South Dakota Politics

Gordon’s Drebin Gaffe & Tea Partiphobia

The big news from the mother country over the last couple days was Labour PM Gordon Brown's gaffe. Brown had a conversation with Gillian Duffy, a 66 year old woman and lifelong Labour voter. Ms. Duffy was worried about crime and immigration, among a number of issues. Brown handles the exchange pretty well and treats her with apparent grace, so long as the cameras were rolling. But when he climbs into his Jag and speeds away, he calls Ms. Duffy "a bigoted woman." He forgot that his mike was still on. I name this a "Drebin gaffe" after Leslie Neilson's Frank Drebin in the Police Story movies. Check out that clip to find out what I mean. Here is the PM's actual gaffe:

Michael Barone calls this "one of the most amazing unforced errors in the history of English-speaking politics." That might not be hyperbole. The problem of course is that now we know for certain what Gordon Brown really thinks about Gillian Duffy. She is worried about the effects of immigration and crime in Britain, two issues that are not unrelated, and Brown thinks that makes her a bigot.

It occurs to me that the same is true of the American left in its reaction to the Tea Party movement. The charge of racism has been incessantly hurled at the Tea Partiers, in spite of almost no evidence. Now comes a poll from University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality that illustrates the straining that this accusation requires.

The Washington Institute survey tests "racial resentment" among Tea Party believers by asking questions like this [hat tip to Powerline]:

• "Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors." [78% agree].

• "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class." [72% disagree].

• "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve." [83% disagree].

• "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites." [73% agree].

Is this evidence of "racial resentment," as Newsweek alleges? It is in fact evidence that strong majorities of Tea Party activists reject liberal positions on these issues in favor of conservative positions. Like Gordon Brown, Newsweek apparently regards disagreement with the Left as bigotry.

In fact, these results prove the opposite of racism. The respondents view African Americans as being exactly the same as other ethnic groups. To say that blacks would be as well off as whites if only they tried as hard means you think that blacks have the same natural capacities as whites. One might argue that these sentiments are unfair; one cannot logically claim that they amount to racism.

Another set of questions in the poll have not received the attention it deserves. Tea Party "true believers" favor laws protecting homosexuals against discrimination in the workplace and believe that homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the Armed Forces, by 62% and 69% respectively. On the other hand, only 36% agreed that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt children.

It is clear that the Washington Institute was looking for evidence of racism among Tea Party believers. What they found, and what Newsweek tried to fit in the frame of "racial resentment," in fact proves the opposite. The Tea Party activists are hardly a bigoted bunch, unless you mean by "bigot" what Gordon Brown means: anyone who challenges the views of the Left.

Nick Clegg and Third Party Success

 

  

Disillusioned third-party voters may find the latest political news from the UK heartening. The most recent polls now show Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats pulling ahead of the candidates of both major parties (David Cameron of the Tories and Gordon Brown of the Labour Party). Clegg, who was, until recently, known for being unknown, gained popularity after impressing voters during Britain's first televised debates.

This is somewhat incredible. Labour has been in power for 13 years. Therefore, any change would mean something. But what makes Clegg's rise even more meaningful is the fact that the last time a member of a party other than Labour or Conservative held the office of Prime Minister was in 1918 (92 years ago). A Clegg win, then, would be monumental. The fact that he has managed to overtake his opponents in the polls is impressive in itself. Until a few weeks ago, even Clegg supporters thought the candidate's chances of winning were slim to none.

Third-party voters in the United States often feel the same way about their candidates' chances. But could something similar happen in the United States?

History suggests that it is highly unlikely. The last time a third-party candidate held the office of president in the United States was in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln led the Republicans to victory over the Whigs and Democrats. That was 150 years ago.

On the other hand, the sentiment of the present day American public toward the two reigning parties is much like that of the UK's citizens toward Labour and the Tories. Congress's low approval rating, the voluntary withdrawals of many incumbent Democrats from impending elections and Obama's recent return to campaigning (as detailed in this story), give evidence of the public's disappointment in the Democrats. Meanwhile, McCain's loss in the last presidential election and the increased momentum of the tea party movements across the nation show the public's disillusion with the Republican Party. Liberals and Conservatives alike seem to despise Washington Politics.

Before Clegg's rise, the British Public had expressed similar disgust with its politicians. The Economist put it this way:

Vote Brown -- "The Devil You Know"

Vote Cameron -- "The Devil You Don't"

Vote Clegg -- "Who The Devil?"

This sort of sentiment has a great deal to do with Clegg's success. Clegg also had the advantage of appearing in a novel sort of debate. It is true that televised debates are not novel here and that they are less likely to make as much of an impression on the American public as they have on the British. Still, what mattered more than the fact that the debate was televised was what was televised. Many third party candidates are eccentric, radical, and awkward. Consider Ross Perot, Ron Paul or Ralph Nader. Each is admirable in his own way. But each is a little odd.

Clegg, on the other hand, is handsome, charismatic, eloquent and reasonable. He seems moderate and commonsensical, rather than radical. Furthermore, he presents himself as one of the people, fighting from the outside against dishonesty and corruption in politics in the status quo. And whether or not Clegg is as honest as he asks others to be, his message has struck a chord with the British public.

If such a candidate were to run for a third-party in America, might he win? It is unlikely. But, as our friends in the UK are proving, the unlikely does sometimes happen.

Edit: Valued commenters George Mason and Guard have nicely pointed out that I am an idiot. As the UK's election system is more party centred than the American system, Clegg's newfound popularity is not as monumental as I suggested. Mason and Guard point out rightly that in order for Clegg to become Prime Minister, his party will have to win a majority of seats in parliament - no easy feat.

Not only that, but the results of the last prime ministerial debate are markedly different. Tory David Cameron is now leading by a substantial margin and Gordon Brown is also ranking higher than Clegg in some polls.

Many thanks to the commenters, who I must confess, are more knowledgeable than I am on this topic.

Immigration Politics and the 2010 Elections

The MSM is on a full court press to convince us that the recent legislation in Arizona turns that bit of Painted Desert into a police state. See Linda Greenhouse's piece "Breathing While Undocumented" for a sample. That none of this is in good faith is evident from the fact that no one seems to be asking how the law would actually work. Arizona has decided that its own law officers ought to do the work that federal officers ought to be doing but clearly aren't.

Maybe this will be done in a way that unconstitutionally burdens all citizens of Latino decent, and maybe not. I would like to see someone with the necessary expertise tell us what documents are necessary to prove that one is a legal resident. A driver's license? A social security card?

Meanwhile the majority party in Congress has put immigration back on the agenda, just in time to wreck negotiations on a Cap and Trade bill. Why? The answer is that the President has given up on the "non-minority" vote for this November. Or at least non-young, non-male voters.

Maybe the Arizona business will help with Hispanic voters. That would explain the MSM's attention. But he has his work cut out for him. The Examiner explains:

Last week, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) wrote a very angry op ed for the Huffington Post in which he assailed President Obama for everything from allowing federal agencies to lawfully deport criminal aliens, to not acting to stop the Arizona state legislature from passing a law which makes it a crime for illegal aliens to be present in Arizona.

In his rant, the Illinois Congressman even griped about the breakup of human smuggling networks, notorious for abusing and kidnapping their human freight.

What Rep. Gutierrez wants is "comprehensive" immigration reform. In case you don't know what that means, let me enlighten you. It means legalizing people who entered this country illegally, in exchange for empty promises to control the boarders in the future. So far, so good. But he wants President Obama to actually arrange this.

The President can do nothing of the sort. Congress has been trying to pass immigration reform for decades. It isn't going to do it in the middle of an election year. The sole purpose of raising the issue now is to try to drum up enthusiasm among Hispanic/Latino voters. But such voters want action, and they can see that the President can't deliver. FiveThirtyEight shows that enthusiasm for Obama among such voters has fallen precipitously. Only 55% now support the President.

This is in line with polls showing lackluster enthusiasm among other key Obama constituencies. Just at the same time comes this from Gallup:

On the heels of yesterday's report showing nearly half of young voters aged 18-29 - a critical piece of Obama's 2008 coalition - are "not enthusiastic" about voting in this year's election, Gallup is out with another body blow for Democrats today with a survey showing that the GOP leads Democrats by 20 points among those voters most enthusiastic about the 2010 midterms.

Among all registered voters, the GOP leads in the generic congressional ballot in the current Gallup survey by just one point, 46 to 45. But among those who are "very enthusiastic" about voting in November, the GOP lead over Democrats balloons to a 57/37 gap.

A twenty point gap in enthusiasm! I have never seen anything like this before. There are two obvious questions: are these polls accurate, and will the situation change between now and this November. If the answer is no, no exactly, and yes, the Democrats may be in for a pleasant surprise. If the answer is yes and no, they are looking at a disaster of Biblical proportions. I make no predictions; but if these polls are accurate and noting much changes, the Republicans will sweep everything that isn't tied down. The President will wake up after the election to find the GOP in control of both houses of Congress.

The Perpetual Bailout Bill

The Democrats are pushing another piece of complicated legislation in the hopes that we will all wait until it is passed to find out what is in it. The Republicans are blocking it. I say: God Bless James Madison. The recent fiscal crisis certainly calls out for reform. Maybe trying to push through the biggest piece of financial reform before the voters find out what is in it, and especially before the voters get to vote, is not the best way to go about reform.

President Obama explains why we should accept this reform:

A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts. That's the truth. End of story. And nobody should be fooled in this debate.

Well, what he says three times is true, no doubt. But NPR's Planet Money couldn't find three experts on either side of the aisle who agreed with the President.

We at Planet Money did an informal survey of economists and regulatory experts on the left and the right. We couldn't find any who fully endorse the reforms backed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress. Everyone thinks the reforms just aren't enough to solve the problem.

Here is what GRETCHEN MORGENSON at the New York Times says about the President's favored legislation:

Too big to fail is alive and well, alas. Indeed, several aspects of the legislative proposals sanction and codify the special status conferred on institutions that are seen as systemically important. Instead of reducing the number of behemoth firms assigned this special status, the bills would encourage smaller companies to grow large and dangerous so that they, too, could have a seat at the bailout buffet.

What the Republicans want to do is to revise the bankruptcy laws to make them adequate to the current financial environment. That way, failing banks, large or small, can be taken apart in an efficient manner. What the Democrats want to do is authorize the government to take over large banks in crisis (see: bailout) in order to keep them afloat. Take your pick, but if I was a whiz kid at some major money lender, I would be hoping for the latter. Nothing is more fun than to gamble when somebody is standing behind you ready to cover your losses.

What is certain is that you can't believe a word the President says, especially when he says it three times. If the New York Times and NPR won't back him, up, well I suppose there's always Paul Krugman.

Hazing Arizona

The State of Arizona, of which I was once a lawful resident, has passed an immigration enforcement law. Critics are calling it shameful and even Fascist. Here's one such critic, my esteemed Keloland colleague, Cory Heidelberger:

For all you 9-12ers hollering that President Obama is acting like Hitler, let's hear some protest about the real police state tactics just passed by the Republicans running Arizona. Their new state immigration policy authorizes police to approach anyone they consider suspicious and demand proof of citizenship…

Yes, we need a secure border. Yes, immigrants must follow the law. But a law that allows police to yank us off the street just for looking suspicious and not carrying the right documents is the wrong way to enforce our laws. It's the Nazi way.

I'll let Glen Beck and Cory decide who the real Nazis are, if that is how they want to spend their time. Meanwhile, I have reviewed the Arizona Legislature's summary of the bill. Cory's objection seems to be based on this provision:

[SB1070] requires a reasonable attempt to be made to determine the immigration status of a person during any legitimate contact made by an official or agency of the state or a county, city, town or political subdivision (political subdivision) if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S.

This provision does not in fact "authorize police to approach anyone they consider suspicious." The keywords here are "any legitimate contact" and "reasonable suspicion." Police officers would have to have a legitimate reason for approaching someone in the first place, before they are required to determine the immigration status of that person.

This looks to me like standard procedure. A policeman cannot legitimately pull a fellow over just because he doesn't like the fellow's bumper sticker. On the other hand, if he stops the bloke because he's weaving or has a tail light out, the officer can shine his flashlight into the back seat. If he sees a metal canister marked "Anthrax," he is surely authorized to make further inquiries. Likewise the police would require a legitimate reason to approach someone before the above provision would be triggered.

The problem is with the "reasonable suspicion" language. What constitutes "reasonable suspicion…that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S."? It is hard not to think that that means anyone who looks even vaguely Latino.

This might, in effect, mean that all persons of Latino decent, including legal immigrants and citizens, and they alone, will be required to carry proof of their status. I say "might" because it all depends on how the police and other government agents interpret the law. That doesn't look like equal protection.

I am guessing that this doesn't survive Court scrutiny, and that practical considerations would render it largely null in any case. Arizona just doesn't have the resources to enforce federal immigration law through these means.

But the Arizona law is a reflection of our dysfunctional immigration policies. Our immigration laws are not being enforced. Arizona is burdened by a half a million illegal aliens. The President is talking about "comprehensive reform," but everyone knows what that means. It means amnesty for those who have made it across the border so far, and lackluster laws that invite millions more to follow in the future. We have seen all this before.

Everyone knows what a sensible immigration policy would be. From The Arizona Republic:

The federal government needs to pass immigration reform that imposes order at the border, creates a legal flow of needed workers and helps bring the nation's undocumented workforce out of the shadows.

Washington seems perfectly incapable of that. No wonder people have lost faith in their government.

God Loves Chicago

It is charming to be in Chicago at the moment when Rod "the Hair" Blagojevich announces that he wants to subpoena the President of the United States.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's lawyers asked a federal judge Thursday to force President Obama to testify at Blagojevich's upcoming trial, as new information surfaced -- accidentally -- that Obama personally called a mutual supporter to discuss his replacement in the U.S. Senate.

On the day before he was elected president, then-Sen. Obama called a union official about the possibility that adviser Valerie Jarrett replace him in the Senate, according to Blagojevich's defense filing in U.S. District Court in Chicago and sources close to the investigation.

I doubt that this amounts to anything, but when you send Chicago to D.C., this is sometimes what you should expect.

Dog Gone! U.S. v. Stevens

In an 8 to 1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a federal statute (18 U.S.C. § 48) that criminalizes the sale or possession of depictions of animal cruelty. The statute was intended to prevent someone from profiting indirectly from activities that would otherwise be illegal.

Dog fighting seems to have been the primary focus of the legislation. This activity is illegal in every state. Organizing dog fights or dog fighting rings is a felony. See Michael Vick. Presumably, if someone published a magazine with photos of dog fights, or sold videos or even audio recordings of the same, that would create an additional financial incentive to keep the fights going.

First Amendment Free Speech protection is subject to certain exceptions under the Court's jurisprudence. Fight words, defamation, obscenity, sedition, are among them. As I gather from a quick review of the decision, the Court understood that Congress wanted to carve out another exception, this one to cover depictions of animal cruelty. The Court declined to do so.

The Court decided rightly. Suppose an animal rights group sold a video depicting animals subject to cruelty in a number of industries, including the beef industry and dog fighting. It looks as though that sale could be criminal under this statute.   Likewise this blog with the attached photo might be liable. 

The government insisted, reasonably enough, that prosecutors would not act beyond the intentions of the law; but the Court replied, correctly, that First Amendment rights are not to be dependent on a presumption of prosecutorial responsibility.

The Government seemed to want to use a "balancing test." The Court properly rejected that idea. From the Syllabus:

The Government's proposed test would broadly balance the value of the speech against its societal costs to determine whether the First Amendment even applies. But the First Amendment's free speech guarantee does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits. The Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government out-weigh the costs.

That said, the decision is not without problems. I cannot see how this case differs from New York v. Ferber, where a law criminalizing possession or sale of child pornography was upheld. The rationale for the laws looks the same, except in so far as we value children more than dogs.

Critics of Ferber thought that the statute might criminalize many innocent depictions of naked children, say, in baby product catalogs. I have not heard of any such cases, so maybe prosecutorial responsibility is more reliable than the Court is willing to acknowledge.

Perhaps the moral of the story is this: we care a lot about free speech, and only limit it when we really, really want to. Those who traffic in child porn should be thrown in the slammer. Given that, the role of the Court is to keep such exceptions to a bare minimum. The Court has done that in U.S. v. Stevens.

Environmentalism and the Separation of Church and State

The Telegraph reports that a British worker has won £100,000 (Approximately $153,500 USD) after suing his employer for "environmental discrimination." According to The Telegraph:

At a preparatory hearing last year, a judge ruled that his belief in climate change was legally akin to a religious belief and should be protected from discrimination.

I am not sure if this sort of thing will ever happen in the United States, but suppose it did. It might present some interesting problems. Consider, for instance, the American tradition regarding the separation of church and state.

If environmental beliefs are to be treated as religious beliefs, would congressional funding of environmental projects such as combating climate change, be considered the endorsement of a particular religion? If so, would congress still be able to help finance such projects? Maybe not.

If not, would those who have supported governmental funding of climate-related projects suddenly find themselves supporting more interaction between the church and state? Or would they oppose such funding?

Rubber Rooms & Predators in the Classroom

File this one under corruption in the school systems and the media.  Cross list under "sexual abuse by teachers." 

Now consider this arresting passage from The New Yorker:

In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: "Children are fragile. Handle with care." It's a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

This is what New York City has been doing with about 675 teachers removed from the classroom for various reasons. It's expensive. From the AP:

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimated last year that the practice was costing the taxpayers $65 million a year.

Well, there is a place to tighten the fiscal belt, and apparently NYC has finally decided to end the practice. Why did they do it in the first place? Because union rules make it virtually impossible to fire teachers. Predictably:

The union did not appear to sacrifice much in the deal. While the agreement speeds hearings, it does little to change the arduous process of firing teachers, particularly ineffective ones. Administrators still must spend months or even years documenting poor performance before the department can begin hearings, which will still last up to two months.

There is a much worse scandal hiding behind this one. The MSM has been in a feeding frenzy lately over sexual abuse by Catholic Priests and the Church's protection of the perpetrators. That is a genuine scandal to be sure, and the media was surely right to cover it.

You might suppose, however, that it would be as big a scandal and a story if worse rates of abuse were going on in the public schools and school officials were frequently failing to act or even investigate allegations. Well, a scandal it is in fact; but a story? Not so much.

The LATimes gives us some idea of what is going on.

In March [2008], we learned that administrators in South Los Angeles had failed to investigate allegations that a high school teacher had a sexual relationship with a student. Then they made Steve Thomas Rooney an assistant principal at Markham Middle School in Watts. He's in jail now, charged with having unlawful sex with a former student and molesting two girls from the Markham campus.

In another case this month, the principal and an assistant principal at South East High were slapped with criminal charges for failing to report a student's allegations that a substitute teacher had sex with her.

Four administrators and a dean have been disciplined in the two cases for ignoring district policies on reporting and investigating abuse allegations.

Now ask yourself: were you aware of a system-wide sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Of course. Were you remotely aware of a similar scandal in the public school system? Of course not, unless you caught this piece by Hillary Profita in the National Review Online (picked up by CBSNews).

In accordance with a requirement of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

As the National Catholic Register's reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.

Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.

That 2000 to 4 story ratio gives you a pretty good picture of the Media's selective attention. That extends to individual cases as well. When a former Priest came forward last year to report being abused thirty years ago, the LATimes reported it. When a teacher was sentenced two days later to eight counts of felony abuse with underage girls, the LAT ignored it.

Journalists just enjoy going after the Catholic Church a lot more than they like going after schools and school officials. I don't know what the real dimensions of the sexual abuse scandal in public schools is, but it is obvious that it's as big or bigger than anything going on in the Church. It isn't just school officials that are protecting predatory teachers. It is also the Main Stream Media.

Hat Tip to Justin Paulette at No Left Turns.

The New Christie Miracles

From Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, America enjoyed robust economic growth. Assume for a moment that George W. Bush is personally responsible for bringing that growth to a stop. It is nonetheless true that the Federal Government and most of the state governments spent like drunken sailors all the way through to now. No, that's unfair. I got carried away. Your drunken sailor would be scratching his head and saying, "well…maybe I should go home and sleep it off" well before things got to this point.

Republicans in general have been plenty guilty in all this, but one recently elected Republican seems to know what to do about it. From the Wall Street Journal:

Governor Christie is on a mission to make New Jersey competitive once again in the contest to attract people and capital… Listen to Mr. Christie's take on the state of his state: "We are, I think, the failed experiment in America—the best example of a failed experiment in America—on taxes and bigger government. Over the last eight years, New Jersey increased taxes and fees 115 times."

New Jersey's residents now suffer under the nation's highest tax burden. Yet the tax hikes haven't come close to matching increases in spending. Mr. Christie recently introduced a $29.3 billion state budget to eliminate a projected $11 billion deficit for fiscal year 2011.

New Jersey's Governor seems determined to actually cut state spending. He has put his every power as Governor where his mouth is by declaring a state of emergency and freezing spending wherever he could by law. It might seem to require a miracle to bring his state's budget under control, but then the election of a Republican in this bluest of blue states was miraculous to begin with. One way to push a miracle is by calling people's bluff. From Gene Healy in the Examiner:

Consider the clever move Christie made last week, offering to free up aid for school districts whose teachers agreed to wage freezes. It's all about the children, right? So far only a handful of districts have gone along.

A recent memo from New Jersey teacher's union reps in Bergen County ends with a cutesy "prayer" for the governor's death.

Given a choice between accepting a pay cut and grinding children into toothpaste, your average teacher's union will opt for oral hygiene. It's indeed clever to force that choice.

But the most impressive New Jersey miracle is this:

Christie's running a bold experiment: treating voters like adults, telling them what's needed to get out of their predicament. It's the right thing to do, and given where New Jersey stands, probably as wise a political choice as any (it's not like [Gov] Corzine stayed popular by ducking the hard choices).

As Christie puts it: "It should've been dealt with years ago. It wasn't. ... If people don't like it after four years, they can send me home."

More like this, please.

Yes. More like this. Now is the time to replace wish bones with backbones. We cannot know that Republicans will deserve to win by acting like Governor Christie. We can only know that those who do so deserve to win.

The Enemy of My Friend is My Friend?

Last month, Hillary Clinton traveled to Syria, where she shook hands with Syria's Walid Mouallem. The London Times said of the handshake:

The brief encounter was seen as a sign that Washington was prepared to mend fences with Syria, whose leader, Bashar Assad, was treated as a pariah by the Bush Administration.

In 2007, Nancy Pelosi also made nice with Syria, defying the White House to shake hands and socialize with Mr. Mouallem.

But our allies in Israel are not as eager to mend fences with Syria, and one can hardly blame them. According to The Times, "Israeli Intelligence has discovered that Syria has recently supplied long-range ballistic missiles and advanced anti-aircraft systems to Hezbollah." It is understandably hard to want to shake the hand of someone who just provided your enemy with the means by which to wipe out your friends and neighbors. So instead of offering a handshake, one Israeli minister offered the following statement:

We'll return Syria to the Stone Age by crippling its power stations, ports, fuel storage and every bit of strategic infrastructure if Hezbollah dare to launch ballistic missiles against us.

Will we, I wonder, continue to seek to "mend fences" with Syria after this discovery, or will we back our long-time friend and ally? If Israel does, indeed, return Syria to the Stone Age, will we condemn Israel or stand by her as she has stood by us in many our conflicts?

Either decision is likely to have strong repercussions for the Obama Administration. Many of those who voted for Obama did so because they opposed the Iraq War. Some oppose intervention in Middle Eastern affairs altogether. Others are very much against Israel. On the other hand, many of Obama's supporters are, in fact, Jewish and many of these support Israel. Indeed, according to Haaretz, Obama received 77 percent of the Jewish vote. A move against Israel would almost certainly decrease that number in the next election.

The Bautsch Assault

According to the AP, Bobby Jindal's top campaign fundraiser, Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend were assaulted recently after they left a fund-raising event.

Some have speculated that the attacks were politically motivated, but the AP says only the following:

A department spokesman wouldn't elaborate on the nature of the suspects' derogatory comments and said a possible motive for the attack was under investigation.

The story has not attracted the attention of most of the mainstream media. I have been searching for mentions and have found very few.

Why is this?

It's hard to say, but one can speculate. Perhaps the media outlets are afraid they might find some truth to the rumors. Maybe they simply don't think that assaults on Republicans are newsworthy. I suspect that this story would have broken in the mainstream media long ago if the attack were made on a Democrat. I daresay it would be all over front pages if the assault was rumored to have been perpetrated by a tea-partier or even a Republican.

Certainly the idea of a Republican being assaulted does not fit well with the image the media has been trying to paint of our political situation lately. Right-wingers are supposed to be the crazy and violent characters, not the victims.

It is very possible that the attacks were not at all politically motivated. Bautsch and Brown may have just walked into the wrong area at the wrong time. But the lack of coverage of the Bautsch assault is, in my opinion, due to political bias and the media ought to be embarrassed by it.

Democrats Demonize Dissent

Allow me to recall something said by John Brennan (Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) in a USAToday op-ed back in February:

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.

He was speaking, of course, of criticism directed at the Obama Administration. When a Bush Administration official said something similar, Democrats loudly complained that their patriotism was being questioned. I pointed out the hypocrisy in a post at the time.

In fact, neither the Bush Administration nor the Obama Administration was really questioning anyone's patriotism. But what the Democrats are manifestly doing is as bad or worse. They have launched a campaign on all fronts to blacken the reputation of thousands of Americans whose only crime was to come out in public and criticize the party in power. Powerline has been all over this.

From the New York Times:

In advance of a symposium on Friday about the attack on the Oklahoma City federal building and its current relevance, [President] Clinton, who was in his first term at the time of the bombing, warned that attempts to incite opposition by demonizing the government can provoke responses beyond what political figures intend.

"There can be real consequences when what you say animates people who do things you would never do," Mr. Clinton said in an interview, saying that Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing, and those who assisted him, "were profoundly alienated, disconnected people who bought into this militant antigovernment line."

In other words, "political figures" who "demonize" the government are indirectly guilty of encouraging domestic terrorism. Or at least they are when the President is a Democrat. Clinton doesn't mention the anti-war protesters who demonized President Bush, hung him in effigy over and over, and called for his execution or murder.

Powerline alerts us to Representative Betty McCollum's (D-MN) remarks on the House Floor Tuesday. Here is a bit of it:

"When Members of Congress compare health care legislation to 'government tyranny,' 'socialism,' or 'totalitarianism' – in the hopes of scoring political points is like pouring gas on the fire of extremism.

"The Members of this House Democrats and Republicans – have a duty and an obligation to end the dangerous name-calling that can only inspire the extremist militias and phony patriots.

"In the most free, prosperous and greatest democracy on earth it is time to return to a civil, decent debate of public policy.

"I don't want another 'Oklahoma City' to ever take place again.

What is Rep. McCollum's evidence of a link between criticizing health care legislation and Timothy McVeigh's crime?

"Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center states, 'Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing…'

"Today, Mr. Potok states, 'as the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians…'

Notice the word "associated". There is a precise term for this in politics: it is guilt by association. Timothy McVeigh criticized the government. The Tea Party people criticize the government. Therefore the Tea Party people are Timothy McVeigh. There is another term for it: McCarthyism.

The fraudulent strategy of guilt by association is all the Democrats have against the Tea Party movement. I have shown how Paul Krugman and Chris Matthews made fools of themselves when they tried to show that Republican rhetoric was extremist, for they personally and Democrats generally use exactly the same kind of rhetoric all the time.

This is deplorable. There is no evidence that extremism is on the rise in America, and no evidence that the Tea Party movement is in any way connected with or responsible for political violence. What Clinton and McCollum are trying to do, aided by the liberal punditocracy, is to demonize dissent.

National Day of Prayer Ruled Unconstitutional

A United States District Court in Wisconsin has ruled that the Federal Statute calling for a National Day of Prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Here is the statute (36 U.S. 119):

The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

Now I confess that I find that language odd. Presumably, Americans may also turn to God in prayer on the other three hundred and sixty four days of the year. But the language is intended to avoid "encouraging" religious faith or practice. Interestingly, President Obama's proclamation does exactly that.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 7, 2009, as a National Day of Prayer. I call upon Americans to pray in thanksgiving for our freedoms and blessings and to ask for God's continued guidance, grace, and protection for this land that we love.

But it is the statute, not the proclamation, which was overturned. Here is how the Wisconsin Court puts the issue:

On one hand, the Court has held on many occasions that the government violates the establishment clause when it engages in conduct that a reasonable observer would view as an endorsement of a particular religious belief or practice, including prayer.

On the other hand, the Court has held that some forms of "ceremonial deism," such as legislative prayer, do not violate the establishment clause.

The Wisconsin District Court went with the first hand and not the second. Eugene Volokh thinks that this decision is inconsistent with Court precedent.

I find this hard to reconcile with the logic of Marsh v. Chambers (1983), which upheld legislative prayers on the grounds that they go back to the founding of the nation; official proclamations of days of prayer, thanksgiving, and even fasting are just as firmly rooted.

Volokh guesses that the decision will be appealed and that, if Second Circuit Court affirms, the Supreme Court will hear the case and reverse. I am guessing he is right and that the statute will ultimately be upheld.

Applying a little common sense in lieu of judicial reasoning, I see no good reason for the Courts to strike down § 119. It is one of those countless resolutions to proclaim something that are intended to honor or recognize someone or something without doing anything meaningful. For that reason it can do no harm.

Under § 119 no one is less free to believe or practice or not believe and not practice any religion as he or she pleases. So it doesn't violate the Free Exercise Clause. Nor is anyone compelled to contribute monies toward any religious institution or explicitly or implicitly agree with any religious doctrine.

The standard that the Wisconsin Court seems to apply, that "that a reasonable observer would view [§ 119] as an endorsement of a particular religious belief or practice," gives way too much power to mere opinion. Reasonable observers can come to any number of irreconcilable conclusions; there are no grounds for giving one kind of opinion a veto power over the laws.

Suppose Congress should declare a national day to honor Charles Darwin. I would not be opposed to that. A reasonable observer might well view that as taking sides in a contest between Biblical faith and secular humanism. The observer has every right to his or her views, but that doesn't imply a veto power over Congress.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is one of those outfits that fights the silliest battles over the silliest things. This isn't about protecting anyone's freedoms. It's about making sure that the public sphere is purified of any hint of religious imagery or influence. But that is just an article of a peculiar faith, and it does more to politicize religion in this country than anything else.

Aberdeen’s Tax Day Tea Party

I wasn't born in time to witness the Vietnam War protests or any of the movements that branched out of them. The Tea Party movement, then, at least so far, is the largest protest movement of my lifetime. It is also the first in recent history that has espoused principles I support. Therefore, even though Aberdeen's Tea Party was relatively small, it was nice to have been a part of it.

Although some have demonized Tea Partiers, and have tried to paint the whole movement as a radical, perhaps even violent protest, the Aberdeen Tea Party was anything but radical and violent. True, the speakers were somewhat harsh in their criticism of government policies – but their criticism was true and tempered with humor and optimism. Their focus was on tax policies and wasteful spending. There were no racist remarks, but instead, calls against racism, most notably from Ron Parker. There were no calls for violence, merely requests for political action, such as voting and signing petitions.

The crowd was not hostile, but instead full of laughter and appreciative cheering. The atmosphere reminded me somewhat of a church potluck. On the other hand, the reaction to the Tea Party has been much more hostile – at least if one judges it from the comments on the Aberdeen American News Web Site. One of the commenters made the following comment:

I am in agreement some of what was said in this article but from some of the quotes it is obvious that it was well attended by fringe crazies.

Another criticizes the movement for being financed by rich people and for being made up of out of work people, all at once, saying first the following:

Seems most of the financial backers are rich, white, male republicans. Shocking.

(How dare any Tea Partier be rich? ) And then this:

And other polls show that between 25% and 50% of people (varies by state) who go to teabagger rallies are out of work. So while they scream for "less government" they are happily taking unemployment money from the Nanny State.

(How dare any Tea Partier be poor?)

The poster appends this with the observation that "There cannot be stupider people on Earth."

But there can! Shockingly enough, there are people who say things like "My Uncle was among the US forces who liberated prisoners in Auschwitz." Or that whole towns have been wiped out by Tornados when there are only 12 casualties.

But my favorite of all of the comments was this one:

You know, the protest bothered me for a while yesterday...But after a while I realized that I was falling for it. These wingnuts WANT me to get upset and react. If these bozos want to wave their signs and hoist their pretty yellow flag, all while collecting their social security checks and using their Medicare, they are clearly clueless.

This reminds me a bit of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain." I don't think any of us had this poster in mind when we gathered at the park yesterday. Indeed, I think it's fair to assume that the poster made this comment without any real knowledge of who was at the rally or what our intentions were. The plan was not to go about irritating random citizens. It was not to make people angry. It was to join together in protest of irresponsible governmental policies. That's pretty much it. At our rally, no one (at least no one I saw) banged any bongo drums, spit on anyone or acted in any raucous manner. People simple spoke out about issues that they found important, said the pledge, sang the national anthem and listened to a few patriotic tunes. It's hard to see why that would cause anyone to "get upset and react."

The bozos this poster was referring to, include the speakers: a police officer, a minister who is also an extremely talented musician, an astute businessman, and two PhDs from prestigious Universities. All of them seemed sane. The crowd itself was pretty diverse. Many of us were relatively young. I, for one, am not collecting a social security check or using Medicare. I suspect that that is true of many of the old classmates I saw there, as well as the young mother I sat next to. Everyone I knew in the crowd was employed. Certainly the majority of the speakers were, if not all.

Bill Clinton said today that he felt that the atmosphere in America today was a lot like the atmosphere present before the Oklahoma City bombing. Maybe that's true, but at least in Aberdeen, there seems to be more hostility from the left than the right.

Of course, I'm quite biased. I count many of the Tea Partiers as friends and the speakers included two of the people I most admire - my father and of course, SDP's own Dr. Blanchard. But I am proud to have been a part of this movement and I encourage those who missed out this time to attend the next if there is one.

Taxing, Borrowing, and Eating Your Seed Corn

Robert Samuelson, my favorite economist/pundit, has a pleasant tax day piece arguing that higher taxes are in our future.

Almost all the pressures on taxes are in the same direction: up. It will be hard for President Obama to keep his promise not to raise taxes on households with incomes below $200,000 (for singles) and $250,000 (for couples). It will be hard for economic conservatives or the tea party to achieve meaningful tax reductions. Just about everyone will be tempted to deplore federal budget deficits—and do nothing about them. But this escape route may close; many economists warn that endlessly large deficits risk big jumps in interest rates. Someday, higher taxes may be unavoidable.

So, the lesson for tax day 2010 is simple: enjoy it while you can. It's not going to get any easier.

I strongly recommend the whole essay, where he lays out the reasons that tax increases are inevitable. Reluctantly, I must agree. It would be a good idea, however, to be clear about what we are really doing when we tax.

Economies produce two things: goods, like iPods and hearing aids, and services, like repair work and treatment for hearing problems. There are in turn two things you can do with the economy's productive capacity: consume it or invest it in future production. The primary purpose of the economy is consumption, but you have to invest to provide for future consumption. The big question is whether we are providing enough investment to insure future growth.

Government spending is largely about consumption. To be sure, the government takes a portion of the productive economy in order to provide things that make economic production possible, like policemen and courts. That is investment of a sort. Mostly, however, it moves wealth from productive parts of the economy, like family breadwinners, to less productive or unproductive people like retirees.

Government can finance its spending by taxing or borrowing. Taxing depresses consumption among some in order to increase it among others. Borrowing likewise increases consumption, now, in return for a promise that the loans will be paid for by future production. Give us the productive capacity you control now (by your ownership of capital) and we promise you control over more capital in the future.

Samuelson points out that about half of Americans pay no Federal income tax. That doesn't mean that they pay no Federal Taxes. Everything we buy is more expensive because of Federal taxation. Some people believe that the Administration will propose a Value Added Tax, or VAT, to cover its enormous expenditures. That would add a series of taxes to the production of anything valuable at every stage where the product is refined and made more valuable: when wood is cut into lumber, where lumber is assembled into a chair, etc. All this is about hiding the real cost of government from the consumer.

When government borrowing gets out of hand, as surely is happening now, that threatens the financial system. At some point, lenders will suspect that the promise of future returns is fraudulent, and that's when the currency collapses. For that reason, taxation has to keep up with borrowing.

But taxation is still just another way of shifting wealth from one place to another. When government is mostly shifting wealth to consumption, which is what our gargantuan social programs are about, that means less wealth is available for investment.

That is the real worry. We may be at the point where we are eating our seed corn. The American economy has driven the world economy for most of the last hundred years. It has done so because our investment to consumption ratio has been a lot higher than the rest of the developed world. We seem to be where Europe was decades ago, when high salaries, long vacations, and early retirement began to suck the life out of economic growth.

Increasing taxation might help to stave off financial collapse, but it doesn't do anything to shift wealth away from consumption toward investment. That is the real crisis we face.

Tea Party in Aberdeen

A small Tea Party meeting happened at Anderson Park in Aberdeen this evening. Yours truly spoke there, along with several others. It was lots of fun. Here are some pics.

 

Controlling the Press

 

In July of last year, Helen Thomas, one of the left's most loyal and esteemed reporters, accused the Obama Administration of wielding unprecedented levels of control over the press. Thomas seems to be enjoying a better relationship with the White House these days, so it might be tempting to assume that any problems she had with the administration's control of the press had been resolved. Yet now, Dana Milbank is offering similar criticism. In this article (Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit),

Milbank accuses Obama of turning Washington into a military encampment "with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue."

He calls Obama the "occupant of an office once informally known as `leader of the free world."

But, according to Milbank, Obama is uninterested in press freedom. Indeed, he says the following:

The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama's eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: "I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session."

Several members of the press, says Milbank, found themselves escorted out just minutes after they arrived. Some were only allowed to stay for thirty to forty seconds.

Perhaps the most interesting line in the Milbank column is the following:

Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said these were the most restricted such meetings they had ever seen.

It would be hard to accuse the Washington Post of being a conservative publication. Dana Milbank himself used to appear on Countdown with Keith Olberman.

So the fact that Milbank is writing this story is worth noting.

One can understand why a conservative might want to accuse a democrat of too much control. But, when leftists begin to voice such concerns about officials on their own side, then there is, perhaps, even more reason to worry.

Confederate History Month

A few years ago I sat at meeting of the Exchange Club in a modest sized Arkansas town. I was there to give a brief talk on the passing of Ronald Reagan, but I was preceded by a couple of Civil War reenactors in full Confederate uniform. One of them made the comment that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Every head in the room vigorously nodded in agreement, except for mine. I know better.

It was the issue of slavery, and that alone, that brought the United States repeatedly to the point of dissolution between 1820 and 1860. It was slavery alone that finally pushed the country over the edge. Secession and Civil War could never have happened had the South not committed itself to the preservation of slavery.

On April 7^th, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell declared April Confederate History Month in that state and issued a proclamation honoring those

who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today.

He was speaking, of course, of men who served in the armed forces of the Confederacy. He also removed anti-slavery language that had been included in the last such proclamation in 1999.

This is a very delicate issue, but I generally agree with the Governor's decision to issue such a proclamation. Shelby Foote, whose appearances on Ken Burns' Civil War epic were among of the most memorable moments in that incomparable series, put it very well. I am going from memory here, but he said that war ended in an agreement between the two sides. The North would admit that the South fought honorably, and the South would admit that the North won.

You might think that the North admitted too much, and you might be right. But bringing the South back into the Union was no small achievement. We could easily have ended up with a situation not unlike that of the six counties of Northern Ireland. We might have had a permanently militarized South, with a hostile majority that considered itself no part of the United States. That would have been terrible almost beyond imagination. The Governor's proclamation was an act under the terms of Foote's agreement.

That said, it was both politically stupid of the Governor, as well as morally and historically incorrect, to remove the anti-slavery language. My esteemed Keloland colleague and NSU colleague emeritus, Professor David Newquist, puts it this way:

A huge part of American history is reflected the reconciliation and healing that took place after the Civil War and extends up to our time. When Gen. Grant framed the terms of surrender with Gen. Lee, he did not insist that all Confederates give up their arms and present themselves to huge prison camps. Rather, he let them return to their homes with the horses and firearms needed to resume the productive pursuits of their lives. That can be studied and celebrated, but not without acknowledging the malignant history of slavery as central to what happened.

Professor Newquist's comment is dead spot on. "Malignant" is precisely the right word here. Slavery was a malignancy in the nation while it lasted, and the disease would continue to work its terrible damage for another hundred years after the war extinguished that peculiar institution. The Governor should have known that removing the anti-slavery language would discredit whatever good he hoped to do.

The men in that Exchange Club were all of them good Americans and good Southerners. In believing that slavery was not the central issue in the war, they were trying absolve the South of its greatest scandal and America's greatest scandal. But there is no absolution except by remembering everything. Most of those who fought for the South were not slave owners. They thought they were fighting for their country, just as Union soldiers did and just as their patriot forefathers did. But they were in fact fighting to preserve slavery. The trick is so show how they can recognize the latter fact and still preserve their honor. That would be the point of a properly worded proclamation.

Crashing the Party

Dana Loesch at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism blog, has an interesting post about The Tea Party Crashers here.

The crashers, according to the Loesch article, say the following:

We will act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.) to further distance them from mainstream America and damage the public's opinion of them. We will also use the inside information that we have gained in order to disrupt and derail their plans.

There are a couple of problems with this. First, if the tea party is really all that bad, there shouldn't be any need for it. If it isn't, then the crashers are targeting people with legitimate concerns and making those who are peaceful look bad. That is hardly admirable.

The second is that now that crashers are planning this "infiltration" and have announced to the world that they are doing so, conservatives can simply brush off any violent or undesirable tea party acts by blaming them on the crashers.

Some of the videos of certain tea parties have been embarrassing, such as the YouTube video that claims to show tea party members heckling a disabled veteran. That sort of thing is reprehensible, and when one knows that those responsible for it are part of the Tea Party movement, it does make the movement look bad. But if one suspects that the hecklers are really liberals, then the liberals shameful, both for the heckling and for misrepresenting the tea partiers.

Therefore, I suspect that this crashing will do more to strengthen the tea party than to weaken it.

SDP @ the Movies: Departures

Yôjirô Takita's Okuribito or Departures, is one of the finest movies I have seen in a long time. It is not at all a horror movie, as long time readers of this blog might expect from me. It is a meditation on death and grieving, and it is one of those films that present a very interesting and somewhat alien feature of another culture.

Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) is a cello player who is forced to leave Tokyo when his orchestra folds. He takes his wife Mika, played brilliantly and slyly by the spunky Ryoko Hirosue, to live in the house his mother left him in his old home town. There are a lot of themes here familiar to fans of Japanese cinema. . The Japanese treasure virtuosity. Daigo realizes he doesn't have it, at least on the big fiddle. He also feels guilt that he wasn't there when his mother passed away.

Back in Sakata, he answers a classified ad for "Assisting Departures." He supposes it's some kind of travel agency. What it is, of course, is the heart of the movie. His job is to ritually prepare a dead body for "encoffinment". This involves undressing, washing and preparing the body, and redressing, all under the watchful eyes of the mourners who sit on cushions. It has to be done in a very careful, scripted way, so that no one sees anything embarrassing or unpleasant. It also involves applying makeup to restore the face of the deceased, as best he can, to present a final pleasant memory to the family.

Daigo must overcome his initial revulsion at dealing with dead bodies. He quickly discovers that, unlike the cello, he has a real talent for this. That discovery locks him in. The profession chooses the man. It is also a problem. The Japanese are at once less religious and more superstitious than Americans. Their national God was deposed by American might, and nothing has replaced him. But the traditional spirits and demigods largely survived, along with the spirits of the dead. Daigo initially hides the nature of his new job from his wife, but Mika does find out and she is appalled. An old friend refuses to speak to him on the street. Death is apparently seen as something that is more or less contagious. To touch the dead on a regular basis is scandalous.

Of course, death is a scandal in all cultures. If this film is an accurate presentation of the Japanese funeral industry, it is interesting to note that the role of the undertaker (pick up the coffin for cremation) and the role of the NK agent are distinct. In America, we let the undertaker take care of the most unpleasant business. Our funerals have moved in the Japanese direction, with our PowerPoint presentations celebrating the life of the deceased.

However, judging entirely by the film, I like the Japanese way better. The preparation of the corpse makes the fact of death more vivid but it also affords the living a perfect moment to take the memory of the loved one into their hearts. Nowhere is life more robustly evident than at this kind of ceremony. I like the public attention to the body.

Departures is a splendid movie. It is somber enough in its parts, but overall it is happy and reaffirming. It has a lot of great cello music. Put in on your Netflix cue. You won't be disappointed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pacifism, & Evil

Friend and esteemed Keloland colleague Cory Heidelberger has a post on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who took part in an attempt to assassinate Hitler and was hanged for it. Cory is commenting on a Fox News review/interview with the author of a new biography on Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas.

My friend seems to be very angry at Fox News, and accuses that organization of "twisting Bonhoeffer's lessons," producing a view "conveniently tailored to Fox News viewers' preferred narrative about America 2010." As far as I can tell, Lauren Green's piece did no more than present the interpretation of Bonhoeffer from Metaxas' biography. I haven't read it, and I am guessing that Cory hasn't either. What is contained in the Fox piece sounds right to me.

Cory objects to these lines:

"The experience he had in Harlem deepened his faith in such a way that when he came back to Germany, he felt called by God," Metaxas says. "It wasn't just theology in his head. He felt called by God to obey God. For him that meant very clearly to stand up for the Jews."

Cory says:

That a man purporting sufficient expertise to write a biography of Bonhoeffer would append the adjective just to theology suggests the author missed the point. Bonhoeffer's resistance was very much grounded in theological and moral reasoning, not to mention a keen understanding of political and global context.

But Metaxas is just drawing a distinction between abstract reasoning, which surely did guide everything Bonhoeffer did, and political commitment in concrete situations. Sometimes intellectual reasoning insulates people from political reality. As Metaxas tells it, Bonhoeffer's exposure to Adam Clayton Powell Sr.'s civil rights rhetoric and a sermon by Rabbi Stephen Wise deeply affected him in ways that made his theological speculations concrete. I see nothing objectionable in that, and I note that it mirrors Bonhoeffer's own criticism of "cheap grace."

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.

The other issue concerns pacifism. Cory has this:

We all know pacifist is a synonym for sissy on Fox News. So for the Right to claim this mainline Protestant as their own icon, they have to repackage him.

I doubt that Cory can back up that first claim with any citations. It seems clear to me that pacifism requires extreme courage. But did Fox or Metaxas "repackage" Bonhoeffer? The Fox review has this:

"Bonhoeffer was not a pacifist," Metaxas says. "And that will be news to a lot of people who think of Bonhoeffer as their hero, as some kind of pacifist."

Cory objects:

Bonhoeffer was a big pacifist. He denounced Hitler from the moment the Nazis took power. But his main weapons were words, ideas, and theology. Bonhoeffer didn't rush straight to Berghof with a Luger in his hand. Even as he spoke out against Hitler's evil, Bonhoeffer struggled to reach the point where he could justify committing the evil of violence. And even when he finally agreed to participate in violence, he still called it evil.

Metaxas is right and Cory wrong. This is a matter of simple logic. Pacifism is by definition an extreme position. It means an absolute rejection of violence as a means, regardless of the situation. Bonhoeffer participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, altogether the right thing to do in my opinion. That means that he ultimately wasn't any kind of pacifist, big or otherwise.

It doesn't matter what his "main weapons" were, if he was willing to use violence as even the most minor of weapons. It doesn't matter how hesitant he was or how much he struggled. Once you have made the decision to kill as a means to an end, you just aren't a pacifist anymore. Contrary to what my friend says, if Fox got Metaxas right, Metaxas got Bonhoeffer right.

I have engaged Cory here because, his Foxophobia excepted, he has written a serious post on a serious subject. I gather he has sympathy for pacifism and admiration for Bonhoeffer, and wants to reconcile the two. That's a tall order, but I admire Cory for trying.

I especially admire Cory's last line in the above quote.

And even when [Bonhoeffer] finally agreed to participate in violence, he still called it evil.

I gather that Bonhoeffer, like most modern Theologians, leaned toward a deontological ethics. What is right is obligatory, regardless of the circumstances. The end never justifies the means. Utilitarian ethics, by contrast, judges rightness by intention and outcome. If you meant well and do good, the means are not wrong. Bonhoeffer could not maintain the former in the face of Hitler's evil. But he refused to hide behind the second. Killing is still evil, which means that sometimes one has to do what is evil. I am not sure that there's a coherent moral position there. I am sure that it makes Bonhoeffer a hero of no ordinary caliber. Cory has done this hero some service.

Prodigal Planet

 Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son always seemed to me to be a bit troubling. There's the one son who frittered away his inheritance on high priced hookers and then began to starve when the GDP went south. It's great that he could come home and feast on the fatted calf.

But doesn't the unprodigal son, the one who stuck around and kept working, have a point? Dad never hosted him a party, nor did Paul Krugman of the New York Times ever praise him in a column. However:

31 [Dad] said unto him, `Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. 32 It was meet that we should make merry and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.'"

Okay. But isn't this happy ending possible only because someone bothered to fat the damn calf?

Just right now a lot of prodigal sons are showing up on their father's doorsteps. The state of California went prodigal on a Biblical scale, and now wants the Federal Government contribute a long line of fatted calves, each of a size that would impress Paul Bunyan.

Something the same is happening in Europe, where the nation of Greece has shown up, hat in hand, hoping that the European Union will kill a few fatted calves on their behalf. The trouble is, the good son in Europe is Germany, and Germany has had enough of it. She has bankrolled the European Union for decades, but in recent years she has become a poor nation. Germany had a prodigal brother to fatten up: East Germany. There just aren't a lot of cattle left.

The larger truth is that Europe as a whole (Germany included) has been prodigally dependent on the United States for a half century. The U.S. bore most of the cost for the defense of Europe through the Cold War. Afterwards, when Europe needed troops to pacify the ruins of Yugoslavia, American soldiers went there and made merry.

But prodigal Europe has depended on America for more than that, as Jonah Goldberg tells it.

When was the last time you used a Portuguese electronic device? How often does Europe come out with a breakthrough drug? Not often, and when they do, it's usually because companies like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline increasingly conduct their research here. Indeed, the top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single country combined. We nearly monopolize the Nobel Prize in medicine, and we create stuff at a rate Europe hasn't seen since da Vinci was in his workshop.

Prodigality is relative, perhaps. The U.S. has been prodigal in so far as we have relied on the Chinese to buy up our debt, and thus wasted much of our substance with riotous living. But among developed nations, we have been the responsible son.

Under President Obama, we are going prodigal in a big way. For most of the last century, government debt was a small portion of the GDP. Now it is on track to rise to 100% of the GDP, similar to what Greece is facing. There is talk of instituting a Value Added Tax, which in Europe makes it possible for governments to siphon off much larger portions of the economy, portions that would otherwise go to investment. Since the Second World War, government outlays in the U.S. have always remained around 20% of the GDP. With a VAT, they would approach the 55% that the French Government takes out of its productive economy. The Democrats want to make America more like Europe, and they are succeeding.

The world has gone prodigal. Maybe we are in the big crisis now, or maybe the economy will recover, the milk and honey will flow again, and the crisis will be postponed. Either way, one wonders what we will do when the famine comes and there isn't any generous father or responsible brother to bail us out.

Porn Star Republican

Here is a story you can sink your teeth into. Maybe I should rephrase that. From the Huffington Post:

While most of the reaction to an RNC-funded outing at a Los Angeles bondage-themed nightclub in February has been critical, it has won the GOP at least one supporter -- a porn star.

Stormy Daniels, an adult movie actor and potential candidate for U.S. Senate in Louisiana, has apparently decided -- perhaps satirically -- to renounce the Democratic Party and become a Republican.

I like to think of myself as a big tent Republican. If there's room for the Log Cabin Republicans, and there damn sure is, why not Louisiana Senator Stormy Daniels? You couldn't say anymore that Republicans are boring!

Liberals like the idea of making America more like Europe. Well, a Daniels for Senate campaign would do that. It's already happened in Italy. Cicciolina, a Hungarian-born porn star was elected to the Italian Parliament. Her campaign rallies consisted of a lot of men shouting "Bear it! Bear it!" She would then oblige her constituents by opening her shirt and revealing her platform.

You have to admit, Ms. Daniels is a lot more fun to look at than John Boehner or Mitch McConnell. I am guessing that's true regardless of your sexual preference. Of course, if Ms. Daniels were running as a Democrat the New York Times would be right behind her. More or less. We'd be hearing about how prejudice keeps such enterprising women out of politics. To run as a Republican, that's cutting edge.

More Fun with Krugman

Intrepid and cherished reader William posted a link on one of his comments that nails Paul Krugman. In one of his most dreadful NYT's columns, Krugman set out to prove that Republicans were encouraging violence with their rhetoric.

Sarah Palin put out a map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight.

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you'll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials. [my italics].

I have argued, and I think demonstrated, that all of Krugman's examples were commonplaces of political rhetoric and that Democrats use the same kind of rhetoric frequently.

But what about Palin's map? Here it is.

Now I argued that, so far from being menacing, this was very typical political graphics. As usual, I was right.

William found this post at Verum Serum. It includes a map from the Democratic Leadership Council webpage, from the Bush years. The map illustrates "targeting strategy" in the coming election. That is to so, it identifies districts where the Democratic Party has a chance to pick off a seat or two. Here it is:

Well, bull's-eyes may be more or less menacing than cross hairs, but surely, Mr. Krugman, they are at least "comparably menacing".

Krugman's column was part of the current Democratic playbook: ignore arguments about the economy and the deficit and instead attack the character of the opposition. Paint them as racists and dangerous radicals. Krugman's piece falls in the latter category.

But neither the Tea Party activists nor the Republican Party in general are in fact dangerous radicals. So Krugman had to make an idiotic argument, something that come naturally to him. The second map above proves the point. Thanks, William.

April 15th

April 15th is set to be an eventful day. It is, of course, Tax Day. It is also the day my daughter will turn two. Furthermore, in the United States, the Tea Party movement will host some of its largest events to date. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, it will be the day of the first-ever televised debates among candidates for Prime Minister - at least, that's what the media is reporting. The UK debates, they say, will largely resemble those of the United States.

But the truth of the matter is that the candidates have been debating regularly for years and that their debates have been covered by the BBC and sometimes even C-Span in a segment called "Prime Minister's Questions." These debates are not like our debates, where a media host asks pre-screened questions and everyone has a good idea of what will happen in advance. They are heated, argumentative debates between the Prime Minister and the Parliament.

The following excerpt from the February 24 PMQ shows the nature of these debates well:

Mr. Cameron: Just as we need openness in the health service, we need openness at the heart of Government. After the Chancellor's extraordinary statement last night, the Prime Minister said this morning on GMTV:

"I would never instruct anybody to do anything other than support my Chancellor".

Will he try to stand up with a straight face and tell us that that is true?

The Prime Minister: Not only is that correct, but this is the nearest that the right hon. Gentleman has ever got to talking about the economy in the past few months.

Mr. Cameron: If the Prime Minister wants to talk about the economy, we can talk about- [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Members must calm down. The Leader of the Opposition must be heard.

Mr. Cameron: We can talk about the Prime Minister trebling the deficit, about wrecking the pension system, about ruining the tax system and about bringing this country to its knees. Right now, six weeks before an election, with a record Budget deficit, at the end of a long recession, I want to ask why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are at war with each other. This is what we are told- [ Interruption. ] If they get any closer, they will start kissing. We are told that Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's spin doctor, was "spreading poison against Darling" and that he "told every journalist who had access to a pencil that Alistair's interview was a disaster."

We are also told that there was the most poisonous briefing against him. Last night, the Chancellor said that after he had said what he had said, No. 10 Downing Street unleashed "the forces of hell". Why does the Prime Minister think that he said that?

The Prime Minister: I have already answered the right hon. Gentleman's question. I never instructed a briefing against the Chancellor.

When it comes to the question of the economy, which the right hon. Gentleman has raised, can he and his party now explain why they were for reducing the deficit, then against reducing the deficit and are now for reducing the deficit again? None of his policies stand up, and that is why there is never any substance from the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Cameron: It was this Prime Minister who put character at the heart of the election. It was this Prime Minister who asked to be judged on his moral compass. Why is it that the moral compass always points at someone else rather than at him?

This is a kind of debate that seems to have somehow disappeared from American politics. Our canned debates are no substitute. When people are angry or when they want upfront answers from their leaders, they deserve to be represented in these matters by their representatives. Cameron does a good job of this. Most of our politicians do not.

It is, I think, somewhat ironic that the leaders in the country the original tea partiers broke away from due to lack of representation, now sometimes do a better job of representing their people than ours. If ours did a better job of listening to the people, the modern day tea party probably would not exist. Yet, it does and it is growing. Therefore, I think that in matters of debate, our politicians should borrow a page out of our ally's book, rather than lending them one out of ours.

Knuckleheaded On Nukes

If you think I mean that our President is a knucklehead about strategic weapons policy, you're right; but I do not mean just President Obama. Several Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter as I recall, have expressed a desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons. We are about as likely to revive the Pony Express.

The possibility that rogue states may have such weapons or may be about to acquire them is not something that will go away. Non-proliferation policies show no promise. The only real deterrent to small state nukes is the threat of massive retaliation. International security depends on large stockpiles in the hands of the United States. To imagine the elimination of such weapons in any foreseeable time frame is knuckleheaded.

President Obama's change in strategic weapons doctrine is typical Obama foreign policy talk. Either it is largely meaningless, or it's bad. Mary Beth Sheridan in the WaPo:

Obama's nuclear policy breaks with the past by narrowing the circumstances under which the U.S. government says it will use the devastating weapons. But on one point after another, the changes are gradual rather than transformational…

The new document is less ambiguous about the purposes of nuclear weapons than in the past, saying their "fundamental role" is to deter a nuclear attack. But it shies away from declaring that their "sole purpose" is deterrence, as some Democratic lawmakers and arms-control activists had wanted. That leaves open the possibility that the weapons can be used in some other scenarios, such as in response to a conventional attack.

That's the largely meaningless part. Presidents are largely constrained in the policy decisions by such realities of international relations as I mention above. The Administration can't bring itself to say much that is different from past administrations. But then there is this part:

Unlike the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Obama team says it would not authorize a nuclear strike against a non-nuclear country in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack.

But it attaches important caveats: The non-nuclear country must be in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations under international treaties, which leaves Iran on the list of potential targets.

I suppose this part of the new policy, the closest thing to meaningful language in it, is intended to encourage Iran and North Korea to get with the program. Good luck with that.

But for Heaven's sake, is the President really going to going to call in a team of international lawyers to tell him whether or how he can respond after some rogue state has attacked the U.S. with chemical or biological weapons?

Do we really want to say to our enemies: as long as you abide by the said treaties, and confine yourself to a certain category of weapons of mass destruction, you don't have to fear our nuclear arsenal? That's nuts, and our enemies would be nuts to count on it. It's a good thing that rogue state leaders are not usually nuts in that way.

Typically, and fortunately in this case, the Administration doesn't mean a word of what it is saying.

The U.S. government reserves the right to change its mind if biological weapons become more powerful.

Exactly how powerful do the weapons need to be? I am guessing that the lawyers won't be in charge of that decision.

Here is the gem in the WaPo article:

Peter D. Feaver, a former defense and strategy official in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, wrote on ForeignPolicy.com that the new document is not "the bold leap that wins plaudits in academic seminar rooms, activist think-tanks and Norwegian parliaments."

Rather, he wrote, it reflects the kind of pragmatism Obama has shown in foreign policy decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan: "Critics may complain that this results in a lack of strategic clarity . . . but perhaps it will come to be seen as a politically deft balance of competing desiderata."

A "politically deft balance of competing desiderata." I couldn't have put it worse, or more accurately, myself. Let me unpack that for you. It means a gob of irreconcilable bits of wishful thinking, amounting to utter nonsense.

Someone should tell the President that the Norwegians can't take back his peace prize, so he doesn't have to keep not doing anything meaningful to deserve it.

Chris Matthews Krugmans Himself

As I have pointed out, Paul Krugman made a stupid argument to the effect that Republican leaders were encouraging political violence. Actually I called the argument idiotic. Krugman's evidence consisted entirely of the most ordinary sorts of political metaphors. Krugman himself was guilty of the same, and it turns out that President Obama was as well. That looks to me like self-defeating rhetoric.

Now we see the same from MSNBC clown Chris Matthews, courtesy of Byron York. Matthews seizes on a remark by Rush Limbaugh:

Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people, purposely.

Matthews was appalled by the use of the word "regime". From York:

Apparently some people didn't get it. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews appeared deeply troubled by the word. "I've never seen language like this in the American press," he said, "referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election -- we will have another one in November, we'll have another one for president in a couple years -- fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country…. We know that word, 'regime.' It was used by George Bush, 'regime change.' You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They're juntas. They're military coups. The use of the word 'regime' in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus [Limbaugh] to stop using it."

Matthews didn't stop there. "I never heard the word 'regime,' before, have you?" he said to NBC's Chuck Todd. "I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a 'regime.'"

As a political scientist, I can tell you that "regime" is not an appropriate word to use when you mean Administration or Congressional Majorities, or the sum of the two. Regime means a type of constitution depending on who rules. The American Regime is a democratic republic. The regime of mainland China is an oligarchy.

But the word regime is commonly misused in current political discourse to mean whoever is in charge. York shows that the phrase "Bush regime" was very common in political journalism. Did it ever bother Matthews before?

Best yet is this:

Finally -- you knew this was coming -- on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. "Let's go to the Reverend Al Sharpton," Matthews said. "Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?"

By his own argument, Matthews is worse than Joe McCarthy. What this shows, of course, is that more than one liberal intellectual has rendered himself incoherent. Liberals are searching for evidence that the other side is not merely wrong but illegitimate. They are searching in a mood of desperation. They fling terrible accusations without bothering to examine their own logic or how it might come back to haunt them.

This is pathological. I suspect that the pathology points in the first place to the coming election. More deeply, it suggests that they have not entirely forgotten the long term problems that their favorite policies have created.

The Democrats' Smear Campaign against the Tea Party Protestors

The Democrats were all over this one. Here is Ellis Close from Newsweek:

Much has been made of the abuse showered on members of Congress at a recent tea-party demonstration on Capitol Hill. Georgia Congressman John Lewis was greeted with racial slurs. Emanuel Cleaver, a black congressman from Missouri, was spat on.

Much has been made indeed. Dozens of pundits have seized on the incident as proof that the Tea Party activists are generally motivated by racism. Of course, one incident hardly makes that case, especially if it didn't happen.

In an interview with Fox4 News, Representative Cleaver refused to say whether he had been spit on.

"I haven't talked about this incident on TV or anywhere, and I've been approached to talk about it on every national TV show," said Rep. Cleaver in an interview with FOX 4 News. "I never, I never reported anything, never a single thing in Washington, not one thing. People assume I went somewhere, never done press conference, never done an interview on it and I'm not going to do it."

In fact, Cleaver's staff did report the incident. The Huffington Post reproduces their press release in which this is included:

This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him.

If the Congressman is now backing away from the latter statement, I think we can assume it didn't happen. It was a false accusation, intended to damage the reputation of the Tea Party protestors.

So what about the "racial slurs"? As the House prepared to vote on ObamaCare, Nancy Pelosi and other representatives chose to walk past a group of demonstrators. They didn't have to. They were trying to draw hostile fire (that's a metaphor), which was a fair strategy. It was during this incident that the alleged racial slurs occurred.

Video clips of the incident are available, and Andrew Breitbart posts one. You can hear the protestors boo loudly, and chant "Kill that Bill!" Maybe that's one of Krugman's hints of violence. What you do not hear is the "N" word, or any other racial slurs.

Breitbart has offered a cool one hundred grand to anyone who can produced evidence that any protestors actually used racial slurs during this incident. So far, he seems to be in no danger of paying out.

The mainstream press, left-leaning pundits, and certain bloggers have repeated this story without bothering to verify it. Racism is a terrible thing, and if you are going to accuse someone of it you had better make sure of the facts. Otherwise, you look like a damned liar.

Hiding the Truth about Affirmative Action

Offhand, I can't think of a case where a conservative scholar or institution announced a finding and then refused to release the data on which it was supposedly based. But I know of a number of occasions where that happened on the Left.

Michael Bellesiles (pronounced Bell-Leel) published a book Arming America in 2000, in which he argued that gun ownership was far less common in antebellum America than historians had suspected. The point, of course, was the right to bear arms wasn't something that the founding generation and subsequent generations really cared about. Bellesiles' book received glowing reviews across the MSM, and he won the Bancroft Prize.

The book was a fraud. It was riddled with errors, and much of the data was apparently invented. When asked to produce it, he claimed that it has been damaged when an office flooded. For the first time, the Bancroft prize was withdrawn.

Much the same thing has recently happened in the global warming debate. The records of climate history on which the Anthropogenic Global Warming thesis is based rely on a small number of data sets. The researchers who maintain those data sets have consistently refused to release them to the scrutiny of skeptical scientists, in one case in defiance of court orders. In another case, it was claimed that the original data was lost.

Now we have a third such example. From the Chronicles of Higher Education:

Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow of the California Superior Court for San Francisco County ruled last week that the state bar is not legally obliged to release the data sought by Richard H. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Joe Hicks, a former governor of the California state bar who is involved in a consortium of affirmative-action researchers organized by Mr. Sander. The two men were joined by the California First Amendment Coalition in their lawsuit, which seeks state-bar data on law students broken down by race and ethnicity.

Here is the question. Affirmative Action is the practice of giving preference to minority candidates in hiring and university admissions. In almost every case, minority status is weighted so heavily that a student who can claim such status can secure admission to the most competitive schools even if his or her test scores and academic record would have automatically disqualified a non-minority applicant.

One of the reasons offered for Affirmative Action is that it will increase the number of lawyers, doctors, etc., who are African American, Hispanic, etc. But does it in fact do that? Students whose academic preparation is modest will often fail when they are placed in the most competitive schools, whereas they might have flourished in a more typical institution. Does Affirmative Action really increase the number of minority students graduating from law schools and entering the legal profession? Or does it rather decrease the number by setting up many promising students for failure in programs for which they are ill-prepared?

That is what Sanders and Hicks want to find out. But the California State Bar refuses to release the data. I think we can assume the answer. When people refuse to release data, it is always because they think the data will confirm something that they don't want to see confirmed. Affirmative Action isn't helping minority students, it is hurting them. But the Left loves the idea of Affirmative Action more than it cares about the real people affected by such policies.

Hiding the data has become a habit in modern times. That is a sign of corruption. No doubt conservatives would be tempted to do it too, if they could get away with it. With the establishment Press and academia arrayed against them, they can't. The California Bar Association, so far, can.

Thune in 2012?

You knew this was coming! Chris Cillizza at WaPo's The Fix again considers Senator John Thune as a possible Presidential candidate in 2012. According to Cillizza, the Thune people are assuring everyone that Senator Thune "remains entirely undecided and his decision will be heavily shaped by what he hears and sees in the coming months." That assures me that Thune and his organization are taking the possibility very seriously.

Cillizza lays out some of the strengths and weaknesses of a Thune bid, and I can't quarrel with any that he offers. I would approach the question rather differently.

For better and for worse, the Republican Party is more organized in its nominee selection process. That is to say that the national and state party organizations tend to weigh in on the selection in a fairly scripted way. John McCain got his head start from the fact that he was more or less the next in line, and that counts for a lot in Republican nominations. George W. Bush got his head start from the fact that Republican Governors knew and liked him better than anyone else the national party could think of. His father, like McCain, was next in line by virtue of being Reagan's VP. Reagan, like Romney, had sought the nomination before and was a well-known and well-loved national figure.

By that standard, Mitt Romney looks like the most viable candidate for nomination. For Thune to beat Romney out, something would have to happen on the Republican side that would be similar to Barack Obama's rise. Two factors made the latter possible.

First, a substantial part of the Democratic electorate was deeply dissatisfied with Senator Clinton. In retrospect, it is easy to see why. Can one imagine that Ms. Clinton would have pushed healthcare reform a second time, let alone pushed it through?

Second, Barack Obama presented a uniquely compelling personality: articulate, African American, and, best of all, with so little history that one could project almost any hope onto him.

John Thune would come to the race without any of the structural advantages that propelled earlier candidates to the nomination (other than his rise in the senate leadership); nor does he have any established base, geographic or otherwise. He would have to gamble on the possibility that the Republican establishment and the electorate are looking for an alternative to business as usual. That is not farfetched in the current climate.

Like Obama, Thune would have to depend on his own personal presentation. That is not farfetched either, but it is a bit of a stretch. The Senator is intelligent and articulate. He looks good on camera. He's tall. Taller candidates tend to win. Unlike Governor Romney, he has very little baggage to weigh him down. He is a solid conservative. The National Journal ranks him as the sixth most conservative Senator. That will appeal to Republican conservatives across the board, just as Obama appeal to the Democratic liberal core. Is all that enough to get Republicans to abandon their persistent instincts and nominate him?

One can certainly imagine a Thune nomination. Whether the stars are really aligned in favor of such a thing will only be known if he indeed decides to throw his hat in the ring.