South Dakota Politics

Media

The blogfather Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is noting that Ed Morrissey is coming down hard on the media:  "When our media has the testicular fortitude to report on terrorists honestly, then they will have gained the moral authority to lecture any White House on censorship and the responsibility of fully informing the public."  Check it out.

M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A

It was a good weekend for men's Gopher hockey.  That would be your #1 ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers.  I realize that I have just doomed them to failure. 

Fukuyama Is Not A Dirty Word

I got an email from a friend asking what I think of the Francis Fukuyama piece in yesterday's NYT attacking the "Bush Doctrine."  While not my definitive take, here are the not well thought out arguments I emailed back:

I have long maintained that in foreign policy neo-conservatism is simply idealist ends with realist means.  Fukuyama seems to be in some agreement with this, and also in some sympathy, but he can't quite buy into it because of his opposition to the Iraq war.  He thinks the Iraq policy is too idealistic.  But he also finds the realist position untenable because he doesn't want to take morality out of the equation.  So when Fukuyama tries to come up with some positive prescriptions he becomes sui generis, a foreign policy paradigm to himself.  I suppose that might be a virtue, but I think it also might suggest some muddiness of thought.  What I like about Fukuyama's piece is that it makes the best argument against war in Iraq, namely that it was too idealistic.  I have some sympathies with that position as, contra Bush, I do not think the yearning for liberty beats in the heart of every man.  I think some men do want the liberty to beat the hearts out of their opponents, but I suspect Bush means something else by liberty (wink).  But that said, I think the Bush policy in Iraq is the worst possible policy except all the others.  I think it would have been foolish to ignore the threat of Iraq, an argument that Fukuyama can only rebut with his 20/20 hindsight.

Got Proof?

I would be surprised if Steve Hildebrand can find an actual example of "Catholic priests threatening their parishioners to 'vote against pro-abortion candidates or you are not welcome back in my church.'"  I recall having dinner with a priest friend a week after the election and he said that then Bishop of Sioux Falls Diocese Robert Carlson would love to have had the kind of influence over Catholic voters that was attributed to him in certain circles.  What my friend meant was not that Carlson was hungry for political power, but that he would have loved to have had the easy influence over the flock on religious matters that some thought he had regarding politics.  In my experience, virtually all priests are circumspect come election time about influencing parishioners' voting decisions.  Some priests say nothing about elections while some priests will speak with some strength about certain values voters should take into the voting booth.  To be sure, one of them is voting for a culture of life.  But the vast majority of priests are very moderate in their rhetoric about elections, precisely because they are sensitive about turning the pulpit into a political tool.  I don't know any priest who would be careless enough to say the kind of thing Hildebrand is accusing priests of saying.  I am prepared to be wrong, but I would want some hard evidence that any priest in the Sioux Falls Diocese made such a crude overture as "vote against pro-abortion candidates or you are not welcome back in my church."  If such a thing happened it was surely an isolated incident, not a regular occurrence by multiple priests (note the Hildebrand quote is in the plural, suggesting more than one priest).  Besides, I thought the claim from the Daschle camp was that Tom was an abortion moderate, not some pro-abortion radical.  So obviously if priests were warning about "pro-abortion" votes, clearly that didn't pertain to Tom Daschle, right?   

Hildebrand Blames Priests

From an article entitled "Aide says Daschle didn't fight back" in the February 11, 2006, Argus Leader, Daschle campaign manager Steve Hildebrand blames priests for Daschle's defeat in 2004.  Hildebrand recounts "Catholic priests threatening their parishioners to 'vote against pro-abortion candidates or you are not welcome back in my church.'"

For more realistic reasons on how Thune won, read this.

Presidents Day

It is one of the tragedies of modern America that we no long celebrate Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday separately.  Instead we get generic "Presidents Day," when we can celebrate Lincoln and Washington alongside other notables such as James Buchanan, Warren Harding, and Richard Nixon.  And isn't it odd that we have a day set aside to honor one branch of government but not the other two?  If that doesn't smell of imperial presidency, I don't know what does.  So why not take some time to read Washington's Farewell Address.  Or you could breeze through this short piece by Lincoln:

Nov. 19, 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The Minimum Wage and the Dismal Science

Harry Truman once said that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.  So much for the dismal science.  Chad at CCK has apparently decided to reject science altogether, as it is practiced in the modern academies.  He doesn't like the fact that our state legislature was influenced by a USD study that found that an increase in the minimum wage would cost jobs in South Dakota.  This is what set him off.

According to the Rapid City Journal, "USD economist Ralph Brown, co-author of the USD study" rejected some criticism by noting the difference between partisan think tanks and peer-reviewed journals.

Brown,  . . . said the conclusions in his 30-page report, were based on economic studies that appeared in “peer reviewed” professional journals. In contrast, he said, the Economic Policy Institute is a “progressive” advocacy group with an agenda. As a contrasting example, Brown cited a Web site for the conservative Employment Policies Institute — a group with the same “EPI” acronym that draws almost opposite conclusions about the ultimate effect of raising minimum wages.

Of course the fact that EPI is a partisan advocacy group doesn't mean that its criticisms were unfounded.  But Chad takes the extraordinary step of dismissing the whole idea of peer-reviewed journals.

Their claim that their "study" is somehow better is the worse kind of ivory-towerism -- that their study is "peer-reviewed" because it is printed in a journal that sits on a dusty shelf in college libraries. Give me a break. Just because someone prints an article in one of these rags doesn't mean they are above partisanship.

This is an extraordinary assertion!  Peer-reviewed journals are the standard in every academic discipline.  If some physicists claims to have discovered a new particle, or a clinical researcher believes she has found an effective drug for treating uterine cancer, the first test will be publication in some "rag" like Nature, or Science, or the Journal of the American Medical Association.  What holds true for the hard sciences is also the rule in the flacid sciences, like economics or political science.  Chad thinks this "is the worse kind of ivory-towerism."  Wow.  I suspose then that a study indicating that Ginseng does not, in fact, boost energy or intellligence, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, would have no more weight than a counter argument made by an association of health food stores.  If that is the standard that CCK wants to promote, well its best that we know now. 

Peer review is hardly perfect.  But it usually separates the genuine wheat from the fraudulent chaff, as the recent scandal involving stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk demonstates.  Perhaps Chad really does have a marvelous alternative to this system.  We shudder with anticipation. 

Chad also misreads Browns comments.  The problem with the Economic Policy Institute is not that it is "progressive," but that it is an advocacy group.  That was the point of mentioning the similarly acronymed Employment Policies Institute, a conservative outfit that reached opposite conclusions about the minimum wage.  Such think tanks may do good work, and in fact I think that the left-leaning EPI is pretty honest.  I have cited them myself.  But they do have an axe to grind.  And they do not have to submit their work to peer review, which surely must be liberating. 

 

Beating The Dead Horse

According to Drudge, get ready for another week of MSM coverage of Dick Cheney.  I guess the Iranian nuculear weapons story isn't important enough to cover.  As usual, Mark Steyn is on the case:

The press corps that noisily champions "the public's right to know" about a minor hunting accident simultaneously assures the public that they've no need to see these Danish cartoons that have caused riots, arson and death around the world. On CNN, out of "sensitivity" to Islam, they show the cartoons but with the Prophet's face pixilated so that he looks as if Cheney's ventilated him with birdshot and it turned puffy and gangrenous. C'mon, guys, these are interesting times. Anyone can unload the umpteenth round of blanks into the bulletproof Chimpy Hallibushitler, but why not take a shot at something that matters?

Watch Your Participles

A reader sends along this unfortunate headline: Man Shot By Cheney Leaving Hospital. 

Dana Milbank

In case you missed it:

Ed Morrissey:

No, this isn't a tryout for America's Worst-Dressed Nerds; it's Milbank trying to be funny and only succeeding at being funny-looking. Since when do serious journalists pull stunts like this? Heck, most bloggers I know wouldn't be dumb enough to dress like this on national TV even as a joke, not if they wanted to maintain any credibility.

After Neoconservatism

If you want to read an excellent critique of the Bush Doctrine, read Francis Fukuyama.  This is the best argument against the Bush administration, not the irrational "Bush lied us into war and likes killing children" argument.

Update: For a brief critique of Fukuyama, see Joe Knippenberg. 

Munson to Run?

Dave Kranz is reporting today that Mayor Dave Munson, who recently revealed he would not run for re-election, is reconsidering that decision:

Note to the candidates planning to run for the open Sioux Falls mayor's seat: Mayor Dave Munson is rethinking his decision not to seek re-election.

After a few weeks in a lame duck role, the 63-year-old incumbent says he is giving the possibility some consideration because of extensive constituent encouragement.

"I appreciate what people are saying, and I'm listening. Now I need a few days to think this through. I want to do the right thing for Sioux Falls," he said.

Check out the whole thing.

A Conservative Case for Hate Crime Laws

Here's a piece of mine that was just published in the American News.  It is the subject of a thread in the American News Discussion Board.

In 1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay man in his early twenties, was robbed and beaten by two men roughly the same age. He was found tied to a fence post outside Laramie Wyoming, and died in the hospital. His assailants, Arthur Henderson and Aaron McKinney, no great criminal minds it would turn out, were quickly apprehended. Police confirmed that the predatory pair assaulted two Hispanic teenagers hours after they murdered Shepard. 

Reactions to this horrific crime may be sorted by political perspective. Liberals tend to think that prejudice was the cause Shepard’s murder, and that the correct response is hate crimes legislation. Such laws would proscribe especially harsh penalties when a crime is motivated by hatred of some specific group of people. Conservatives think that such laws are unnecessary. Motives are considered in sentencing, and as a result, juries tend to punish crimes of prejudice to the full extent of the law. Hate Crimes laws send the wrong message, that its especially bad to kill certain kinds of people. 

Both sides are partly right and partly wrong. When I first read about Mr. Shepard’s murder it reminded me of an another horrific act. Five years earlier in an English shopping center a toddler, Jamie Bolger, was separated from his mother by two ten year old boys. They led the three year old out of the building and took him for a two mile walk, during which time they tormented him relentlessly. Then they beat him to death with bricks. 

To someone who knows a bit about sociobiology, this behavior is frighteningly familiar. Infanticide is ubiquitous among mammals. Isolating a young and vulnerable target from the protection on his mother, this is a formula plot on Animal Planet. As the case of Jamie Bolger shows, you don’t need racism or homophobia to generate murderous brutality. The script was written into us long ago in the history of our species. Original sin is not only a Christian doctrine, it is also a Darwinian fact.

Henderson and McKinney were following that script when they lured Mr. Shepard away from a campus hangout with the promise of sex. Their predatory intentions, and not their prejudice, were their dominant motives. But that doesn’t mean that prejudice wasn’t an important factor. Predators always seek out the most vulnerable prey. In nature this is usually an individual who is weak, slow, small, or isolated from the pack. Human predators zero in on those whom they suppose do not enjoy the protection of civil society. 

Here, I think, conservatives overlook something. Why did Henderson and McKinney suppose that a young gay male or two Hispanic teens made good targets? Their prejudice persuaded them that “these people” weren’t really part of our society, that no one would care much if one or two of them disappeared, that it wasn’t really against the law to kill a homosexual. Hate crimes legislation could be designed precisely to demolish this error. The point would not be to anoint favored minorities with special protections. Instead it would be to criminalize the very act of selection when it precedes a criminal assault. Such laws would protect everyone. There is no one is who will not find himself the odd man out on some occasion.

Thugs are mostly stupid people. But they are smart enough to wait until the patrol car has turned the corner to go up the side of someone’s head, and they can learn that singling somebody out because he or she is one of “them” will not afford them any immunity. Instead, it will ensure that the law comes down on them like a ton of bricks. 

It’s a mistake to think that human beings are brutal only when they have bad ideas. Even if we all had the same set of good ideas, which would be neither a good thing nor possible, we would still be dangerous animals. But its also a mistake not to address the way in which racial divisions, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation encourage specific acts of brutality. We can’t make prejudice go away. But we can do something to make the Matt Shepard’s of the world are less inviting targets. 

The Northern Valley Beacon Pays Me a Complement.

No, I am not being ironic.  For all the animosity that has existed between SDP and the Beacon, I have, on a least a couple of occasions, praised a post on that opposition blog.  I will do so again: the Beacon's tireless author, David Newquist, is fiercely committed to open government, and that is something we all ought to appreciate.  In this spirit, the Beacon has this to say about the piece written by Jim Seeber and myself on the Morgan Lewis case. 

Professors Ken Blanchard, political science, and Jim Seeber, sociology, apparently called up the Aberdeen Chief of Police and requested an interview with him about his conclusion that Morgan Lewis committed suicide. Chief Lanpher's announcement of the conclusion did not include a survey of the evidence that led to it, an account of the reasoning of that evidence, or the identities and qualifications of "consultants" he alleges came to the same conclusion.

The professors published their conclusions from their interview on the opinion page of the local newspaper. As their academic specialities are neither criminology or journalism, they have incited much comment about their qualifications to probe into a matter on which the local government has imposed secrecy and created doubt, suspicion, and distrust. Both men are occasional columnists in the newspaper in which their joint column appeared.

Having been a full-time working journalist for 13 years and a teacher of journalism and a part-time working journalist for another 30 years, I, too, have some profound problems with the handling of the Morgan Lewis case by law enforcement officials and the media. Any incident that involves law enforcement and any personnel and resources paid for by tax dollars and authorized in behalf of the citizens should be a matter of record and those records should be open. Aberdeen and Brown County officials have denied the public's right to know, and news media have made very feeble efforts at enforcing that right.

Consequently, Professors Blanchard and Seeber deserve acknowledgment for doing what no one else did. They asked for an explanation of the evidence leading to the suicide conclusion, they received one, and they got it disseminated to the public. If I understand their account correctly, they did not approach the Chief as journalists or criminal investigators. They approached him as members of an academic community that for 15 months has been held in confusion, concern, and worry about the death of Prof. Lewis. Rather than have faculty and students sit around and generate speculations and accusations, they went to the major source of information and asked for an accounting.

This is spot on as regards how our article came to be.  Todd Epp's amusements notwithstanding, we did not approach the police chief because we had any expertise in criminal investigations.  We approached him because we wanted to know why the police had reached the conclusion that they did, and we wanted to get the facts out to the larger public.  I am sincerely grateful to David for noting this.