South Dakota Politics

Obama, Daschle, and the Lobbying Problem

The Politico:

Barack Obama’s expected pick of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to be secretary of health and human services bumps up against the president-elect’s pledge to rid the White House of special interests.

The former Democratic senator from South Dakota is a special policy adviser for the lobbying law firm Alston & Bird. And in his three years there, the firm has earned more than $16 million representing some of the health care industry’s most powerful interests before the department he’s in line to lead.

Daschle is not himself a lobbyist. But he has advised the firm’s clients on health care issues, according to the firm’s website.

His work as a paid adviser appears to run counter to Obama’s pledge to “free the executive branch from special interest influence.” No political appointee, Obama’s transition team has declared, “will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

As health and human services secretary, Daschle would oversee myriad regulations, ranging from the drugs that can come to market to Medicare and Medicare reimbursements.

“We can’t figure out any way that he would qualify to be secretary of health and human services under the policy that [Obama] has laid out,” said Taylor Lincoln, editor of Becoming44.org, the blog of government watchdog group Public Citizen.

Daschle’s office referred questions to Obama’s transition aides, who said his “work at Alston & Bird does not present a bar to his service in the transition.”

“We are still in the process of structuring the ethics rules for an Obama administration, but it's clear that those rules would require recusal from any regulation or issue at Alston that he actually worked on,” said transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. “We will meet every commitment made during the campaign.”

And that suggests that Daschle may well have to remove himself from some HHS issues because they were before his law firm.

Be sure to read the rest.

Sic Transit Gloria

My latest in the American News:

The election drubbing recently taken by Republicans has given rise to much soul searching on the part of conservatives. What is the future of conservatism?

The conservative serves an important role in any regime. This is perhaps best illustrated by the story, perhaps apocryphal, of the slave who would ride behind a victorious Roman general during the triumphant return to Rome whispering in his ear “All glory is fleeting.”

The conservative's task is similar. It is for him to whisper in our ears “there are limits.” Human reason is not sufficient to solve all problems. Sin cannot be eradicated from the human soul. Society is sufficiently complex that it makes central planning difficult, if not impossible.

In the 19th century, Alexis De Tocqueville noted democracy's dangerous tendency to trust in the “indefinite perfectibility of man.”

But the conservative teaches that perfection is impossible. I recently asked a group of students what “utopia” means. They responded “a perfect society.” True enough, as this is how we often use the word. But “utopia” literally is from the Greek for “nowhere.” In other words, the perfect society is impossible.

Our love of even good things, conservatives teach us, must be a moderate love. To turn any particular thing into the sin qua non of justice is actually to do injustice.

The conservative reminds us that progress always comes with a cost. Perhaps one error of contemporary conservatives is to believe that the market is the sole of justice, perhaps promoting an immoderate love of the “progress” of economic change.

Conservatism suggests there is something worth conserving. As Abraham Lincoln famously put it, if conservative means favoring “the old and tried against the new and untried,” then he was a conservative. Lincoln gets at a central conservative truth: there is wisdom stored up across the ages that one discards at great peril.

Human order is a fragile thing. C.S. Lewis reminds that even war is not outside the norm of the human condition; war only “aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it,” and “human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”

It took roughly 4,000 years to build a civilization that was not brutal and vulgar. We are to be reminded that the now seemingly barbaric “eye for an eye” was actually a major advance in human decency. If you kill one of mine I will only kill one, as opposed to all, of yours. Yet civilization is fragile, on a precipice as Lewis puts it. Conservatives do their job best when they remind us of the value of the past and to innovate only with great trepidation.

This why conservatives question the redefining of marriage, the diminution of the sacredness of human life in the name of “choice” and the rejection, indeed outright mockery, of traditional religion. If Western civilization was built on the solid foundation of the Christian church and the morality it promoted (if not always practiced), then only a certain kind of ideological arrogance suggests that we can casually dispense with that foundation and retain the fruits of that civilization.

Conservatives will prove the faithful opposition if they successfully remind the majority that even audacious hope needs its limits.

The Science & the Politics of Global Warming

My good friend and cherished Keloland interlocutor, BB, has this in reply to my recent post on Climate Change and Renewable Energy. BB begins with this:

I get the feeling that your vitriol comments concerning anything to do with climate change are based emotively rather than rationally. Generally what intelligent and open minded people do is to evaluate and weigh the evidence in as fair and impartial manner as possible. Then through the use of intellect come to a reasoned and rational answer. What you seem to do is the inverse: you have already promulgated what the "correct" answer is and then attempt to stitch together an argument.

I don't believe that my comment was vitriolic at all. I simply challenged some popular views on the subject. It is quite wrong of you to say that I have "already promulgated what the "correct" answer is" on this subject. I have been posting on climate change for several years, and I have generally accepted the propositions that the world is in a warming trend, and that human activity is having some effect. Recently I have begun to doubt both propositions, which is the kind of thing that people sometimes do when they "evaluate and weigh the evidence in as fair and impartial a manner as possible." My position is agnostic. I don't think we can know what is going to happen next or what we had to do with it.

By contrast, it is the global warming faithful who always begin by declaring that the science is settled. Science is never settled. BB continues with this:

Look at the guy you cite as "proving" that your erroneous argument has validity. He is one of a handful of scientists throughout the whole world that still cling to the idea that global warming is a myth. He is not a climatologist, has never had any of his crackpot ideas peer reviewed and is totally discredited in his own scientific community. I can not fathom why an intelligent person such as yourself can rebuke the findings of over 99% of the scientific community. You are just plain wrong....

This is a mess. It is a classic ad hominem argument: it is geologist Robert Carter himself that BB attacks, with no attempt at all to show that Carter's evidence or arguments are faulty. It also contains a number of odd ideas. Is it really true that only "climatologists" are allowed to speak about global warming? If we take that standard seriously, then we can draw some interesting conclusions about BB's identity. Since he speaks about my "emotions" and about climate change, he must be not only a climatologist Ph.D., but a licensed psychiatrist or clinical psychologist. There can't be too many people out there with both degrees. Likewise, if only climatologists are allowed to speak on the subject, and if 99% of the scientific community has leave to speak, then 99% of the latter must be climatologists. I would never have guessed.

One of us, BB or myself, is wrong about science. He thinks it works like politics: count the votes and that is the right scientific conclusion. I think that consensus is largely irrelevant. What counts is not what scientists believe, but the arguments and evidence that they present. Is Bob Carter wrong when he says that it has frequently been warmer in the past than it is now? I have not seen any summary of global climate estimates over any defined range of time that contradicts him, and I have looked (see "evaluate and weigh the evidence."). If Carter is right, then recent global temperature trends are not at all out of the ordinary. That might matter.

I am also very skeptical about BB's 99% figure. Where, exactly, does that number come from? Apparently BB is also a trained demographer.

Global Warming is not just a scientific research program, it is also and emphatically a political agenda. I am a trained political scientist (like BB), so I can speak about that. When someone tries to dismiss or stigmatize all opposition to a policy agenda, that ain't science, it's politics. So here is my political take on the matter.

Barring a real global economic collapse, China and India are going to keep expanding, economically. The developed nations are just not going to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Whatever we might wish or prescribe these are the facts. So the thing to do is to prepare for whatever climate change may result. Meanwhile, we might want to think about what to do with we are wrong about the future. What if we are in for a sustained cooling trend? Maybe we ought to think about that. BB thinks I am "just plain wrong." Maybe I am. But neither of us knows. Robert Carter shows that global temperatures over the last century are well above the long range trends. What goes up must come down is only common sense. If that is what a crack pot is, count me in.

Holiday Mischief

Here's a piece by my favorite journalist, from the Dubuque Telegraph Herald:

Dubuque man forked by father on Thanksgiving He and dad are arrested on different charges Courtney Blanchard TH staff writer

For one Dubuque man, Thanksgiving ended with a fork in his neck and a trespassing arrest.

Jeremy J. Fortmann, 26, 3378 Foothill Road Apt. 3, was arrested on a charge of trespassing after his father, Paul L. Brown, 51, 414 West Locust St., told him he wasn't welcome at his home during Thanksgiving. Fortmann left, but later returned to the West Locust home. At about 9:30 p.m., Brown stabbed his son in the neck with a fork, police said.

Brown, who was intoxicated, was arrested on a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon and grew uncooperative with police. He refused to give a thumb print or answer questions, police said. He appeared in court early Friday and remained in custody in the evening on a $5,000 bond.

Fortmann, who also was intoxicated, received minor injuries and was held at the Dubuque County Jail until he was sober, police said.

Well, if you thought your family was dysfunctional, think again.

Terror & Thanksgiving

For those of us who think that we have been living through a "national nightmare," for the last eight years, as a friend of mine put it, the terrorist attack in Mumbai may serve as a bit of a correction. A well-planned attack by Islamic terrorists has killed over a hundred people and wounded more than three hundred in the city that used to be called Bombay. There are reports that foreigners (Americans, Europeans, and Japanese) were targets, and that some of these targets were killed. But it looks like most of the dead and injured are Indian. It also looks clear that the attack had substantial "outside help," though who was behind it is not at all clear. The trouble is, the Indian Government always has a pretty good idea who did it. From the Washington Post:

Indian police and terrorism experts said they were uncertain who had carried out the attack, but [Prime Minister] Singh, in a nationally televised address, used phrases usually taken here to mean Pakistan, raising fears that the violence in Mumbai could raise tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

So the possibility that this atrocity may lead to a real war between two nuclear armed powers is, well, very real. If you want to know what a real "national nightmare" looks like, this would be it.

We Americans have a lot to be thankful for. One thing is that we have just elected our first African American President. This shows that the quarrels among us are family quarrels, and that they will be settled by ballots rather than bullets. Another thing we have to be thankful for is that the great terror of 9/11/01 has not been repeated. At least not here.

Whatever you think about the Bush Presidency, our 43^rd President managed to prevent another terrorist attack. This was in part due to a much heightened security regime. We have been carefully monitoring terrorist communications, and the very fact that we have been doing that has made another attack difficult. But the most important reason that no new attack happened was the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Our military ventures there attracted the terrorist networks to a place where we had the most deadly military apparatus in history waiting for them. American forces killed scores of Al Qaeda's leaders, and hundreds, maybe thousands of their foot soldiers. It may be, paradoxically, that it is only our recent success in Iraq that has freed the terrorists to concentrate on other places. Oh, and another thing: we have shut down most of the financial networks that were feeding the terrorist organizations, and we have discouraged unfriendly regimes from backing these murderous rascals.

Prior to 9/11, each successive terrorist attack was more sophisticated and better funded than the last. Since 9/11, each terrorist attack has been less sophisticated and less well-funded than the last. Or at least that is what it looked like until Mumbai. But even there, the attack was carried out by a bunch of killers with rifles.

We can be thankful that we have done so well. The trick now is to keep up the pressure.

Happy Thanksgiving from SDP!

Green Growthers & Gangrene Technologies

Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, has the solution de jure for our current economic woes: governments should create jobs in "green" industries. He begins his sermon to the choir in the San Francisco Chronicle with this wave of the wand:

Amid the pressures of the global financial crisis, some ask how we can afford to tackle climate change. The better question is: Can we afford not to?

Put aside the familiar arguments - that the science is clear, that climate change represents an indisputable existential threat to the planet, and that every day we do not act the problem grows worse. Instead, let us make the case purely on bread-and-butter economics.

This is a useful beginning: a preposterous statement is declared to be gospel truth and all dissent is summarily brushed aside. But it is preposterous. There is nothing at all unusual about recent climate trends, including the cooling period that has lasted about ten years now. I can say without fear of contradiction that the world climate in the foreseeable future can't be foreseen: it will get cooler or warmer or stay about the same. For someone wanting confirmation, see geologist Robert Carter's piece in Economic Analysis and Policy.

But even if you accept the global warming hypothesis, it would do to point out that climate change is something that the world has lived with for much longer than human beings, or any living beings, have existed on the planet. It has been warmer in the past than it is now, and much cooler. Somehow the polar bears and bare ass human beings managed to survive. That is not at all to say that we should not be concerned. Professor Carter thinks, as I do, that the global warming gospel is an impediment to the serious thinking that we need to do. We have to prepare for whatever nature has in store for us, instead of assuming that we know what that is. But to speak of "existential threats to the planet" is to trade the realm of science for the kingdom of fairies.

But I will put aside reason and evidence on this question, as Secretary General Ban would have me do, and ask whether his recommendations make sense if the world is really facing an existential crisis. Does it really make sense to solve the current economic crisis by investing billions in "green technologies"?

He is clearly right that many countries have created jobs in biofuels. The trouble is, biofuels aren't "green" in any meaningful sense. Corn produced ethanol is an environmental and humanitarian disaster. It produces more greenhouse gases than petroleum industries; it pollutes the environment where corn is grown and ethanol produced; it has resulted, in places like South Dakota, in virgin prairie being tilled for the first time; and it has raised world food prices, which is something that those living on the margin can ill afford. Best of all, it is less efficient than petroleum based technologies and so makes the world energy problem worse rather than better.

All this means that biofuels create jobs, but at a terrible price. We would do better just to pay all these workers for sitting home with their lights off. Wind power probably does have a place in our energy budget. Single towers on isolate farms, or small wind farms for isolated communities, could reduce the demand those spots place on the grid. Someday soon (but not yet, given current wind technology), this might accomplish a net reduction in energy demand. But big wind farms are only a means of turning wind energy into federal tax subsidies.

Government is very bad at balancing economic or environmental books. Case in point, from the Washington Post:

The federal government has invested billions of dollars over the past 16 years, building a fleet of 112,000 alternative-fuel vehicles to serve as a model for a national movement away from fossil fuels.

Under a mandate from Congress, federal agencies have gradually increased their fleets of alternative-fuel vehicles, a majority of them "flex-fuel," capable of running on either gasoline or ethanol-based E85 fuel. But many of the vehicles were sent to locations hundreds of miles from any alternative fueling sites, the analysis shows.

As a result, more than 92 percent of the fuel used in the government's alternative-fuel fleet continues to be standard gasoline.

Got that? The Fed bought a lot of cars built to run on biofuels and then sent them to places where biofuels were unavailable. That's how government works. When private industry does this sort of thing, it either goes belly up or gets saved by a government bailout. But it gets better.

The Postal Service illustrates the problem. It estimates that its 37,000 newer alternative-fuel delivery vans, which can run on high-grade ethanol, consumed 1.5 million additional gallons of gasoline last fiscal year because of the larger engines.

The vehicles that would allow the agency to meet federal mandates were available in six- and eight-cylinder models -- not the four-cylinder variety it traditionally purchased. Alternative fuel was used less than 1 percent of the time in 2007-2008.

So the net result of buying "alternative-fuel delivery vans" for the Post Office was burning a million and a half more gallons of gasoline! There's progress for you.

Government investment in green technologies is not always bad. Setting general efficiency standards, and then letting the market meet those standards, works pretty well. But Secretary General Ban's prescription for government created green industries to create jobs and save the environment will cost jobs, as money is shifted from productive enterprises to unproductive ones. Oh, and it will hurt the environment.

Priceless

How big is the bailout?  Go here.  So far we have pledged $4.6 trillion for the various bailout tactics.  What else could we spend that money on:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

Constraints on President Obama

My latest in the American News:

Barack Obama attained electoral success to the melodic strains of “change.” But his more ardent followers might find some discordant notes in the coming administration. Obama faces numerous constraints on his ability to act.

The most obvious constraint is Congress. Surely Obama has the advantage of substantial majorities in both the House and Senate, but Congress answers to different constituencies than does a president.

House Ways and Means chair Charlie Rangel certainly has his own ideas regarding taxation. Other committee chairs and congressional leaders have their own constituencies to serve. While they will follow Obama's lead up to a point, history indicates that the sailing might not be as smooth as some assume.

Another constraint on Obama is that he cannot really claim a mandate. First, winning 53 percent of the popular vote is not exactly a landslide. Also, those who voted for him did so for differing reasons. Some voted for him because of his Iraq policy. For some it was the financial meltdown. Some people had a nebulous desire for “change” that had no policy content. Some Obama voters, in fact, didn't really vote for Obama at all as much as against George Bush and the Republicans.

Presidential scholars call this a “coalition of minorities” that adds up to electoral majority. That coalition falls apart as a president governs and inevitably offends parts of that coalition.

The very financial crisis that helped propel Obama to the White House also constrains him. A serious recession will raise government spending by increasing demands for social services while also lowering tax revenues. This is why some analysts predict a deficit as large as $1 trillion for the next fiscal year.

Obama will find it fiscally impossible to fulfill his campaign promises to increase spending on health care, education, alternative energy and infrastructure all while cutting taxes for 95 percent of tax payers.

Finally, Obama made various foreign policy pronouncements, some of which already have been rendered moot. The Iraqi government recently voted to allow American troops to remain another three years. Besides, military officials say that it is logistically impossible to meet Obama's goal of removing troops within 16 months.

A newly aggressive Russia, a decline in world oil prices, the instability of the North Korean regime and dozens of other unpredictable events will likely cause Obama to form a Clintonian foreign policy defined by a liberal internationalism where America takes the lead in promoting certain priorities.

It is no accident that the team forming around Obama bears suspicious resemblance to the Clinton administration, perhaps including Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Obama smartly seems to have concluded that the transformative change he campaigned on is largely unworkable in the current political and economic environment.

The “change” of the Obama campaign might quickly become a centrist and pragmatic “third way” administration. We could do much worse.

Thune the #2 Republican to Watch

Chris Cillizza:  "The South Dakota Senator is incredibly well positioned to emerge as the telegenic voice of the Obama opposition. Thune is part of a group of young and aggressive Republican senators who will look to take the fight to Obama and Senate Democrats over the next two years. It doesn't hurt Thune that he is already a revered figure among conservatives after ousting former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Thune's problem is that conventional wisdom within the party already seems to be settling on the idea that the GOP governors need to lead Republicans out of the wilderness in which they currently find themselves."

Hillary Clinton Ineligible for Secretary of State

The Volokh Conspiracy, our favorite constitutional law blog, points out a slight snag for Barack Obama's choice for State: Senator Clinton is constitutionally ineligible. Here is Article I, Section 6 of said fundamental law:

Clause 2: No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Now, Hillary Clinton is a Senator, and the time for which she has been elected extends until 2012. "Emoluments" means compensation. This year the salary of the Secretary of State was increased by an executive order (issued by the President under U.S. statutes). From Al Kamen in the Washington Post's The Trail:

In Clinton's case, during her current term in the Senate, which began in January 2007, cabinet salaries were increased from $186,600 to $191,300.

That's four thousand, seven hundred dollars more in emoluments. Hence, Ms. Clinton is quite obviously ineligible for the office. The reasons for the "exclusive clause" are fairly obvious, but let Mr. Madison speak for them. From The Founder's Constitution:

Mr. Madison. Some gentlemen give too much weight and others too little to this subject. If you have no exclusive clause, there may be danger of creating offices or augmenting the stipends of those already created, in order to gratify some members if they were not excluded. Such an instance has fallen within my own observation. I am therefore of opinion, that no office ought to be open to a member, which may be created or augmented while he is in the legislature.

In other words, Madison did not think that the exclusion went far enough to prevent corruption. He was afraid that Congress would create cushy federal offices for their members to move into when they are tired of working. In the Virginia Ratifying Conventions, Patrick Henry made the same complaint:

Does not this plainly say that, if an office be not created during the time for which he is elected, or if its emoluments be not increased during such time, he may accept of it? I can see it in no other light.

Like Madison, Henry would exclude anyone who serves in Congress from any office created by Congress. That would, I suppose, leave only elected offices and judicial appointments. James Wilson disagrees. Again from the Records of the Constitutional Convention:

[W]e ought to hold forth every honorable inducement for men of abilities to enter the service of the public.--This is truly a republican principle. Shall talents, which entitle a man to public reward, operate as a punishment? While a member of the legislature, he ought to be excluded from any other office, but no longer. Suppose a war breaks out and a number of your best military characters were members; must we lose the benefit of their services?

It is pretty clear from all this what the clause means. However, there is a way out: the so-called "Saxbe Fix." Again from The Trail:

That "fix" came in 1973, when President Nixon nominated Ohio Sen. William Saxbe (R) to be attorney general after the famed "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal. Saxbe was in the Senate in 1969 when the AG's pay was raised. Congress acceded to Nixon's request to lower the attorney general's salary to its pre-1969 level. Apparently this had been done once before, in 1909, for a senator in line to be secretary of state. And President George H.W. Bush, as he was leaving office, approved a Saxbe fix so that Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen could move from the Senate to take that job.

I am pretty sure we are in for another "Saxbe fix". The question is whether the fix is constitutional or not. Eugene Volokh makes this argument for it:

I think the phrase "the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time" is ambiguous. It could mean "shall have been increased at least once," or it could mean "shall have been increased on net." If you're thinking about buying a computer, for instance, and you ask "Has the price of this computer been increased during the last year?," it seems to me quite possible that you would mean "Has it been increased so that it now costs more than it cost a year ago?," rather than "Has it been increased at all, even if the price hike was entirely rolled back a month later?" In fact, the "on net" reading strikes me as more plausible than the rival reading.

I can't tell for certain what the founders would have made of this distinction, but it seems clearly in line with common sense. The purpose of the clause was to prevent Congress from using their power to create offices to provide gifts for themselves out of the public purse. As for the mechanism, I find myself agreeing with Patrick Henry (it was bound to happen sooner or later): "if an office be not created during the time for which [s]he is elected, or if its emoluments be not increased during such time, [s]he may accept of it."

There is no important substantive controversy here. No serious person thinks that Senator Clinton's appointment is some kind of scheme to feather her monetary nest. But the Constitution represents the will of We the People. It is binding on Congress, convenient and sensible or not. So I think Ms. Clinton's salary will have to be fixed at the figure that stood when she was first elected. Heck, even the Daily Kos agrees. So if anyone gives you gruff on this, tell 'em me, Kos, and Patrick Henry all said so.

Obama & Gitmo

President Elect Obama has repeatedly promised to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He either will or he won't, and right now there is no telling. The question then is what he will do with the detainees.

Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard does a little investigative journalism and discovers that a lot of the persons held at the terrorist detention facility are terrorists. Exactly how many clearly fall into that category is a good question, and President Obama will get to ponder it. But he is smart enough that a few more questions will surely occur to him: what if I order the release of someone who then goes on to commit a new act of terrorism? What if this hypothetical post-detainee manages to kill more than a few Americans? What will that do to my Presidency, or to the people's patience with things like human rights?

It is interesting to note that Obama's choice for Attorney General, Eric Holder, has endorsed Bush's policy at Gitmo. Powerline directs us to Cliff May at the Wall Street Journal, who gives us this juicy quote from Eric Holder:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention that you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not. Should Zacarias Moussaoui be called a prisoner of war? Again, I think not.

That seems to me to be about right. The Geneva Convention was a classic social contract between nations: every nation is to abide by these rules in war and in return all our soldiers get certain protections when they become prisoners of war. But that only works if the corollary is: violate these rules and you lose the protections.

The fact that we are talking about the rights of these scoundrels is largely a result of the Bush Administration's success at preventing another terrorist attack. If you want to keep talking about rights and due process you have to make sure the next attack doesn't happen. Here, again, is Joscelyn:

The new administration will soon discover from its review of the Guantánamo files what motivated its predecessor: The scope of the terrorist threat was far greater than anyone knew on September 11, 2001. But for the Bush administration's efforts, many more Americans surely would have perished.

This conclusion is based on a careful review of the thousands of pages of documents released from Guantánamo, as well as other publicly available evidence.

President-elect Obama has a lot to chew on here. I am guessing that when we really get to meet the new boss, he will be rather the same as the old boss.

Quantum of Solace: A Review

The latest in the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace, continues the efforts of filmmakers to update the Bond image, presenting a darker, more brooding Bond rather than the suave wise cracking that has been the norm.  Unfortunately, unlike Casino Royale, the first film for Daniel Craig as the new Bond, Quantum of Solace is a confused jumble of characters, action and plot (or lack thereof) and presents a Bond so cynical that it is hard to root for him. 

The film partially takes off where Casino Royale left off.  Bond is clearly a man with vengeance on his mind for the death of his beloved Vesper in the previous film.  Bond is still after the secret society, which we learn in this film is called Quantum, that seems to control so much of the world's wealth and governments. The villain in this film is Dominic Greene, a business man who is part of the Quantum conspiracy.  Greene trades on the world's desire of environmental sustainability (note the man's name) to present a front of a concerned businessman while he is busy buying up world resources and the governments that control them.  Bond follows Greene around the world attempting to unmask the clandestine group and creating chaos as he goes.  There is a lot of action (and death) in this movie.  On the way he picks up "Bond girl" Camille who seeks revenge on the new dictator of Bolivia, a vicious general who killed her family years ago. 

It doesn't make sense to describe the plot beyond this, as there really isn't one.  The film features a confusing number of characters and venue changes that make it difficult to follow.  Add to this the close photography even in the action sequences and it actually becomes hard to discern the action on the screen.  I certainly would encourage reviewing Casino Royale before seeing Quantum to refresh your memory of certain facts and characters.  I wish I had. 

The new Bond is a post-national Bond in some ways, a kind of Bond for a globalized world.  What we learn in this film is that all governments and corporations are essentially corrupt.  This includes the Americans and the British.  Corruption pervades all authority, including the Church in a clever filming of a scene at an opera, making defense of authority an absurdity.  Thus the only thing worth fighting for is one's self.  This Bond does not fight for Queen and country, but for revenge.  Thus he is sympathetic to his colleague Camille, who only wants to kill the man who killed her family.  This is so even though she concedes that her father, who was part of a previous Bolivian government, was a cruel man.  He was a bad father, but he was hers.  Thus love of one's own, very narrowly defined, trumps love of country or even love of justice. 

One of the themes of the film is one never knows who one's friends and enemies are.  It consciously sets us up to doubt everyone.  This causes us to wonder why we should root for Bond.  After all, why is his violence in service of himself any different than anyone else's?  One never gets a sense that Bond is after Quantum because he wants to defend his country, or justice, or the people of the world, or anything noble.

To describe the new Bond, perhaps we can refer to a genre related to the spy story, the detective story.  There are two basic detective types.  There is the high society detective perhaps best exemplified by the William Powell/Myrna Loy team of Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man films.  These are wealthy folks who do detective work because they would otherwise be bored.  They do not question authority but rather seek to supplement it when it fails to produce justice.  There is then the hard-boiled detective as depicted, for example, by Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep.  This detective consciously works outside the law, as the law is partially indicted in the corruption the detective investigates.  The hard-boiled detective is outside the law, sometimes in opposition to the law, living in a much darker world than the Nick Charles's of the world. 

Daniel Craig's James Bond partakes much more of the hard-boiled detective genre than the high society detective that Bond sometimes became in the hands of other directors and actors.  But he goes beyond the Philip Marlowes.  Even the hard-boiled detective, while sullied by the corruption that surrounds him, remains devoted to public order.  In the hard-boiled story, there is a dark underworld that exists just below the surface of a seemingly benign and well ordered society.  It's the detective's job to enter into this world, or perhaps emerge from it, in order to maintain the precarious tranquility of society.  This sanguinary Bond kills for his good with little concern for who it relates to any kind of justice other than his own interest. In Quantum, Bond defies his government, becoming a rogue agent who is an authority unto himself. 

There are some indications at the very end of the film that Bond is aware "who he works for."  When M welcomes Bond "back" to the fold, he says he never left.  Perhaps in coming films we will see him subsume his own sense of individual justice for a justice that defends his country.  But even here we see Bond succumbing to a tyrannical temptation, believing that he was better able to do justice on his own, including the private use of lethal force, than those with proper authority to use deadly force.  While Bond is "licensed to kill," that comes with certain responsibilities and restrictions.  This Bond is only restricted by what he himself decides is necessary.

Quantum of Solace is both a jumbled mess of a film and a vision of a cynical world where justice is what we say it is.  We just hope that Bond chooses to spare the rest of us from his sense of revenge.  

Hillary @ State: Obama Triangulates

Nothing suggests pragmatism so much as choosing the uglier of two evils. Senate leader Harry Reid is being raked over the coals by the online left for allowing Senator Joe Lieberman to retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. But it was President-Elect Obama's decision. To his activist base, this is a very ugly thing. They have been out to punish Lieberman for his apostasy on Iraq. So vehement was their indignation that the left denied Joe the democratic nomination for his Connecticut Senate seat. He won anyway, as an independent. Now they wanted to see him stripped on his Committee post for backing John McCain. Here, I think, they have a case. It's one thing to kick someone out of the party for dissent on a single issue; it's another to kick him out when he stumps for the other team. The one bottom line demand of all members of a party is that they support the party in elections. But Lieberman wins again, because Obama wants that vote in the Senate. That's politics.

Obama surely chose Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State for similar reasons. Putting her in that important position has got to be irritating to his activist base, many of whom backed him precisely because they wanted to be rid of the Clintons. The Democratic Left sees the Clintons as unprincipled scoundrels (duh!) who would sell off their supporters in a minute for power and prestige. In choosing Clinton, Obama is acting in a clintonian fashion.

But what is his strategy? It seems likely that he wants to put Ms. Clinton under his direct command. In the Senate, she would be a potential competitor, with eyes on the prize down the road. He may want to mollify that part of the Democratic electorate that backed Clinton in the nomination process. After all, they are nearly as large as the part that backed him. A lot of commentary has focused on the problem of Mr. Clinton, who is the kind of fellow to give loose cannons a bad name. But in fact this move gives Obama all sorts of leverage over the philanderer in chief. Bill Clinton is apparently signing all sorts of agreements to behave, including pre-clearance by Obama people for his future speeches. Finally, if the Clintons become a problem, Obama can fire them. That will leave Hillary without a Senate seat under her butt. This looks to be all about controlling the Clintons.

What it isn't about is picking an effective and competent Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton may be adequate. A Secretary of State is not a policy maker. She or he is the face of the Administration in diplomatic relations. Her job will be to do whatever the President tells her to do. Of course, she will be captured by the State Department. That means she will be the advocate of all the stubborn bureaucrats below her. The question then is how well she can govern the ungovernable Foggy Bottom.

Ms. Clinton failed to secure the nomination for President because she was a disastrously bad leader. She chose the incompetent Solis Doyle as her campaign manager, and Solis Doyle ran the campaign into the ground just at the critical time. Ms. Clinton badly managed her campaign funds, and allowed cancerous divisions to grow among her campaign staff. This is the person that Obama has picked to run the State Department. We can only hope that he indeed plans to fire her.

Blanchard on Daschle on South Dakota Public Radio

Yours truly will appear on Dakota Midday (South Dakota Public Radio) Monday.  The show begins at noon, and I should be on sometime after 12:20.  Political scientist Bob Burns will be on with me.  We will be discussing the Daschle appointment with host Paul Guggenheimer. 

Clinton Accepts SecState Position

From the New York Times:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to give up her Senate seat and accept the position of secretary of state, making her the public face around the world for the administration of the man who beat her for the Democratic presidential nomination, two confidants said Friday.

The apparent accord between perhaps the two leading figures in the Democratic Party climaxed a week-long drama that riveted the nation’s capital.

Mrs. Clinton came to her decision after additional discussion with President-elect Barack Obama about the nature of her role and his plans for foreign policy, said one of the confidants, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the situation.

Mr. Obama’s office told reporters on Thursday that the nomination is “on track” but this is the first word from the Clinton camp that she has decided.

“She’s ready,” the confidant said, adding that Mrs. Clinton was reassured after talking again with Mr. Obama because their first meeting in Chicago last week “was so general.” The purpose of the follow-up talk, he noted, was not to extract particular concessions but “just getting comfortable” with the idea of working together.

A second Clinton associate confirmed that her camp believes they have a done deal. Senior Obama advisers said Friday morning that the offer had not been formally accepted and no announcement would be made until after Thanksgiving. But they said they were convinced that the nascent alliance was ready to be sealed.

Prayers for AG Mukasey

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech in Washington D.C. tonight: 

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the no-nonsense former federal judge who took over the Justice Department after Alberto Gonzales resigned in disgrace, collapsed during a speech Thursday night and was rushed to a hospital after losing consciousness.

"The attorney general is conscious, conversant and alert," Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said after doctors admitted Mulsasey to George Washington University Hospital for the night.

The 67-year-old Mukasey was delivering a speech to the Federalist Society at a Washington hotel when "he just started shaking and he collapsed," said Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor. "They're very concerned."

Later, a senior law enforcement official said Mukasey appeared to be talking when he was taken away. He was conscious during part of the ambulance ride to hospital, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation.

Mukasey, the nation's top law enforcement official, was 15 to 20 minutes into his speech about the Bush administration's successes in combatting terrorism when he began slurring his words. He collapsed and lost consciousness, said O'Connor, the department's No. 3 official, who was traveling at the time and was alerted to what had occurred.

Unity and Post-Partisanship?

Both the Left and the Right are wondering why Barack Obama is placing so many old Washington hands in his cabinet, starting with Joe Biden and most recently with Hillary Clinton.  So, this begs the question: with the Left and Right coming together, is this the sort of post-partisanship Obama promised the nation?

UPDATE:  Useful Idiots Discovering They're No Longer Useful

Change We Were Hoping For

Glenn Reynolds:  "Hey, you can’t spell 'change' without a D-A-S-C-H-L-E!"

Hillary Does Hamlet

Something very odd is happening here. Barack Obama has apparently offered Hillary Clinton the post of Secretary of State. Why? The New York Observer offers up some speculation, which covers a lot of what I have thought of.

Since it was first reported last week that the two had met to discuss the possibility, there has been no shortage of theories in the press: He wants her out of the Senate and into a pliant administration post; he's paying her back for conceding graciously and then campaigning for him; he wants to score points with women voters.

But if you ask some of the most prominent members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, the consensus about her appeal as a potential secretary of state is much simpler: She'll deliver.

Okay: Obama wants to keep Hillary in a position where he can control her and where he can keep an eye on her, and he thinks that she would be good at the job. Of course that carries a significant burden: Obama had to get a lot of concessions from Mr. Clinton (pre-clearance of speeches, for example), that amount to a lot of procedural bubble wrap around the Narcissist in Chief. Is she worth all that?

Maybe. Certainly, if she still wields the allegiance of a large part of the Democratic Party and Obama can assure its loyalty this way.

But here is the odd thing: Senator Clinton is very publicly having a hard time deciding. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post psychoanalyzes the once and maybe future first woman president, and concludes that this is all calculation. She wants to make her acceptance look like a gift to President Obama, thus to reaffirm her clout.

Is it my imagination, or aren't these things usually worked out in advance? You don't let on that you have actually offered the job to someone unless they have already agreed privately to accept. Otherwise, you look like you don't know quite what you are doing, and you give the nominee a kind of power that subordinates shouldn't have.

One of the few joys of the recent election was the prospect that we were through with the Clintons. Obama doesn't seem to be able to deliver that.

Daschle & Herseth Sandlin: Which Tail Wags Which Dog?

South Dakota continues to cut a figure in national politics that one would not expect from our population or economy. Tom Daschle has accepted a position in the Obama Administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services. I quoted this passage in a previous post this afternoon, by Ezra Klein in The American Prospect:

CNN is reporting that Tom Daschle will not only be Health and Human Services Secretary, but also health reform czar under the Obama administration. This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don't tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That's not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.

This certainly seems to me to be right. Daschle showed his shrewd judgment, or maybe his good luck, by joining the Obama tent rival early on. But I can't help but wonder whether that decision has more to do with the resentment he must feel for having done so much to rescue Bill Clinton during the latter's misadventures in office. Now he gets his place by the right hand of the savior.

Obama, conversely, is showing keen judgment in wanting to avoid the awful mistakes of Clinton's first term. He is tapping people who know how to get things done. Be afraid. Be very afraid. We are in for Canadian style healthcare, the sequel.

But Representative Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (someday I will forgive her all the extra keystrokes her unnecessary name change is costing me) also ascended today. She has been elected co-chair for administration for the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, according to the Argus Leader. The "Blue Dogs" are a group of Democrats committed to "fiscal conservatism," meaning balanced budgets and that sort of thing. With so many Democrats having been elected to represent relatively conservative constituencies, I am guessing that this group will get a little larger in the next Congress.

Here's the problem: current programs like Social Security and Medicare are already headed toward a budgetary precipice. Within a few decades, according to some estimates, these programs will consume the entire federal budget. Reforming them is almost certainly going to cost a lot of pain in reduced benefits and higher taxes and fees.

Now, what will be the fiscal consequences of a new program extending government paid health care to all Americans? Maybe a new system can remove a lot of the inefficiencies in the current system, something that large government programs are not known for. But it is not realistic to expect that such a system will not cost a lot more and require cuts in the benefits available under private healthcare. Can you really do that and make it palatable to the voters?

What is more, can you do it and satisfy the demand of the Blue Dogs for fiscal responsibility? If Obama can do all that, then maybe he is The One.  The great social welfare systems of Europe were instituted in a time when populations were growing, and one could always count on waves of young to support the sick and elderly.  I think those systems are in large part responsible for a half century of lethargy in the European economies.  Can such a system be brought into being now?  I have my doubts. 

Daschle Accepts HHS Position

Wall Street Journal:

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has accepted President-elect Barack Obama's offer to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services, according to an official familiar with the situation.

Atop HHS, Mr. Daschle is expected to play a key role in moving Mr. Obama's ambitious health care agenda through Congress. He was an early backer of Mr. Obama's during the presidential primaries and was a close adviser throughout the former Illinois senator's White House campaign.

As a veteran of Washington and of Capitol Hill, he brings knowledge about how to move legislation through Congress. He has a particular interest in health care and is co-author of a book published this year, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis."

A native of Aberdeen, S.D., Mr. Daschle represented South Dakota in the Senate from 1987 through 2004, when he was defeated in his bid for re-election to a fourth term. Since then, he has been an adviser to the law firm of Alston and Bird. Health care interests, including CVS Caremark, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Abbott Laboratories and HealthSouth, are among the firm's lobbying clients.

His wife was acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the Clinton administration. She is one of Washington's top lobbyists. Her lobbying clients over the past year included American Airlines, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, Senate lobbying records show.

Daschle and Herseth-Sandlin to Advance

 As Jason notes below, rumors are flying that Tom Daschle will be tapped for head of Health and Human Services. My sources tell me it's genuine. Also, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin appears to be the next leader of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition in the House.

Update:

CNN now reports the Daschle Choice.  CNN also notes this:

Most significantly, Daschle negotiated that he will also serve as the White House health "czar" — or point person — so that he will report directly to the incoming President. The significance is this guarantees that by wearing two hats Daschle, and not White House staffers, will be writing the health care plan that Obama submits to Congress next year.

Update:

This from American Prospect:

CNN is reporting that Tom Daschle will not only be Health and Human Services Secretary, but also health reform czar under the Obama administration. This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don't tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That's not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.

Daschle in the Obama Administration

Reports are coming out that Barack Obama will appoint Tom Daschle to be his Health and Human Services secretary.

Is This The Change We've Been Waiting For?

Obama tabs Eric Holder, another Clinton leftover, for Attorney General.  Mac Owens, no Obama partisan, finds little objectionable in what he sees in Obama's foreign policy team (see here and here).  As Owens puts it, "In short, Barack Obama will learn what Bill Clinton and George W. Bush discovered: That is easier to be president when you're not." The evidence so far is that Obama has dumped the "change you can believe in" for "Clinton, Term III."  Indeed, like Clinton and Bush, Obama is now receiving an education about what a responsibility power is.  He seems to be learning fast, which is why the campaign rhetoric is being quickly jettisoned. How Obama's most ardent supporters will take this remains to be seen.  And my interpretation is open to revision should the facts change. 

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State?

Apparently so.  For the record, I think this is a mistake only because with Hillary you get Bill, and Bill is famously undisciplined.  A gaffe is only a matter of time.  Of greater interest is who Obama picks as his national security adviser.  Policy is made by the NSC (of which the Sec of State is one member), not the State Department. 

Santa Claus Cancels Emergency: Arctic Ice Increasing

We have all been worried about the polar bears.  Global warming has been chipping away at the Arctic ice they do their ice fishing on.  Of course, Global Warming hasn't been happening for about ten years.  But never mind that. It does seem as though Arctic ice has been shrinking during that same period.  You worry about the white bears, I'll worry about the elves. 

Only, this just in, Arctic ice isn't shrinking.  From Daily Tech:

An abnormally cool Arctic is seeing dramatic changes to ice levels.  In sharp contrast to the rapid melting seen last year, the amount of global sea ice has rebounded sharply and is now growing rapidly. The total amount of ice, which set a record low value last year, grew in October at the fastest pace since record-keeping began in 1979.

The actual amount of ice area varies seasonally from about 16 to 23 million square kilometers. However, the mean anomaly-- defined as the difference between the current area and the seasonally-adjusted average-- changes much slower, and generally varies by only 2-3 million square kilometers.

That anomaly had been negative, indicating ice loss, for most of the current decade and reached a historic low in 2007. The current value is again zero, indicating an amount of ice exactly equal to the global average from 1979-2000.

So the arctic is back to normal, and Santa Claus can sleep soundly while his Elves hammer out new blue ray DVD players.  You might suppose that would be news, but so far the MSM doesn't seem to be noticing it. 

The Democrats and the Union Enforcer Bill

Perhaps the real test of what kind of President Barack Obama will be, and what kind of Congress the 111^th will be, will come over the perversely named Employee Free Choice Act. This piece of legislation would amend the National Labor Relations Act. Under current law, an employer can demand an election to determine whether his employees will organize under some new or existing union. The election is held by the National Labor Relations Board, and the voting is by secret ballot. The secret ballot, of course, is to protect workers against pressure by making sure that no one, neither their employer or the pro-union organizers, can know how they voted.

If the EFCA becomes law, the secret ballot election would be replaced by a "card check" procedure. If a majority of employees sign cards favoring union, then the workforce will be organized.

All the arguments in favor of the change turn on the disadvantages that unions have in getting access to workers. To be sure, employers have easier access to their employees than a union might have, especially if the latter means a union wishing to come into a previously unionized workforce, like Wal-Mart. But card check wouldn't remedy that problem. What it would do is give Union goons the chance to pressure workers. "Hey Joey, I heard you don't wanna be joinin the union! It would be terrible if something were to happen to youse. Or your beautiful children." Card check is a union leg-breaker free choice act.

The Employee Free Choice Act of 2007 passed the House on a party line vote. 228 Democrats and 13 Republicans voted in favor of it. Two Democrats and 183 Republicans voted no. When it got to the Senate it was defeated by a Republican filibuster. The Democrats brought a vote of cloture, to end debate and vote on the bill. The vote was 51 yes and 48 no, on straight party lines. But a vote of cloture requires 60 votes. So card check failed. If it had passed Congress, President Bush would have vetoed it. President McCain would have done the same. But President Obama said he would sign it.

There is now a good chance that the Democrats will get a 60 vote majority. Stevens in Alaska is behind the count, and Al Franken's friend keep finding new votes in Minnesota. I think Chambliss in Georgia will put it out, but I am not certain. If the Democrats do get to 60, it looks like card check is a sure thing.

I would like to think that this was all for show. The Democrats wanted to show the Unions that they were all for them, while they needed their money. Card check is so obviously a terrible idea that, maybe, the Democrats don't really want to take responsibility for it. We might be about to find out.

Same Sex Marriage 3: A Reply to Cory

My Keloland fellow, Cory Heidelberger, has a brief reply to my recent post on Same Sex Marriage and the Constitution. It was so good he apparently managed to post it twice. We are more in agreement, I think, than he may realize; or at a least about some things.

Here is his last paragraph:

To disagree with the good professor, I will appeal not to lust, but to love, to the intentional choice that a free person can make to commit to a relationship with one significant other. That is a valuable, character-building, society-leavening choice. That commitment is about much more than what we do with our naughty bits. It's about sharing a household, raising children, tending each other when sick or dying. Incest and polygamy may still fall under the purview of responsible government, as those behaviors entail problems with power and submission. But if two rational citizens want to make a lasting commitment to each other, we should not contort our law or Constitution into denying that choice.

Cory is making a hardy effort here to distinguish between a homosexual relationship and other "non-traditional" relationships. He seems to think that two consenting adults involved in the former have a constitutional right to marry, whereas persons involved in the latter do not. Now I happen to share Cory's sentiments. I think when a man shows up in a emergency room because his male partner of many years has collapsed on the racquetball court, it is only decency to give him the same rights a wife would have. Moreover if (as some gay activists have argued) marriage can curb the tendency of male homosexuals to be promiscuous, as it surely does curb the promiscuous inclinations of heterosexual males, then both kinds of marriage would be worthy of respect for exactly the same reason. So my sentiments here are compatible with Cory's.

The chief difference is that I don't confuse my sentiments for constitutional principles. Cory is inclined to admire the homosexual couple (two rational and presumably adult citizens) as much as the heterosexual couple. But surely it's possible that some incestuous or polygynous relationships involve rational citizens. Who is Cory to deny them their choice? I agree with Cory that the alternatives he dislikes may "entail problems with power and submission," but so does heterosexual monogamy and, I dare to say, some spicier homosexual partnerships. I suspect that Cory is merely categorizing these relationships into the ones he feels fondly toward, and the ones he doesn't. That is the same as Black voters apparently did in California when they voted for Prop. 8.

I think Cory's intuition is right, and that there are rational principles that indicate which of these relationships should be blessed by the state, which should be ignored, and which should be prohibited. I just don't think these principles are contained in any constitution I have yet seen. Some things are left up to legislatures to decide. So I see "no contortion of the law or Constitution" involved here.

Finally, I partially dissent on the nookie question. Homosexual relationships like heterosexual ones are surely about more than just physical sex. But it is physical sex that ties together all the relationships that Cory mentions. We wouldn't be considering extending the relationship of marriage to couples of men who are just chums. Without the nookie, no one would be talking about marriage. I note that my spell check doesn't recognize "nookie."

Happy Veterans Day

To those who have served and are currently serving, thank you.  Take the time today to honor and remember our veterans, past and present.  We're proud of your courage and sacrifice, and may God bless you and the country you served so diligently.

Lest We Forget

Forgive the indulgence, but let me repost what I wrote a year ago, although this time I am off the road, not on:

I will be on the road this weekend, so let me comment on Armistice Day two days early.  Of course, we don't celebrate Armistice Day anymore.  I think that is a shame.  This is not to say the the current holiday, Veterans Day, is a bad one (quite the contrary), but remembering the First World War as a separate event would aid our historical memory. 

Winston Churchill opens his history of the Second World War thusly:

I must regard these volumes as a continuation of the story of the first World War which I set out in The World Crisis, The Eastern Front, and The Aftermath.  Together, if the present work is completed, they will cover an account of another Thirty Years War. 

Churchill saw the the two wars an inextricably linked, indeed, almost seamless.  It is fair to say that the First World War, with its contribution to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its hand in the rise of Hitler in Germany, set the tone for the entire 20th Century.  The horror of the war explains much, in my opinion, of present day European politics.  The war decimated a continent and, it can be argued, destroyed in Europe faith in what we call Western Civilization.  I think it is no coincidence that Churchill ultimately saw the United States as the great defender of that civilization. 

What was the cost in lives of the First World War?  According to John Keegan, by war's end two million Frenchman had died, leaving 630,000 war widows.  The conscript classes of 1912-1915, the youngest French soldiers, lost between 27 and 30 percent.  A similar number of Germans died in the war.  Keegan points out that as a percentage, no nation lost more than Serbia.  Out of a pre-war population of five million, 125,000 died in combat, but another 650,000 civilians died of starvation and privation, for a total of about 15% of the population. Roughly one million British soldiers died in the war.  In my trip to the UK this past summer it was noticed that in every village there is a WWI memorial.   The United States, a late entry into the war, suffered just over 100,000 deaths.   

Keegan sums up the war's effect:

[I]t damaged a civilisation, the rational and liberal civilisation of the European enlightenment, permanently for the worse and, through the damage done, world civilisation also.  Pre-war Europe, imperial though it was in its relation with most of the world beyond the continent, offered respect to the principles of constitutionalism, the rule of law and representative government.  Post-war Europe rapidly relinquished confidence in such principles.  They were lost altogether in Russia after 1917, in Italy after 1922, in Germany in 1933, in Spain after 1936...Within fifteen years of the war's end, totalitarianism, a new word for a system that rejected the liberalism and constitutionalism which had inspired European politics since the eclipse of monarchy in 1789, was almost everywhere on the rise.

One of the grieving British parents was Rudyard Kipling, whose son died in the war.  He penned the poem Recessional years before the war, but it has become part of British Remembrance Day celebrations.   It used to be on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, bells would ring out.  It is still the case in some places. In America, where I suspect we will hear few bells, we could do worse than remember Kipling's words:

Recessional June 22, 1897

GOD of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle-line—
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,	5
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.	10
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
Far-call'd our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday	15
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—	20
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust	25
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!	30

Same Sex Marriage & the Constitution

I am not opposed to same-sex marriage as policy, but I do not believe that same-sex marriage is required by the Constitution of the United States. I doubt very much whether it is required under any reasonable interpretation of any state constitution. In reply to an anonymous interlocutor (AI) on my Keloland site, I wrote this:

Banning gay marriage does not "discriminate against a group of people by denying them rights enjoyed by other groups." Under such laws, a gay man can marry a woman but not another man. A non-gay man has exactly the same rights. Whatever may be wrong with traditional marriage restrictions, it isn't equality.

Happily, I received a response, presumably from the same A.I.:

So a predominately homosexual society banning heterosexual marriage would comport with your definition of equality?

To which I reply: yes. A law that allowed a person to marry another of his or her own sex but not to marry someone of the opposite sex, so long it was applied the same way to all persons, would satisfy the standard of equality before the law. Treating everyone the same regardless of who they are is what equality means. I don't think that is merely "my definition;" rather, it is the very heart of that concept.

That doesn't mean, of course, that the law proposed above would be a good law or a just law, it just means, as I said, that whatever is wrong with it, it isn't inequality.

AI goes on:

Telling a heterosexual person they can marry a person they are physically compatible with while denying that right to a homosexual person hardly meets a reasonable definition of equality under law.

I am not at all certain what "physical compatibility" means here. I cannot imagine any obvious way that two men are more physically compatible than a man and a woman. Well, actually I can, but I won't elaborate. I suspect that what AI means is that homosexuals are attracted to persons of the same sex, just as heterosexuals are attracted to persons of the opposite sex; so, allowing the one group to marry those they are attracted to, but not the other group is not equality.

But that argument also fails. No one, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgendered, etc, gets to marry whomever he/she is attracted to. No one is allowed to marry his daughter, sister, or mother, regardless of how "physically compatible" they may be. No two people can marry a third. A State might forbid marriage between first cousins or even second cousins. So long as these restrictions are applied equally to all, regardless of race, creed, color, or sexual preference, they involve no inequalities.

A final argument against different-sex restrictions on marriage makes an analogy with laws against miscegenation. This fails as well, on logical grounds. The purpose and presumed effect of banning inter-racial marriage was to make sure that discrete and insular minorities remain discrete and insular. Or, to use the language of Plessy, the purpose was to prevent "commingling" between the races. Whatever different sex restrictions on marriage may do, they do not inhibit commingling of homosexuals with heterosexuals.

So I see no valid argument that constitutional principles require the legalization of same sex marriage. I also made this argument about motive behind the thirty states that have passed different-sex restrictions on marriage:

I would like to think that the opposition is rooted in irritation at the Courts. California was one of the states where the State Supreme Court tried to enact gay marriage by legislative fiat. The same thing happened in Massachusetts, and would have been overturned their if the state constitution had not allowed the legislature to block the popular will.

AI responds:

As for 30 states banning gay marriage in response to court actions, I doubt it. There was no court action in SD prompting voters to ban same-sex marriage. I doubt Mormon support for 8 in California was anything more than religious bias (bigotry) against homosexuality. I am not accusing you of bigotry. However, I do believe defending the notion that trying to define otherwise arbitrary lines between judicial activism and legitimate legal interpretations justifies a Proposition 8 serves to offer cover for bigots.

Persons of traditional faith have the right hold what opinions they do about the sanctity of marriage. Perhaps it is not the best political strategy to call them bigots. I notice that you mention the Mormons, but not African-Americans who, as I pointed out, may have put Prop. 8 over the top. Selecting your targets in such a way might on its own be at least a soft form of bigotry.

I did not vote for the recent constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in SD. But I have close friends who did, some of them deeply involved in that initiative. I can tell you that they were thinking of little else but the actions of various courts around the nation. There has been a movement nationwide to establish same-sex marriage by judicial fiat. I can also tell you that when discussing this with people who are deeply opposed to same sex marriage (and that includes a lot of discussions with a lot of people), I never heard anyone express a contempt for homosexuals. I did hear frequent contempt for liberals who want to trump the legislative process have judges write their own opinions into the text of the various constitutions. So I think you are wrong with regard to the motives behind the movement.

Zen Noir

A second piece of Buddhist cinema showed up today in its bright red Netflix jacket. Zen Noir, directed by Marc Rosenbush, and staring Duane Sharp (who looks disturbingly like Will Farrow) as the detective. It's a clever piece of film making, and one of the best film presentations of the Dharma that I have seen. Interested readers should be warned that the movie is done in a mildly surrealist style (more about that in a moment) which means that it is temporally disjointed, with a context somewhere between waking and dreaming. I have a very low tolerance for that sort of thing, but I found it largely working here.

It's a clever idea: a blend of film noir clichés with the story of the teacher/student relationship right out of classic Zen literature. It opens on the unnamed detective, hat on head in a tank top undershirt, gazing at himself in the mirror. "The morning fog clings to the city like the scent of desperation to an aging drag queen." Not quite trusting the humor yet, the detective says: "why do I talk like that?"

The detective gets a call warning of a murder in a temple. The caller sounds vaguely Chinese, but doesn't give his name or the temple. "Three synagogues later it occurred to me that there aren't many Chinese Jews."

Once he gets to the temple, he finds that his rational methods of investigation don't work there. When he asks one student where he was at the time of the murder. "What do you mean by time?" When questioned, the master will only show him an orange.

It helps to know a little bit about Zen. The orange is common metaphor for the here and now reality. If you can eat an orange, really tasting its color, fragrance, and flavor, that is enlightenment. Most of us can't. We are always drifting away from reality into daydreams, or worse, building screens against reality. A few of the jokes won't work on you if you don't have some familiarity with the Zendo.

The reason we build screens is to escape the truth about death. The detective, it turns out, is still mourning his late wife, and that is what he has really come to the temple for.

I find the surrealist devices cheap. Bouncing back and forth between the detective context (hat, trench coat, gun) and the Zen context (shaved heads and robes) is frequently jarring. But they do serve well enough to bind the two genres, film noir and Zen story, together. Almost all the action takes place in two or three rooms, and the cast is limited to six characters (all but two of whom die or are already dead). It is respectable meditation on death and mindfulness, at least by Hollywood standards.

Finally, there is some beautiful cinematography. The orange is frequently shown burning in reverse, with the flames falling rather than rising, which is makes for a gorgeous image. Also, the soundtrack on the DVD is excellent, alternating between a Miles Davis like Noir jazz line and a lot of Eastern bamboo flute and percussion. There is a brief sex scene involving the detective and a shaven headed nun (cross legged with spines erect, if that is possible) and the high pitched flute thingy does a pretty good job of registering the climax.

It's a clever movie, with more than a little weirdness. It's one way to find out what the Dharma is about. I recommend it.

Buddhism in Korean Cinema

I have seen a lot of Asian movies in recent years, almost all of them in the horror genre. I have noted that Buddhism has a minimal presence in Asian horror, which contrasts greatly with Christianity in Western horror. But there is a Buddhist cinema making itself visible of late.

Yesterday I watched the splendid film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. It is a 2003 production from South Korea. The film is simply stunning, and stunningly simple. The setting is confined to a floating temple on a mountain lake, along with a nearby waterfall and pool. The misty mountain landscape, along with the rushing water over rocks, is both breathtaking in itself, and a Dharma lesson for anyone who pays attention.

It begins with an old Buddhist priest raising a young boy on this floating temple. Each of the seasons depicts a stage in the life of the boy, who (small risk of spoiler here) will eventually replace his master. The central action (Fall) turns around a visit by a teenage girl, whose mother brings her to the temple to cure some unspecified illness. The now teenage monk (Young-min Kim) naturally falls in love with her, and that spices the film up with a little very visual sex.

The old priest is not surprised or offended by his protégé's indulgence. "It's only nature," he remarks. But he warns: lust leads to the desire to possess, and that leads to murder. Sure enough, the young man leaves to pursue his love, and returns a wanted man with a bloody knife. The most intense scenes occur when the young man has returned, and is doing penance by carving the Heart Sutra into the wood deck of the floating temple. This Sutra (or scripture) is central to Zen Buddhism throughout Asia. Detectives arrive to arrest him, but before they depart they end up helping him finishing the carving.

The most interesting if subtle feature of the film is the two doors. One is inside the temple. There are no internal walls, but the young monk tries very hard to move between the two "chambers" by going through the door, even when he is sneaking over his master to join his lover on the other side. It looks simpler just to go around, but he is loath to do so. The other is a double door at the dock that the characters row towards to get off the lake. It has two muscular spirits carved into it, presumably to keep out demons. It is not so effective. But the water is usually high enough to invite one to merely row around the door and land on the bank. No one ever does. Some doors are like that. Try as we might to find an alternative, we inevitably have to pass through them.

This is a beautiful film. If you want to see the Dharma presented in a 90 minute DVD, this is a good place to start.

ps. Where is Buddhist in good standing, Todd Epp? 

Obama Voters Kill Same Sex Marriage in California

Whatever lies in store for us after January, Barack Obama has already struck two blows for conservative causes. He destroyed the system of public financing that libertarian minded conservatives have long opposed, and he probably secured passage of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in California. From the LA Times:

Although many of the state's black political leaders spoke out against Proposition 8, an exit poll of California voters showed that black voters favored the measure by a margin of more than 2 to 1. Not only was the black vote weighted heavily in favor of Proposition 8, but black turnout -- spurred by Barack Obama's historic campaign for president -- was unusually large, with African Americans making up roughly 10% of the total electorate.

The exit poll didn't ask voters why they voted the way they did. But Madison Shockley, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad and among the roughly one-third of blacks who opposed Proposition 8, said the vote was understandable. "Black folks go to church, probably more than the Caucasian population, and the churches they go to tend to be very traditional."

Black Americans are probably the most reliable voting bloc in the Democratic coalition, more reliable perhaps than Gay voters. But they are surprisingly conservative on many social issues, in part because of religion. It looks like White voters narrowly voted against Prop. 8, though persons married with children went strongly for it. Hispanics supported it, again for religious reasons. But the surge in the Black vote certainly helped put Prop 8 over the top.

Gays should be angry at Black voters, then, but you can't be angry at Black voters. It isn't allowed. Not even religiously motivated Black voters. So who are California's gays taking it out on? Mormons. From the LA Times:

More than a thousand gay-rights activists gathered Thursday afternoon outside the Mormon temple in Westwood to protest the role Mormons played in passing Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

It was the latest in an escalating campaign directed against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its role in marshaling millions of dollars in contributions from its members for the successful campaign to take away same-sex marriage rights.

Well, it's the nature of politics that you have to pick your targets carefully. But there is another old saw worth repeating: be careful what you wish for. Daniel Finkelstein, writing in the London Times Online, explains Obama's victory in these simple terms: Americans are richer, smarter, and less White. Well, now we know who to blame for eight years of Dubya: poor, dumb, White people. There's a target for you! But maybe less White doesn't always mean more liberal. I note that the millions of Muslims ringing Paris and other European cities probably aren't any friendlier to Gay rights than American Blacks. Welcome to the first day of the rest of the century.

The Idea of Change in American Politics

Today's must read is Wilfred McClay' s "The Idea of Change in American Politics" (pdf alert).  McClay is professor of history at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. This is one of the most insightful pieces on language and politics I have read.  He concludes with a discussion of Barack Obama the the "promise" of American life.  Read this piece. 

Sporting Glory

My latest in The American News is not about politics, but sports. 

Leo Thorsness: American Hero

Scott Johnson has a longish post on the heroism of South Dakota's living Medal of Honor recipient, Leo Thorsness.  It is well worth your time. 

California Rejects Court Imposed Gay Marriage

From the New York Times:

California voters have adopted a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, The Associated Press reported Wednesday, joining voters in two other states who went to the polls Tuesday to overturn such unions.

With almost all precincts in California reporting, the A.P. said, elections returns showed that the same-sex marriage ban initiative known as Proposition 8 won 52 percent of the vote. Some provisional and absentee ballots remained to be counted, but based on trends and the locations of outstanding votes, the initiative's margin of support was secure, according to the A.P.

It wasn't only California:

Only three states this year had ballots that included bans on same-sex marriage, compared with 8 in 2006 and 11 in 2004.

The ban passed in all three states — the other two being Florida and Arizona — but its success in California, a trend-setter in so many arenas, was seen as major defeat for gay rights activists. …

The measure came only months after California's highest court ruled it constitutional, spurring thousands of gay couples to marry there.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California is indeed astounding. I am constantly surprised at the strength of the opposition to legal same-sex marriage in places otherwise trending liberal.

I would like to think that the opposition is rooted in irritation at the Courts. California was one of the states where the State Supreme Court tried to enact gay marriage by legislative fiat. The same thing happened in Massachusetts, and would have been overturned their if the state constitution had not allowed the legislature to block the popular will.

I am not opposed to gay marriage, but I am opposed to judicial usurpation of legislative powers. It is probably a good thing for democracy in California that the initiative passed.

Waiting for Barack: Partisanship or Principle?

It is an open question whether Barack Obama is what is commonly called an "ideologue," which is to say, a politician who acts consistently out of principle. He is certainly a committed partisan, voting with his own party virtually all of the time. His choice of a Chief of Staff is some indication of this:

Roger M. sends me this note:

Just a note that for a President-elect who said he wanted to be bipartisan, his selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff seems a contradiction.  Emanuel has been the most partisan Democrat in the Congress. Of course part of that stems from his tenure as Chair of the DCCC, but I wonder if this White House is without saying it planning to wage war on the remaining GOP in the Congress--circle the wagons boys!!!.

Just right now, Roger, I am not sure if the Republicans have enough wagons left to form a complete circle. Obama is a winner. It is not clear that he is consistently committed to anything other than winning. If he remains so, it might be very bad for Republicans, but perhaps not so bad for the country. He will probably move to the center, at least on some issues, so as to neutralize the opposition. Bill Clinton did so, and we got some pretty good policy out of that.

If he tacks decisively to the left, that will probably energize the opposition and help the Republicans revive. But he might get a lot of seriously leftist legislation passed, and that can be hard to undo. Just look at the French, who had found it nearly impossible to reform their sclerotic economy. It's going to be a fun four years, at least.

Michael Crichton, RIP

Author Michael Crichton, most famous I suppose for Jurassic Park, has died.

Appaloosa: A Review

The film Appaloosa is an odd sort of Western.  It participates in some of the most tried and true elements of the genre (the violent hero and villain, the incompetent towns folk, gritty gun play, etc.), but there is an oddly discordant tone to the film. While I can recommend the film based on the performances of Ed Harris and in particular Viggo Mortensen, viewers should be aware that the film is not what it purports to be. 

The film starts as a typical Western.  Ed Harris plays Virgil Cole, gun fighter extraordanaire who goes from town to town cleaning up the riff raff in the name of the law.  With him is his sidekick, Everett Hitch (Mortensen) who uses an 8 gauge shot gun to great effect.  They have come to the town of Appaloosa in New Mexico territory.  Their marshal has been shot dead by cattle baron Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and they now have no way to protect themselves. 

One expects at this point a series of confrontation, a give and take, between Cole and Bragg, and to a certain extent we get that.  The plot is complicated by the arrival of Allison French (Renee Zellweger).  Cole quickly falls for her, seemingly dividing his soul between his wandering gun fighting ways and the desire for a home. Hitch believes Allie is not quite what she seems, and the story gives us reason to believe him. 

Cole eventually arrests Bragg for the murder of the former marshal. Bragg is convicted, but on the way hang him, Bragg's hired guns waylay the train.  They have kidnapped Allie and demand Bragg as Ransom.  Cole, who has openly proclaimed that he does not fear death, apparently fears the death of his woman so he complies.  Cole and Hitch then take after them in order to rescue Allie and exact some revenge. 

It is at this point that the film gets complicated and cannot be adequately discussed without giving away key plot points.  Let's just say that the resolution is uncertain.  The hired guns are killed, but Bragg gets away.  Allie is rescued, but Cole learns that she is not the woman he thought she was. 

This appears like it could be the end of the film, but it is not.  There is a kind of second act that focuses on the relationship between Allie and Cole.  The question is whether either one of them can really settle down.  Bragg has also come back to town with a pardon from his old friend, President Chester Arthur.  A confrontation ensues, but not in the way one would expect.

The film suffers from a bit of indecision.  It can't decide whether it is a gun fighter movie or a love story.  One way to solve this dilemma is to make explicit the uncertainty within Cole, the conflict between guns and home.  But this is papered over.  Thus it is like there are two movies running side by side that do not realize the other one is there.  Also, the film suffers from Zellweger's inadequate performance.  She plays Allie as a modern woman stuck in the 1880s New Mexico.  Sure, the script makes he lines a bit more antiquated, but she does not enter into the role, thus is not really believable. 

I like Westerns. If you do too, you'll like Appaloosa.  Harris and Mortensen are good in their roles, and hey, some of us just like cowboy movies.  Just be aware that the Cole-Allie love affair is more important that it seems at first. 

Election Summary

I endorse Jason's comments: Congratulations Mr. President elect.  McCain was gracious.  Obama deserved to win. 

All things considered, it wasn't nearly as bad for the Republicans as they might have feared.  Obama will win a majority of the popular vote, but the difference is only about 5%, apparently.  It is not true, as some liberal commentators kept saying, that Republican support collapsed or that "Reganism" is dead. Bear in mind that Obama promised to deliver tax cuts to 95% of the American people.  Maybe he didn't really mean tax cuts, but the fact that he used Republican language is significant. 

On the other hand, McCain lost a lot of states that the Republicans used to be able to count on.  That is an ominous sign for the GOP.

On the Senate side of the equation, the Coleman/Franken race is still too close to call as I type.  I had hoped and still hope that Coleman pulls it out.  On the plus side, Stevens seems to be winning in Alaska.  This is good not because Stevens wins, but because he will probably be expelled by the Senate.  Then Palin can appoint a successor.  That might keep that seat for the GOP.  If Coleman wins, the Democratic gains will be held to six, or even five.  Oregan is still too close to call.  I had predicted a loss of seven seats. 

Congratulations Mr. Obama

Jonah Goldberg:  "Look, I expect to be one of the most severe critics of the Obama administration and the Democrats generally in the years ahead (though I sincerely hope I won't find that necessary). But Obama ran a brilliant race and he should be congratulated for it. . . . God bless America, and may He guide Obama to be the best president possible."

Mr. President-elect, I congratulate you on your campaign.  It is truly a historic night having our first African American president and a testament to where this nation has come in the last thirty years.  While, like Goldberg, I expect I'll disagree with some of your policies, I will do so with the respect that the Office of the President deserves.  I urge my fellow conservatives to do the same and to not fall into the derangement that has characterized segments of the Left over the past eight years.  I hope that I'm wrong about some of my criticism of Obama, and we'll see how things shake out for the next four years.  He ran a brilliant campaign and should be congratulated for his achievement.  I wish you the best of luck.

Mr. McCain, I may disagree with some policies and the course of your campaign, but you have run an honorable and tough campaign.  Thank you for your service and commitment to the United States.  Although you were not on the top of my list of candidates I supported, I've appreciated your integrity.  Just listening to McCain's gracious concession speech is proof enough that he is a man of character and would have admirably served as the nation's Commander in Chief.  I'll quote McCain to end:  "I wish godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. . . . do not despair of our difficulties but to always believe in the promise of America."

UPDATE:  Jim Geraghty writes:  "I have many, many disagreements with Barack Obama. But tonight I congratulate him on his victory. I have seen a few critics say, "he won't be my president," but that is nonsense. He will be my president, and I will wish him well, particularly as he takes on the duty of protecting the American people in a dangerous world."  Indeed.

Following the Election Results

You can follow live updates of election results in South Dakota through the Secretary of State's website.  The political junkies out there might also enjoy following the results in the key states of Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.

Also, Fox News has a great election results map where you can zoom to the county level and track results.  I give it two thumbs up.

UPDATE:  Stephen Green and the folks at Contentions are liveblogging the results.

Election Day News

PJM is doing a roundup of election day news all day. 

Voting Machine Problems

Reports have been coming in all morning about voting machine problems in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and some other states out east.

The Murtha/Russell Race

An update from the folks at The Corner.

Ignore the Talking Heads

No matter what the talking heads say before the polls close means much.  They were wrong on the Kerry exit poll victory in 2004, but this hasn't stopped some networks this time around.

Plus, some good advice from Glenn Reynolds:  Whoever Wins, Chill Out

Stay tuned throughout the day for election day updates.  And get out and vote!

This Is Democracy?

Patrick Deneen on polling and democracy.  The post is long and thoughtful, so sure to be ignored.  Just one paragraph of this remarkable piece:

What a polling regime effectively does is to reinforce the worst aspect of both the Federalists and Anti-federalists. On the one hand, as the Federalists intended, it leaves the citizenry undisturbed and unchallenged in their private concerns and interests. Polling seeks merely to sound out an expression of our interests: it possesses no deliberative aspect, no interactive opportunity; it is passive and impersonal. From incessant polling we learn that we are bundles of interests, that we can be dissected into a particular voting blocs, that we should learn to match our particular interests to a particular candidate (and vice-versa). On the other hand, representatives seek to "mirror" or parrot the views of some portion of the electorate they believe will give them an electoral majority, but without the accompanying deliberation that the Anti-federalists hoped and expected would be the result of local and more personal politics. Polling both reinforces our self-understanding as simultaneously a collection of preferences and as tiny and insignificant fractions of the overall electorate. We come to understand that we matter only inasmuch as we express some set of pre-packaged interests while also understanding that, in a mass electorate, we don't really matter at all. Polling is a reflection of the reality of mass democracy, a reality that shapes us rather than merely seeks to discover our "opinions." Viewed as merely a "tool" of democracy (or social science), we overlook how deeply it shapes and influences our worldview - especially how it reinforces an emphasis that what matters most in politics is raw and unadulterated interest, and what politics is not and cannot be is a form of deliberation.