime colleagues in the Senate, in one of the least edifying spectacles in recent political history, pledged their troth to the one-issue neophyte, Ned Lamont. Sens. Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Reid and, most embarrassing of all, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, participated in what can only be seen as a tragic Shakespearean assassination of a former colleague.

Check out the whole article here.  Also, hats off to Tony Blair and the United Kingdom for foiling this terror plot before it became a terrible tragedy.  Obviously it is hard to measure how effective our national security efforts have been since September 11th.  Yet, the United States has not been attacked since then and there is evidence that we have prevented several potential attacks under the leadership of Republicans who take an active stand on homeland security.  With Lamont's win over Lieberman in Connecticut, it is obvious that the Democratic position is that of the antiwar party.

McGovern Analogy

John McIntyre:

Democrats went down this road in the late 1960's with Vietnam and they are still carrying the baggage from that leftward turn. Lamont's win is a big step back to that losing formula. During the height of the "progressive" revolt against the war in Vietnam, Americans voted 57% for Nixon and Wallace in 1968, followed by a whopping 60% for Nixon in 1972 against the avowededly anti-war McGovern.

These Democratic wipeouts in '68 and '72 occurred while tens of thousands of Americans were dying in Southeast Asia. Today, as much as our media and the left want to make Iraq a Vietnam-like quagmire, casualties are running at a tenth of what they were in Vietnam. The other big difference from Vietnam is 9/11. America was attacked 5 years ago, something many on the Left seem to forget, but the voters have not. The comments that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 are irrelevant as Americans understand, rightly or wrongly, that we are in Iraq because of what happened on September 11. Only conspiracy-minded leftists believe otherwise. Just ask yourself if the U.S. would have invaded Iraq had 9/11 not happened.

...

Nationally, the images from last night are a disaster for the Democratic Party. Perched behind Lamont during his victory speech were the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, grinning ear to ear, serenaded by the chant of "Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home." For a party that has a profound public relations and substantive problem on national security, these are not exactly the images you want broadcast to the nation.

Anti-war Democrats and much of the mainstream media continue to confuse anti-war with anti-lose. The incessant commentary that 2/3rd of the country is against the war completely misreads the American public, as much of the negativity towards the war isn't because we are fighting, but rather a growing feeling that we are not fighting to win or not fighting smart.

Democrats went down this road in the late 1960's with Vietnam and they are still carrying the baggage from that leftward turn. Lamont's win is a big step back to that losing formula. During the height of the "progressive" revolt against the war in Vietnam, Americans voted 57% for Nixon and Wallace in 1968, followed by a whopping 60% for Nixon in 1972 against the avowededly anti-war McGovern.

These Democratic wipeouts in '68 and '72 occurred while tens of thousands of Americans were dying in Southeast Asia. Today, as much as our media and the left want to make Iraq a Vietnam-like quagmire, casualties are running at a tenth of what they were in Vietnam. The other big difference from Vietnam is 9/11. America was attacked 5 years ago, something many on the Left seem to forget, but the voters have not. The comments that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 are irrelevant as Americans understand, rightly or wrongly, that we are in Iraq because of what happened on September 11. Only conspiracy-minded leftists believe otherwise. Just ask yourself if the U.S. would have invaded Iraq had 9/11 not happened.

UPDATE:  The OpinionJournal writes an editorial entitled "The Lamont Democrats; Echoes of Vietnam cira 1975."  Excerpt:

Conservatives who are dismissing this as another suicidal lurch to the left should also be more respectful of voter sentiment. We're old enough to recall conservative Jeff Bell's upset of Senator Clifford Case in a New Jersey GOP primary in 1978. The media and political establishments sniffed at that result, and Mr. Bell lost in November to Bill Bradley. But it turned out his primary triumph was also a harbinger of Ronald Reagan. Mr. Lamont's victory is a sign of a resurgent political left that in its opposition to the Iraq War has found an issue that resonates with many voters.

On the other hand, Mr. Lamont has only won a primary, and Republicans and Mr. Lieberman now have a chance to frame the general election debate from here to November. The Lamont victory means that the Democrats are now the withdraw-from-Iraq party. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate united behind a somewhat more cautious pullout policy last week, calling for a phased withdrawal beginning this year. But with the support Mr. Lamont is now drawing from mainstream Democrats, the momentum within the party is all toward the come-home-now left.

Read the whole thing.

Updates from Knoxville

I'm coming to you from Knoxville Speedway in Knoxville, Iowa.  We've had a lot of great racing, but a tragedy Wednesday night.  Kansan Steve King was killed after a wreck Wednesday night, so we approach the races with heavy hearts and him and his family in our thoughts and prayers.

For those interested, the main event will be broadcast on Saturday on the Speed Channel at 9 p.m. central time.  See here for the qualifying order for Saturday's events.

Challenging Words

Here is the epigraph to Evelyn Waugh's Put Out More Flags:

"A little unjustice in the heart can be drowned by wine; but a great injustice in the world can be drowned only by the sword."
Epigrams of Chang Ch'ao; quoted and translated in Lin Yutand in The Importance Of Living

Deception From Palestine

Reader Donna passes along this link that I also received from the Jerusalem Post.  You need to know that certain news organizations are systematically deceiving you. 

John McCain Is Coming To Town

From KELO:

Arizona Senator John McCain Plans To Visit South Dakota

Arizona Senator John McCain plans to visit South Dakota in October.

South Dakota Senator John Thune's office made the announcement Thursday. McCain will speak to members of the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce on October 17th to mark the organization's 100^th anniversary.

Thune and McCain serve on the Senate Armed Service Committee.

The One Book Meme

At Professor Schaff's invitation, I accept Julie's challenge. 

1. One book that changed your life

Crisis of the House Divided, by Harry Jaffa.  Half way through the book I was convinced that Stephen Douglas was right.  By the end of the book I knew that Lincoln was right, and I was on my way to Claremont to study with Harry.  All this happened over the course of two days. 

2. One book that you’ve read more than once

Easy.  The Lord of the Rings.  I am guessing I have read it about a dozen times.  Spoiler: the ring is destroyed and the Dark Lord defeated.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island

Very tough.  Can I assemble my own book in a very large binder?  No?  Then probably one of the Norton anthologies of literature.  Give me three books, and they would be the King James Bible, the Complete Shakespeare, and the most complete one volume encyclopedia of science I could find.  I'd come back larned.  Give me two more, and they would be the works of Plato and Aristotle.  But surely I can fit ten in my duffle.  Then I could take Zen master Suzuki Roshi's Beginner's Mind, and the Oxford Book of English Verse. 

4. One book that made you laugh

Herodotus' Histories.  On a train headed toward Oregon I read about a Persian king who was struck blind for some sacriledge.  A priest told him that he would regain his sight if he bathed his eyes in the urine of a women who had not "slept" with any man but her husband.  So he has his wife piss in a cup, and he splashes the stuff in his eyes.  But to his great dismay, Herodotus relates, he did not regain his sight. 

5. One book that made you cry

James Joyce's Dubliners.

6. One book that you wish you had written

The King James Bible.

7. One book that you wish had never been written

Easy.  The Communist Manifesto.  That book killed more people than weapons of mass destruction ever did.  Can I get rid of Das Kapital as well?

8. One book you’re currently reading

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, by Mark Ridley.   

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read

The King James Bible. 

The US and Britain Dodge a Bullet

Perhaps "snag" a bullet would have been more accurate, in the way that Torii Hunter snags a fly ball.  This was mostly an MI5 operation, though apparently with substantial US assistance.  From the Washington Post:

LONDON, Aug. 10 -- A plot to simultaneously blow up as many as 10 U.S.-bound passenger jets with liquid explosives hidden in carry-on luggage was foiled with the arrest of 24 suspects, British and U.S. officials said Thursday.  . . .

The plot "was sophisticated, it had a lot of members and it was international in scope," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters. He said the suspects planned to smuggle bombs and detonators disguised as beverages, electronic devices and other everyday objects onto planes.

What it is most important to focus on now is how the plot was discovered and foiled.  Again from the WaPo:

It all began with a tip: In the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on London's transit system, British authorities received a call from a worried member of the Muslim community, reporting general suspicions about an acquaintance.

From that vague but vital piece of information, according to a senior European intelligence official, British authorities opened the investigation into what they said turned out to be a well-coordinated and long-planned plot to bomb multiple transatlantic flights heading toward the United States -- an assault designed to rival the scope and lethality of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.

Modern technology has put into the terrorist hands a quiver of weapons that are difficult to guard against.  It has also given them ways of organizing and communicating across vast distances.  The good news is that the age-old hurdles that any successful conspiracy must leap (well-described by Machiavelli in The Discourses) are still in place.  The more people you involve, and you have to involve a lot of people, the more you are exposed to the searching eyes of the enemy.  The trick for those wishing to foil the conspiracy is to get that first vital piece of information, and then be able to follow the trail.  In this case, the first piece of the puzzle was a matter of good luck.  The rest was provided by rigorous and blessedly unhampered surveillance. 

Investigators eventually pieced together enough information from a blizzard of stakeouts, tips and wiretaps to make clear that something big was in the works, and that the plotters' preparations were nearing an end.  ...

One U.S. intelligence source, however, said some of the British suspects arrested had made calls to the United States.  . . .

British officials suspect that as many as 50 participants and accomplices were involved, U.S. law enforcement officials said. Internet searches made by the suspects suggested they had considered targeting as many as 10 flights, investigators said, although there was no evidence that those arrested had bought tickets or made reservations.

It is certainly true, as civil rights activists insist, that the surveillance powers of the national security forces have to have adequate oversight, to make sure they are not abused.  It is even more certain that the security forces have to enjoy the free use of all the means at their disposal to detect and foil such plots.  These include wiretapping, Internet monitoring, and yes, listening in to calls between suspected terrorists abroad and persons in the United States.  Should it ever come to light that a terrorist plot succeeded because some scrupulous judge delayed or blocked an investigation, that would not be a victory for civil liberties.  It would be a crippling blow.

Classified Information And The Press

Some time ago, Chad Schuldt and I debated whether federal employees who leak classified information should be charged with a crime and also whether the news outlets that publish that information should suffer legal consequences.  I do not wish to re-fight that battle (you can get the gist of it here and here), but John C. Eastman has some relevant information over at NLT:

   This morning, the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the Espionage Act, which permits prosecution of anyone who knowingly publishes classified intelligence information. The challenge was brought by two lobbyists for AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) who received classified information from a Department of Defense analyst during the Clinton administration and who subsequently republished that information to others. The ruling should make the editors and publishers of the New York Times extremely nervous. As I noted in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence this past May, the New York times can be prosecuted under other provisions of the Espionage Act for its publication last December of our highly-classified and operationally-sensitive NSA surveillance program. Copy of my testimony is available here (registration required for download).

Update: Jonathan Adler has more information at Volokh. 

 

Global Terrorism and US Politics

It appears the terror masters were at it again.  This time they were caught.  And don't even try bringing water through security the next few weeks. 

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said as many as 10 flights had been targeted, and other officials said the plotters had hoped to bring the planes down in a cascade of horror over the Atlantic Ocean, possibly within days.

The plan involved the use of a peroxide-based solution, flammable when sparked by innocent-appearing small electronic devices.

Why do they fight us? Is it something we did?  I continue to say it is not what we do, it is who we are.  The islamofascists hate the modern world and the liberation that is at the heart of it.  As Wafa Sultan puts it, we are fighting not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of centuries (which, yes, is kinda the same thing).  Or here is Tom Friedman in the NYT (it is hidden behind Times Select, but because of Big Brother, I am allowed in. But sorry, no link available). Friedman takes as his muse the fact that just weeks before the recent Israeli-Palestinian war started Warren Buffett was in Israel looking to strike some big deals.

Young Israelis dream of being inventors, and their role models are the Israeli innovators who made it to the Nasdaq. Hezbollah youth dream of being martyrs, and their role models are Islamic militants who made it to the Next World. Israel spent the last six years preparing for Warren Buffett, while Hezbollah spent the last six years preparing for this war.

"Israel was not prepared for this war," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "It came upon us like the crash of a meteorite. The whole focus of debate in the country before this war was on withdrawal." The Israeli army had just taken on its own extremists, the settlers in Gaza, and removed them against their will, added Ezrahi, "and the country had just elected for the first time a prime minister who promised voters to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank in return for nothing."

In the end, Israel will do whatever it has to do to prevail. But what is so troubling for Israelis is that this war is about nothing and everything. That is, Israel got out of Lebanon, and yet Hezbollah  keeps coming. It is all about Hezbollah's need to justify its existence and Iran's need for a distraction.

Israelis dream of life, all too many Palestinians dream of death.  It is difficult to put it more starkly than that.  This is life affirmation versus death affirmation.  Anyone who cannot see the difference is morally blind. And there is nothing Israel can do to appease them.  It is not what Israel does.  It is what Israel is: modern and free. 

Which brings me to a column by Jacob Weisberg over at Slate.  Weisberg, liberal in good standing, is afraid of what the Ned Lamont victory in Connecticut means for the Democratic Party.

The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush's faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.
(snip)
It was not George McGovern's opposition to Vietnam but his larger tendency toward isolationism and his ambivalence about the use of American power in general that helped him lose 49 states to Richard Nixon. In a similar way, the 2006 Connecticut primary points to the growing influence within the party of leftists unmoved by the fight against global jihad.

I don't know how strong the isolationist wing of the Democratic Party is.  One primary does not a national trend make.  I suspect that the Democrats want power bad enough that they will moderate in 2008 and nominate someone who has proven credentials on fighting islamofascism.  If this is to be the case, then hawkish liberals, like Martin Peretz at The New Republic, need to be supported.  And if Republicans care about the future of the nation (as opposed to partisanship) they will rally behind the conventionally liberal Joe Lieberman in Connecticut.

Update: Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Mark Kennedy has endorsed Lieberman. 

Drought Tour 2006

Yesterday, Senators Johnson and Thune made their tour of some drought stricken areas.

Before focusing on the equity of drought payments, money must be secured, Johnson and Thune said.

And it could be a tough battle to convince Congress and the White House, both said.

That's one reason the Democrat and Republican toured the state together on Wednesday - to show that drought is not an issue of one party or the other, Johnson said.

Thune said one common question asked from the crowds at tour stops on Wednesday was, "What can we do to help?"

He encouraged local agencies affiliated with national associations - such as rural electric cooperatives - to encourage their national spokespersons to speak up for drought aid.

Drought injures the state's entire economy, even in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, Thune said.

There was also this tidbit from a farmer expressing why a certain area of corn had been hit particularly bad:

Quiett explained why the corn near the road on the south end of the field looked the worst. It caught the brunt of decimating winds that gradually slowed down as they met resistance from stalks deeper in the field.

"Thirty-five mile-per-hour winds out of the south and 115-degree temperatures. That's why," Quiett said.

That's what I call a dry sense of humor. 

Brotherly Love

Here's a fun little story from KELO about the Billion brothers:

Billion’s Brother On Abortion

South Dakota's abortion debate took a twist today when the younger brother of gubernatorial candidate Jack Billion showed up at a news conference to oppose his sibling's position.

Democrat Jack Billion called the stunt an example of how divisive the issue is and how some people have little tolerance for other views.

He called the news conference to clarify his stance on South Dakota's newly passed abortion ban, which is up for a public vote in November.

Younger brother Stephen Billion, an internal medicine doctor, said he supports the ban because it "recognizes the scientific and moral truth about human life in the womb."

Jack Billion, a retired Sioux Falls physician, calls the ban a "rigid and unforgiving law" that leaves women and families no option.

In response to his brother's public support of HB 1215, Jack Billion was reputed to say, "I'm telling mom!" 

Cynthy We Knew Ye All Too Well

Cynthia McKinney was indeed defeated in yesterday's Democratic Primary in Georgia.  The WaPo reminds us of why this one should please everybody but the McKinney clan itself.  .

Outside the Democratic primary showdown between Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and Ned Lamont in Connecticut, none of yesterday's races had attracted more attention than McKinney's.

The six-term lawmaker grabbed national headlines in March for striking a police officer who attempted to stop her as she skirted a metal detector in a House office building. McKinney, who is black, said race was a factor in the officer's stopping her when most members routinely breeze by security monitors.

McKinney also caused a stir in 2002 when she suggested that President Bush may have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That year, she lost the Democratic primary to a more moderate black candidate, Denise L. Majette. State Rep. Billy McKinney spelled out the reason for his daughter's political troubles that election night: "J-E-W-S."

Supreme Court OKs Initiatives

Here's the story:

South Dakotans will be allowed to vote on a repeal of video lottery and a cell phone tax.

The state supreme court has ruled 5-0 in favor of the campaigns to put the tax on the ballot.

Attorney General Larry Long had instructed Secretary of State Chris Nelson not to put the measures on the ballot, saying a prior court decision didn't allow for a public vote on initiated measures, especially those that would take away state revenue sources.

But the supreme court has overridden that decision.

Video lottery provides about $100 million annually to the state.  The cell phone tax brings in about six million.

Lieberman Update

Boy did I call this one wrong.  It appears that Joe Lieberman will run for re-election as an Independent.  From the Washington Post

Lieberman publicly conceded the primary shortly after 11 p.m., after a congratulatory call to Lamont. But he appeared almost exuberant in defeat, telling supporters at a hotel in Hartford that he planned to run as an independent in November and predicting that he would be returned to the Senate for a fourth term.

Julie Issues A Challenge

Since I do pretty much everything Julie tells me to do, here it goes:
1. One book that changed your life.
Love and Friendship by Allan Bloom. 

2. One book you've read more than once. 
My Antonia by Willa Cather. It does it for me every time.  "Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed. we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."  Gulp.

3. One book you want on a desert island.
Yes, the Bible is the obvious answer.  And yes, I also dig the King James version.  And if I didn't bring the Bible, I'd bring Lord of the Rings.  Almost the same thing. 

4. One book that made you laugh.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.  It has nothing to do with the new Woody Allen movie.

5. On book that made you cry.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  I kid you not.  If you haven't read it, you have no clue. If you have, you know exactly what I am talking about. 

6. One book you wish you had written.
I dunno.  All of them?  It's tempting to say Jack Nicklaus's Golf, My Way, but I'll say anything by Walker Percy, especially Love in the Ruins.   

7. One book you wish had never been written.
Although I object to the question, in the spirit of the exercise I will answer it.  Main Street by Sinclair Lewis.  In about the first 50 pages you get it.  Small town people are stupid.  But then he goes on to keep making the point for another 300 pages. 

8. One book you are currently reading.
Dante's Inferno.  In high school reading this work seemed like its own circle of Hell (I am positive I am the first person to ever make that Inferno joke).  This epic also gave rise to one of my favorite Gershwin turns of phrase, in "How Long Has This Been Going On (male version)":
As a tot, when I trotted in little velvet panties,
I was kissed by my sisters, my cousins, and my anties.
Sad to tell, it was hell, an inferno worse than Dante's.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.  Avert your eyes from me, for the shame is too great. 

10.  Now tag people.
Obviously, I tag my SDP colleagues.  What say you, gentlemen?

Blogs

The USA Today looks at on blogospheric fact-checking regarding Reutersgate.  HT to Insty.

The Wiki Effect

There's been a lot of heated debate and discussion lately regarding the false report about Stephanie Herseth being pregnant, which was discovered in the depths of the online open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia.  The debate demonstrates the perils of using Wikipedia as a source of information, a sort of caveat emptor for anybody wishing to cite information whether one is a journalist, political observer, academic, historian, or any other professional requiring solid facts.   

Wikipedia offers a remarkable degree of freedom.  Individuals have the ability to read it free of charge and use it at their will (ie, you can reprint entire articles on your website without worrying about copyright infringements).  Because of this remarkable degree of freedom, the site has become widely read, receiving over one million visitors per day to scan the 500 million words of information.  Unfortunately, this degree of freedom (primarily the freedom to edit information at one's whim) also allows people to abuse the system and attack individuals as was the case with Ms. Herseth.

Thus comes the basic question: as professionals, to what degree should we rely on Wikipedia and what are the potential implications of the information presented on the site?

In the June 2006 edition of the Journal of American History, Roy Rosenzweig attempted to answer that question as it concerned the history profession [Roy Rosenzweig, "Can History be Open Source?  Wikipedia and the Future of the Past," Journal of American History 93:1 (June 2006): 117-146].  "Wikipedia has created a working community, but has it created a good historical resource?," Rosenzweig asks.  "Are Wikipedians good historians?  As in the old tale of the blind men and the elephant, your assessment of Wikipedia as history depends a great deal on what part you touch."  He goes on to outline a few articles about American history and finds factual errors, glaring omissions, and remarkably accurate entries. 

To shift Rosenzweig's original question a bit, I ask is Wikipedia a good resource for political observers?  In my opinion, absolutely not.  Given the passion individuals have regarding political issues (abortion, gay marriage, health care, individual politicians, etc.) any article is subject to partisan disinformation and should be taken at face value. 

The largest glaring problem of using Wikipedia for a source is the fact that it constantly changes.  An article on Franklin D. Roosevelt has been edited at least five thousand times in the last four years.  Furthermore, the open-source nature of Wikipedia makes it vulnerable to vandalism.  In the fall of 2005, a Wikipedia article about journalist John Seigenthaler, who once worked for Robert Kennedy, asserted he was thought "to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby."  It was 132 days before the scurrilous charge was removed from the biography, while sites that mirror Wikipedia didn't update their profiles for another three weeks.  Just this week, the biography of Stephanie Herseth asserted her view on abortion changed "after announcing her pregnancy with fiancee Ajay Bruno's baby."  The libelous statement has since been removed, but demonstrates again that Wikipedia as a resource must be used cautiously or, more preferably, not at all.

Why is this important for politics?  Like the Argus Leader, Wikipedia has a ripple effect.  Rosenzweig writes:

Wikipedia can act as a megaphone, amplifying the (sometimes incorrect) conventional wisdom. As Wikinfo (a fork, or spin-off, from Wikipedia) explains: “A wiki with so many hundreds of thousands of pages is bound to get some things wrong. The problem is, that because Wikipedia has become the ‘aol’ [America Online] of the library and reference world, such false information and incorrect definitions of terms become multiple incompetences, propagated to millions of potential readers world-wide.” Not only does Wikipedia propagate misinformation but so do those who appropriate its content, as they are entitled to do under the gfdl. As a result, as the blogger John Morse observed, “when you search Google for some obscure term that Wikipedia knows about, you might get two dozen results that all say the same thing—seemingly authoritative until you realize they all spread from a snapshot of Wiki—one that is now severed from the context of editability and might seem more creditable than it really is.” The Web site Answers.com, which promises to provide “quick, integrated reference answers,” relies heavily on Wikipedia for those answers. And Google, which already puts Wikipedia results high in its rankings, now sends people looking for “definitions” to Answers.com. Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?

Indeed.  A rumor or outright lie written under an individual's biography can suddenly find itself throughout the entire Internet with a seemingly authoritative voice.  While I highly doubt a political campaign would ever use Wikipedia to distribute misinformation, all it takes is one technologically-savvy kid to change or add a sentence and completely revise the biography of an individual and change whether they are viewed favorably or unfavorably.  Using Wikipedia as a starting point for information is certainly helpful, but research should not stop there also.  Information from Wikipedia, whether used by journalists, bloggers, academics, or whomever, should never be a source to back up arguments or information.

On Leave (Again)

Unlike the Great Blog Silence of 2006, this break will be much shorter.  I am headed down to Knoxville, Iowa, for the Knoxville Nationals, the premiere annual World of Outlaws event.  I'll be cheering for Terry McCarl, who recently won his first World of Outlaws event at Husets Speedway in Brandon, SD.  And, unlike last year when it rained constantly and the main event was pushed back a day, the weather looks much better.

From The Comedy Vaults

If I may paraphrase an actual joke from an actual Monkees episode, Michael Nesmith is not a has-been, he's an am-is.  (For those interested, see this IMDB site and look for dialog between a Tony and  Mickey Dolenz. It's about halfway down.).

SDP gets Culture

My friend and colleague, Professor Schaff, likes to keep us informed about the musical genius of Hollywood has-beens like Michael Nesmith.  I for one am grateful.  What would the state of my soul be now were it not for the Monkees's "I'm Not Your Steppin Stone."  Or the Monkee Men!  But if there is one luminous ray of culture that all our readers know we have neglected, it is surely modern dance.  Here, with a little help from technology, is something to remedy the situation. 

Check this out from Break.com (my teenage son's favorite website).

ps.  I am just kidding about Nesmith.  I have long admired him, though with not so much to go on as Jon has. 

Twins Win. Lieberman Loses. So does McKinney, one hopes.

It's a two out of three night here in the SDP dugout.  The Twins finally managed to beat the Tigers in Detroit, 4-2.  Excellent ball game. Joe Nathan saved the day. 

Joe Lieberman has lost the Connecticut Democratic primary by a narrower margin, 52-48%, with about 80% of the votes in.  Lieberman has conceded, and it looks very unlikely that he will run as an independent.  I think he would have won such a race, but I understand why he won't try.  Stabbing back at a party that has stabbed him in the back would leave him with no one to caucus with except Senate Republicans.  I can't imagine wanting to be in that position.

My friend Chad over at CCK had this to say (in advance):

Regardless of what many in the GOP fold would like readers of weblogs to believe, a Lamont victory isn't a "victory for the McGovern wing" of the Democratic party.  It's a victory over George Bush.

Chad is surely right on the second count.  This primary was a referendum on Bush.  Granted, it was a referendum open only to Connecticut Democrats, but it is obvious that Lieberman's support of Bush's foreign policy was the anvil weighing him down.   As for the "McGovern wing" point, let us not forget that Lieberman was only a few handfuls of dimpled chads away from the Vice Presidency in 2000.  Al drafted Joe for the same reason that Bill had, eight years earlier, drafted Al: to show how far his party had marched away from its McGovernite past.  The national campaign that was waged this year against Lieberman surely looks like a rejection of the strategy by means of which Clinton earned eight years at a very prestigious Pennsylvania Avenue address. 

On a related note, here is how some New Hampshire voters describe Hillary Clinton:

“Lying b**** . . . shrew . . . Machiavellian . . . evil, power-mad witch . . . the ultimate self-serving politician.”

Wow.  That, according to a recent study and poll reported on in the Boston Herald, is how Ms. Clinton is viewed by New Hampshire Democrats.  If that American Research Group report is accurate, the era of Clintonism is over and done, with the Donkey dial turning sharply to the left.  It's hard to see how this is good news either for the Democrats or for the Republic. 

A bit of news with no national implications, beyond not wanting flamboyantly crazy people in Congress, is that Cynthia McKinney appears to be losing her primary race in Georgia.  Her opponent, Hank Johnson, has declared victory, and the fact that McKinney is now talking about voting machine irregularities suggests that she agrees with him. 

Life Is Good In Aberdeen, And Better In Pierre

Aberdeen is ranked #24 by bizjournals.com on a list of the best "micropolitan" places to live.  "Micropolitan" means any town between 10,000 and 50,000 in population.  Pierre is #8 and Brookings #21.  Number one was Bozeman, MT.  Here's how the towns are scored:

The study ranks the areas classified as micropolitan areas by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Areas with 10,000 to 50,000 residents were ranked based on population growth, income growth, per capita income, small business growth, small business concentration, management or professional jobs, ease of commuting, affordable housing, low taxation, college degrees, advanced degrees and proximity to major metropolitan area.
(snip)
The highest scores go to well-rounded places with strong economies, light traffic, moderate costs of living, first-class educational systems and good access to big-city attractions, according to the Web site.

The Man Who Changed The World

I confess having a soft spot for the Monkees.  They were on syndicated television when I was a kid and as an adult I have collected their music and TV show DVDs out of pure nostalgia.  I make no high claims as to quality of either Monkee medium, but I find them fun.  I am also a big fan of the solo music of Monkee Michael Nesmith (see this nice interview from the Irish Times).  Nesmith was highly influential in the country rock movement of the early 70s.  You can find his music on itunes or at his website, videoranch, where you can purchase by the song.  If you are curious, I suggest you start with two songs from the Nevada Fighter album, "Propinquity" and the title song, "Nevada Fighter."  Together they give a good indication as to what Nesmith was doing in the early 70s.  Nez's music was also covered by such artists as Linda Ronstadt, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Earl Scruggs. 

Nesmith was very influential in the rise of music video.  He won the first Grammy for Video of the Year for his show Elephant Parts (sections of which can be viewed at videoranch).  Nesmith is also credited for inventing MTV.  Nesmith produced a show called Popclips for budding cable network Nickelodeon.  It was a half hour of music video.  Time Warner bought the idea and turned it into MTV.  Thus, at the first MTV Video Awards show Michael Nesmith was given the Vanguard Award for lifetime achievement in music video. 

It's safe to say the MTV did not become what Nesmith would have wanted.  Nesmith was enthralled with the mixing of media.  For example, his album The Prison is actually a short story (it comes with the CD) with the music serving as a soundtrack. Nesmith saw music video as another art form, with the video being a short story with a soundtrack.  What MTV became was simply another marketing vehicle.  And an odd one at that.  Now, more than ever, image was everything in popular music.  Artists had to look flashy in videos in addition to making listenable music.  And the listenable music part is questionable.  For example, it is hard to imagine Madonna's success without MTV.  For another example, look at the group Chicago.  Chicago never put their picture on the album cover and rotated lead singing honors.  But in the era of MTV, they had to start being telegenic.  So they started putting their faces on the album cover.  They promoted Peter Cetera to front man because he was the best looking guy.  They dumped their horn section for a more mainstream pop sound.  And in a matter of years the group broke up over dissension over the direction of the band.  Chicago was the quintessential band where it was all about the music.  Well, not after MTV.  This is not to romanticize pre-MTV popular music (yes, it also was about image), but MTV changed the musical landscape. 

MTV has long since stopped showing videos.  Their main programing now is essentially sending certain images to American youth about what it means to be cool.  This isn't just cool music.  It's cool movies, and cool clothes, and cool attitudes, and cool politics, and cool hair, etc.  This is best documented in the PBS Frontline show "The Merchants of Cool".  MTV, through its programming, attempts to tell young people how they should act and what they should think if they want to appear cool.  This theme is also developed in the must read Nation of Rebels.  MTV set out to change the culture, and they have been quite successful.  I have no idea what Michael Nesmith thinks of his Frankenstein monster, but I doubt it is what he envisioned. 

Yesterday Stanley Crouch, jazz impresario, wrote about MTV on the occassion of the network's 25th anniversary.  Yet Crouch is unhappy with MTV and its contributions to the degradation of the black culture.

Of course, that is not the whole story of MTV, which also came to project the most dehumanizing images of black people since the dawn of minstrelsy in the 19th century. Pimps, whores, potheads, dope dealers, gangbangers, the crudest materialism and anarchic gang violence were broadcast around the world as "real" black culture.

At first, far too many black people were taken in by the cult of celebrity and the wealth that came to these gold- toothed knuckleheads and mindless hussies to realize what was happening. The lowest possible common denominator was seen as the norm. The illiteracy and rule-of-thumb stupidity was interpreted as a "cultural" rejection of white middle-class norms.

It could be argued that the secret story of MTV is that they have grown very rich, and made their corporate sponsors very rich, selling rebellion and "cool" to young people.  MTV, in some sense, is one long commercial.  It is selling rebellion and cool and all the consumer items you need to be a cool rebel.  As we learned in Fight Club, you are what you buy.  That is the consumerist culture that is now MTV.  Wrapped up in a mantle of the counterculture, they are the most stereotypical of the corporate whores.  In The Godfather, the heads of the families agree to sell drugs only to the blacks.  After all, it is argued, they are animals anyway.  Is MTV any different, except that they are better liars?

The McGovernite Entity

Paul Mirengoff observes:

Would a Lamont victory in the primary cause Democratic incumbents to push more forcefully for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq? It almost certainly would lead to some scurrying in that direction. But in my view, such scurrying will occur over time regardless of tommorow's result. The Democratic party is a McGovernite entity. Most of its leading politicians instinctively want us out of Iraq. And now that a majority of Americans have turned against the war, political calculation provides an inadequate brake on the semi-pacificst instincts of the Dems. Even if Lieberman wins, focus groups of Democratic voters will convey to the Democratic politicians who pay for them the same message that the Lamont boomlet has. A Lieberman victory might buck-up Hillary Clinton for a little while, but probably not for long.

Today is the big day in Connecticut so we'll watch what happens.

John Thune and Classcial Virtue

Okay, the title was a little dramatic.  But that is not the same as inaccurate.  Among the virtues, Aristotle counted phronaysis (my transliteration).  This Greek word is often translated as "prudence," or more helpfully, as "practical wisdom."  This virtue is the ability to make the right call in diverse circumstances. 

I suggest that Senator Thune exemplifies this virtue.  He knew well enough when to retire from his House seat, and if he misjudged in his run against Tim Johnson, it did him no harm.  No one can now fault his decision to run against Senator Daschle.  My colleagues have noted Thune's decision not to run for a top GOP leadership post: the National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair, even though he would have easily captured that post.  To these eyes, that is what prudence looks like.

I liked and admired Senator Daschle (and I have said so in print), though in all candor I never voted for him.  I think he lost because he bought a really expensive house in Virginia, thus sending the signal that the really wasn't from South Dakota any more.  For reasons that my colleague, Professor Schaff, can explain in better detail than I, it's not a good idea for a South Dakota politician to seem to be too big for his breeches.  I don't think this is such a good thing.  We benefited from Daschle being Senate Party Leader, and we would benefit from the advancement of Senator Thune.  But I suspect that Senator Thune knows how to make the right call on this one. 

Whichever side of the floor you are on, it makes sense to recognize the virtues of South Dakota.  We have, in a very short time, produced two Senators of national stature.  By virtue of that fact, we are a much bigger state than our population or geographic location would indicate.  It's worth taking a moment to appreciate this. 

A new blogger

Greetings to the readers of South Dakota Politics. My name is Dustin Adams, and I will be contributing to the blog very soon.  I grew up in Belle Fourche, SD, and I just graduated from the University of South Dakota in May. I will soon be heading out to study law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. I am looking forward to contributing to this great blog!

Hotline: "A Blow to Republicans"

The Hotline blog reacts to Thune's announcement regarding his refusal to run as head of the NRSC.  Excerpt:

Even Democrats think Sen. John Thune (R-SD) would have made a hell of an NRSC chair. But Thune, the favorite of many in the Republican party for that position, bowed out from consideration over the weekend.

He's a mega fundraiser, telegenic, popular with his colleagues and whip-smart.

But Thune's first brush with national politics -- the cold shoulder given to him by the BRAC commission -- soured his desire to move up too quickly. (Ellsworth Air Force Base was eventually saved and Thune eventually stopped being a thorn in the side of the Bush Admin).

We wonder if his decision has something to do with Thune's anti-Bush campaign comment: " I were running in [South Dakota]' this year, you obviously don't embrace the president and his agenda."

Maybe Thune took a good look at the numbers and realized that the '08 GOP cycle would be, in some ways, more of a defensive cycle for the GOP than even this one; particularly if the GOP narrowly holds the Senate this cycle.

The betting suggests that Thune, who allies think would be a great presidential candidate in future cycles and a potential vice presidential ticketmate in '08, doesn't want to spend the next two years raising money the hard way.

He's great at raising it the easy way -- the Daschle-killer is a top draw on the GOP fundraising circuit.

Thune Forgoes NRSC Bid

Professor Schaff noted the story below.  Here's an excerpt of a Roll Call article today on Thune rejecting a bid to head the National Republican Senatorial Committee: 

In a surprise reversal that throws open a top GOP leadership slot in the next Congress, Sen. John Thune (S.D.) has decided to forgo what many believed was a certain bid to head the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 2008 cycle.

Thune quietly began informing his colleagues, most notably Majority Whip and presumed leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), of his decision late last week. The freshman lawmaker, viewed as politically astute and a rising star in the GOP Conference, cited a desire to spend more time with his family and the demanding travel schedule associated with the NRSC job as the primary reasons for opting out of the race.

...

His decision leaves a big question mark in the Republican ranks over who else might be willing to take on the grueling position as the party’s top fundraiser, campaigner and recruiter next cycle, a post now held by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (N.C.). The 2008 cycle promises to be a brutal one since 21 Republican incumbents are up for re-election, and many believe control of the Senate will be up for grabs.

Sens. David Vitter (La.) and Mel Martinez (Fla.) both have been mentioned in GOP leadership circles as possibilities, but both have suggested — either directly or indirectly — that they don’t believe the job is the right match for them next cycle, either. GOP sources said Friday that other possible candidates include Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Richard Burr (N.C.).

Others who might be interested in the job — such as Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, who pursued the post in the previous go-round — are barred from seeking it because they are up for re-election in 2008.

Who Are The White Hats?

David Warren has a nice piece on the racism coming from Palestine. 

Dr Condoleezza Rice is a "coloured dark skin black lady". Did you know? She is a "black spinster", a "raven who brings only destruction", according to Al Hayat Al Jadida, the official daily of the Palestinian Authority -- still under the direction of the "moderate" Fatah faction, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. These descriptors are from news stories: you should see the editorials. According to the colour cartoon, Miss Rice is pregnant and has a monkey in her womb. The caption says, "Rice speaks about birth of new Middle East." A cartoon from a demonstrator's placard, also featured prominently in the paper, shows her not pregnant, but instead drinking the blood of Arab babies. In caption she says: "I need more blood."

And you thought Danish cartoonists were edgy.

They hate Condi Rice because she's black, every Jew because they are Jews, homosexuals because they are sexual deviants (in their view), and Hezbollah means "The Party of God"  (which David Bernstein at Volokh insists on calling them).  You'd think the Western nations could enthusiastically get behind a war against the racist, homophobic, Party of God folks.  But you'd think wrong.  As Mark Steyn so cleverly points out, we instead look for the "proportionate" response.  Here's Steyn:

On the other other hand, when the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, announces that if Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,'' that's not in the least "disproportionate.'' When President Ahmadinejad of Iran visits Malaysia and declares, apropos Lebanon, that "although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented," well, that's just a bit of mildly overheated rhetoric prefacing what's otherwise a very helpful outline of a viable peace process: (Stage One) Please don't keep degrading our infrastructure until (Stage Two) we've got the capacity to nuke you.

Right now, Israel's best chance of any decent press would seem to be if Mel Gibson flies in and bawls out his waiter as a "f---ing Jew.''

Peretz's Insinuations

I too saw the Martin Peretz piece in the WSJ.  It is worth the read.  But Peretz seems to insinuate that George McGovern was as much of a stooge for the Soviet Union as was Harry Wallace.  That is clearly false.  Peretz should be faulted for at least being sloppy with his writing (what are we to make of the phrase "altogether accurate analogies") if not making an outright false allegation. 

I do second the Captain and his critique of "liberal internationalist" foreign policy.  He calls it "Utopian" while others would call it "idealistic."  This foreign policy view holds that the people of the world all really want the same thing.  We all want peace, freedom, self-determination, and harmony.  Further it is assumed that everyone agrees on the definition of these terms.  With this assumption, the liberal idealists believe that conflict is caused by lack of understanding.  Thus the solution to conflict is diplomatic negotiations in which we are all made aware that we really want the same thing and our differences are merely superficial.  Unfortunately this fish is rotten at the head.  We don't all want the same thing.  Some people do simply want power and will kill and destroy to get it.  Granted they may speak the language of Western liberalism (Hezbollah is quite good at this), but it is all a show for gullible Westerners. 

Before the right-wingers get to feeling too superior, George Bush's foreign policy is predicated by the assumption, often stated by Bush, that in the hearts of all people beats the desire for freedom. We just need to liberate them from bad governments and freedom will flourish. There is much evidence to the contrary.

Thune Will Not Seek Leadership Post

Sen. Thune has announced he will not seek the post of GOP Senate campaign chair.  Despite Thune's fund raising prowess, it's probably a wise move for him to focus on his own seat rather than moving into a position of national power.

Connecticut and the Return of McGovernism

Mary Peretz of The New Republic tells OpinionJournal that the political movement in Connecticut looks like 1972 all over again.  Excerpt:

I was there, a partisan, as a graduate student at the beginning, in 1962, when the eminent Harvard historian H. Stuart Hughes (grandson of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes) ran for the U.S. Senate as an independent against George Cabot Lodge and the victor, Ted Kennedy, a trio of what in the Ivies is, somewhat derisively, called "legacies." Hughes's platform fixed on President John F. Kennedy's belligerent policy towards Cuba, which had been crystallized in the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco. The campaign ended, however, with Hughes winning a dreary 1% of the vote when Krushchev capitulated to JFK just before the election and brought the missile crisis to an end, leaving Fidel Castro in power as an annoyance (which he is still, though maybe not much longer), but not as a threat.

Later peace candidates did better. Some were even elected. Vietnam was their card. One was even nominated for president in 1972. George McGovern, a morally imperious isolationist with fellow-traveling habits, never could shake the altogether accurate analogies with Henry Wallace. (Wallace was the slightly dopey vice president, dropped from the ticket by FDR in 1944, who ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket, a creation of Stalin's agents in the U.S.) Mr. McGovern's trouncing by Richard Nixon, a reprobate president if we ever had one, augured the recessional--if not quite the collapse--of such Democratic politics, which insisted our enemy in the Cold War was not the Soviets but us.

It was then that people like Joe Lieberman emerged, muscular on defense, assertive in foreign policy, genuinely liberal on social and economic matters, but not doctrinaire on regulatory issues. He had marched for civil rights and is committed to an equal opportunity agenda with equal opportunity results. He has qualms about affirmative action. But who, in his hearts of hearts, does not? He is appalled by the abysmal standards of our popular culture and our public discourse. Who really loves our popular culture--or, at least, which parent? He is thoroughly a Democrat. But Mr. Lieberman believes that, in an age of communal and global stress, one would do well to speak with the president (even, on rare occasion, speak well of him) and compromise with him on urgent matters of practical law.

HT to Ed Morrissey, who has more observations.

Sidney Blumenthal on Neo-Conservatives and Israel

Sidney Blumenthal, former adviser to President Clinton, has this piece in Salon.com.  Here is the money quote:

Aug. 3, 2006 | The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

I suspect that Mr. Blumenthal's anonymous source is weaving what is obvious with what is mere rumor and innuendo.  Start with the first part:

The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, . . .  . President Bush has approved the secret program.

Well, yeah.  Supplying intelligence to the Israelis as they fight yet another war with their neighbors is standard procedure for the U.S.  You don't need "neo-conservatives" to explain it.  Of course exposing the "secret program" won't be particularly helpful for American policy, especially when it is quoted on Arab news, but Blumenthal couldn't care less about that. 

The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Nice passive construction in that sentence.  Description without a specified describer.  There is little question that Syria and Iran are behind Hezbollah, and that the administration would like to expose that connection as much as possible.  Surely they would like to find some way of severing the connection, which might be done if our European allies had any interest in it.  If Blumenthal sees this as sinister, well it's no wonder that Salon and the left-wing British Guardian like his stuff. 

Blumenthal's use of the term "neo-conservatives" is interesting.  When a right-wing radical film-maker goes on a drunken rant, he accuses the Jews of, well, of anything bad he can think of.  These days you can see the same sneer when the European left speaks of neo-conservatives.  It's the neo-cons who are behind all the bad stuff in the world.  Of course it's probably just an accident that the neo-conservative movement, in its beginnings, was largely a matter of Jewish intellectuals drifting from the left to the right. 

The rest of Blumenthal's piece is a mixed bag.  He scores one good hit on Bush Administration policy:

Charles Freeman, the elder Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, remarked, "The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad."

That may well turn out to be true.  If radical Shiite forces come to dominate Iraq, we may have created another Syria to be used as a tool by Iran.  An article focusing on that would have been much more interesting than a conspiracy theory about neo-conservatives.  But Blumenthal can't tell what he has got.  So we get this:

Bush's rejection of and reluctance to embrace the peace process concluded with the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. This failure was followed by a refusal to engage Hamas, potentially splitting its new governmental ministers from its more radical leadership in Damascus. Predictably, the most radical elements of Hamas found a way to lash out. And Hezbollah seized the moment by staging its own provocation.

Ah, now I understand.  Whose fault is it that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups?  Not the fault of the people in those organizations.  It's the fault of Bush.  If only Bush were nicer, Hamas would turn into a bunch of Shriners, ridding in circles on little motor cars in  a main street parade.  How nice to think that we are so powerful, that the evils of others are only reflections of our own vices. 

Personal Attacks

A commentator at Mt. Blogmore reviews some of the nasty rumors that have been spread to hurt South Dakota politicians in the past:

Over the years, South Dakota statewide elected officials have had to endure many juicy and salacious rumors. Most, if not all, like the Herseth rumor, were catagorically false.

Here’s a sampling (I bet Frankenfeld can put a name to each one of them):

“He’s gay.”
“His wife caught him in bed with the babysitter.”
“He raped a woman.”
“He’s got Alzheimers.”
“He’s beating his wife.”
“He’s gay.”
“He’s sleeping with a staffer.”
“He tried to sleep with his staffer.”
“He’s a drunk.”
“He’s on a bunch of medication.”
“He’s gay.”

Beyond the homophobia (or would it be latent homosexuality?), all of these rumors were spread by smart, astute political observers who thought they were true. Further, so far as I know, however, none of these rumors have shown up on Wikipedia or spread via email and blog by their opponent’s dense campaign manager and an even denser right-wing lunatic supposedly “In search of the Truth.”

This latest episode informs me why I prefer the old fashioned way of hearing about rumors involving South Dakota politicians: in a phone call with David Kranz.

Meat Plant

Isn't that sort of a contradiction in terms?  I second my colleague's comment on Russ Keen's reporting in the American News concerning the meat-packing plant proposed for Aberdeen.  My wife and I were recently approached by a woman who was gathering signatures opposing the beef processing plant.  We may have been a little bit testy.  To see the most important impact this plant would have on our community, consider the following from the headline article:

"Housing is our No. 1 issue," said Joe Pepplitsch, city manager in Lexington, Neb., where a Tyson beef plant employs about 2,400. Before it opened in 1990, Lexington was a town of 6,000 people. Today, 10,000 call it home.

By far, the biggest Swift-related issue in Grand Island is wastewater treatment, Kuzma said. And that's because of volume, not odor, she said.

In Schuyler, Neb., the top concern is crowded schools, which is directly related to beef plant employment at Cargill Meat Solutions west of town.

And in Norfolk, Neb., the city continues to reel from the sudden departure of all of these issues - as well as the loss of all the benefits that come with a beef plant. Tyson announced unexpectedly in February that it would close its Norfolk plant where 1,300 worked.

Can you imagine, just for a while, having Schuyler's problem?  Aberdeen schools over-crowded!  What would that look like?  Call me a an optimist on a lot of things, but I would surely rather have Schulyer's problems than Norfolk's. 

VDH and Historical Analogy

Historian Victor Davis Hanson, author of A War Like No Other, writes a history lesson for NRO regarding the crisis in the Middle East:

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and it is even more baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan.  India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.

Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with these perceived Muslim grievances:  India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon. Therefore we are to believe that “freedom fighters” commit terror for political purposes of “liberation.” At the most extreme, some think there is absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that there is constitutes “Islamaphobia.”

Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated — as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques.

But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, “Valley of the Wolves,” depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post “deliberate,” without a word that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah’s terrorists routinely hide behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles.

If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about Israel: “When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in their legendary army, the end of this entity will begin [emphasis added].” Then compare Nasrallah’s remarks about the U.S: “To President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief. Your masses will soon waste away, and your days are numbered [emphasis added].”

And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia— from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah.” And isn’t that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any?

An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against Israel.

Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States— does anyone remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? — routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas, as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial creed of Hezbollah.

There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred.

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7^th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around.

AL's Self-Importance

The Argus Leader is patting itself on the back today:  "So, too, has the Argus Leader been the watchman, investigating government corruption, turning its spotlight again and again on injustices uncovered in its sphere of influence."

Giago

Argus Leader:

Tim Giago's sometimes controversial views and new ideas have changed the face of Native American journalism and challenged media around the country.

Today, Giago is 72. He recently announced his retirement as president of the Native American Journalists Foundation after being in the newspaper business for more than 35 years.

With a staff of three and $4,000, he started the Lakota Times in 1981 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It became the nation's largest independently owned Indian newspaper.

The venture would prove to be more difficult than ever imagined. Tensions between Natives and others over the occupation of Wounded Knee led to attacks on the newspaper.

"Getting caught between the factions that were at each other's throats," Giago said. "We tried to walk the middle road. We did editorials that were critical of both sides."

But windows were broken out, and the building was firebombed before Christmas in the paper's first year.

Read the whole thing.

Bike Week

New York Times:

Now the United States Postal Service may be displaying a similar rebellious streak: tomorrow at the huge Sturgis motorcycle rally in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Postal Service will issue a set of four stamps that depict classic American bikes. An event once tinged with something of an outlaw reputation, Sturgis has become an annual pilgrimage for well-heeled touring riders and sport bike enthusiasts.

When the post office approved motorcycles in 2003 as a subject for future stamps, it asked the Smithsonian Institution for help selecting models that would display what Mark Saunders, a post office spokesman, called “the evolution” of American style and construction. An example of one bike selected for the stamps, a 1918 Cleveland, is owned by Ms. Nickerson, president of the Big Sandbar chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America, on Long Island.

The Times also has a good story on the conflict between Native Americans and commercial growth around Bear Butte:

But Bear Butte, which dozens of tribes hold as one of the most sacred sites in North America, is getting a new neighbor: a giant biker bar and campground are under construction about two and a half miles away. They are scheduled to open this weekend, in time for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, one of the country’s largest biker events, which officially starts Monday.

The potential for rock music, roaring motorcycles and thousands of people drinking near the striking volcanic Bear Butte formation has brought American Indians from around the country to an encampment on the treeless plains near here. They plan to march into downtown Sturgis on Friday to demonstrate their concerns to the bikers already gathering for the rally.

Organizers said that about 2,000 Indians and their supporters were expected to take part. Nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was the site of the Wounded Knee standoff in 1973, and some participants are veterans of that protest. Some religious groups, including the Mennonite Central Committee at Pine Ridge, have also become involved.

UPDATE:  The Argus Leader also has a lengthy story about the commercial development around Bear Butte.

Where's The Beef?

The Aberdeen American News, especially reporter Russ Keen, does an excellent job covering the coming of a beef processing plant to Aberdeen.  They have three stories.  This one focuses on towns in Nebraska that also have a such a plant.  Their thoughts are largely positive; indeed they seem almost jealous of Aberdeen's luck in getting this plant.  This story concerns potential problems with having significant numbers of new folks, especially Hispanics, moving into the community.  As the story's headline indicates, experience shows that it is population growth, not different cultures, that brings increase in crime.  Lastly, this story focuses on how Aberdeen will deal with the coming beef plant and it's enviable problem that the town is creating too many jobs too fast.