South Dakota Politics

Half a War and No Responsibility

The President addressed the American people last night and defended his Libya policy. If the speech was hardly as shrewd as Fred Kaplan put it at Slate, neither was it as bad as Scott Johnson judges it at Powerline.

The Associated Press has a "fact check" piece on the speech in which the facts do not come out on the President's side. We aren't really turning over command to NATO as the President flamboyantly declares; the mission isn't narrowly focused on saving lives, as he claims; if we really have an important strategic interest, the President might have made that case to Congress; we haven't "stopped Gaddafi's advance" and the United States obviously can "turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries" because we are doing so in scores of cases in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Fair enough, but the simple theme of the speech was plausible and almost makes for a slogan: when our national interests and our moral principles align, we probably ought to put our muscle behind it. It would be in bad taste, perhaps, to ask what happens when it's one and not the other.

The President's speech aligns his policy with one faction on the Left, which has been admirably represented by The New Republic. That faction is searching for a foreign policy that is a) Not Bush and b) nonetheless muscular when it comes to humanitarian interventions. I note here that b) is a lot more evident than a). To mention one example, we intervened in Libya to stop atrocities that haven't happened yet. That makes all the sense in the world, but isn't it rather "preemptive"?

One passage in the speech was intended to restore the President's "not-Bush" credentials. I thought it was a remarkably honest statement of something that President Bill Clinton would never have been honest about.

The task that I assigned our forces -– to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone -– carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support. It's also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.

To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq's future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.

That is what a "not-Bush" foreign policy means. It doesn't mean that we won't fight preemptive wars against the dictator du jour, it just means that we will fight them from the air and on the cheap. Maybe cheaper is indeed better. President Bill Clinton's air war against Slobodan Milošević and his policy-free no-fly zone in Iraq are examples.

But there is real moral peril in the President's words when he explains why putting US boots on the ground would be a mistake.

The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.

It's one thing to try to cut the risk in blood and treasure. It's another thing to try to evade responsibility. These are the President's words and they are damning. He really thinks he can insert American military power in Libya while washing his hands of responsibility for "what comes next".

Responsibility is not just a buzzword. It's not just about who can blame us for this or that. Responsibility is real and it is about the consequences of our actions. See: karma. Suppose that the consequence of the President's actions is that Gaddafi's regime falls and a small cell of Al Qaida operatives gets control of Libya. The U.S. will have to deal with that consequence. It won't matter that we avoided any contact between American leather and Libyan sand. It won't matter that the President tried to pretend that someone else was in charge. We, the people of the United States, will have to deal with the consequences of Barack Obama's decisions and indecision.

That is what responsibility means. The emphasized line above didn't get in the President's speech by accident. Somebody and probably several somebodies thought it was a good idea. The President didn't object and he said it to the American people. One wonders whether Barack Obama has ever taken responsibility for anything.

The Incoherence of Greenergy

What we usually complain about when we complain about politics is hypocrisy. Politicians, parties, and interest groups piously defend principles in speech that they blithely contradict in action. More common and more interesting to me are cases where political actors are resolutely and genuinely committed to principles that are in manifest contradiction with one another. I can think of cases on both the left and the right. You will forgive me if I start with the left.

Here are three principles dear to the American Left:

1. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a threat to humanity and the ecosystem, so we should curtail burning fossil fuels and increase our investment in green energy sources.
2. Nuclear power is dangerous and bad. It ought to be phased out and certainly we should not expand nuclear power production.
3. All human societies should strive to improve the living conditions of the unprivileged masses, at least in part by taking away privileges from the wealthy minority.

Each of those principles is problematic in itself. Greenergy does not, at present, do anything to reduce carbon emissions. It probably makes them worse. Under the most optimistic assumptions, greenergy is unlike to make more than a small contribution to the world's power needs. More Americans have died in wind power accidents than in nuclear power accidents and far more Americans die from radiation in coal smoke than from radiation released by nuclear power plants.

Let's leave those points alone for the moment and consider the anti-synergy between the principles. Nuclear power is the one of the only major power technologies that does not result in greenhouse emissions. Expanding nuclear power is one of the few ways that we might seriously reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It is possible that safer kinds of nuclear power, such as thorium reactors, are possible; but the left is uninterested in that.

What is certain is that the left's animosity toward nuclear power works directly against its desire to reduce greenhouse emissions. Both principles are genuine and honest, they are just mutually exclusive.

Or they are mutually exclusive unless the left is willing to abandon the third principle. Curtailing both fossil fuel use and nuclear power would mean a dramatic reduction in the energy available to modern civilization. Twisty light bulbs will not make up the difference. What would be the social consequences of a major contraction of the energy supply?

No large human society (and perhaps no small one) has ever managed to abolish inequality. Modern nations have managed to adequately feed, clothe, and house most of their peoples. For the first time in human history, more people suffer from obesity than from hunger. The improvement in the lot of the least has come by means of economic expansion and that has been powered by the expanded production of energy.

What will happen if indeed energy production and economic growth are curtailed either nationally or across the globe? I can tell you what won't happen. We won't suddenly become unselfish. We won't suddenly see the virtues of restraint, cooperation, and altruism. The masses may rise in anger (probably) and regimes will fall (possibly), but what emerges from the rubble won't look like Woodstock (even on a bad day).

What will happen is what always happens during social and political collapse. Some combination of daring, utter ruthlessness, and luck will put someone in a position to feather his own nest and reward his muscle. The most will go to the few and the little that remains will be pawed over by the rest. At best this will look like the Great Depression amplified, viewed through a cabaret window. At worst it will look like The Road Warrior.

It isn't going to come to that because, short of some peak oil or day after scenario, we aren't going to cut back on energy production any time soon. That is just another way of saying that the left's love of greenergy is incoherent.

The Causes of Secession 150 Years Ago

One hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln had been President of the United States for 22 days. Jefferson Davis has been President of the Confederate States of America for about a month more than that.

April would hardly prove to be the cruelest month, but it would be the most cruelly portentous. On April 12^th, 1861, the attack on Fort Sumter would kick off the Civil War. Five days later Virginia would kick off the second wave of secession, which would bring the Confederacy to a total of eleven states.

The Washington Post has a fun "Five Myths" series going on. The latest installment is Five Myths about Why the South Seceded, by James W. Loewen. It's good. I'll summarize and add my two cents. The South didn't secede over state's rights (Myth #1). There was only issue of the time that involved a Federal intervention into state affairs and that was the fugitive slave issue. The South was in favor of intervention. Indeed, the central argument for secession was that the Federal Government had broken the original compact by not enforcing the Fugitive Slave Clause.

Tariffs and taxes were not the issue (#2). I would add that no other economic issue cleaved the nation. Most Southerners weren't slave owners but that doesn't mean they weren't pro-slavery (#3). A lot of them hoped to be, and those who didn't didn't want to lose their superior status to the slave population.

Lincoln didn't go to war to free the slaves (#4). No, he went to war to save the Union. But slavery was the root cause of the Union's peril, and that was the theme of Lincoln's Senate and Presidential campaigns.

Finally, there is no reason to believe that the South could not have long maintained slavery if it had managed to achieve independence (#5).

I would add the following: the immediate cause of the first wave of secession was the election of Abraham Lincoln. The Deep South participated in an election and then pulled out when they didn't like the result. That doesn't bolster their record as gentlemen.

The ultimate cause of the Civil War was the South's attachment to slavery and the North's refusal to allow the extension of that peculiar institution. What really destabilized the nation was the 1850 census. The South realized how much faster the rest of the country was growing. Southerners came to believe what Abraham Lincoln believed: that if the South was permanently hemmed in, slavery was indeed on a course to ultimate extinction. The mini-civil war in Kansas proved that even Judge Douglas' popular sovereignty couldn't save them. The only way to preserve slavery was to escape the Union.

The Civil War still sings in our blood and marrow. It is good to think about it.

Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Women

Affirmative Action is a policy of discriminating against applicants for jobs and college admissions on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex. The policy is defended on the grounds that it remedies past discrimination and, in the case of college admissions, that it promotes a more diverse student body.

Whatever one may think of that defense, it has been clear for decades that Affirmative Action culture is corrupting. It has encouraged colleges to routinely lie about their admissions criteria. Indeed, that was exactly what the Supreme Court recommended in Bakke. It has meant discrimination against Asian Americans.

I knew all that but I was not prepared for the story that Andrew Ferguson tells in the March 28^th issue of The Weekly Standard. It turns out that elite universities are discriminating in favor of male applicants against female applicants.

A raft of prominent schools, including Pomona, Tufts, the College of William and Mary, and Boston College, were accepting boys at a far higher rate than female applicants—boys with lower test scores and lower grade point averages than their female rivals. William and Mary, for instance, accepted 40 percent of the boys who applied in 2006 and only 26 percent of the girls.

That sort of takes one's breath away.

[In] 2011, 60 percent of college applicants will be women. Girls—sorry, fellas—are by any objective measure more attractive applicants than boys, with higher average GPAs and test scores. They have fewer behavioral problems. They write better application essays. They have a wider range of extracurricular interests. They clean up better for interviews.

On any fairly balanced scale, the acceptance rate for women at selective colleges should be far higher than for men. Instead it's the other way around.

Surprise! If progressive reforms in college admissions had any point at all, surely it would include an end to discrimination against women. If progressives are in charge of anything, surely they are in charge of elite university administrations. So what gives? Well…

Here is where the Legend of 60-40 enters in. Sixty-forty is the ratio of women to men at which, according to admissions lore, the "atmosphere" of a campus changes irreversibly and the school's reputation passes a point of no return. It becomes known as a "girls' school" and before you know it . . . there goes the neighborhood.

It turns out that the admissions staffs of elite colleges don't want their campuses to become known as "girl's schools". That is said to be bad for two reasons. One is that it becomes less attractive to women. Another is that it encourages predatory males to seek admission to a school where they expect to be outnumbered by women.

For this reason, the admissions dean of the College of William and Mary has been unapologetic about that thumb of his, which he has firmly planted on the boy side of the scale. "We are, after all, the College of William and Mary," he has often said, "not the College of Mary and Mary."

Whatever one may think about the motives, it seems clear that many elite universities are deliberately and routinely discriminating against women in favor of men for admissions. How pervasive this is is impossible to tell. Because of Affirmative Action culture, colleges have long been allowed and indeed encouraged to conceal the data.

You might think that Civil Rights and Feminist organizations would be up in arms, but you'd be wrong. They have been silent. You might think that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission would launch an investigation. You'd be wrong again. By a vote of four to three, the Commission shelved a proposal to gather and analyze the data.

Elite college administrations are progressive bastions. They breed incestuously with civil rights and feminist interest groups. Accordingly the former enjoy a license to discriminate which a military school like the Virginian Military Institute and, say, Wal Mart, do not enjoy.

That is corruption. It is the more or less legitimate child of Affirmative Action culture. If it's ok to discriminate against one person on the grounds of his color, sex, or ethnicity, so long as you are doing it for progressive purposes, and if it's ok to conceal what you are doing, then it is all too easy to give your friends a pass.

Of course, there is an easy way to end the corruption. Just say that it is never permissible to discriminate against anyone on the basis of race, creed, color, or gender. Conservatives have long been in favor of that. Liberals have stoutly and successfully opposed it.

Obama Launches War While on Spring Break

I never believed in Barack Obama but I never doubted that he existed. Suddenly, I am having doubts. This afternoon I listened to an NPR story by Ari Shapiro about the President's recent trip to Latin America. Here are some nuggets as best I can transcribe them.

Latin America's enthusiasm for the Obama family burst into view the minute the President and First Lady walked into Brasilia's Planalto Palace on Saturday to face the scrum of local and foreign press.

Said one voice "we have so many good things here: Samba, Cachaça, and" something. Samba is a dance and Cachaça is sugarcane booze. I couldn't figure out how to Google the third good thing about Brazil. Shapiro says:

It was all part of a relationship building spring break trip which had as much to do with business as pleasure.

A "relationship-building spring break"! Well, Barack wouldn't be the first American to go south for a little Cachaça during spring break.

I gather that the President talked a lot about jobs. Good enough. The President sees Latin America as buying power to help the U.S. economy and countries that have made a peaceful transition to democracy. Even better. Now: what was he trying to accomplish down there? Shapiro tells us.

Many Presidential foreign trips come with a to do list of deals and treaties that the U.S. hopes to secure, but that was never the focus of this tour. "I think it was pretty heavy on symbolism and light on substance…"

That quote was Michael Shifter, President of Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington. Shapiro goes on:

It's difficult to gauge success on a trip designed to build a relationship, as White House spokesman Josh Ernest acknowledged during the last stop in El Salvador: "The easiest way to measure the results of the trip are not the things you can measure immediately but certainly over months and years as opportunities expand in this region…"

Let's unpack that. The President's trip to Latin American accomplished nothing that can be measured now and we will scarcely know in the future what influence it had. That's about as close as one could come to saying that it accomplished nothing without actually saying it.

It accomplished nothing. Accomplishing anything of "substance" was "never the focus." It was all hat and no cattle. I think we have to acknowledge that NPR is not without a sense of responsibility. Yes, they put lipstick on the pig, but they still brought the pig out on stage. On its own merits, this trip looks like a very shallow pretence of foreign policy.

Of course, while Latin America was bursting with enthusiasm for the First Family, American cruise missiles were bursting in Libya. I wonder: did any American President ever launch a war while away on a junket? George W. Bush was ruthlessly (and with good reason) raked over the coals for going on vacation while Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans. Barack Obama ordered American forces into harm's way while on spring break.

Of course, the Libyan unpleasantness isn't war. It's a "kinetic military action." That's what the Administration now insists on calling it. See Byron York. As the President finally gets back to Washington, the "coalition" of nations involved in the Libyan adventure is falling apart. From the London Telegraph:

The US President "absolutely" ruled out a land invasion to oust Col Muammar Gaddafi and insisted that America would stand down from its leading military role within days. But uncertainty over who would take over military command deepened as France and Britain remained divided over how central Nato's role would be in the international coalition.

The Administration is promising that the U.S. will hand over military command of the Libyan operations within days. But to who? The Arab League? Germany is threatening to all but pull out of NATO if NATO takes command of the operation. Italy is threatening to deny use of its bases unless the leadership question is resolved. How can it be resolved? If anyone in the Obama Administration has a clue, they are keeping it a secret.

I am having really trouble believing that this empty man is really the President of the United States.

Obama Snubs Congress on Libya

The President has commenced military action against Gaddafi's Libya, an action that seems likely to be sustained for a number of weeks or more. How long it will be sustained is difficult to tell because no one seems to know what the policy is. One thing that is notable is that the President has made no attempt to get Congressional approval (note: meeting with leaders of Congress doesn't count).

Congress as a whole has been remarkably quiescent about this. The New York Times mentions it, vaguely, as an afterthought:

Mr. Obama should have brought Congress more into the loop on his decision, and must do so now.

A few Democrats in Congress have shown an admirable consistency. From The Politico:

Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Mike Capuano (Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Rob Andrews (N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) "all strongly raised objections to the constitutionality of the president's actions" during that call, said two Democratic lawmakers who took part.

Kucinich has gone so far as to recommend impeachment of the President but that, after all, is what a Dennis Kucinich is for.

Is President Obama under any obligation to seek Congressional approval for his military intervention? The answer is almost certainly yes, under the terms of the War Powers Act. However, that legislation has never worked very well and is routinely ignored both by Presidents and Congress.

Is the President under a constitutional obligation to seek Congress's approval, as the above named Democrats believe? There is little doubt that, in giving Congress the power to declare war, the Founder's believed they were limiting the power of the President to commit the nation to war. See The Founder's Constitution on Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11.

Unfortunately, that power was never explicitly defined. A declaration of war gives the government certain emergency powers. This includes the power to seize the property and assets of the enemy. It also includes the power to seize the assets of citizens, including commanding industries to produce war materials. It includes the power to suspend habeas corpus. Probably we do not want Congress to declare war unless a real national emergency has emerged.

If the President isn't required to get Congressional approval for military action, that doesn't mean he doesn't need it. Building support for his national security policies in Congress is a big part of his job. That is why modern presidents have almost always sought and received congressional approval for military actions. From the Volokh Conspiracy:

Virtually every major military action undertaken by the US since World War II has either been formally authorized by strong congressional majorities in advance (Vietnam, both Iraq Wars, Afghanistan), or enjoyed strong congressional support without a prior formal vote, though often there was an authorizing vote after the fact (Korea, both Lebanon interventions, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti).

The view that the President must obtain Congressional approval for such actions was affirmed by a freshman senator in 2007.

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

That, of course, was one Senator Barack Obama. It is difficult to see how this intervention satisfies that standard. Yet President Obama made no attempt to get Congressional approval and I predict that he will not do so. Perhaps that's ok. He did bend over backwards to get approval from the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council.

The reason that President Obama didn't submit his decision for Congressional review is that he would have to explain what he is doing. There's the rub. He doesn't know what he is doing. The New York Times editorial says as much. You can also consult the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, another Democrat in good standing for this view.

In the Oval Office, President Obama keeps busts of his heroes — Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. He should add one of Milton Berle, the so-called Mr. Television of the 1950s. Berle used to signal his studio audience to both continue and stop applauding by holding up one hand to wave them on and another to quiet them. This is the president's Libya policy in a nutshell.

Contrary to Kucinich, the problem with the President's policy in Libya is not that it's unconstitutional. The problem is that it is incoherent. Only the cruise missiles are real.

ps.  Note John Judis at The New Republic. 

I myself would have preferred Obama to have taken leadership several weeks ago in assembling a coalition, and building support, for intervention. If the current coalition had intervened two weeks ago, even with a no-fly zone (which opponents of intervention were claiming would take weeks to impose), Qaddafi would probably be in Caracas by now, and many lives would have been spared. Obama had to be shamed into taking leadership, as Bill Clinton was when French President Jacques Chirac, after a visit to Washington in June 1995, complained that the post of leader of the free world was “vacant.”

Moreover, Obama did the absolutely worst thing—he called for Qaddafi’s ouster, but did not do anything about it, and discouraged others from doing so.

We Are At War Again

We are at war with Libya. Our President, who ran for office promising to end two American wars in the Middle East, and reneged on both promises, has now launched us into a third. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just sayin'.

Let's review. Over the last several weeks the Administration has been at odds with itself over the civil war in Libya. At any one time, different views of our policy were stated by senior members of the Administration. The President said that Gaddafi must go, but made it rather clear that he wasn't going to do anything to make that happen. Then President Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead. France leads international alliance! All at once Obama climbs on board. But on board what, exactly?

The French, with a lot of help from Secretary of State Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, pushed a "no-fly zone" policy through the U.N. Security Council. Okay, so a coalition of nations would ground Gaddafi's air force.

The problem with the "no-fly zone" idea is that it sounds like something short of war. It isn't. It means not only shooting down Libyan military aircraft over Libyan airspace, which is surely an act of war. It also means destroying the regime's anti-aircraft defenses on the ground.

It is possible that that would have been enough, if it had been done weeks ago. Back then the rebels were in control of most of the eastern half of the country and Gaddafi was busy restoring control over Tripoli. A no fly zone then might have kept him locked in his capital, forced to sue for peace. Obama's dithering allowed the regime to get on its feet and drive the rebels into their last stronghold, Benghazi.

Now, to keep the rebellion alive, it isn't enough to ground Gaddafi's planes and helicopters. It is necessary to attack his tanks and other machines on the ground. That is what the coalition is doing. This is called mission creep.

There is enough of the neocon in me to want to believe in Obama's Libya policy, if only I could believe that he had a policy. Today someone lobbed a missile into Gaddafi's "residential complex". Apparently Gaddafi thinks he is a Kennedy. Whose missile was it? David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Barack Obama are among the suspects. Only Obama is denying it. Is Gaddafi himself a target? The Pentagon says no. Liam Fox, Britain's Defense Secretary says, well, yeah, sort of.

The U.S. is not, I repeat, not taking the lead here. Except right now, because we have the capacity to do so. Later other nations will take the lead. Ok.

What I don't get is what do we do next? The latest news has Gaddafi's forces retreating from Benghazi. Great. Now what? If, as President Obama has promised, not one American boot will touch one grain of Libyan sand, how are we going to make sure that Gaddafi goes? Surely we can't leave this wounded, snarling, bizarrely dressed monster in power. I have no idea what we intend. I wish I could believe that Obama does.

The Administration clearly believes that the U.S. should not take the lead in this business, even if we have most of the cruise missiles. We are told that it is ok to intervene because the Arab League said it was ok. Do any of our real enemies give a rat's ass about the Arab League? Is U.S. leadership really so toxic that we have to keep it in a lock box?

Or could it be that we are not taking leadership because, just right now, our President is utterly incapable of exercising leadership? Just asking.

Paul the Appalling Movie

If you are worried about spoilers, relax. In the first place, Paul is an utterly predictable parody of E.T. Only if you haven't seen the latter will anything come as a surprise and in that case you'd be missing the point. In the second place, Paul is one of the most offensive movies I have ever seen. If I am spoiling it for you, you probably deserve it.

Paul stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who also wrote the screenplay. These two limey clowns were responsible for Shaun of the Dead, a brilliant parody of the zombie genre. SOTD managed to lampoon the zombie movie while preserving some of its visceral force. That was an achievement. I was hoping for something at least as genuinely funny tonight. What I got was, at its best moments, E.T. with a foul mouth, a smoking joint in one hand, and an extended middle finger in the other. I also got something much uglier.

Pegg and Frost play two comic book nerds on a dream vacation in America. They attend a Sci-Fi convention in San Diego and then set out in a rented RV for a tour of our most famous UFO sites. On the way they pick up Paul: a real live Alien escaped from Area 51 who has managed to phone home. He needs to get to a secret spot (Devils Tower) where he can be picked up by his homies. They also pick up a girl. Pegg's Graeme Willy connects with her. They are pursued by a trio of men in black, commanded by Sigourney Weaver.

Paul is a standard issue Area 51 alien: he has a large cranium tear drop head and stands about four feet tall. He has the power to resurrect the dead. In one scene he brings a dead bird to life and then promptly eats it. That would be inventive if it weren't stolen from Shrek. You would have to be asleep not to guess, at that moment, that Paul would use that same power to save one of the characters later. You would be sound asleep if you didn't expect that, at the end, a flying saucer would show up to take Paul home.

All that was mildly entertaining and very funny in spots, if not quite funny enough. Unfortunately, the writers weren't as interested in being funny as they were in expressing their utter contempt for America in general and Christians in particular.

In a café devoted to UFO culture, our heroes encounter two belligerent, homophobic rednecks. A bit down the road they encounter a sheriff who, upon learning they are English, expresses his dismay that British cops don't carry guns. "How can they shoot people?" he asks, disdainfully. That's what Pegg and Frost think of America. Just in case we don't get the point, we see an image of George Bush (41) on their laptop with a derisive slogan attached.

When our heroes pick up the girl, she is managing an RV park. She is wearing a t-shirt depicting Jesus shooting Darwin. She believes the earth is 4,000 years old and cannot believe in other worlds. She is blind in one eye. Subsequent dialogue makes it clear that she and her Bible toting, gun wielding father are retrograde, evolutionarily slow creatures. The comic nerds are, of course, more advanced. E.T., foul mouthed and stoned, is where evolution is going. In short order extraterrestrial Paul cures her. Her blind eye is restored. She immediately learns how to weave profanity into everything she says and she wants to have lots of sex. At the end she declares she has been liberated. That's progress!

Paul is a work of left wing bigotry. Young Earthers, and probably all Christians, aren't just wrong: they are stunted people. Probably half of Americans are right wing, Bible besotted, gun clinging Neanderthals. This message is delivered throughout the movie and reemphasized at its end. If this movie had put fundamentalist Muslims in place of fundamentalist Christians, Pegg and Frost would be on trial in Europe.

I will confess that this movie offended me for personal reasons. I am a Darwinist by training and inclination. I am a professor of political science and philosophy and I teach Darwin's theory in both contexts. I have many students who are resistant to evolutionary theory for religious reasons. I occasionally have students who believe in literal or even young Earth versions of Biblical faith.

It's my job to respect their persons and their beliefs. In fact, that isn't hard. I know for a fact that even the Biblical literalists are frequently both intelligent and admirable people. They have to be. The larger culture around them keeps telling them they are inferior and that they ought to get with the program. They manage to say no to power, which is something that liberals claim to admire but don't.

I try to show my students that Biblical Religion and Darwinian theory are not mutually exclusive. I try to show them that, even if they can't accept the evolutionary account of human origins, they can still see natural selection at work in creation and use Darwin's theory at least in an instrumental way.

And then along comes a movie that tells them that they are idiots. Their pastors have been telling them that evolutionary theory is just another religion and along come Pegg and Frost to shout that anyone who does not believe in evolution is a retarded heretic.

I didn't like this movie.

Arizona's SB1070

In the comments section of my post on Peter King’s hearings on Radical Islam, commenters Lynn, Becky and Jimi challenge fellow commenter BillW on his statements regarding SB1070. Bill sees the law as racially discriminatory. Indeed, he sees it as a piece of legislation that, “requires people to be investigated because of their 'Mexican-ness'”. Lynn argues that the law only targets those who have already committed crimes and are suspected of being illegal. Bill argues that this does not justify targeting specific races. Becky joins the fray, arguing that the Arizona laws include measures “to apply not just to one particular ethnicity, but to illegal immigrants in general.” Jimi challenges us to actually read the bill.

I promised to weigh in on the topic, and mean to deliver on that promise, but, through researching, I have found that I know a great deal less about the topic than I thought I did. I have also found most of my attempts to discuss the issue very long-winded. So instead of focusing on the issue of illegal immigration as a whole, I will try to limit myself to discussing the Arizona laws. I followed Jimi’s advice and decided to read through the bill. The text of SB1070s can be found here:

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

I have read the bill over a number of times and have seen nothing in it that singles out a particular race. I even did a text search for “Mexican” and “Mexico” just in case, but I still came up with nothing.  So I have to side with Team Becky-Lynn-Jimi to some degree. The law seems to apply to people of every ethnicity.

However, I can sympathize with Bill’s view, because one can see how such a law might be abused. Bill is certainly not alone in his concern. Randal C. Archibold, writing for The New York Times, for instance, notes that many police groups are worried about how the law would be applied. Some condemned, arguing that it could lead to “racial and ethnic profiling.” Bill makes the same argument when he says:

“The law as written by the Arizona legislature and signed by the governor requires all public employees to demand proof of citizenship from anyone they think might be an illegal immigrant. The primary basis for thinking someone might be an illegal immigrant is their appearance.”

Bill is, I think, right to be concerned about this sort of application. But nothing in the law directs employees to consider appearance, and, in fact, the one mention SB1070 makes of race is this, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”

Therefore, unless I have missed something (and as anyone who has followed my posts knows, that happens a lot), the law does not appear to be either racist or unconstitutional. But it certainly could be easily abused and I think Bill is right to keep his eyes open.

As a final note: I also agree with Bill’s observation that the immigration problem in America is much more complex than either giving amnesty or deporting every alien. Because I would not exist if America had not been such a melting pot, I have been largely in favor of immigration – especially when those who enter America are fleeing dangerous countries. Mexico certainly is one of these. In the past, I sometimes saw Mexican immigrants as something akin to Cuban asylum seekers and have only recently (and very reluctantly) come to believe in stronger border protection. This is largely due to problems with crime involving illegal immigrants (sometimes very brutal) and economics (See California’s health system). I hope to have more time to elaborate on these things, but for now, I  thought I should be honest about my position and biases. Thank you all for your comments and insights. You have given me a good deal to think about.

Islam, the Irish, and Peter King

I suspect that some American Muslims, particularly young men, may be uniquely susceptible to recruitment by international terrorist networks. I suspect that the larger American Muslim community will be very unsympathetic to such activities. Whether my suspicions are correct or not is a reasonable question.

For that reason, I see nothing wrong with the House Committee on Homeland Security's hearing entitled: "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." If organized cells of militant Islamists were developing in America, then we would damn well need to know about it. I emphasize the "if" for I very much doubt that they are, in any meaningful sense.

I do see something egregiously awkward in the fact that New York Republican Peter King is conducting these hearings. Here is a bit from Scott Shane's remarkable report in the New York Times:

Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.

"We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry," Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, "If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it."

As Mr. King, a Republican, rose as a Long Island politician in the 1980s, benefiting from strong Irish-American support, the I.R.A. was carrying out a bloody campaign of bombing and sniping, targeting the British Army, Protestant paramilitaries and sometimes pubs and other civilian gathering spots. His statements, along with his close ties to key figures in the military and political wings of the I.R.A., drew the attention of British and American authorities.

A judge in Belfast threw him out of an I.R.A. murder trial, calling him an "obvious collaborator," said Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist and author of "A Secret History of the I.R.A." In 1984, Mr. King complained that the Secret Service had investigated him as a "security risk," Mr. Moloney said.

Now I am in an unusual position here. I can speak, in that pious and sexy way that is popular, about "my people." My mother's maiden name was Daugherty. Her father was your standard issue Irish American Mick. My last name is French; but it has an Irish version that may have been the original version: Bhlainséir. Blanchardstown is suburb of Dublin.

Shane points out the irony of Representative King's presence. The chairman of a hearing on domestic Islamic terrorism was himself a terrorist sympathizer if not, indeed, a collaborator. The IRA was as nasty a gaggle of cutthroats as ever there was. Peter King's support for them, his willingness to absolve them of their crimes, his refusal now to admit that he was wrong, are all deplorable. They make him a very poor choice for the roll that he has come to play.

On the other hand, he offers us a very useful comparison. The Irish Republican Army had deep roots among my people. Rep. King absolves himself by saying that the IRA was never at war with the U.S. That's right, but the U.S. and Britain have long been staunch allies. If the IRA never conducted operations against targets in the U.S. they were following a well worn principle: "don't shit where you eat." A lot of my people were funding the IRA.

Of course the vast majority of Irish Americans was uninterested in and would have been unsympathetic to the IRA, if they had thought about it. I expect that Muslim Americans will follow suit. It's the American way.

However, a lot of Americans did support the IRA and they were pretty much all of them Irish. I don't know if Congress ever held hearings on this, but they would have certainly been right to do so. American support for the IRA was morally if not legally criminal and it was a matter of national interest.

Many years ago I was in an Irish bar listening to hours of wonderful Celtic music on St. Patty's day. I was with a table of grad students. Late in the evening one of the bands played several IRA songs (Black and Tan, etc.). After the third such number all of the folks at my table, myself included, raised our glasses and shouted "God Save The Queen!" Fortunately, we were among California Irish and not Chicago Irish, so I live to tell the tale. There is a lot of tale there worth telling.

Hearings on Radical Islam Should Make Americans Uneasy

For about a week I have wanted to write something about the hearings on radical Islam. They make me uneasy for a number of reasons. First, it would not take much of a stretch to see this happening to members of other religions. As a conservative Christian, that makes me nervous. If Congress can hold radical Muslim hearings, it can certainly hold radical Christian hearings. Then, might I be considered a radical? It is a possibility.

But that is only one problem. There’s also the question of constitutionality. Is it really constitutional for Congress to single out one religion for scrutiny? I suppose it could be, so long as that scrutiny did not prevent the free-exercise of religion. But suppose the hearings make some Muslims afraid to practice their religion. And what if the hearings go from scrutiny to action? What good is a hearing if there is no possibility of it leading to something?

And then there is history. Once we singled out Japanese Americans. Because we were afraid that they might be aiding our enemies in World War II, we trampled on their rights, stripped them of their dignity and robbed them of their possessions. This is to our shame and, in more recent times, we have recognized this, making apologies and in some cases, paying reparations. But are we sincerely sorry? And if we are – will it stop us from behaving the same way again? Is it possible that we might do the same thing to Muslim Americans?

I hope the answer is no. And perhaps the hearings are harmless. Certainly a hearing is not the same thing as an internment camp. But I think such hearings should make us uneasy. Having said all that, I will confess that I hesitated before posting this. Right as I was about to sit down to write, I happened to see an article about a brutal murder in Itamar. The story appears in several publications, but the following is what appeared in The Jerusalem Post:

Ruth Fogel was in the bathroom when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.

The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bathroom. With both parents and the newborn dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bedroom where Ruth and Udi’s sons Yoav (11) and Elad (four) were sleeping. They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats.

If this were not heartbreaking enough, the story goes on to describe how the Fogel’s 12-year-old daughter found her two-year old brother screaming for his dead parents to wake up.

What made the story even more disturbing to me was that the scene was that one of the rooms in which these murders took place was not unlike my daughter’s room. There were colorful pillows arranged near what appeared to be a child’s bed. And someone had left a little doll on the floor – just as my daughter often does.  Were it not for the bloodstains, the scene might have been heartwarming. But with the bloodstains it was terrifying. So, for a second I wondered if I was right to be uneasy. Maybe, I thought, the right thing to do would be to root out this sort of thing before it happened.

But then I remembered something that happened around 9/11. After the attacks, someone vandalized the office of a middle-eastern professor on the campus of my university. The professor was justifiably upset and I remember how sorry and ashamed I was that it had happened. I have only seen him on a handful of occasions. On one these, he was praising a Christian student for her high scores on a mathematics exam. On another, he was attending a small wedding in a Christian church. The bride had a Jewish last name. It would be hard to accuse such a person of being radical or intolerant. The idea of someone such as this man being persecuted merely because of his name or heritage still disturbs me.

Therefore, though I do fear the sort of terror inflicted on the Fogel family, I find it hard to support Peter King. He may have the best intentions, but I am afraid that if we begin to try to paint Muslims in America with too broad a brush we may end up doing something that will grieve us forever.

Obama Goes Bush on Private Manning

I notice that it's not only the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Republic that have launched withering critiques of President Obama recently. I add my friend and esteemed blogosphere neighbor Cory Heidelberger.

President Obama's Defense Department is subjecting Private Bradley Manning, American citizen and soldier, to prolonged forced nudity and sleep deprivation. This treatment, for a man awaiting trial for the capital offense of revealing what our government actually says and does, is easily deemed an Orwellian disgrace, if not a violation of fundamental human rights, if not outright torture.

I am not sure that prolonged nudity and sleep deprivation necessarily constitute torture. In fact, that sounds a lot like Bill Clinton's stint as governor of Arkansas. I am sure that Manning's citizen-soldier status does not help build sympathy in this case and that he is not, in fact, facing trial for "the capital offense of revealing what our government actually says and does."

Manning is a traitor. He is so precisely because he is a citizen and solider. He is facing trial for illegally revealing top secret material. This is a grave offense. Manning could not know for certain to whom he was delivering the stolen material. Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange might well have been an agent of some hostile power like Iran, or Al Qaeda. The information might have been used to do serious damage to American interests and security. I gather that Manning will not be facing the death penalty, but that would not have been inappropriate.

Manning's crime was also an offense against the international system of diplomacy. Diplomats must be able to speak freely with one another behind closed doors. In some cases, that may make the difference between peace and war. Such meetings require confidentiality. Manning and Assange struck a blow against that system and so threatened pretty much everyone everywhere.

Private Manning has apparently been forced to sleep naked, according to the New York Times. The explanation is that the brig commander was concerned that Manning might try to hang himself with his own underwear. At least one pundit has had fun with this suggestion, but it is hardly nonsense. Suicide by hanging does not require a rope and seven feet of space. All it requires is a little pressure on the right parts of the neck. Private Manning is sleeping naked but not uncovered. He is allowed two blankets.

On the other hand, it is not so clear that this treatment is necessary and it's hard not to think that it may have the aim, if not of driving him crazy, at least of softening him up to the point that he is willing to testify against Mr. Assange. That comes close enough to torture and to that degree I concur with Mr. Justice Heidelberger.

As Cory notes, State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley was fired for publicly criticizing the military's treatment of Manning. That's actually a good sign. At least someone in the Administration is capable of exercising authority.

It probably wasn't the President. Jake Tapper has this at ABC News:

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said this week that the treatment of Private Bradley Manning by the Pentagon is "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid."

Asked by ABC News if he agreed with that, President Obama said Friday that he'd "asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards."

Pentagon officials, he said, "assure me that they are. I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well."

Cory and other critics of the Military in this case can interpret this in two ways. One is that the President made a decision: he deliberately endorsed the Military's conduct here. That is what Cory thinks. Bush has "snuck back into the White House." Another way to look at it is that President pretty much does what most of the people around him tell him to do. That's my guess, as he here merely repeats the Military's position. Take your pick. Either way, the President alone is responsible.

I would note one more thing. When Bush authorized the waterboarding of three Al Qaeda prisoners, his aim was to keep Al Qaeda from murdering more Americans. Assuming that Private Manning is indeed being tortured, with the President's approval, Obama's aim is to nail an Australian journalist.

The Where’s Waldo President Does Libya

There is a good argument to be made against U.S. intervention in Libya. George Will has made it. There is a good argument to be made for intervention. Leon Wieseltier has made it in the New Republic. I am ashamed to confess that I am not sure what I would do if I had to make the call. Fortunately, I don't.

Unfortunately Barack Obama does and he ain't. If we have learned nothing else about the Obama Administration, it is that it has no center. If you don't believe me, ask the New York Times for heaven's sake!

The Obama administration is throwing out so many conflicting messages on Libya that they are blunting any potential pressure on the Libyan regime and weakening American credibility. It's dangerous to make threats if you're not prepared to follow through. All of the public hand-wringing has made it even worse.

Yes. On any one day the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the President are talking at odds with one another. Worse, the Administration's policy, if one can call it that, is clearly at odds with itself. From the Washington Post:

"WE HAVE ALREADY engineered the most rapid and forceful set of sanctions that have ever been applied internationally," President Obama boasted last week in one of his rare public statements about Libya…

It's beginning to look as if what Mr. Obama has "engineered" is a situation in which the United States and its closest allies have declared that a dictator must go "as quickly as possible" - and have not only constrained themselves from ensuring that outcome but are actively hindering it by refusing to provide arms to the opposition. So far the United States has not even recognized the opposition administration set up in Benghazi - even though the White House has said repeatedly that Mr. Gaddafi's regime is no longer legitimate.

Mr. Obama, who skipped a meeting of his top aides on Libya Wednesday, may hope that the Libyan rebels will defeat the Gaddafi forces without outside help - or that other Western governments will provide the leadership that he is shunning.

Well, one can always hope. Hope is easy, whereas decision and action are, for this President at least, impossible. Ruth Marcus calls his Administration the "where's Waldo presidency."

For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action - unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.

Yes. The President has no policy to address the fiscal crisis facing America. He has no policy on entitlement reform. He has nothing resembling a coherent energy policy. These things will matter a lot in the future. Right now people are dying in Libya. Our President has simultaneously encouraged them to fight, declared that Qaddafi must go, and effectively ensured that Qaddafi can do whatever he needs to do to keep power. The vacuous executive radiates out through his administration to the world community. The French have tried to provide leadership, but when the President of the United States is MIA, that is hopeless.

To say that this is a "where's Waldo Presidency" is unfair to Waldo. Waldo was always somewhere in the picture.

Tsunamis, Climate Change and Pie

Nearly five years ago my husband (then fiancé) and I were sitting in a 50s style diner in San Francisco, sipping hot chocolates and waiting for slices of pie that never arrived.  Our waiter appeared five or ten minutes later to tell us to leave the café at once. At first, his speech was so hurried that I couldn’t make out what he was trying to tell us, but eventually I made out a word – “Tsunami.” Apparently, a friend had called him to tell him that San Francisco was under a Tsunami warning.

 It was only after we had left the café that I began to understand why our waiter was so afraid. Tsunamis arrive within seconds. There is little time to prepare. We were faced with a difficult choice – did we attempt to walk back to our vehicle, which was at a lower elevation and closer to the coast, or did we attempt to move upward and away from the water? On foot, we would not be able to travel very far, but what if the tsunami hit before we made it to our vehicle – or worse yet, what if it hit while we were in it and trapped us inside? I began to feel very helpless.

As it turned out, no tsunami hit San Francisco that day, but for a few minutes, I knew real fear. So when news of the devastation in Japan hit, I was horrified. Not only because Japan was suffering so greatly, but because there seems to be so little anyone can do to warn or help victims of this sort of disaster.

And I suppose it gives those of us who are skeptical about man-made climate change some insight into what it is that those who are fearful of climate change are trying to prevent. It’s hard to feel helpless and natural, I think, to want to try to make problems manageable. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have stopped the Tsunami by installing low flush toilets and driving Leafs (Leaves?) and Priuses about?

Few seem to be suggesting that Japan’s earthquake was due to global warming, but many are suggesting that others could be. One of the most interesting comments on the subject comes from Professor Bill McGuire of University College London, who claims that if man-made CO2 emmisions aren’t stabilized within five years things like Tsunamis won’t be as notable.  This, he says is because “things would be so bad that the odd tsunami or eruption won't make much difference."

But what makes me skeptical about these things is the way in which they are presented. Even those who have begun to link tsunamis to climate change often feel the need to specify that there isn’t yet enough evidence to back up all their claims (and I appreciate their honesty).

For instance, writers for Mongabay (which bills itself as “one of the world's most popular environmental science and conservation news sites”), write that the earthquake that caused Japan’s tsunami might have been caused by climate change but that “It’s unlikely that scientists will be able to provide a definitive answer anytime soon.” Meawhile, Mcguire and company still feel obliged to point out that many of their findings “still amounted only to hypotheses.” Still, it would be nice to think that we had a significant amount of control over things like tsunamis. And maybe, just in case, I’ll turn the lights off early tonight.

Body and Soul

The central problem in modern philosophy is the mind/body problem. What exactly is the mind and how is it related to (and how does it interact with, if indeed it does interact with) the physical body?

On this question, most modern philosophers, not to mention most scientists, part company with most everyone else. Popular culture (or folk wisdom as academic philosophers derisively call it) is very fond of substance dualism. The body is physical and material. The mind is non-physical and immaterial. Most modern Christians, at least in the developed world, accept the Walt Disney interpretation. The mind is some tethered to the body during life, and floats free in a vaporous (but usually clothed) form at the last moment.

This view has its advantages. It gives hope for the afterlife in the face of the scandalous fact that, so far as we can establish, no one's physical body has ever gone anywhere after death except into dust. It explains ghosts. It explains the fact that human consciousness can be real yet immeasurable and invisible.

There are dualist philosophers, but unfortunately for their theory they have never been able to explain what a non-physical, immaterial substance might be or how it could interact with physical matter.

This may be one of the rare cases where science will decide the issue. Split brain patients have the corpus callosum cut. This is the thick cable that allows the two halves of the brain to communicate. Experiments have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that, once the corpus callosum is severed, the two halves of the brain are unable to communicate with each other. If the patient sees an object with his right eye alone, he can name it. That's because the information is transferred to his left brain, where the language center is located. If he sees the object only with his left eye he cannot name it, but he can draw it. That's because his right hemisphere lacks the language module but does have modules for processing visual images.

This seems to me to be devastating for dualism. If there was a non-physical locus of consciousness that receives information from the brain (both hemispheres) and body and commanded the same, shouldn't that consciousness be able to relay information from one hemisphere to the other? It can't. The split brain patient is, for all functional purposes, two people. If the non-physical mind can be split in two by cutting a trunk of nerves, in what meaningful sense is it non-physical?

Colin McGinn, writing in The New York Review of Books, has more evidence.

We begin with phantom limbs—the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body. Such limbs can arrange themselves intransigently into painful positions. The doctor touches the patient's body in different parts with a cotton swab, eliciting normal responses; then he touches the patient's face and elicits sensations in the patient's phantom hand, finding an entire map of the absent hand on the patient's face. Why? Because in the strip of cortex called the postcentral gyrus the areas that deal with nerve inputs from the hand and face happen to be adjacent, so that in the case of amputation some sort of neighborly cross-activation occurs—the facial inputs spill over to the area that maps the phantom hand.

Human consciousness, otherwise known as the mind, is not some metaphysical addition to the physical brain anymore than a landscape is something over and above the hills, trees, meadows, and roads of which it is constituted.

Lest you think that I am arguing for base materialism, let me set the record straight. Dualism fears for the soul and tries to save it by detaching it from the physical world. Accordingly the physical world is then viewed as dead and inert in any important sense. I think that a big mistake was made when modern philosophers substituted the word "mind" for the better word "soul".

Soul is the Anglo Saxon equivalent of the Latin anima and the Greek psyche. Aristotle's psyche was the information and energy that informed and energized the physical matter of the body. You can't have form without something (material) that is formed and so you can't have soul without a body. Just as certain, you can't have a living, breathing body without the information and energy that is the soul.

Modern neuroscience is coming to understand this. Every living thing has what Aristotle called psyche. If ghosts do not float free of matter, neither is matter always dead. That human consciousness can emerge from a physical brain tells us that matter is much more alive, at least potentially, than materialist science had once imagined. For those who are interested in such things, we are living in very interesting times.

Democracy in Wisconsin

Governor Scott Walker has won his legislative battle with Wisconsin Democrats and protesters. By stripping out the spending provisions from his controversial bill, the GOP could pass it without the missing Senate Democrats. The bill will eliminate most collective bargaining for most of Wisconsin's public employees.

Republicans complained bitterly about the Badger 14, the Wisconsin Senators who fled the state in order to deny Republicans a quorum. Conservatives have been calling the 14 Senators fleebaggers, which is several kinds of clever. I have defended the Badger 14 and I do so here again. Fleeing or hiding to prevent a quorum is in fact a form of filibuster which has been used by both parties on the state and national levels. If you think that the filibuster in the U.S. Senate is legitimate, and I do, you can't have much of an issue with fleebagging.

Democrats may have a better cause for complaint. From Powerline:

The Republicans stripped the collective bargaining provisions out of the budget bill in a conference committee. Democrats are howling that the move was illegal because Wisconsin's open meeting law requires some public bodies to give 24 hours notice before they meet. Would an open meeting law apply to a legislative conference committee?

Powerline provides the language of the open meeting law and it basically says the law applies to the State Legislature and its committees except when it doesn't.

There may be a legal issue here but it is certainly a technicality. Open meetings laws are intended keep government committees from doing things in the dark. This was hardly done in the dark. The strategy has been openly discussed for weeks and the action has been national news for longer.

Do you think that Wisconsin Republicans played fast and loose with the rules here? Well, what did you think when U.S. House Democrats "deemed" a bill to have passed the Senate when it didn't, in order to get Health Care reform around the roadblock known as Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts? That was playing fast and loose with the Constitution.

These two stories are in fact the same story. Governor Scott Walker won in Wisconsin because he and his party won big last November. He isn't polling so well right now, and that may have consequences in the future. Wisconsin Democrats are raising a lot of bucks from this controversy. The only expression of public opinion that really counts, however, is what happens during an election.

Why did Republicans do so well in last year's election? Public opinion began to swing decisively against Democrats just at the time when they began to push their health care legislation. This fact was observable in not only in public opinion polling but in the polls that count: the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and the Senate election in Massachusetts. Democrats decided to floor the pedal on the convertible and went off the cliff last November.

What happened in Wisconsin is the consequence of what happened in polling places across that state and across the nation. Health care reform gave the U.S. House of Representatives and Wisconsin to the Republicans. Right now it looks likely to give them the U.S. Senate next year. Health care reform resulted in an end to collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin and Ohio.

That is democracy. Of course the winds may change for Governor Walker and other Republicans nationally. Unfortunately for Democrats, the national fiscal climate is not favorable to their passions. The pressure of public debt is settling down on all the aspirations of government. Nothing that either party does in the near future is likely to change this.

ps.  I stand (modestly) corrected on the "public notice" issue in Wisconsin.  The issue is a canard.  As I noted, public meetings are required by the open meetings law except where they aren't.  They aren't when the law conflicts with any rule of the legislature.  The Volokh Conspiracy (may it be praised) explains the Senate rule under which the action was taken. 

NPR joins ACORN as Schiller and Schiller get O’Keefed

Perhaps the best thing about NPR's current embarrassment is that, pretty soon now, no one will have to explain anymore that Vivian Schiller and Ron Schiller are neither married nor related. V. Schiller was, until today, the CEO of NPR. R. Schiller was, until recently, President of the NPR Foundation. He resigned to take a job at the Aspen Institute but that job is now toast as well.

Schiller and Schiller got sacked after they got O'Keefed. In case you haven't heard, James O'Keefe, the young gotcha film maker who exposed the dubious culture of ACORN, pulled a similar trick on NPR. From the Daily Caller:

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe, [Ron] Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR's director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give up to $5 million to NPR because, "the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere."

Both the edited version (above) and an unedited version of the video are available online. Three things that happen on the video did Schiller and Schiller in.

First, R. S. doesn't seem the least bit disturbed that he is talking to a front for the Muslim brotherhood, the mission of which is "to spread acceptance of Sharia across the world", nor that one of his hosts talks about "a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR." Quotes from Powerline.

Second, R. S. says a lot of very nasty things about Republicans in general and Tea Party people in particular. From the Daily Caller:

The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been "hijacked by this group." The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, "the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people." Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

Third, R. S. says that NPR would be better off without federal funding at the very moment that NPR is fighting to keep its federal funding.

Conservatives are all over the first item, but I find it underwhelming. Maybe R. Schiller shouldn't have accepted the dinner invitation until the MEAC was better vetted, but he wasn't in a position at that table to do the vetting. As for not objecting when their hosts said objectionable things, I'm sorry but that is what fund raisers are supposed to do. You aren't there to educated or correct a potential donor. Remember what was said later, when your organization has to decide whether to accept the donation.

The second item is much more troubling for what it says about the culture of NPR executives. R. Schiller is deeply contemptuous of about half of all Americans. The Tea Party people are White, middle-America gun-toting, seriously racist people." Like the President's infamous remark about "clinging" to guns and religion, this is apparently what a lot of liberals say when they think there is nobody in the room except them. It is what R. Schiller really thinks and I am guessing it is what V. Schiller thinks. R.S., to be sure, thinks of himself as part of a small elite surrounded by, well…

Schiller decried U.S. media coverage of Egypt's uprising against former dictator Hosni Mubarak, especially talk of the Muslim Brotherhood's influence on the protests and future of Egypt. Schiller said that is what he is "most disappointed by in this country, which is that the educated, so-called elite in this country is too small a percentage of the population, so that you have this very large un-educated part of the population that carries these ideas."

Is that what most of the executives at NPR think about most of their fellow Americans? That question is one that neither Schiller could survive as NPR executives. As for the new job that is no longer open to R. Schiller, I note that the Aspen Institute is devoted to "open-minded dialogue."

Obama Does Bush On GTMO

When the Nobel Committee tried to explain its existentially inexplicable decision to award the Peace Prize to President Barack Obama in 2009, one of the things they mentioned was the President's promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The absurdity and corruption of the award was fully evident at the time. The problem with awarded noble promises with Noble prizes has been realized now. From the Washington Post:

President Barack Obama reversed course Monday and ordered a resumption of military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making his once ironclad promise to close the isolated prison look even more distant.

That's two major promises broken, in case you're counting: the promise to close GTMO and the promise to try detainees in civilian courts. Obama will restart the military tribunals originally planned by the Bush Administration.

The President's executive order seems to break a third promise, or so I would think if I on the President's left. Again from the WaPo:

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security.

The phrase "indefinite detention" is not without force. It means that some detainees will be held indefinitely without trial. I would wonder, if I were one of those people who cheered when candidate Obama promised to correct the inequities of the Bush Administration, who won in 2008. Dana Milbank concludes that it was Bush, and Bush wasn't even running.

Not only had he revoked his pledge to close Gitmo within a year, but he also had contradicted his claim that a detention policy "can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone." His executive order did exactly what he said must not be done, in a style favored by his predecessor in the Oval Office.

"This detention without trial - what's different from the Bush administration?" a French reporter from Le Monde asked on the call.

The WaPo editorial is rhetorically even handed when it comes to blame.

At the start of his administration, Mr. Obama called for the prison's closure. Two years later, that goal appears as far out of reach as ever, thanks largely to unconscionable congressional restrictions that have hampered his ability to prosecute or transfer detainees. Mr. Obama shares in the blame for not fighting aggressively to reverse this regrettable intrusion.

Of course, it is the President's job to make policy on such matters and for two years his party commanded both houses of Congress. Perhaps one should not make Noble Prize-winning promises unless one is sure of one's own commitment and one's power to deliver. President Obama never produced a coherent plan for dealing with the GTMO detainees and so he has had to fall back to Bush Administration policy.

Perhaps the President didn't really invest himself in the policy process, as if he were the sort of person who could fail to do that. Perhaps the awful truth is that Bush got it right and there is no viable alternative. The two aren't mutually exclusive. I am sure of the one and inclined toward the other.

Militant Islam in general and terrorism in particular present terrible problems that neither ordinary criminal law nor military justice are well equipped to deal with. What does a Commander in Chief do with someone who was seized in circumstances not conducive to the gathering of evidence but whom, the President thinks, is very certain to work murderous mischief against the United States if ever he is released? I know! You don't release him. Period. If you do release him, perhaps at the request of some court, and he goes on to kill a lot of kids playing soccer and the American people come to understand exactly what happened, that might not be conducive to any future respect on the part of the latter toward civil liberties or human rights.

The American left excoriated the Bush Administration for its anti-terrorism policy and especially for its GTMO policy. It appears that Bush got it mostly right. If you don't believe me, ask his successor.

Clean, Green, & Insane

There is nothing like a fiscal crisis to expose fiscal insanity. I have noted the detachment from reality that is evident in President Obama's push for high-speed rail. His fondness for the technology is apparently untouched by the plain fact that high-speed rail has been tried in dozens of countries and has been a disaster.

Much the same is true of the President's fondness for "green energy". The Los Angeles Times has devastating report on one really big attempt to reap the benefits of green technologies in California.

Larry Eisenberg had a vision. "Amazing," he called it. "Spectacular." The Los Angeles Community College District would become a paragon of clean energy. By generating solar, wind and geothermal power, the district would supply all its electricity needs. Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront.

There is the dream: energy self-sufficiency achieved with green technologies, saving money and saving the planet at the same time. The problem, of course, with things that sound too good to be true is that they aren't true.

As head of a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the college campuses, Eisenberg commanded attention. But his plan for energy independence was seriously flawed.

He overestimated how much power the colleges could generate. He underestimated the cost. And he poured millions of dollars into designs for projects that proved so impractical or unpopular they were never built.

These and other blunders cost nearly $10 million that could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities, a Times investigation found.

I confess that I am somewhat in awe of "a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the [Los Angeles Community College] campuses." That's about two billion dollars more than this year's budget for the entire state government of South Dakota. It gives you some idea why California so deep in the fiscal hole.

What is so astonishing about the story is how utterly insane Eisenberg's vision was.

For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.

Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.

"More expensive" sounds relatively benign. In fact, it would have been ruinously expensive.

No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills. An engineering consultant put the cost far higher: $1.9 billion.

That's five kinds of crackers. To see the full extent of Eisenberg's insanity, you will have to read the article. What is both disturbing and revealing is that he managed to do enough mischief so far to cost the taxpayers of California and the rest of the United States (federal subsidies are involved) over ten million.

The folks in charge of all that money put Eisenberg in charge. Why? Because he told them what they wanted to hear. Green, clean, energy is a pretty idea. Energy self-sufficiency is another. Who wouldn't want to believe that we can clean up the air, stop global warming, and have money left over to fund public employee pensions?

Unfortunately, both ideas are fictions. Neither wind nor solar power, nor, I dare say, biofuels, are cost effective. All of them require that vast spaces covered with panels, wind towers, or corn, to generate significant amounts of energy. Each of them comes with its own brand of environmental damage.

California can no longer afford such ruinous nonsense as the dreams of Larry Eisenberg. Neither can the United States. One can only hope that the President is a little less Eisenbergian than he sometimes appears.

Dakotas Rank High in Gallup “Well Being” index

Gallup has released its "Well-being Index". There is some rather good news for the Dakotas. North Dakota ranks third best, after nos. 1 and 2, Hawaii and Wyoming. South Dakota came in at number 7. The Rushmore State ranked number one in "work environment". For our blogosphere neighbors who love to tell us how bad South Dakota is, this will no doubt be depressing news.

I am not sure quite what to make of the national map, but it is thought-provoking. The "empty quarter" as it has been called (upper Midwest) ranks as the highest region, but a lot of New England states rank in the high range. The South ranks lowest. While the West ranks in the midrange mostly, Nevada is in the toilet.

Coffee and Retaliation

My favorite story in the news today was the AP’s report that the The Conneticut State Board of Labor Relations has forced the city of Orange to reinstate free coffee and milk privileges to 30 townhall workers. According to The AP, First Selectman James Zeoli claims to have stopped providing free coffee to the workers to save money, but The United Public Services Employees Union claims that the move was “retaliation over union leaders’ public comments one night earlier.” The board, noting that Zeoli had told one union member to “jump in a lake” ruled in favor of the union.

I was curious as to what sort of legislation lay behind this, so I did a bit of poking about. According to The Milford Orange Bulletin, retaliation violates the 1965 Municipal Employee Relations Act. The section the board seems to be referring to is the following:

It is a prohibited practice for an employer to take adverse action against an employee as a method of retaliation for engaging in protected concerted activities. 

That seems pretty clear cut. But it’s hard to keep from wondering about a few things. First, does Zeoli’s move only affect unions? If it is a move made across the board that affects non-union members as well as those who have joined unions, can we still consider it retaliation? Second, can we assume that because Zeoli told a union member to jump in a lake that every move he makes afterward is made out of retaliation? Suppose Orange really does need to save money. Can every attempt Zeoli makes to cut spending be denied because of Zeoli's earlier remarks?

Public v. Private Compensation

Do public sector workers make more in salary and benefits than other workers? Yes, for the most part, according to USA Today:

Wisconsin is one of 41 states where public employees earn higher average pay and benefits than private workers in the same state, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Still, the compensation of Wisconsin's government workers ranks below the national average for non-federal public employees and has increased only slightly since 2000…

The analysis of government data found that public employees' compensation has grown faster than the earnings of private workers since 2000. Primary cause: the rising value of benefits.

That brute fact, that in four out of five states, public employees make more than the workers who actually make, service and grow things, may have political consequences if it becomes common knowledge. That may be true regardless of reasonable attempts to evaluate the fact.

More embarrassing is the rate at which public compensation has grown in some states.

Key state-by-state findings:

•California. Public employee compensation rose 28% above the inflation rate from 2000 to 2009 to an average of $71,385 in 2009.

•Nevada. Government employees earned an average of $17,815 more — or 35% — than private workers, the nation's biggest pay gap. The state's low-paying private jobs in tourism were the cause, says Bob Potts of the Center for Business and Economic Research at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

A 28% growth above cost of living in public employee compensation in California is damning, as is the 35% pay advantage for government employees in Nevada.

Critics of these comparisons are quick to point out that public employees have, on average, more education and training than private sector workers in general. That's true enough, but it is also irrelevant.

The function of compensation rates in any rational economy is to balance demand (how much you have to offer potential employees to get the good ones) with value (how much each employee benefits his or her employer). Does anyone imagine that every administrator in every school system is actually worth his keep?

Ignore the vast army of administrators for a moment and consider teachers, who are at ground zero in Wisconsin. Who should we compare the compensation of public school teachers against? Perhaps private school teachers? Reason TV has a nice video with a great soundtrack. I notice this nugget of information.

The average national salary of public school teachers (2006-2007) was $53,230. The average salary of private school teachers was $39,690. I think it very unlikely that private school teachers are in any meaningful way less qualified on average than their public counterparts. It is clear that they do not deliver an inferior product. Private schools in general make do with a lot less and deliver a lot more than public schools.

It is hard to evaluate the contribution of the larger education industry, but we might consider this nugget from the Reason video: in 1980-81 public spending per pupil in the U.S. was $5,639. In 2006-07 it was $10,041.

Those are constant dollars. Can any rational person really believe that we are getting almost twice the value out of public education today than we got in 1980? No. Just to look at the most reliable indicator, the National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores for reading and math are pretty much the same as they were in the early 1970's.

That doubling of per pupil dollars in twenty five years didn't go to the pupils but went somewhere. It went to build up the public sector. Therein lies the problem. As long as the economy was growing steadily, California could afford to enrich its public employees beyond any rational expectation. We are now at the point where public expenditures are growing faster than any plausible rate of general economic growth. It isn't a matter of what pubic workers deserve. It's a matter of what we can afford.

Jumping to Conclusions about the Frankfurt Shooting

Here is another event about which we must, at all costs, avoid jumping to conclusions. From ABC News:

A gunman shouting "Allahu Akbar" opened fire on a bus carrying U.S. airmen in Frankfurt, Germany, killing two and wounding two others before his gun jammed and he was subdued, officials said.

An ethnic Albanian from Kosovo was taken into custody and the FBI was heading an investigation because U.S. citizens were killed and to determine whether the shooting was an act of terrorism.

The Washington Post has an update that provides more information about which we must, at all costs, avoid jumping to conclusions.

"The suspect is accused of killing two U.S. military personnel and seriously injuring two others," federal prosecutors said in a statement. "Given the circumstances, there is a suspicion that the act was motivated by Islamism."

No! Ya think?

Early reports suggested that Uka was a Kosovar Albanian and a devout Muslim who worked at the airport. It was unclear whether he had come to Germany from Kosovo or was born in Germany.

Well, this one is a real head scratcher. "There is a suspicion that the act was motivated by Islamism." It looks like a duck and walks like a duck and damn sure quacks like a duck. No doubt it will require a concerted effort by German authorities and the FBI to determine if it really is, in fact, a duck.

PJ Crowley, spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, was confused by the question.

"Was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a terrorist attack? I mean, you have to look at the evidence and look at the motivation and then you make a judgment," Crowley told the Press.

Well, yeah. In the case of the Tucson shooting there was no reason to suspect that the act fit any reasonable definition of terrorism. In the case of Arif Uka there is no reason to suspect that it was anything else. Focus, Mr. Crowley: duck-not duck.

Maybe the problem is that the Administration and the U.S. military can only recognize a duck when there is more than one of them.

An American military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the United States was not ruling out terrorism, although it was unclear if the suspect was acting alone or with partners. "I don't know if he's tied to a group," said the official. "But there is enough information at this point to indicate that he identifies with Islamist terrorist ideology."

Was it terrorism if the Frankfurt shooter was part of a conspiracy but not-terrorism if he was acting on his own? The latter looks no less genuine and much more frightening to me. Terrorist networks give us something to look for and disrupt. A lot of spontaneous acts by individuals present a more terrifying threat. The really scary thing about the Oklahoma City bombing is that it seems to have taken only two people to pull it off.

It would be tempting to excuse the Administration's hesitance to use the word "terrorism" as benign if were merely procedural. That would be like using the words "alleged" and "accused" to refer to people who committed crimes in front of dozens of witnesses.

Unfortunately, we know that the problem is much deeper than that. The Senate report on the Fort Hood shooting shows that the Army and the FBI refused to jump to conclusions about Nidal Malik Hasan when that malevolent duck was right in front of their eyes. They spared no effort to make sure that Hasan was protected and promoted and thus kept in a position to murder his fellow servicemen and women.

PJ Crowley's confused response to questioning about the Frankfurt shooting suggests that the Administration has done nothing at all to respond to the Senate Report. President Obama doesn't know that he and his have a problem. That is disturbing news indeed.

Supreme Court Upholds Right to Picket Military Funerals

Correctly.  Snyder v. Phelps

Blasphemy in Austria

Asia Bibi was sentenced to die for blasphemy in Pakistan. You can read my account of her case here. She is apparently still waiting for the Lahore court to set a date for her appeal. Christians in Punjab, India have been marching and holding hunger strikes in her support. Ms. Bibi is a Pakistani Christian. Forty thousand people marched in Lahore in support of the blasphemy law under which Ms. Bibi was convicted. The armies of darkness are out in force.

Meanwhile a comic version of this is playing out in Austria. Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, posts this on The Corner:

Today, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a young Viennese mother, was convicted under section 283 of the Austrian penal code of vilifying religious teachings for her negative commentary on Islam in a lecture before a political-party gathering in Vienna; she was fined 480 Euros. Sabaditsch-Wolff, a diplomat's daughter, had lived and worked for several years in various Middle Eastern Muslim countries, and at the lecture in question spoke critically of the treatment of women and the practice of jihad in Iran, Libya, and other places that she had lived in. The court found that Austria's free-speech guarantees protected her from hate-speech charges.

However, it seems the case turned on the judge's reasoning that her statement that Islam's prophet Mohammed was a "pedophile" was defamatory since his child bride Aisha (age six at the time of marriage and nine at the time it was consummated) remained his wife when she turned 18. The case was brought by prosecutors after complaints by a mainstream Austrian weekly magazine that had secretly taped and then wrote about her lecture. She plans to appeal.

Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff came afoul of the law in Austria for making an argument. Here is an example of that argument from an interview with EuropeNews:

It is a fact that Mohammed married a six-year-old at the age of 56. To this day men in Islamic countries view this as legitimizing marriage to a minor, thereby causing rape and life-long trauma.

Sabaditsch-Wolff is arguing for a connection between Islamic lore concerning Mohammed and the mistreatment of women in Islamic countries. Apparently, that argument is illegal in Austria. Apparently, "Austria's free-speech guarantees protected her from hate-speech charges," but not from "the Austrian penal code of vilifying religious teachings."

This is abhorrent. Sabaditsch-Wolff is either right about the lore, the mistreatment of women, and the connection between the two, or she is not. Free speech means being free to make the argument without fear of prison or a fine of 480 Euros.

The inimitable Mark Steyn parses the appalling logic employed by the judge who sentenced Sabaditsch-Wolff on the lesser charge. In Ms. S-W's lecture she apparently accused the Prophet of paedophilia for marrying a 9 year old girl. Here, apparently, is how the judge turned that accusation into a crime:

The language used in the seminars were not inciting hatred, but the utterances regarding Muhammad and paedophilia were punishable.

"Paedophilia" is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Muhammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18. It is a "denigration of religious teachings" and are found guilty and sentenced to 120 days, which approaches the minimum of € 480.

Did you get that? Yes, according to this account, Muhammad married and, perhaps, deflowered Aisha when she was nine. But he was still married to her when she was 18. Taking that latter fact as evidence that he was still interested in her, it proves that his "sexual preference" was not "solely or mainly directed towards children."

Now just in case I happen to visit Austria, or come to the attention of true believers, let me set the record straight. I am not accusing the Prophet of anything. I don't know the lore and I have no opinions on the Prophet's familial arrangements.

I do have opinions about the Judge's logic in this case. Paedophilia is not just a psychological state, it's a crime. The crime consists in adults having sex with children. By the judge's logic, a man who has sex with an under-aged girl is not guilty of paedophilia if only he keeps it up until she turns 18.

That is noxious numbskullery. The judge is twisting legal logic past the breaking point in order to maintain an Austrian version of blasphemy laws. What happened to Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff is scarcely as horrific as what is happening to Ms. Asia Bibi. It is more disturbing in a different way. Freedom of speech and thought is the core of modern civilization. All the other liberties and virtues depend on it. Sabaditsch-Wolff's conviction, even the least of charges, shows a fault in our civilization. That fault must be repaired, if we don't want women in Vienna or Kansas City to fear for their lives lest they offend the faithful.