South Dakota Politics

Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us.

It used to be said that the United States had a civil religion. If this is still so, it is a religion lightly practiced. I doubt that more than a fraction of the people enjoying this Monday off will give thought to those who died in their country's service.

It is ironic, perhaps, that those who died defending our Republic were so successful in their intention that Americans today feel safe enough to forget about them. However that may be, forgetfulness is perilous.

Liberty is not something abstract. It is as real as money, as tangible as a left tackle. It consists of courts, a bicameral Congress, and a President and his administration, and fifty state governments. Its muscle is the armed might of the Republic. Without military power, American liberty would not exist.

The military power of our Republic has always depended on the willingness of citizens to take arms in its defense. That we have done so freely and frequently is a major source of our power. It is proper that we should remember those who sacrificed their lives.

I had the great and undeserved fortune of being born in the gentler half of the twentieth century. I owe that good fortune to my Uncle Bill, who was killed on Okinawa by a sniper's bullet, and countless others like him. On this beautiful day, let us enjoy our barbeque. Let us also praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

Sesspool 2: The Tangled Web Unweaves

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague, Doug Wiken, takes me to task for blogging on Offergate. He posted the following comment on by last blog:

Gosh, you guys are really, really short on serious issues. If you care about the wrong kind of influence in government, consider the number of lobbyists per congress member and the amount of money they dump into campaign coffers. A non-paying position is insignificant chicken feed, but may be the best the White House had to offer. In any case, they would have been better off not getting involved. It is really funny to find Republicans supporting a guy who may be able to defeat their Republican candidate and also be an actual Democrat instead of a pale copy of a mirror image of one.

I stated in my last post that I didn't think the root issue amounted to much. If it was illegal for the White House to offer Joe Sestak a job in exchange for dropping his senate bid, it probably shouldn't be.

It is not the crime but the cover-up that is now the issue. When Presidents lie, even about small things, it is probably best to know what the truth is and why they lied about it. This is especially true because Administrations of both flavors have an odd habit of turning the smallest of sins into a major crisis, with unfortunate consequences for the public business. When the Nixon Administration worried that the Democrats might have damaging information, they sent burglars into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. We know how that turned out. I am not saying that there is any Watergate-level scandal here. I do think that paranoid behavior on the part of the Obama Administration is a legitimate topic for inquiring minds.

The Administration's current story is that they offered Joe Sestak a non-paying job on a "Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board", using scruples-challenged Bill Clinton as an intermediary. They did so, according to White House counsel Robert Bauer, in order to "avoid a divisive Senate primary, [and] allow him to retain his seat in the House."

I pointed out in my last post that it was highly implausible. It would be like saying to someone: "if you don't apply for that job that offers three times the pay and prestige, we will give you a blue ribbon!"

However, the supposed offer was worse than implausible. It was legally incoherent. Byron York at the Washington Examiner explains why. Apparently, President Clinton offered Sestak a position "on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board." The problem with that is that so long as Sestak was a member of Congress, he would be ineligible to serve on that board. Its members cannot be employed by the Federal Government.

I see two possibilities here. One is that the Administration tried to tempt Sestak with a job offer, but offered him something that they couldn't legally deliver. That would be mildly embarrassing, but benign. If true, the Administration could have shut down the story at the outset by admitting it.

The second possibility, now very likely, is that the Administration offered Sestak something else. That something else would have been a paid position, and that might amount to legal bribery. That alone would explain the months of stony silence and the recent lawyerly statements.

Bauer's statement is what we political scientists call a gross linguistic inexactitude, or in common speech, a big fat lie. Whether the Administration broke the law in their Clintonian dealings with Joe Sestak, I do not know. I do know that the Administration has a guilty conscience about what it did. In a Republic, sooner or later, the executive branch has to come clean. We aren't there yet.

Sesspool

For months now Pennsylvania Representative and now Democratic nominee for Senate, Joe Sestak, has claimed that the White House offered him a job to quit the primary race and let Arlen Specter get nominated. The White House steadfastly refused to admit that it did just that, until now. From the WaPo:

In classic Washington fashion last summer, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched former president Bill Clinton to put the arm on an old friend, Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania. Sestak was planning to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary; Emanuel wanted him out of the way.

In a phone call, Clinton told Sestak that he had doubts about Sestak's chances of beating Specter. Then he dangled an offer: Would Sestak be willing to drop out of the race if Obama offered him an unpaid spot on a prestigious presidential advisory board? Sestak flatly turned him down.

Let's stop here for a moment. There was nothing wrong with the White House wanting Sestak out of the race, except perhaps for bad political judgment. I think Specter would have been a disaster. Sestak has a real chance. There is nothing ethically wrong with trying to offer Sestak some attractive compensation for withdrawing.

It is clear, however, that the White House thought it was doing something seedy. Why else call in former President and notorious bagman Bill Clinton to act as an intermediary? Why take three months to come out and admit that that is what Rahm Emanuel did? Legal and ethical questions aside, the Administration was surely acting with a guilty conscience.

A clue to this comes from the statement released by White House Counsel Robert Bauer.

We found that, as the Congressman has publicly and accurately state, options for Executive Branch service were raised with him. Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated.

That's pure Nixonian language: efforts were made and positions discussed. When you go to the trouble to convert verbs and objects into the subjects of your sentences, you think you are in trouble indeed.

It is also patently dishonest. Did the White House really believe that Sestak could be persuaded to drop his Senate bid in exchange for a seat on an advisory board? Rahm Emanuel ain't that stupid.

And now there is a time line problem.

Sestak emerged from the Capitol after a long day of voting to find a swarm of reporters, who demanded to know why he had not divulged earlier the conversation with Clinton. He said that the call had lasted "30 to 60 seconds," but that he had not felt it proper to talk about it.

Well, that really quick call may have come in June or July of last year, but not both. If in June, then what efforts were made and what other positions were discussed in July? Nothing in Bauer's statement rules out other offers.

The line about compensation is telling. I gather it is against the law to offer someone a paid position in government as part of a quid pro quo. I am sure it happens all the time, and I don't see anything particularly wrong with it.

What is clear is that the Administration is acting as if it has done something very bad, and it is trying desperately to contain the damage. The efforts it is making to that purpose seem tailor made to turn a small story into a big one. I am guessing that all this is a self-inflicted moral wound, but now I and every aspiring blogger and reporter wants to know what really happened.

Oil’s Well that Ends Poorly

Oil that is. Louisiana Tea. It is curious that the Obama Administration might be undone not by Tea Party activists or by swelling deficits but by something happening almost a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. From Yahoo News:

In the five weeks since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama had largely escaped political fallout. But as BP attempts yet again to seal the leak, a new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a majority of Americans unhappy with Obama's handling of the spill. According to the poll, 53 percent rate Obama's handling "poor" or "very poor"; 43 percent believe Obama is doing a good job.

The article goes on to point out that the public blames others (i.e., British Petroleum) more than it blames the President. That will matter when BP has to stand for reelection.

Geography conspires against the President. From USAToday:

The hurricane that drowned New Orleans and cast George W. Bush as out of touch swept across the Gulf Coast nearly five years ago. Now, as oil laps ashore in the very same region, local officials are asking: Is there another government-Gulf Coast disconnect? Is BP's oil spill becoming this president's Katrina?

It might even get better, for the President's opposition. We are entering hurricane season, and the odds are in favor of a bad one. A hurricane in the Gulf right now might push the oil far enough north to lubricate a few Republican candidates.

I am being flippant here because there is an element of silliness in all this. George W. Bush wasn't responsible for the weather nor did his Administration do a bad job of dealing with it. More aid got to more people faster in the Katrina disaster than in any previous hurricane. But Bush was already in political trouble and people were looking for an excuse to throw him overboard. Some unforced political errors, like going on vacation just before the storm landed, gave them plenty of reason to do so.

President Obama isn't to blame for the oil rig explosion, nor is there much he can do about it now. No one in his administration has the expertise to deal with an oil spill 5,000 feet below sea level. The Administration may have been slow to act, but there is no reason to believe that swift action on its part would have made a difference. However, half or almost half the public already had doubts about President Obama's leadership. This might be a tipping point. The New York Times puts it this way:

There were uncomfortable echoes of Katrina. Just as Mr. Bush cast aside Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Obama addressed reporters just hours after S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, his director of the Minerals Management Service, resigned under pressure.

Just as Mr. Bush was criticized for being on vacation in Texas when Katrina bore down on New Orleans, Mr. Obama has been criticized for golfing, fund-raising and, on Thursday night, heading to Chicago for a holiday weekend while oil laps up in the marshes and beaches of Louisiana.

In politics, how it looks is how it is, even if this is bitterly unfair.

Other comparisons between Barack and George W. ought to make his supports nervous. The latter was frequently criticized for his reticence to appear before the press. President Obama just gave his first full Press Conference in ten months! Why is this man, supposedly such a great orator and intelligent statesman, so afraid to face the press in an unscripted setting?

The purpose of the press conference was clear: the President was taking responsibility. The buck stops here. Read the New York Times piece linked above to see how the Times tries to make this assumption of responsibility seem heroic and unique, when it is neither. Then note this from Fox News:

Shortly before Obama entered the East Room, the head of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, resigned. Obama pointed the finger at MMS during his press conference for lax oversight, but claimed that he only found out about director Elizabeth Birnbaum's departure Thursday. "I don't know the circumstances in which this occurred," he said.

Let me get this straight: the head of the agency which oversees offshore drilling resigns as oil is spilling into the Gulf, and the President has no flippin' idea why she resigned or what the circumstances of her resignation were? Who the Hell is in charge here? Either the President is not being honest, or he is as clueless as he pretends to be.

Besotted with Belgium

Vice President Biden is, apparently, besotted with Belgium. According to Daniel Foster of National Review, Biden declared the following in a recent speech in Brussels:

As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, DC as the "capital of the free world."  But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union, and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.

It is a little embarrassing for the vice president to suggest that another county might be superior to his own in terms of freedom and democracy. If this were the case, perhaps a man who has been part of the U.S. government for thirty-seven years and who now holds one of the highest titles in the nation might have, at some point, considered doing something about America's lack of freedom.

But what makes Biden's statement even more embarrassing is that he is talking about Brussels. While Biden suggests Brussels might be "capital of the free world," much of Europe is skeptical about Belgium's commitment to freedom. They are particularly concerned about the actions of Brussels-born European Council President Herman Von Rompuy. Indeed, according to The Telegraph, "Open warfare has broken out at the top of the European Union with governments accusing the new president, Herman Van Rompuy of making a power grab."

European leaders are accusing Van Rompuy of trying to expand his role to take on powers that he was not supposed to take.

Indeed, The Telegraph goes on to describe situation this way:

Diplomats are increasingly worried that amid the turf wars there is a danger of Brussels "mission creep" as squabbling EU chiefs try to enlarge their empires at the expense of each other and national sovereignty. National governments, led by Germany, are incensed by an attempt by Mr Van Rompuy to take on new powers he claims were agreed at an informal summit two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, leader of Britain's UKIP, denounced Van Rompuy with the following statement:

I would like to ask you, President. Who voted for you? By what mechanism? Oh I know democracy's not popular with you lot. And what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy? Well, I sense – I sense, though, that you're competent and capable and dangerous and I have no doubt that it's your intention to be the quiet assassin of European Democracy and of the European nation states. You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of nation states, perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which is pretty much a non-country.

Farage may be doing Belgium a disservice. It is, after all, famous for its cuisine. Brussels is especially well known. Indeed, Wikipedia sums up the city's accomplishments well, saying, "Brussels is known for its local waffle, its chocolate, its French fries and its numerous types of beers." But Brussels' 1000 year history is not a history of democracy and freedom. Belgian imperialism was often cruel and despotic and Brussels was at the center of it. Consider, for instance, King Leopald's barbaric treatment and genocide of the people of the Congo.

Of course much has changed such then. But when our European allies are, even now, voicing concern over Brussels' hostility toward democratic principles, Biden might think twice about suggesting that the city replace Washington as freedom's capital.

An Artificial Slice of Life

Lauran Neergaard breaks the story at the Washington Post:

Scientists announced a bold step Thursday in the enduring quest to create artificial life. They've produced a living cell powered by manmade DNA…

Scientists for years have moved single genes and even large chunks of DNA from one species to another. At his J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and San Diego, Venter's team aimed to go further. A few years ago, the researchers transplanted an entire natural genome - the genetic code - of one bacterium into another and watched it take over, turning a goat germ into a cattle germ.

Next, the researchers built from scratch another, smaller bacterium's genome, using off-the-shelf laboratory-made DNA fragments.

Friday's report combines those two achievements to test a big question: Could synthetic DNA really take over and drive a living cell? Somehow, it did.

Ms. Neergaard is lucky that bad science writing isn't a crime; otherwise she would be in shackles by now. The word "enduring" in the first sentence is puerile puffery. The much worse sin against scientific literacy is that DNA doesn't "power" living cells, nor does it "take over and drive" them. DNA is the fundamental repository of information for most of its operations and for the essential business of reproduction. DNA is a very powerful map, but the cell itself does the driving.

These distortions have clearly been encouraged by Venter, who is both a scientist and an entrepreneur. This is how he sells his science:

"This is the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer," Venter told reporters.

Well, not yet. Venter's team built the genome of one kind of bacteria from scratch, using fragments of DNA. In doing so, I gather they were plagiarizing the Lord's work by precisely copying the DNA of the cattle germ. Then they transplanted the artificial genome into a different kind of cell (a goat germ). The new cell was able to function and I gather it has reproduced. But the parent of the new cell is clearly the recipient cell, not the computer.

The distortions aside, this is a very big story. That a research team can assemble a complete genome from scratch is an astounding feat of technology. That the transfer of a genome into a cell changes the latter's species form is a fundamental bit of intelligence for metaphysics. What would happen if you replaced the DNA in a human cell with chimpanzee DNA? I am guessing you would get a chimpanzee cell whose parent was a human being.

It is the metaphysics that disturbs Alasdair Palmer at the London Telegraph.

[If Venter's technology] works for the cells of bacteria, it will work for our cells, too: with us, there are more components – we have 25,000 genes in each of our cells, as opposed to the 500 that control the reproduction of the bacterium that Dr Venter used – but the mechanisms are the same. The differences are a matter of quantity, not quality.

That sends a shiver down the human spine. What has happened to the mystery of life, the intangible, miraculous glory that we think is somehow its essence? It has disappeared. There are only molecules and the void.

Mr. Palmer is in way over his head here. We aren't human because we have more genes than bacteria. That's like saying that the only difference between a mud hut and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the size of the blueprints. The human genome and bacterial genomes contain fundamentally different information.

But Mr. Palmer suffers from philosophical and theological illiteracy as much as from scientific illiteracy. Suppose you had to choose your sole reading material for the next five years from one of three boxes. One contains a blank book and a supply of pens. Another, the complete speeches of Barack Obama. The third, the complete works of William Shakespeare. You have to choose blindly. Would it comfort you to know that each box contains roughly the same number of ink and wood pulp molecules?

If you get the first box, you are in for a lot of boredom. If you choose the second, you will end up scratching your eyes out. If you choose the third, you will manage well enough, and come back with at least one bit of literary expertise under your belt. Venter's experiment confirms that there is much more in heaven and earth than mere molecules. There are forms and information.

As for theology, the teaching of the major churches over the last two millennia is that resurrection means the resurrection of the body. That would suggest that, just as Shakespeare's plays have to be substantiated in some physical medium to endure, so do human souls. I am quite comfortable with this, and in fact I think that no other view is coherent.

Mr. Palmer doesn't want to know the truth about the human soul because he doesn't really believe in the human soul. He wants to be safe in warm in his ignorance. Fortunately I have read Aristotle, with some care, and I am confident that biology is ultimately the study of souls. The more we know, the more we will be amazed and gratified.

Obama’s Insipid Rhetoric and Willful Blindness

It was disturbing when Attorney General Eric Holder refused to say the most obvious thing before the House Judiciary Committee. He was asked whether the three recent terrorist plots against Americans might have been motivated by radical Islam. This is a no-brainer. When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was shooting American soldiers he yelled "Allahu Akbar!" That doesn't mean, in case you are wondering, that "I have a list of vague grievances." It means "God is Great!" It is sort of Islamic in origin. But you would have to water board General Holder to get him to say that Islam had anything to do with it.

It was disturbing when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated that the Times Square would-be mass murderer might have been motivated by opposition to health care legislation or anguish over bad real estate investments.

It is yet another thing when the President of the United States cannot bring himself to mention the existence of terrorism when he signs a bill honoring a victim of terrorism.

On May 17^th the President signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act. Here is how he opened his remarks:

Well, hello, everybody. I am very proud to be able to sign the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, a piece of legislation that sends a strong signal about our core values when it comes to the freedom of the press.

All around the world there are enormously courageous journalists and bloggers who, at great risk to themselves, are trying to shine a light on the critical issues that the people of their country face; who are the frontlines against tyranny and oppression. And obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world's imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is, and it reminded us that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world.

Does the President really have no one around him competent and brave enough to point out how utterly insipid this language is?

Might the President have at least mentioned a few of the bloggers and journalists who face guns and dungeons for their efforts to report what their own governments are doing? Might he not have mentioned Omid Mir Sayafi, a 25 year old blogger who died in an Iranian prison? Mr. Sayafi dared to criticize supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Of course Iran is an Islamic Republic, so maybe the Obama Administration's speech impediment would have made that awkward.

So why not mention Nay Phone Latt, a Burmese blogger who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for posting a cartoon of the Gangster leader Than Swe? Is the Administration tongue tied when it comes to all Gangsters? It has no trouble speaking up about Israeli construction.

Worse than these sins of omission, of course, is that line about "the loss of Daniel Pearl". Loss? Pearl wasn't misplaced. He was murdered. A group of persons, persons who were no part of the Tea Party movement and had suffered no real estate losses on the American market, kidnapped him and cut his head off. One would never guess from the President's bloodless language that Daniel Pearl was a victim of radical Islamic terrorism, or indeed that he was a victim at all.

That this is self-censorship and not mere incompetence is evident from the following lines:

What this act does is it sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. It has the State Department each year chronicling how press freedom is operating as one component of our human rights assessment, but it also looks at countries that are -- governments that are specifically condoning or facilitating this kind of press repression, singles them out and subjects them to the gaze of world opinion in ways that I think are extraordinarily important.

So we are going to "single out" governments that violate freedom of the press and "subject them to the gaze of world opinion". That ought to strike fear in the heart of Mr. Than Swe. Maybe if he does something really bad (one shudders to think) the President will actually mention him.

Of course Daniel Pearl's head wasn't sawed off by a government, exactly. His captors were terrorists, motivated by radical versions of the religion of Islam. To judge by the President's insipid rhetoric, such people do not even exist. His Administration certainly seems incapable of talking about them.

Can Rand Stand?

Since I teach American Government as part of my day job, I have to thank the Lord for Rand Paul. This is the guy who in a few short days made a lot of abstract principles concrete. Whether that concrete can serve as the foundation for a serious Senate bid remains to be seen.

On Tuesday, Paul crushed the establishment Republican candidate for Senate, and did so with Tea Party backing. That serves as a perfect illustration of the public mood: anti-establishment to the core. (PowerPoint slide number one).

Two days later candidate Paul showed what the point of political establishments is: they help to select candidates who know what not to say on MSNBC. He also showed us what a real Libertarian thinks (PowerPoint slides two and three).

MADDOW: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?

PAUL: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race.

But I think what's important about this debate is not written into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or fashion.

Libertarians are probably among the least racist people on the planet. They put the highest possible value on individual freedom short of anarchy, and that means all individuals. The great thing about that is that, short of force or fraud, everyone gets to do pretty much whatever he or she wants. The not so great thing is that some people want rather bad things. (PowerPoint slides four and five).

Paul declared that he fully supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act in so far as it eliminated all segregation in government, but admitted that he was uncomfortable with the parts of the act that interfered with the freedoms of private businesses. (PowerPoint slides six and seven).

That is a great illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of Libertarianism. Yes, liberty does sometimes mean liberty for despicable people to do and say despicable things. But sometimes one liberty curtails another, and government must decide which to protect. Our freedom to drive at relatively high speeds is possible only because government denies us the freedom to decide which side of the damn road we want to drive on.

In the Civil Rights Act, Congress decided that the liberty to travel across America on our interstate highways was more important that the liberty of motel owners to refuse to accept African American guests. (PowerPoint slides eight and nine). I think that that was the right call.

Of course, the real problem with Rand Paul's reflections was not that Libertarian is a flawed doctrine. The problem is that Paul ignited a fire in his own house just at the moment of his great victory, a fire which he now has to put out. I gather that Paul does not call himself a Libertarian, preferring to describe himself as a Constitutional Conservative. He is not clueless about the need to control his image. That takes some skill, however, and he was clearly not ready to face Rachel Maddow.

I am not as sure as John Hinderaker at Powerline that Rand Paul will "never be ready" for prime time. But he does have to understand that politics is about building coalitions, not about publically fine tuning political principles. As a Republican, I hope Rand Paul gets his act together. As a political scientist and professor, he is the gift that keeps on giving.

Ragin’ against Kagan?

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote a bachelor's thesis for the Princeton History Department in 1981 entitled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City 1900-1933." Christopher Beam, writing in Slate, says that

Conservatives have now pounced on Kagan's Princeton thesis as evidence of socialist sympathies. It's like a treasure hunt. Whoever finds the most inflammatory quote wins.

Well, maybe. The only pouncing I have seen so far is on RedState.com, which has this:

This proves Elena Kagan is an open and avowed socialist. The woman declares that socialists must stick together instead of fracture in order to advance a socialist agenda, which Kagan advocates.

Maybe other conservatives have pounced, as it were, but most of the major conservative sites I looked at either ignored it or dismissed it. Even RedState has complained more about the fact that Princeton ordered them to remove the document from their website on copyright grounds than it has about the thesis itself.

There are two questions here. First, should someone in Kagan's position be held responsible for what she wrote as a history student in college? In the decisive sense the answer is no. Students need freedom to explore ideas. They should not be held responsible for what they write for their professors in the same way that a professor is held responsible for her published articles or a judge for his written opinions. A college paper is not a statement of professional opinion.

That doesn't mean that she shouldn't be questioned about the content of the thesis. If a nominee for the Federal courts or for some executive branch post were found to have made virulently anti-American or anti-Semitic statements in a college paper, it would be irresponsible of the Senate to ignore the fact.

That said, what does General Kagan's college thesis prove? Not much, so far as I can see. The White House has promised to post this and another thesis "soon", which probably means "not for a long time." You can view it here. I can't claim to have mastered the entire body of the argument, but it looks like a very competent thesis.

Ms. Kagan took issue with two claims in the scholarship: one was that the American Socialist movement in the early twentieth century was never a serious contender for political influence. To the contrary, she argues that it was initially a growing movement that showed real promise. The other is that the movement ultimately collapsed due to outside forces, including the rise of communism in Russia. To the contrary, as I understand her to argue, it collapsed due to internal contradictions and especially due to a refusal of various factions to compromise. She focuses exclusively on the New York Socialist movement, using that as a microcosm to interpret the national movement, a very sensible move.

Her bottom line is stated in the paper's conclusion:

The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle and entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

This indicates that the twenty-one year old Princeton history nerd had sympathy for radicals in general and socialists in particular. One would guess that she was a "moderate" socialist, in the sense that she was in favor of moderation within "radical" circles. She saw the failure of the socialist movement nationally as a sad story.

Does this matter? Yes. The Supreme Court is an essentially liberal institution, in the classical sense. According to classical liberalism, the rights of individual persons are primary. Collective rights, as in the rights of society as a whole, are secondary. Socialism is the view that the interests of society as a whole take precedence over individual rights, and especially over property rights. A socialist court would be contrary to the original intent, the design, and the very logic of the Constitution.

So it would be fair, I think, for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask General Kagan whether she considers herself, today, a socialist. That question would matter only if she said yes. Then, I think, the Republicans would attempt a filibuster, and they would probably succeed.

If Kagan refused to say, we could probably assume the answer is yes but I doubt that that would enough to derail her nomination. If she said no, that would largely be the end of it. In no case would her college thesis be dispositive.

Sayonara, Specter

 

When Arlen Specter left the Republican Party to become a Democrat, many saw him as a traitor. (Some went so far as to call him "Benedict Arlen.") Specter's change gave the Democrats the 60 votes they needed for a super majority. He destroyed any hope Republicans had for filibustering Democratic proposals. Democrats in Pennsylvania have now repaid Specter for this favor by voting him out of office.

For most conservatives, this alone is great news. I may or may not have done a bit of dance when I heard about the primary results. But what makes the news even better is that the Democrat running against Specter is running with a message that is at least slightly conservative. CBS news quotes the victorious Joe Sestak as saying the following, "The career politicians down in Washington don't want to be held accountable. They've lost the trust and the faith of the voters and I think that's what you saw last night, at least in Pennsylvania."  Here, at least, Stesak sounds almost like at Tea-Partier.

Six of Nine Good People Amend the Constitution

The United States Supreme Court announced this holding today, in Graham v. Florida:

The [Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments] Clause does not permit a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonhomicide crime.

Consider the three key phrases: a juvenile offender, life in prison without parole, a nonhomicide crime. Those are qualifiers that now control the reading of the Eight Amendment. If an offender is a juvenile, if he commits a crime, however brutal, that comes up short of murder, then he can't be sentenced to live without parole.

Not one of these qualifiers is actually in the Constitution, nor is there any foundation for this particular package in the history of Constitutional interpretation. This sort of fine tuning is the essence of legislation, not adjudication. It is what legislatures do all the time, and what they are supposed to do. But in this case it is nine judges amending not ordinary legislation, but the Constitution itself.

If the Court is not relying on the text of the Constitution, what does it base its decision on? From Justice Kennedy's opinion:

As compared to adults, juveniles have a "'lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility'"; they "are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure"; and their characters are "not as well formed."

All that may well be true, but I don't know that the Court is competent to apply psychological theories. The Court also thinks itself competent to read the American mind. From the New York Times summary of the case:

Justice Kennedy responded that a study relied on by Mr. Graham and supplemented by the court's own research had located only 129 juvenile offenders convicted under such laws. Seventy-seven were in Florida, the rest in 10 other states. Those numbers, Justice Kennedy said, make the sentence "exceedingly rare" and demonstrate that "a national consensus has developed against it."

Well, he knows better than we what we think. But it's not just we Americans that get to determine what the Constitution means. From Justice Kennedy's opinion:

There is support for our conclusion in the fact that, in continuing to impose life without parole sentences on juveniles who did not commit homicide, the United States adheres to a sentencing practice rejected the world over. This observation does not control our decision. The judgments of other nations and the international community are not dispositive as to the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. But "'[t]he climate of international opinion concerning the acceptability of a particular punishment'" is also "'not irrelevant.'"

Allow me to unpack that for you. When world opinion, as the five or six justices interprets it, agrees with the sentiments of those five or six, then and only then is it relevant to their decision.

I don't necessarily disagree with the Court's sentiment. I am not at all sure that juvenile offenders ought to be sentenced to live without possibility of release. Unlike the majority today, however, I know the difference between my sentiments and the Constitution.

There is no ground in the text, logic, or history of the Constitution for this decision. There is no reason to believe that a national consensus exists against life sentences for juveniles. From Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent:

Congress, the District of Columbia, and 37 States allow judges and juries to consider this sentencing practice in juvenile non homicide cases, and those judges and juries have decided to use it in the very worst cases they have encountered.

In fact, the Court was merely writing its personal sentiments into the text of the Constitution.

On the same day as this decision was announced, the Court also announced another decision. From CBS News:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.

I suppose those must be inmates who became sexually dangerous after the age of 17. Apparently such folks can be kept in jail forever regardless of their sentence. Your constitutional rights apparently depend on how the Court feels about you. Chief Justice Roberts has some thoughts about this. Maybe Graham was judged harshly.

But what about Milagro Cunningham, a 17-year-old who beat and raped an 8-year-old girl before leaving her to die under 197 pounds of rock in a recycling bin in a remote landfill... Or Nathan Walker and Jakaris Taylor, the Florida juveniles who together with their friends gang-raped a woman and forced her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son?... The fact that Graham cannot be sentenced to life without parole for his conduct says nothing whatever about these offenders, or others like them who commit non-homicide crimes far more reprehensible than the conduct at issue here.

Well, yeah, what about those guys? These are judgment calls, not legal questions. Legislatures and juries exist to handle the former. Courts should confine themselves to the latter. This Court majority has no idea what it is.

Politics in the Pulpit

Let me unburden my heart. I love Cory Heidelberger. He has that special knack for writing something interesting, thoughtful, serious, and wrong. What's not to love!

In a recent post, Cory directs our attention to this story from Keloland, which I otherwise would have missed.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Gordon Howie of Rapid City has urged South Dakota churches and their pastors to defy a federal law and endorse candidates.

Under federal tax law, churches that endorse candidates or parties risk losing their tax-exempt status. Churches can legally discuss politics and take positions on issues. Howie says he believes the U.S. Constitution guarantees that pastors have the right to speak freely about politics and candidates.

Responding to a statement by Pastor Scott Craig that the federal law "involves government telling churches what to do" (Rapid City Journal), Cory has this:

Craig's comment is a mistaken interpretation of separation of church and state. There are all sorts of laws where government tells churches and every other organization what it cannot do. Do Candidate Howie and Pastor Craig want to repeal the laws that block pastors from performing polygamous weddings and human sacrifice as well? And those damnable child abuse laws sure crimp the style of priests who dig altar boys.

Can Government block pastors from performing polygamous weddings, recognized by his or her church? If so, that would be an egregious violation of free exercise. All government can do is refuse to recognize those marriages for all legal purposes. The other examples are generally applicable restrictions on actions, not speech.

Cory goes on:

The free-speech argument is bogus, and Howie and Craig know it. Pastors are still perfectly free to express their political views outside of church. They just don't get to take advantage of their position, their pulpit, their captive audience, and their non-profit status to spread those views. It's the same for teachers: I'm free to endorse Scott Heidepriem and deride Gordon Howie here on the blog, but if I engage in that advocacy on the job, in front of a classroom of voting college students, you will (and should!) freak out.

It is Cory's argument here that is bogus. Public school teachers are public employees, in many cases in charge of students who are legally compelled to be there. Pastors are not (outside the military) public employees and their congregations congregate of their own accord.

Unlike human sacrifice or child abuse, sermons enjoy explicit constitutional protection. For government to tell a pastor what he or she can or cannot say in church is an egregious violation of both the free speech clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. If a pastor believes that voting for or against a candidate or proposition is required by God's law, government should not be able to pressure him to say otherwise. It doesn't matter whether the pressure involves threats of punishment, fines, or loss of tax-exempt status. A government that cannot require that students be exposed to creation science or the Intelligent Design argument ought not to be able to tell pastors what they can say from the pulpit.

None of what I just said is backed up by Court decisions. It rests merely on constitutional common sense. Cory is too smart, too well educated, and too honest to escape that common sense.

This isn't Martin Luther King's advocating civil disobedience to win civil rights for an oppressed minority; this is Gordon Howie's desperate attempt to increase his vote count.

Martin Luther King Jr. used the pulpit in a very political way. He advocated civil disobedience at that same venue. Is Cory saying that MLK enjoyed or should have enjoyed constitutional protection? I would certainly say so, and not just because I emphatically agree with King's ministry on these matters. I think it is also a matter of free speech and free exercise.

Gordon Howie urges pastors to defy Federal law on his behalf. I take no position on the South Dakota gubernatorial primary, but I am guessing that Gordon Howie takes his candidacy seriously. He thinks the issues he is running on are important. Is the standard here that pastors can practice political advocacy from the pulpit only when Cory or I approve of what they advocate? That ain't free speech.

Without in any way endorsing Gordon Howie, he is right to urge pastors to defy the Federal ban on political advocacy from the pulpit. It is patently unconstitutional. For reasons of both free speech and free exercise of religion, pastors should be free to speak, in or out of church, as their conscience should direct.

The New Doctor Who

The BBC series Doctor Who continues to challenge time by remaining on the air longer than anything else I can think of. The series ran from 1963 to 1989, and was revived in 2005. It is certainly the longest running science fiction show and it probably second only to Star Trek in its overall success.

The new series is now on its third Doctor, David Tennant having stepped down. Tennant was certainly the finest actor to play the Doctor so far. Having seen the first three episodes of the new season, I can't tell yet whether Matt Smith (number 11 overall) is quite as good. I do think he will make a fine Time Lord.

The original series was a lot of fun. Like most everyone else, my favorite Doctor was Tom Baker. With his wild frizzy hair and constant look of amusement and delight, he portrayed the spirit of science constantly seeing through superstition in all its forms. I like that in a Time Lord.

The revived series is a lot less about good hearted fun because it is serious in a way that the old one largely was not. The Doctor still jaunts around space and time in his TARDIS, a blue 1950's police box that is much bigger on the inside than on the outside. He is still accompanied by a woman (earth.human.young.usually attractive.20-21^st century) who acts as his Doctor Watson. Wherever he lands, there is some trouble afoot that the Doctor can see through and set right.

What makes it more serious is the way that moral dilemmas are woven into the plots. Dr. Who is what modern ethicists would call a deontologist. He places a high value on doing the right thing for the right reason and he is very impatient with utilitarian compromises. The show is very good at presenting the evils that can arise from doing something that obviously seems wrong because it promotes a greater good. That doesn't mean that he can always escape making a utilitarian compromise. What if doing the right thing means the death of millions of people?

The new series is also very good at presenting the self-deception and psychological dysfunction that can result from a moral compromise. In a recent episode the Doctor lands on a space ship carrying England's people away from a dying earth. At the heart of this spaceship is a dreadful secret. This secret is revealed to every citizen when he or she comes of age. The person then has the choice to protest or forget. That's two big buttons on a console. If a certain percentage chooses protest, the terrible arrangement that keeps them afloat, as it were, will be abolished. That might mean the death of them all. Apparently, everyone chooses to forget. The result is a society suffering from an inescapable bad conscience.

That is a remarkable meditation on morality and democracy. I can't think of anything else on TV that comes close to it in sophistication. Of course, it has to be fun more often than not. Things do not always turn out well in these episodes, but they mostly do. The Doctor nearly always comes through.

Doctor Who works by means of a very successful formula. There is the charm of freedom and adventure. The Doctor can go anywhere and anywhen. There is the charm of competence and knowledge. No matter what is wrong, the Doctor almost always knows exactly what to do about it. There is the charm of providence. It surely seems as if the Doctor is guided to where and when he needs to be. By whom, one wonders? But all these charms come at a price. His perpetual loneliness, the last of the Time Lords with a tragedy of Biblical proportions in his past, is only partially remedied by his comely companions. They have their own tragedy. Inevitably, they fall in love with him but they can never have him. That is only partly remedied by the magnificent adventures that wait outside the doors of the TARDIS.

The series used to be carried by the Syfy channel, but now you can see it on BBC America. It is well worth watching.

The New Christie Miracles 2

One of the miracles of the Christie Administration in New Jersey is that Governor Christie seems to know how to actually talk, and seems not to know that politicians aren't supposed to do that. What you will see in this clip is really nothing more than competent oratory, but in the contemporary environment it sounds Churchillean, if not Shakespearean.

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

 

Yes. Politicians are supposed to be confrontational. They exist because the ruling body (that's us) is not of one mind on important questions. Whether Governor Christie can keep this up, and whether it does him or New Jersey any good, is doubtful. But just right now it is very refreshing.

Energy Policy in Wonderland

It seems very likely that Congress is not going to pass an energy bill. Of course they aren't going to pass a budget either. No one in Congress wants to sign on to the extraordinary deficits we are running. Nor are we going to see any supplemental health care legislation passed. Ditto.

So what are the consequences of not passing a new energy bill? The New York Times thinks they are dire:

You don't have to look far for proof that this country must cut its dependence on fossil fuels and develop cleaner sources of energy.

It can be found in the oil-slicked Gulf of Mexico. It can be found in China's aggressive efforts to win the global competition for green technologies and green jobs. And, most urgently, it can be found in the inexorable math of accumulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, oil spills are bad, and maybe Tom Friedman is right and we ought to try to be more like China. But what would a better energy policy look like?

Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman presented a good but far from perfect bill on Wednesday that would at least point the country in the right direction. For the first time, it would set a price on carbon emissions that are now dumped without penalty into the atmosphere. A price signal is an essential prerequisite for reducing emissions and for shifting American industry to cleaner, less polluting sources of energy.

The measure would also invest widely in low-carbon technologies, renewable fuels, more efficient vehicles and mass transit.

Setting a "price on carbon emissions" is intended to do two things. One is to discourage the burning of cheap fossil fuels. Maybe that would save the environment, but it would also make energy and everything that is produced using energy (which is everything that is produced) more expensive. Even organic farmers wearing hemp trousers have to drive their produce around. At a time when the world economy is, to say the least, in a precarious state, that looks like a political winner!

The other thing that a carbon tax is supposed to do is to encourage investment in clean, renewable energy. That, we are constantly told, will create "green jobs" and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

The only problem with that is that it is false, in any meaningful sense. Green energy means chiefly wind power, solar power, and biofuels. All three create green jobs to be sure, but they so because they are heavily subsidized by government. That means that wealth generated elsewhere has to be shifted to these technologies in order to create those jobs. That is wealth that cannot be spent on other things, including other productive enterprises.

For every job created in the wind industry, about two and a half jobs are eliminated elsewhere. Better yet, wind power depends on, well, the wind. When it doesn't blow, power must be generated by more traditional means. Nations that have invested heavily in wind power have seen their carbon emissions and their reliance on fossil fuels increase.

In fact, the only viable sources of energy for modern economies are fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) and nuclear power. That is a bedrock fact, and any rational energy policy would have to be based on it. That doesn't mean that we can't do a lot better in using energy. We may find ways to use those resources that are friendlier to the environment. Government may certainly have a role in encouraging that. But for that to happen, "progressives" would have to abandon transparently false myths about "green energy." Don't hold your breath.

Everyone’s Opposed to ObamaCare. Even Obama!

I have been skeptical of the lawsuits arising in many states against the recently passed healthcare reform. I remain so. However, as the Persians said of the Athenian fleet at Salamis: yeah, they're pretty small boats. But damn, there are a lot of them! From the Washington Post:

Efforts to block a key provision of the new health-care overhaul law are underway in 33 states, as a growing roster of mostly Republican officials have mounted legal and legislative challenges to an eventual requirement that virtually all Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty tax.

This Friday, seven more states will formally join a lawsuit originally filed by Florida and 12 other states in late March.

Thirty-three states is a lot of states. The significance of this is that opposition is opening up along all the constitutional fronts. Voter opposition has been expressed in almost every election held this year. U.S. Representative Alan Mollohan was defeated soundly in a West Virginia Democratic Primary by a conservative Democrat. The main issue was his vote on healthcare.

Another front is opposition by state governments. This is taking three forms. One is the joint lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the mandate on individual health insurance and the fiscal burden that the law places on states. Another is state legislation that intentionally contradicts the federal law in order to generate court cases. The third is initiatives that "repeal" the individual mandate.

I am skeptical about all of this. The repeal of federal law by state initiative amounts to nullification, and that offend the very heart of the U.S. Constitution. Provoking lawsuits by legislation contradicting the healthcare law is standard procedure, as is a direct challenge to the law's constitutionality in court. What bothers me about that is that I don't think the Courts are the proper place to decide healthcare policy.

However, and it's a big honkin' however, all of this builds enormous pressure against the law and that strengthens its foes in Congress in a big way. That's enough of a strategic advantage to justify the whole package.

But if all this weren't enough, the Obama Administration is considering joining the opposition! From Fox News:

The Obama administration threatened to veto parts of its own health care bill after budget scorekeepers found that the package would add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending.

The President kept telling us that healthcare reform would reduce the burden of healthcare spending on the federal budget. The Congressional Budget Office supported this claim until after the bill was passed. Now it concedes that the legislation will result in an increase in healthcare spending by about $115 dollars. That will push the bill over the magic "one trillion" that the President promised us was the limit.

No honest and rational person really believed that this legislation would lower costs. But I hadn't expected that the Obama Administration would join 33 states to oppose key provisions of ObamaCare. I have never seen anything like this. Say what you want about the Democrat's adventure in European healthcare land. It is still the greatest show on earth.

Chris Nelson & the Birther Thing

Does Chris Nelson, South Dakota Secretary of State and candidate for our U.S. House seat, believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and so isn't qualified to be President? Cory Heidelberger surely wants us to think so.

The issue began when Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal asked the various House contenders whether they believed that the President was born in Hawaii. Secretary Nelson said this:

"Yes, meeting the constitutional qualifications to be President is a very important issue. If President Obama isn't constitutionally qualified, it would be the biggest scam ever perpetuated on the American people. MANY people contacted me as Secretary of State prior to and after the election asking how Obama could be on our ballot given this controversy. Absent a court finding that he isn't a natural born citizen, we have to take the certification from the National Democratic Convention at face value."

That paragraph is the sole evidence that Cory has against Secretary Nelson. But he thinks it is enough to bring down Nelson's candidacy.

I hate to be a one-issue voter. I hate to see one stupid answer negate the technocratic competence a candidate has to offer. But when Nelson shows himself as willing to run with the wingnuts as anyone else in the GOP, and when he steps in a big pile of birther doo-doo that even R. Blake and Kristi are smart enough to step around, I'm much more inclined to think this GOP primary is anyone's game.

Well, since Cory hates to be a one issue voter, I am here to help. Nothing in Secretary Nelson's quote is wrong. Constitutional qualifications are important. If the President weren't qualified that would be an unprecedented scandal. I don't doubt that Secretary Nelson got a lot of questions about this.

But, answering like a Secretary of State, he stated the obvious: Obama was on the ballot because he was certified by the National Democratic Convention. As Secretary of State, that was all he needed to know. His own opinion, whatever it may have been, didn't matter. It wasn't his job to inquire into murky conspiratorial theories about the President's birthplace. Unlike most politicians, who tell us only what we want to hear, Secretary Nelson said what he was competent and authorized to say.

Since he is also a candidate, he probably should have said more. He does so in a second exchange with Woster:

That question certainly has generated interest which doesn't suprise me. Of all the issues I've dealt with as Secretary of State I have had more public comment on this question over the last year and a half than any other issue I've dealt with.

The most important point I can make is this, I strongly believe that constitutional requirements for any office must be met whether its President or Secretary of State or United States House of Representatives.

The President has met all the requirements to have his name placed on South Dakota's ballot and be elected by the electoral college. That is my concern as Secretary of State.

Personally, I've looked at this from a number of angles and am satisfied that President Obama was born in the United States.

Again, Secretary of State Nelson is responding in a professional way. His personal opinion of the birther myth isn't really important. All that matters is that Mr. Obama met the legal qualifications to be President. That is precisely the attitude one wants in a public official.

But, since he was asked, now we know his personal opinion. He does not believe the birther nonsense.

I am neither surprised nor offended that Cory and other Democrats should try to exploit the Secretary's professionally responsible comments. Just a few weeks ago, Cory was hoping to replace Representative Herseth-Sandlin as the Democratic nominee because of her "votes on numerous issues". Now he is very afraid that she may be replaced by a Republican.

And if Nelson manages to recover and win, I'm much less inclined to give a pass to Dems who in their justifiable disgust with Stephanie Herseth Sandlin's votes on numerous issues would vote for Nelson in November. Nelson is making clear he's not the tolerable centrist we thought he was.

Well, if Cory has recovered I am guessing that Secretary Nelson will as well. This criticism of Nelson is a red herring.

Fan Mail in the American News

Dr. Leonard Linde, a family physician practicing in Mobridge, sent this letter to the American News:

Recent American News stories, editorials and letters regarding the Tea Party movement piqued my interest.

In the coverage of the Tea Party rally in Aberdeen, Rev. Ron Parker is reported to have voted for President Barack Obama, but he has now "repented." I didn't know a revered member of the clergy held beliefs that were that capricious.

Professor Kenneth Blanchard's column of April 14 and Jim Zeman's letter of April 25 elaborate on the topic. True, democracy allows all to participate in this process, but I have concerns regarding Blanchard's and Art Marmorstein's involvement.

I wonder if their ultra-right political views are instilled in their students at Northern State University.

Zeman's letter raises the question of what angers Tea Party activists. In my view, they are not able to accept the fact that in the 2008 election, the Democrats won both the Senate and House plus the presidency, and that Obama is black. This country did a marvelous thing in 2008 by electing President Obama.

Leonard Linde, M.D.

As a regular columnist for the American News, I cannot respond with a letter of my own. So I offer one here.

Dr. Linde: would it be fair to ask you, on the basis of your letter, whether you treat all your patients with the same level of concern? Should I wonder whether you give better care to Democrats than to Republicans? In my view, it would not be fair at all. Your degree entitles you to a presumption of fairness and professional conduct. Perhaps I could expect the same in return, if only as a matter of professional courtesy.

It is not my business as a professor to tell students what to think. It is my business to present the primary questions and the various attempts to answer those questions. What gratifies me is not when a student agrees with me, but when she or he is interested enough to engage in learning and conversation.

To suggest, as you have, that a professor's public speech raises questions about his professional conduct, is to suggest that professors forfeit their right to public speech. That has the potential, as the Courts often say, of a "chilling effect" on the speech of one group.  It is also wildly inconsistent with universal practice.  Professors comment frequently on a wide range of matters across a wide range of media outlets. 

You mischaracterize my views and those of my colleague. Speaking only for myself, I am a conservative to be sure. I think that the responsibility for crime lies primarily not with society at large, but with criminals. I think that government overspending and over-regulation have perverse effects, and that they threaten the economic system and liberty in general. I regard it as a matter of some concern that we are running deficits of more than a trillion dollars a year. Those are hardly "ultra-right political views." They are mainstream opinions and, I suspect, they are opinions I share with a majority of Americans.

On the other hand, I have written openly in favor of legalized same sex marriage, in my columns and on my blog. I have written in favor of hate crimes legislation. I publicly and enthusiastically embrace Darwin's theory of evolution, and I am opposed to the teaching of creation science or Intelligent Design theory in the public schools.

To say that my political views are "ultra-right" is patently false.

Finally, to say that the anger of the Tea Party activists is motivated by partisan anger at the results of the last election or by the President's racial identification is also patently false.

In Utah, Tea Partiers have defeated Senator Bob Bennett in his bid for the Republican nomination. In Florida, Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio forced Charlie Crist out of the Republican primary. Whether this is good political strategy or not, it is clearly not motivated by anger at Democrats.

Moreover, Bob Bennett and Charlie Crist are White enough to be almost translucent. Marco Rubio, by contrast, is the son of Cuban exiles. Whatever is driving these Tea Party people, it has nothing to do with race.

Please don't mistake my tone. You wrote a serious letter, and it deserved a serious reply. I have attempted one.

SDP on DVDs: Hurt Locker

Hurt Locker is an unusual case: a best picture that really deserved the award. The movie is largely a character study of Sergeant First Class William James (played by Jeremy Renner). When James arrives to take command of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad in Iraq, he immediately alarms the team by his eagerness to take risks. He dons his ironman suit to walk in where they would have sent the little robot. He takes the suit off when it gets in his way. They think he is an adrenaline junkie, which he is, and that his addiction to danger is likely to get them all killed, which it nearly does.

Most of the film rides on the intense drama of bomb disposal, which is tailor-made for high end action. It's not the big boom and balls of fire that build excitement, but all the tiny moments when precisely nothing happens. The film work and sound are superb.

The thing is, this strikes me as a movie intended to be anti-war. Sergeant James is not a citizen soldier, he is a happy warrior. He is at home only on the battle field. When he is back in the states next to his gorgeous wife played by Evangeline Lilly (Kate Austin in Lost), and holding his infant son, he just wants to get back in action. There is something wrong with this guy.

But if it was intended to be anti-war, it fails miserably. As most Greeks admired the Spartans but had no desire to be Spartans, so no ordinary person would want to be what Sergeant James is (except perhaps when playing a video game). But it is quite natural to admire him. His virtues are, almost entirely, military virtues; but Republics need such men now and then. This is what Achilles looked like.

I am reminded of Patton, which was definitely intended to be an anti-war film. It was hijacked by the power of the historical character and that of the actor to become a celebration of a great warrior. For most of human history, men like Patton and Sergeant James enjoyed unambiguous adulation from their fellows. Today, that adulation is mirrored by uncomfortable reserve, if not scorn. Hurt Locker gives some support to both sides of that judgment, but more to the one than the other. You don't want to miss this one.

I endorse Mickey Kaus

SDP does not usually make electoral endorsements, but I am making an exception here. I endorse Mickey Kaus in the California Democratic Primary. There. Ms. Boxer can begin packing.

Kaus is a journalist and a blogger of great distinction. As a candidate, he has no money, no name recognition, no major endorsements (except this one!) and no organization. He wasn't allowed to speak at the recent Democratic convention.

But he is something very rare in politics and almost as rare in the media: a genuinely independent thinker. I would also add that he is very clever, and occasionally brilliant.

Kaus has two major issues on which he disagrees with Democratic orthodoxy. One is his criticism of unions. He thinks they have an unhealthy lock on Democratic policy making, and that they subvert good government on a range of issues. He is certainly right about that.

Kaus is also vehemently in favor of reducing illegal immigration. He argues that such immigration, by providing cheap labor, depresses the wages paid to the most disadvantaged workers in the US. If anything, Kaus is to my right on this issue. I am not at all sure that a very loose immigration policy is not on balance a good thing for the US. It's hard, however, to deny his specific point.

Kaus has also, and very daringly, challenged the view that we are spending too much on healthcare. He thinks that Americans should have access to whatever might do them some good in a pinch, and if that's expensive he thinks the expense is worth it.

That the Democrats denied Kaus a chance to address their convention is proof that they aren't really open to debate on these issues. I suppose he's running to try to force some debate. Good luck with that, Mickey.

Does Kaus have a chance? Well, Boxer is running very low in the polls, and there is a manifest anti-incumbent sentiment at work at large. The LA Times refused to endorse Boxer, without quite endorsing Kaus.

Well, I count about a half-dozen readers from California every day. Assume half of them are Democrats, and that all of the Democrats are swayed by my endorsement, and I might be deserve a place on Mickey's staff. God speed, Mr. Kaus. In the unlikely event that you are not the Democratic nominee, I look forward to your return to blogging at Slate.

Ps. At the risk of breaking your heart, don't count on an endorsement in the general election.

We Passed It. We’re About To Find Out What’s In It.

I mean "we." It doesn't matter how you voted in the last election, or how your Congressman voted on the healthcare reform legislation. Whatever Congress and the President did, we did. Welcome to the Republic.  Michael Tanner at CATO explains what we passed.

We were told that we had to pass healthcare reform because Americans can't afford insurance. Okay. Doesn't that mean that premiums should go down now?

[T]he RAND Corporation released a report concluding that not only would the hard-won health care package fail to curb premium increases, but the bill would drive premiums up as much as 17 percent for young people.

We were also told by the President, over and over again, that "if you like your health care plan, you get to keep it." No.

[T]he Congressional Budget Office now says that as many as 10 million workers will lose their current insurance under the bill. Some of those will have to buy new insurance through the government-run exchanges. Millions more will be thrown onto Medicaid.

That's "as many as ten million" people the President lied to. Well, at least we can rest assured that the healthcare bill we passed will reduce spending and help us balance the budget. Not.

[T]he government's chief actuary released his report on the bill recently, showing that the bill will actually increase health care spending by $311 billion over the next 10 years.

Tanner's piece has a lot more of this, and I urge you to read it. Diana Furchtgott-Roth at the Manhattan Institute considers the effects of the new bill on unskilled workers.

Under the new law, every employer with more than 50 workers will either have to offer health insurance or pay an annual penalty. The penalty for full-time employees is $2,000 per worker. For part-timers, employers will pay $2,000 for each "full-time equivalent worker," a block of 30 weekly hours of part-time work by the same or different employees.

Small enterprises with 50 employees or fewer will be the big winners. If they don't hire too many workers - another government-induced disincentive for hiring in this weak labor market - and stay within the 50-person limit, these firms won't have to provide health insurance and will have a cost advantage over the others.

In other words, the Healthcare Bill will penalize small firms that hire too many (more than 50) workers. These are the kind of businesses that hire a lot of first time, low-skilled workers. It creates a powerful incentive not to hire too many people, and to invest instead in labor-saving alternatives.

That's okay. All the job seekers who are disappointed because of this will get free healthcare. Free to them, at least. The rest of us will have to pony up for their care. This is what we did.

We did it at a time when the Federal Government was already on the path to insolvency. I say, if you are headed for the precipice at high speed, might as well put your foot on the accelerator. At least you'll get a better view. For a bit.

The Blind Side

I don't think I can put it better than this:

The President, the majority party in Congress, and the Press have been waging a vigorous campaign against extremism and political violence on the part of the Tea Party movement. Since not a single act of violence has been traced to the Tea Party activists or to anyone inspired by that movement, this has required a very active imagination on the part of the aforementioned parties.

Their active imagination came in handy when someone actually a car bomb into Times Square. Here is Joan Vennochi at the Boston Globe:

It was likely a "lone wolf'' operation, suggested Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, or, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speculated, "somebody with a political agenda who doesn't like the health care bill or something.'' Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, said it was being treated as a "potential terrorist attack'' but it could be a "one-off'' or isolated incident.

The arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, quickly ended alternative theories. Shahzad is not a Tea-Partier-gone-wild or someone unable to take the pressure of home foreclosure, as some news reports intimated. He told authorities his efforts to blow up innocent people are connected to the Pakistani Taliban.

Okay, Mayor Bloomberg takes the prize there; but one has to be worried a little more about Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano's wishful thinking.

Fortunately we have MSNBC's Contessa Brewer to let the cat out of the bag. What bothers her about the Time Square bomber is that it happened, but that the would-be bomber turned out to be a Pakistani-born, Islamist-motivated terrorist.

Part of me was hoping that this was not going to be anyone with ties to any Islamic Country because there are a lot of people who want to use, um, terrorist intent to justify, ah, writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way, they use it as a justification for really outdated bigotry… [my transcription].

I'm sure Ms. Brewer, like Mayor Bloomberg, would have been much happier if the Times Square Bomber had been driving straight from a Tea Party meeting. She is frustrated to have to admit what now looks almost certain: that Faisal Shahzad was trained by the Pakistani Taliban, and that he had contact with Anwar Awlaki, the American-born Muslim cleric whose influence is in implicated in the Fort Hood Shooting and the Christmas Day incident.

As Mark Twain said of Wagner's music, Ms. Brewer's comment is not as bad as it sounds. It sounds like she just won a beauty pageant and is speaking off the cuff while she bats her eyelashes. But I think she is on to something. She is opposed to "outdated bigotry," which seems to mean prejudice against people from Muslim countries. That suggests another kind of bigotry that is more up to date.

"Writing off people who believe in a certain way" is exactly what the Democrats and the Press have been trying to do to the Tea Party protesters. That's up to date bigotry. It is also crazy. What does it mean to wish that a car bomb terrorist act had domestic roots? What does it mean to wishfully imagine that the car bomber was opposed to health care reform?

What does it mean that the party in power bends over backward to ignore the obvious truth: that the threat of terrorism in America is almost exclusively of Muslim and foreign origins? The Administration studiously avoids using "Islamist" or "Muslim" to describe terrorist acts. But the three serious incidents that have occurred under President Obama have all been motivated by Muslim radicalism. This is a willful blindness, and it may sooner or later have consequences.

démocratie en Angleterre

Our mother country goes to the polls tomorrow, a few days short of Mother's Day. It is worth taking notice. England, like the U.S., Europe, and the rest of the developed world, is in a fiscal pickle. The voters there, as here, are angry at the established parties. There, as here, this is likely to benefit one established party over another.

England is a two party system with three parties. The party or coalition of parties that control enough seats gets to "form a government". The government controls the legislative and the executive branches, as we Yanks would put it. Labour is in power. The Tories, or Conservatives, want to get in power. The Liberal Democrats want to get on the front page.

Until recently, every poll suggested that the Tories will win the larger share of the vote, but will not win enough seats to control Parliament. If that happens we get a "hung parliament," where no party wins an outright majority (326 seats, all things being equal). In that case, the two major parties will try to attract enough of the remaining seats to form a majority. In most parliamentary systems, that is standard procedure.

It looked for a while possible that Labour and the Liberal Democrats would get enough seats to put a Labour dominated coalition back into power. The Brits followed the American example and held televised debates. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader won the first two, raising his prospects. But Conservative leader David Cameron won the third. Last is best. The Liberal Democrats have since been sinking in the polls. Labour Leader Gordon Brown got shellacked in all three, and that's without his infamous gaffe.

The Tories will form the next British Government. Michael Barone, our man in Britain right now, has this:

Since the Sinn Fein members elected in Northern Ireland do not take their seats (they don't want to concede that they're rightfully in the United Kingdom) and since the Ulster Unionists are likely to vote with the Conservatives, David Cameron and his party do not need quite 326 seats for a majority.

God bless the Irish. The London Telegraph has this:

Northern Ireland MPs have indicated that they will formally back the Conservative leader if he protects the region from this year's public spending cuts. The move would cost up to £200million.

The deal, which Mr Cameron will be under pressure to accept, would give his party another nine or 10 parliamentary seats.

Well, President Barack Obama ought to be comfortable with that sort of thing, having paid off the pharmacy industry and the trial lawyers to get health care reform.

Acting according to the principle "nothing ventured, nothing gained," I predict that the Tories will win enough seats to form a government on their own. No hung parliament. I think the Brits are coming around to the idea that someone (and especially someone else) needs to do something about their situation. If I am right, I will look very wise. If not, well, never mind.

Obama Morphs into Bush

It is curious to watch President morph into President Bush, and without the benefit of a YouTube video. In the last week the Obama Administration has managed to engineer its own Katrina. When the BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf, the Administration waited precious days to get into gear.

If you don't believe me, ask the New York flippin' Times.

The company, BP, seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.

A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country's richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush's hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Now this is a bit unfair on both sides. Bush committed a number of unforced political errors during the Katrina disaster (like going on vacation!). But he also a coast guard ship to begin relief efforts when the storm was just off the water. That might be the quickest federal relief ever delivered in a hurricane.

Likewise it isn't easy for the President to respond within hours to this kind of event. It was days before anyone knew how bad it was. In politics, however, impressions count for more than reasonable assessments. Obama now has his Katrina.

Perhaps afraid that he was falling behind in his race to become Bush, on Saturday the President once again went out of his way to discredit dissent. From the AP:

In Obama's 31-minute address to what the White House said was his biggest audience since the inauguration, the president made no mention of Palin or the tea party movement. He did say that debates about the size and role of government are as old as the republic itself.

"But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad," said Obama, who received an honorary doctor of laws degree. "When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us."

When and where did the President hear anyone say that "all of government is inherently bad"? This is a straw man. The President's critics aren't anarchists. They aren't opposed to the existence of government, or speed limits. They are opposed to the radical expansion of government powers, spending, and deficits. That is a minor sophism. Here is a major one:

Obama urged both sides in the political debate to tone it down. "Throwing around phrases like 'socialists' and 'Soviet-style takeover,"fascists' and 'right-wing nut' - that may grab headlines," he said. But it also "closes the door to the possibility of compromise...

"At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response."

It's nice that he is being even handed, but surely his Administration has relentlessly argued that its critics are extremists. That doesn't exactly open the door to compromise.

The message here is that those who vigorously dissent to his policies are in effect encouraging domestic terrorism. That is exactly the kind of thing that drove the American Left into a frenzy when someone in the Bush Administration said it. But the Bushies said such things very rarely. This is apparently Obama's official stance.

Passionate rhetoric isn't new, [the President] acknowledged. Politics in America, he said, "has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. ... If you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up."

Well, then, buck up. You are going to get roughed up, so why complain about it and accuse the other side of encouraging sedition? The President can't really bring himself to acknowledge the legitimacy of his critics. He is morphing into what Bush's critics thought Bush was. Or maybe that is unfair. Maybe this is what Obama was from the beginning.

Greek Theater

What is wrong with that picture? Or this one:

Flights were grounded and trains suspended amid a nationwide general strike Thursday, as Greek police fought running street battles with anarchist youths in fresh and violent signs of anger at the government's austerity plans.

Stop there. The anarchists are protesting cuts in government spending? Doesn't it sound like there are several thousand words missing from that paragraph?

Anarchists are supposed to be opposed to the very existence of government. Surely cutting government spending would get them a little bit closer to that goal. Of course, it's a lot more fun to be an anarchist when the government covers your health care costs and living expenses, so you don't actually have to get a job.

Those who think that the American Tea Party movement encourages violence might take a look at what real political violence looks like. Those who wonder what the Tea Party people fear might take a look at Greece. From the London Times:

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country's resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.

The Times takes a closer look at the Greek cancer.

Public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.

Some of them get as many as four extra months' salary a year, compared with the 14 months that are paid to other Greek workers. One of the most generous bonuses is paid to unmarried daughters of dead employees in state-controlled banks: they can inherit their parents' pensions.

Maybe I should check, but I believe that there are only twelve months in a year. Apparently Greek workers get paid fourteen months out of the year, and public sector workers get paid eighteen months out of the year. The Greek government doesn't just need to reduce its spending, it needs to reduce its calendar.

It's not just generosity that is the problem. The Greek government makes it hard to generate productive business in the first place.

When [Konstantinos] Michalos started a commodities trading business in London in the 1980s, the paperwork took him 48 hours, he said. In Greece's "Soviet-style" economy he had to go through 117 bureaucratic procedures to get the right government permits. A wealthy friend of his had taken 10 years to win permission to put up a hotel.

The New York Times is also offended by the Greeks. But what is eating the Times is not that public employees enjoy ridiculous benefits or that regulatory strangulation renders the economy sclerotic. It's that too many Greeks aren't paying their taxes. I humbly suggest that this is all the same problem. Ridiculous spending leads to ridiculous taxes, which leads in turn to massive tax evasion. Ask the Russians.

Greece is going belly up financially, and because of the Euro it threatens to take down the rest of Europe with it. The PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) are the most vulnerable, but apparently Britain is not far behind. I hope it's not bigoted of me to say that. Keep Gordon Brown's microphone on, please.

Meanwhile back in the States California is going belly up due to exactly the same causes as operate in Greece. On the Federal level, we are running trillion dollar a year deficits, and the majority party deals with this by passing a 900 billion per ten year health care reform that is really a trillion and a half per ten year program. Not to worry. They are also pushing an energy bill that would intentionally retard economic growth.

The American Left has always wanted to make America more like Europe. Well, we are getting there.

Election Shaman Rolls the Bones

Today the Election Shaman returns from the deep forests and haunted caves to come again within wifi range. The Shaman informs me that he is most interested in what he calls the voodoo seats. Go figure.

The Republicans are calling these "trophy seats." They are the Senate seats up in Illinois, Delaware, and Nevada. That would be Barack Obama's former seat, Joe Biden's former seat, and the seat the Senate Majority Harry Reid is currently clinging to the very edge of. Republicans think that a victory in any of these races, let alone all three, would have significant symbolic value. It would symbolize refutation.

The Shaman is not interested in symbols. He is interested in spirits and magic, and he thinks that a Republican victory in any of these seats would push a pin into a voodoo doll, a doll that looks like a map of the U.S. and has a lot of Democratic hairs and fingernails woven into it.

The Shaman reminds me that one such pin was already driven into the map when Scott Brown won the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy. Powerful magic that was. So what about the others?

As for Nevada, the Shaman thinks that the spirits large and small have altogether abandoned Harry Reid. Reid is running about ten points behind two Republican contenders, and isn't running ahead of anyone important enough to consider in a poll. The Shaman thinks that an undocumented worker under indictment for bank fraud could beat Reid. If the Shaman is right, that's one more pin.

In Delaware, the Shaman notes that Republican Mike Castle is running 55/32 against likely Democratic nominee Chris Coons. The Shaman likes the name "Castle" and thinks it may confer certain powers. He urges Republicans in Delaware to carry a characteristic chess piece in their pockets, and sleep with it under their pillows. That would be a third pin.

And then there is the great wizard's house itself. In Illinois, Representative Mark Kirk is eight points ahead of Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for Barack Obama's former seat. The Shaman thinks that the recent seizure of a Giannoulias family bank by Federal Regulators was an omen. Push that pin in, and the map will actually moan.

I have been pressing the Shaman to tell me what the bones say about the election as a whole, but he just makes weird signs in the air. I do notice that when he casts the bones, he gets an astonished look on his face and doesn't move for hours.

I also spied him rubbing John Murtha's former House seat and mumbling something. So I consulted Sean Trende, another election shaman. He has this:

DailyKos/Research2000 finds Republican Tim Burns up six points over Democrat Mark Critz, 46%-40% in the race to replace John Murtha. Large portions of this district haven't been held by a Republican since before the New Deal. This isn't the type of district that Republicans have to take in order to take back the House, but it is exactly the type of district that Republicans have to take to do better than they did in 1994. Obama sports a 38% favorability rating in the district. This is the second poll in a row to show Burns up, in a race that's looking more and more like a pickup. The election will be May 18.

The Election Shaman reminds me that the spirits are capricious. It's his job to make predictions, not mine, so he has greater need for caution. But I note that a good friend of mine, Professor Casca, a Democrat, made these remarks when I met him yesterday:

Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
'These are their reasons; they are natural;'
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

Maybe it was something he ate. Something was surely eating him. The Election Shaman will check back in from time to time.