Greenwald FTW

In response to idiot Democratic senators caving to the Republican talking points that Gitmo terror suspects shouldn't be kept in the American jails that are good enough to hold Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Ted Kaczynski, and Omar Abdel-Rahman, Greenwald says:

There's no more mewling, craven, subservient entity in the United States than the Senate Democratic caucus.

Harsh... and yet so true.

Think Before You Regulate

Jacob posts this interesting article about the unintended consequences of do-gooder legislation, in this case the toy safety act passed in 2008. Seems it's threatening small makers of hand-crafted toys who can't possibly afford to test all their toys before selling them.

I probably disagree with the author and with Jacob when I say that it's not an argument against regulation per se. Rather, it's an argument against hurriedly passing regulations without fully understanding the effect it will have on everyone under the law's jurisdiction. In general, it seems that the quality of legislation is inversely proportional to the speed with which it gets through Congress...

Hate Crimes Legislation

Lot of hate blogging all of a sudden. Weird.

Anyway, the Senate will soon be taking up S. 909, which adds gender identity and sexual orientation to the list of groups protected by existing hate crimes legislation. Which, like every other piece of legislation related to gay rights, brings out the crazies. Most of the opposition to this bill is somewhat disingenuous - since the bill only adds to the list of protected classes in current hate crimes legislation, the concept of "hate crimes" is not really at issue here, and it seems only logical that if we're going to have "hate crimes" be a class of crime, crimes committed out of hatred towards gay people ought to fall under that category. And the bizarre argument I hear the most against S. 909 (also called the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act after the gay Laramie, Wyo. resident beaten to death because of his sexuality in 1998) is that the legislation will somehow make hatred of gay people, or denunciation of homosexuality by churches, a prosecutable offense. This is a patently absurd argument - for something to be a hate crime, it must first be a crime, and usually a violent one. Unless preaching is outlawed, anti-gay preachers have nothing to worry about.

(To be fair, I've heard some weird arguments from the left as well, mostly along the lines of accusing detractors of being in favor of beating up gay people. Last time I checked, beating anyone up is illegal, and would remain that way even if S. 909 fails.)

Wackos notwithstanding, though, there are some good arguments from both supporters and detractors of hate crime legislation in general. It is these arguments I want to look at.

The main argument against hate crime legislation is that it punishes a perpetrator for the thoughts in their head as opposed to their actions. Bigotry is distasteful, of course, but it's hardly illegal, nor should it be. Moreover, punishing someone more for committing a crime out of hate is tantamount to adding prison time for "thoughtcrime," which is not the American way. This is a reasonable argument - we should avoid punishing people for their thoughts.

It is, however, a spurious argument - we already, in many cases, make sentencing decisions based on the perpetrator's thoughts. Is the perp remorseful? If so, he'll probably get a shorter sentence. Ditto if the motive behind the crime was noble (say he robbed a bank in order to pay for Mom's medical bills). These are ad hoc jury/judge decisions of course, but they are frequently codified. If you kill someone, for example, the thoughts in your head are extremely important in determining the crime you committed and the sentence you receive. Did you do it on accident (involuntary manslaughter)? Did you try to hurt someone but not kill them (manslaughter)? Did you want to kill them but do so as a "crime of passion" (second-degree murder)? Did you plan out the whole thing (first-degree murder)? It's not a huge leap to go from here to "did you kill him out of race/sexuality/religion/gender hatred?"

The question, then, is why should we make that distinction? What is it about hate crimes that makes them worth differentiating? The argument is that a hate crime isn't just a crime against another person but a crime aimed at an entire group of people. It's an act of terrorism, so to speak - the goal of the perpetrator is not just to beat up some gay dude but to force all gay people to accept their supposed subordinate status in the social order. Therefore, the crime is more pernicious than just a simple beating, and ought to be punished as such.

The fact is that we punish crimes based on their effect on society already. We punish manslaughter less than murder because the latter has a far more deleterious effect on society than the former. In a case like a hate crime where the negative effect on society is multiplied by the perp's motive, it just makes sense to punish the crime more.

The other argument against federal hate crimes legislation is that it gives to the federal government powers that ought to remain in state hands. Why should a hate crime be a federal issue but a regular crime be a state issue? That's a good point, but there is a role for the federal government here since (as I mentioned earlier) an attack on a gay man anywhere is in essence a crime against gay people around the country. But a federal prosecution seems uncouth, since the crime itself probably did not take place across state lines (like kidnapping or trafficking, say). I would restrict the federal government's role in hate crimes prosecutions to a strictly advisory and assisting role. This lets states take the lead in their own law enforcement, while allowing the feds to step in to help if necessary.

Astute observers will note that I've "flip-flopped" on this issue in the past few years. So I'll reiterate that I reserve the right to change my position on any issue at any time, for any logical reason, so there.

Yep, Hate Still Exists

I saw a swastika painted on a road sign.

Not a big thing, mind you. More of a scrawl than a painting, tucked in a corner of a road sign on southbound Reedy Creek Road in Cary. It's still there, as of this writing. It's been there for about three days now. I didn't take a picture - no point in holding up traffic.

You don't see those much, around here. We in the Triangle are blessed with a rather tolerant community. The three places I've lived for significant periods of time - Northern Virginia, Nashville, and Raleigh - are so welcoming in general that I can honestly say I've never actually experienced any real anti-Semitism. Quite a difference from my mom's family, who weren't allowed to join Pine Bluff (Ark.) Country Club because of their religion. In the past forty years or so, hatred towards Jews and non-whites has faded into social unacceptability...

But, as that road sign chicken-scratch reminded me, it still exists. It's out there in the rantings of people like Pittsburgh shooter Andrew Poplawski. It's out there among the crazy bastards in North Idaho and on Stormfront. And it's out there in some punk with a can of spray-paint on Reedy Creek.

On April 21, Jews commemorated Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the crimes symbolized by that swastika. We swear to never forget... but let's face it, folks, we have forgotten, at least until some halfwit scribbles something on a road sign and we're forced to think about what that symbol really means.

Because we've seen the symbol, we've heard the word "Nazi," entirely too much over the past few years. You go to a protest and you see signs like this. Or this. We throw around slogans comparing Bush to Hitler or calling Obama a fascist, as if we could imagine either of those men slaughtering eleven million innocent people in cold blood simply because he didn't like who they were. The swastika and the word "Nazi" aren't symbols of the ultimate evil of hatred and murder and genocide anymore - they're rhetorical shorthands for policies with which we disagree. And that means we have forgotten.

But it's worse. Not only have we forgotten, it means there's no point in remembering anymore. If we're referencing Nazism and the Holocaust to talk about differences in domestic and foreign policy, how the hell could we invoke the memories of the victims of genocide where it really matters, in cases like Darfur, or the budding anti-gay massacres in Iraq?

Maybe it's just the intellectually lazy fringe who have lost all perspective on the Holocaust, and that most people understand what it means to invoke Hitler and the Nazis. But those fringe idiots make us so afraid to do it when it's warranted, so cynical when it comes to such references that when murderous hate and political power converge and genocide threatens, our first reaction when the Holocaust is referenced is dismissal and derision.

So why does it behoove all of us to condemn, in no uncertain terms, the wanton use of references to fascism and Nazism in our everyday political discourse? Because hate still exists. Because we need to preserve the memory of Hitler's victims for cases when that memory might be useful in stopping actual genocide. And because I don't know what that punk on Reedy Creek Road was thinking about when he scrawled that swastika, but I doubt it was the income tax.

A Question

Isn't it funny how those who yell the loudest for the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" strategy of law enforcement are suddenly perfectly okay with lawbreaking if it's done by the executive branch?

Bonus question for Republicans only: which is worse, lying about cheating on your wife or torturing?

Massive Judicial Fail

Some stupid people north of the border decided to celebrate a "Kick a Ginger Day" where high-school students would kick a red-headed fellow students. The perpetrators are, of course, brought to justice, where the presiding judge blames... South Park?

Judge Lynn Cook-Stanhope said on Friday she was satisfied the teenagers had taken responsibility for their actions, and she saved her scathing remarks for the animated television show South Park, which she called a "vulgar, socially irreverent program that contributes nothing to society."

Unfortunately, the writers and producers of the show will never be called to account for encouraging such action, the judge added.

Okay, dumbshit, the "Ginger Kids" episode that the judge clearly thinks caused this whole incident is a work of art that cannot be seen as having any influence over a bunch of idiot kids in Calgary. Which ought to be clear from the fact that the episode's message is the exact opposite of what these idiot kids did. The "writers and producers" of South Park didn't "encourag[e] such action," they ACTIVELY DISCOURAGED IT. Watch the damn show.

Maybe she's still bitter over the whole "Blame Canada" thing. Which was also sarcastic. Screw it, I'm gonna go try to find "Ginger Kids" online somewhere.

Update: Watch it here.

Mmmm, Tastes Like Greenwash

Congress, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to float a bill offering people money for turning in their old cars if they buy a new, more fuel-efficient one. If you turn in your 18 mpg or less car, you get $3,500 for going up by 4 mpg, and $4,500 for going up by 10 mpg.

Of course, it's wasteful to buy a whole new car and send your old car to the scrap heap when your old car works just fine, thank you. Steve Israel tried to save the green-ness of the bill by suggesting that people be credited for buying fuel-efficient used cars, but that was shot down.

I don't support this bill, but there are a few reasonable excuses for doing so. It could function as another economic stimulus. It would certainly help boost demand for cars from failing Detroit automakers. But for the love of God, please don't try to sell it as "green" legislation, because it ain't.

Maine Event

Maine became the fifth state to allow same-sex marriage today (sixth if you count CA's brief foray into marriage equality). ME also becomes the first state to do so entirely on their own without any, ahem, help from the courts.

Great, Now Tancredo Can Send Me To Jail

Longtime ONAF readers are probably familiar with my frequently over-the-top criticism of former Colorado congresscritter and nativist drumbeater Tom Tancredo. I'm sure my blog posts about him could be classified as "hostile," right? Well, according to this new bill, I could be tried and sent to jail for it! Hooray! Who needs that pesky First Amendment anyway - let's prosecute everyone who makes anyone else feel uncomfortable!

Look, the incident that inspired the bill - where an adult used a fake identity to harass a teenage girl until said girl killed herself - is a tragedy. But just because someone does something evil doesn't mean they should be prosecuted for it. One of the prices we pay for living in a society with guaranteed rights is that evil people frequently have the right to say and do evil things, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it except shame the evil person. We certainly can't pass a law that forbids any sort of pointed criticism if it leads to "emotional distress."

(Speaking of Tancredo and free-speech issues, I never got a chance to post on it, but this incident in Chapel Hill actually kinda made me feel sorry for the bastard. No one deserves to feel physically threatened for their political views.)

Wilson County Schools Act Like Their Students

Have you ever asked a three-year-old to leave the playground, but then the kid screams "No!" and runs off to the slide again, at which point you get angry at the kid, which doesn't make the kid come to you but instead makes him stand there pouting with arms folded, refusing to leave, until eventually you have to carry him kicking and screaming from the playground? For some reason, that's the scene that comes to mind when I think about the recent events surrounding the Wilson County, TN public schools.

First, about a year ago, the school system was hit with a lawsuit over their endorsement of a "praying parents" group that went into schools and prayed for kids. As a result, they were told to add disclaimers to posters in order to make sure that students knew that religious activities that took place on school property were not endorsed by the school. However, WCPS' powers-that-be, being three years old, threw a tantrum and decided that no religious events could be advertised on school property, even if the students and parents are doing the advertising and running the event themselves. Naturally, the courts have issued a "no, you dolts can't do that either" response.

Is neutrality with respect to religion really that difficult to figure out?

Jeffrey Rosen's Epic Fail

Regarding this hit piece on possible Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I have no original thoughts. Rather, I'll paraphrase James Downey...

Mr. Rosen, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent article were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone at this website is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Greenwald has a far more extensive takedown that's well worth the read.

And a final note: it seems like the innuendo about Sotomayor's "temperament" is a giant dog-whistle, given that she's a working-class Puerto Rican... seriously, can you remember the last time a nominee's "temperament" was even discussed?

How The Hell Does This Guy Win Elections?

Witness Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) make a complete fool of himself trying to ask a question of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. His question, essentially, was "how come Alaska and the Arctic have all that oil?" At this point, Chu laughs and attempts to explain, in six seconds, plate tectonics and continental drift. Which completely goes over Barton's head - so far over his head, in fact, that he later brags about stumping Chu on Twitter. (Any reasonable person viewing the video, of course, will recognize that Chu was far from stumped.)

Barton got his industrial engineering degree from Texas A&M. Figures. Insert your favorite Aggie joke here.

Barton, who represents Arlington and some of the I-45 corridor south of Dallas, would later go on to claim that no one would drive a hybrid unless the Army forced them to (which is news to this voluntary Prius owner). Also he's holding hearings on the BCS and comparing it to Communism. (OK, I kinda have to give him that one.)

He's not within reach of Michele Bachmann yet (who is?), but if he keeps this up he'll be there soon enough.

Didn't See That One Coming

I think the smart money was on Stevens or Ginsburg to be the next retiree off the Supreme Court, not Souter. Weird.

Anyway, let the always interesting Court nomination games begin. Random guess: Sonia Sotomayor.

Florida: The Dead Jesus State

So I get that Jesus dying is a kinda important event for Christians, but be that as it may, isn't this kind of a reach? Imagine you're driving down the highway, minding your own business, then WHAM dead Jesus? I expect to see fish with Greek letters on cars, not that. Kinda jarring. I suppose I should expect this out of a state with a governor named Crist...

Oh well, I guess it drives the point home though. (Groan.)

Of course, this raises some fascinating Constitutional questions. Is it government endorsement of religion or government facilitation of free expression/exercise? This is a question I am completely not qualified to answer.

Second Thoughts on Specter

After thinking about this Specter switch for a little while, I'm left with one question:

Does the GOP accept returns?

I'm not the only one wondering how good for fellow progressives this move actually is. Greenwald is openly hostile, and with good reason - Specter's been a consistent anti-civil liberties vote throughout the "War on Terror," and I doubt that's going to change now. Kos is lukewarm too. Both note that having Specter run as a Democrat pretty much precludes any liberal/progressive candidate from winning the seat (barring a Lamont-style charge from the netroots, which I don't see happening).

It would have been much better for the Democrats if Specter had been defeated in the primary by far-right Republican, Pat Toomey, who would lose to pretty much anyone the Democrats nominated. Specter should beat Toomey easily in 2010 (but Toomey now has all the ammunition he needs to paint Specter as a dishonest hack, which could make the race interesting), but that means we're stuck with a Ben Nelson-style Democrat out of a state that should give us more of a Russ Feingold.

There are things Specter's switch helps with, of course. Expect nominations to go through a lot more easily, for example (hello, Dawn Johnsen). Specter's also a decent shot at a vote for health care reform. But I still would have preferred replacing him with a civil-liberties advocate and honest progressive in 2010 to being stuck with Specter through 2016.

Wait, what?

According to the Post's Chris Cillizza, Specter is the new Jeffords. Which gives the Democrats 60 votes (counting Specter, Sanders, and Lieberman), once Franken is seated.

Yeah, that changes things a little bit.

This also means that, thanks to Coleman's defeat, Eric Cantor is the lone Jewish Republican in Congress. Don't know what this means, exactly, but there you go.

"Attention Please: Flight 213 to Alpha Centauri Now Departing from Gate 6"

This has gotta be a joke, right?

Rule #1: If you're gonna build a giant UFO airport in the middle of your largest city, you've lost the right to take umbrage when Sacha Baron Cohen pokes fun at you.

Update: In the comments, Leah says it's part of the reporting paper's new satire section. So yeah, it's a joke. Color me amused.

More Webb Awesomeness

Holy shit, Jim Webb is on fire. How many political third rails is he gonna touch before this criminal justice reform thing is all over?

He's absolutely right, by the way. One of the major problems with our prison system is that we put way too many people in jail for selling or buying drugs, neither of which are crimes with actual victims.

Hat tip: Jacob.

Son of Liberty

This book looks like it'd be a fascinating read. It reminds me of a chapter from an Al Franken book where Franken visits Bob Jones University with his college-bound son and is shocked to find normal, decent people there.

Sympathetic portrayals of those on the other side politically are rare, but necessary. Now we just need a Liberty student to go to Brown for a semester...

Lines Have Been Crossed, Here...

OK, so I'm a father of a wonderful little girl. I want her to be happy and have a fulfilled life, and when she grows up I want her to know that I love her and care about her.

But, um, this is just a bit too creepy. Sorry, Selah, I'm not dating you. Ick.

A Couple Bits of Good News

First, on the piracy front, there's this article talking about the pirate who survived the Maersk Alabama incident arriving in New York for trial. It discusses some of the difficulties associated with this case, like trying someone whose real name and age aren't readily identifiable, who comes from a country with no laws, etc. But what I want to note is that he's being tried. He's not being thrown in some black-site prison as an "enemy combatant" and held without access to lawyers - he's being processed through the justice system, as he should be. This is encouraging, as is the apparent lack of support for Gitmo-style detention by the right. Now explain to me why we can't handle terrorism cases the same way?

Second, Obama seems open to investigating and prosecuting lawbreakers in the Bush administration who approved torture. Of course, as he himself mentions and as Greenwald points out (it's down a ways - incidentally, I'm thinking I should probably just turn my blog into a bunch of Greenwald and Balko links), that's not Obama's decision to make. It's Attorney General Eric Holder's, and we can only hope Holder does the right thing. There's noise that he might, at least.

Incidentally, Michael Mukasey and Michael Hayden: Epic. Fail. Seriously, how can you write a column about torture without noting that it's fucking illegal? Their column amuses me. They sound like little kids whining to Mommy about how Billy eats pizza every day but Mommy makes them eat green beans. "Mommy, mommy, they can torture, why can't we? Waaaaaa...." Can we put Mukasey and Hayden in time-out?

Update: Greenwald castigates those who think that Obama's the central figure in this prosecution/investigation drama. (Guilty as charged - see above. I really should just start linking to Greenwald and not adding my own thoughts.) He's not - it's Holder, and has always been Holder. Obama can scream until he turns blue about how we shouldn't be prosecuting Bush lawyers - Holder can do whatever he damn well pleases, and he should do whatever the law says he should do. Which, in this case, is investigate and prosecute if the evidence permits it. This isn't a political issue, or at least it shouldn't be.

We're Number 1!

NC leads the nation in percentage of people without health insurance.

Employer-based health insurance... it's FANtastic!

The Debate on Marriage Equality Is Over...

some anonymous dude on YouTube just won.

Interesting tangent: has anyone else noted how the right's rhetoric on this issue has shifted in the past couple of years? They're not scaring people about Teh Ghey anymore - rather, they're trying to say that allowing same-sex marriage will infringe on your freedom. Which is a bizarre, counterintuitive argument to make (as the YouTube vid I linked to argues), but a) anti-gay sentiment is becoming more socially unacceptable among those inhabiting the vast American middle, and b) if most voters realize that allowing gays to enter into a civil marriage will not affect them in the slightest, they'll be more likely to vote for it. What I'm saying is this - the right knows that if they just went anti-gay, they'd lose and lose badly. So they have to make this stretch (or a similar stretch) in order to convince people that same-sex marriage hurts the average voter, since it's the only way to keep marriage equality from happening.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that the HRC should find this guy and plaster him all over the country.

Sell Florida

I think this guy is only half kidding.

Quick Question...

How can you serve in the military for long enough to retire and still, when discussing the military, have no frickin' clue what you're talking about?

"Don't ask, don't tell" is cruel and should be repealed. End of story. I'll let fictional black Joint Chiefs chair Percy Fitzwallace (from The West Wing) make the argument...

"The problem with that is that's what they were saying to me 50 years ago. Blacks shouldn't serve with whites. It would disrupt the unit. You know what? It did disrupt the unit. The unit got over it. The unit changed. I'm an admiral in the U.S. Navy and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff... Beat that with a stick."

Tweedledee, Meet Tweedledum

A while ago, Ben outlined the differences between Obama's anti-terrorism policy and that of Bush. There are some differences, of course, but as the NYT reports, they're getting smaller every day:

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

I'm not sure I buy the "unintentional" thing. I don't know how you "unintentionally" spy on someone.

Now first off, it's good that we're at least finding out about this. On the other hand, it's disturbing that Obama would continue the same policy as Bush regarding surveillance until someone called him out on it. I'm hoping this is a lost-in-transition problem that won't be a permanent feature of the Obama administration... but given this administration's admittedly short history of maintaining bullshit "state secrets" arguments, I'm not holding my breath.

Intellectual Whiplash

One thing that happens when power shifts abruptly from being completely in one party's hands to being completely in another's is that outside observers start feeling like they live in the Twilight Zone. Take, for example, this Moonie Times report about a DHS document attempting to profile right-wing extremists and warning of violence. As Sharon at CSPT points out (hat tip for the links), some of the bullet points can be used to pretty much describe any arch-conservative, whether or not they're actually intent on violence or not.

The more astute among us will recognize that this is exactly the same thing Bush was doing to the left wing during his entire presidency. But as Greenwald points out, most of the righties that cheered on Bush when he launched his surveillance of left wing groups are suddenly up in arms. And while he's not as enthusiastic about it as the righties were back in the Bush years, Matt Yglesias seems a little too happy about this turn of events. Haven't seen this on Kos' front page yet, but I'll let you know what the reaction is when I do.

Ah, but there's more. Remember how right-wingers called liberals traitors and unpatriotic when we protested the invasion of Iraq? Well, they have no problem criticizing this president during a military operation. Of course, the folks over at Big Orange jump all over this, and frequent diarist David Waldman goes so far as to call the right-wing critics anti-American. Which is the same crap insult they used against us.

There are more issues like this - the filibuster issue and reconciliation tactics in the Senate, to name one - but I don't have the links or the time to write about them too.

But yeah, my neck hurts.

Update: Balko has another example:

Apparently without the slightest hint of irony, Schultz started by casting off the tea party protesters as “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” Yep. Bush has been out of office for all of three months, and the left has already adopted the “people who disagree with us hate America” crap. He then characterized tea partiers exercising their right to free speech and protest as “trying to overturn the results of an election.” Another page ripped from the right-wing playbook. Just substitute “anti-war protests” for “tea parties.”

Awesome.

The Hits Keep On Comin'

So Iowa becomes the first state outside the Northeast and West Coast to legalize gay marriage, and now Vermont has become the first to do so without a court ruling. They overrode Governor Jim Douglas' veto to pass the legislation... by a single vote in the House.

Vermont, you might recall, was the first to legalize civil unions. Pat yourselves on the back, Vermonters - you done good.

Meanwhile, Back in Fairfax...

Here's a story about Fairfax County Public School officials being idiots. I don't give a damn what your rationale is, threatening to expel someone for taking a birth control pill is insane, no matter how you look at it. As is suspending someone for two weeks because they're taking Advil. Or something prescribed by their doctor. There's no excuse for this outrage, and the many like it that occur every day. None.

This is your country on the War on Drugs. Any questions?

Gay Marriage, Donchaknow

Since the NCAA men's championship game is turning out to be as boring as last year's was exciting, I figured I'd dump a few thoughts on the recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling that gay couples must be allowed to marry in the Hawkeye State.

First, the decision was unanimous and, as Ian points out, pretty damn decisive. Meaning it's not being overturned anytime soon, and no wishy-washy civil unions are going to be instituted. It's either full marriage equality or gut the Constitution.

Aside: I wonder whether the unanimity and definitiveness of this decision means it'll be used as precedent for other state Supreme Courts that are faced with similar decisions...

Anyway, we all know an amendment battle is on the horizon - the question is how it's going to be fought. And this is where Iowa's conservatism actually works against conservatives. In contrast to states like California, where any schmuck can put together a petition and get an amendment on the ballot that year, Iowans have two options. First, the state legislature can take up the question of the amendment. If the amendment passes in two successive sessions of the legislature, it goes before the voters. Second, every ten years Iowans are asked if they want a constitutional convention - this convention can submit amendments to the people to be voted on the next year.

The point is that there'll be no Proposition 8-like electoral battle this year. The absolute worst-case scenario is that the convention ballot question passes - should that occur, a measure would be on the ballot in November 2011. Realistically, I don't expect this to occur. Furthermore, this article makes it clear that Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal is in favor of gay marriage with the zeal of the convert (Gronstad opposed it in '98, but has since seen the light). We'll assume that Gronstal has power similar to that enjoyed by Marc Basnight here in NC, and that he can bury this bill if he doesn't want it to go anywhere.

This means that Republicans will have to take over the Senate at least, and probably both houses, in order to get a question on a ballot. Gronstad's Democrats currently enjoy a 32-18 advantage in the Senate, though, and in this political climate it's tough to imagine a Republican sweep in 2010. So realistically, we're talking 2013 before the Republicans can even get a vote through the Senate on this. Which means another vote would have to take place in the 2015-16 session. Which means the earliest I expect a measure to be on the ballot is November 2016 - more than seven years from now.

This decision is pretty big. It'll be the first foray for marriage equality outside the Northeast. Recall also that the first state to consider gay marriage, Massachusetts, has a similar means of amending their Constitution - they need two consecutive constitutional conventions to give 25% approval to the amendment. The measure passed the first time but couldn't muster the measley 50 votes (out of 200) required to pass the second time around.

What this tells me is that if gay marriage is given time to "sink in," it ceases to become much of a concern. (In fact, a Republican co-sponsor of the proposed MA gay marriage ban admitted as much in this CBS News article.) We'll see if that's the case in Iowa. I think it will be.

Quote of the day: "The politics of it are I'm not going to put discrimination in the Iowa Constitution. That's a horrible idea. The people who are pushing the amendment are saying equal protection under the law -- except. I think that's unacceptable." - Gronstal, saying "You shall not pass" to the gay-marriage ban.

Dumbass quote of the day: "He [Gronstal] is denying 2.1 million Iowans of voting age of the right to vote on an issue of great importance to 550,000 schoolchildren." - Chuck Hurley, president of the "Iowa Family Policy Center," who apparently has some bizarre ideas of what schoolchildren find important.

Glenn Beck Didn't Shoot Anyone

In the wake of the awful shooting of three police officers in Pittsburgh by a far-right crazed nutball, the left blogosphere seems to have taken a page from right-wingers and has started blaming - at least obliquely - right-wing commentators for the tragedy. I'd ignore this moonbattery if it were coming from the far-left cranks, but it's coming from bloggers I respect and agree with much of the time such as Jesse Taylor and Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon. Spaulding, especially, makes the case that:

Richard Poplawski, who spent his time surfing the internet filling his disturbed mind with notions held by many of the fans of Glenn Beck and the WingNutDaily denizens, represents what happens when tin-foil hat conservative theories are taken seriously.

Now I'm not going to question whether or not Poplawski was a fan of Beck or WorldNutDaily. But there's a distinct difference, and if you read this piece by Dave Neiwert you start to get a feel for what it is. Neiwert is probably one of the leading experts on the far-far-right out there, and he reveals that Poplawski held a few other neuroses not explored at all by the Beck crowd, even at their worst. From some of Poplawski's rantings, as uncovered by Neiwert:

In other words: Why, seeing as how the Jews seem to have the nation right where they want it, would they now turn around and destroy it?

Common perception seems to be that if there is an abrupt collapse of social order then racial awareness among the white population will rise dramatically. The Jewish media that dictates “pop culture” could no longer elevate the negro, and reality would reveal its nature. Race-mixing would come to a halt overnight. Consumerism and materialism would cease as the people scrounge for the necessities.

Notice anything there? In fact, most of what Neiwert finds deals more with anti-Semitism and racism than it does with gun-nut and anti-Marxist paranoia. I don't watch Beck's show much, but I have a feeling he'd be just as queasy as I am at the suggestion that Jews are controlling everything and engineered the financial meltdown etc. etc. Put differently, Beck might be wearing a tin-foil hat, but Poplawski decked himself out like Darth Vader in the stuff, to the point where even Beck thinks he looks like a damn fool.

And this is what Spaulding and Taylor ignore. The Freepers who are ranting ungramatically about Obama being a Marxist who wants to take our guns away are not, themselves, a threat to anything but their own sanity. The hate espoused by Poplawski comes from a completely different place. Beck, the Freepers, the WND crowd - they may be a little off-base, but their brand of paranoia is harmless. Meanwhile, it's the anti-Semitic, anti-black hard stuff that Poplawski was into that causes the real damage... and lumping Beck in with that crowd is unfair and simply untrue. We don't need to say "Glenn Beck causes violence" to prove that he's wrong. One would think our standard capability for abstract reasoning is generally good enough to prove that point.

Con Law Nerds, This One's For You

This video is perhaps the geekiest thing I've ever seen. And by "geeky," I mean "awesome."

(H/T: Balko)

Brain Dump

Yet again, a while elapses between posts. Oh well. Here are a few things on my mind...

- There's a lot of bleating out there about Obama asking GM chief executive Rick Wagoner to resign. A lot of it's coming from the traditional right-wing noise boxes, but the meme that "Obama fired the GM CEO" has even come from people whose opinion I generally respect, so I'll go ahead and address it.

The thing is, Obama didn't fire anyone. No one is forcing GM to take bailout money. If Obama's going to offer the cash it's his prerogative to attach conditions to it. In the business world this is called "negotiating." If GM doesn't like the offer, like I said, it doesn't have to take it. GM is perfectly free to turn down the bailout money and go wherever that path takes them, be it into Chapter 11 or wherever. I'm not in favor of giving GM a cent of my tax money, but if the government's going to give GM a massive handout, I feel better knowing that it's not just shoveling money into a dark pit of despair.

Look at it this way. We place conditions on recipients of personal welfare all the time. You have to be actively looking for a job, you can't be on drugs, yadda yadda yadda. Why should we put less restrictions on recipients of corporate welfare, especially since corporations are receiving far larger welfare payments?

- Jim Webb is awesome. Just read the Greenwald article I linked to - he says pretty much everything I want to say. I will add this - having watched Webb in action the past few years, it's gonna be a tough sell for Republicans to call him soft on anything, crime included. So he is really one of the few elected officials who really has the political capital to pull this off, even if he is from a purple-leaning-red state.

- Dear Dan Snyder: Stop it. Seriously, we already have Jason Campbell, and he's pretty good, and he'll be better once he stays in the same offense for more than a year. While it would be pretty awesome to have the potential for an all-Vanderbilt touchdown pass (Cutler to reserve TE Todd Yoder), I don't think it's worth it.

But if you do go through with the trade, just remember to remove all the emergency phones from the vicinity of FedEx Field, for safety purposes...

(No, making fun of that will never get old.)

Facebook Haggadah

Passover is fast approaching, so here's the Haggadah told in the form of a Facebook news feed.

(H/T: Margaret)

"Addition Exposition"

All I have to say is... wow.

Finally, Someone Said It

Someone, somewhere, needed to state the obvious - that if we're serious about closing the deficit we're going to have to STFU and raise taxes. And it's no surprise to me, at least, that that someone is E.J. Dionne:

The debate on the budget is phony, the howling on deficits a charade. Few politicians want to acknowledge that if you really are concerned about long-term deficits, you have to support tax increases.

It goes on from there. Dionne points out that politicians who voted for Clinton's 1993 tax increases were roundly punished for it in the next election - this despite the fact that the '93 tax increases helped pave the way for the only budget surplus we've had in recent memory.

Spending cuts are great, but we're not getting out of this budget mess by spending cuts alone. Even if we get rid of all of our discretionary spending, we still won't close the budget hole - and no one who's serious about policy is suggesting we take even that step. We need a tax increase, and I'll leave it to people smarter than me to determine how taxes can be increased while causing the least amount of pain.

Perhaps Obama's Sudden Love of Executive Power...

...is due to the fact that Office of Legal Counsel chief Dawn Johnsen isn't technically on the job yet?

Johnsen was supposed to be the voice of civil liberties and non-expansive executive power in this administration. Until she gets there, it's no surprise that the OLC hasn't changed things much - it's pretty much operating rudderless.

Senate: confirm her. Now.

"Good Luck Finding An Idiot"

There are few words that can be used to describe the awesomeness of this. Just read it and protect your keyboards.

Lock These Bastards Up

OK, legal eagles, how is this anything but legalized theft? The cops have no proof of criminal activity, nothing. Why should they be allowed to take these people's money? What possible justification could they have for keeping it other than "we're taking your money because we can"?

These cops, and cops like them, should be in jail. They're common thieves, pure and simple. They just hide behind a badge.

Guns, the 14th and 9th Amendments, and Liberal Originalism

Seems like a motley crew of ideas, but Ed Brayton rolls them all together in this post. He's responding to a post by Randy Barnett on Volokh that essentially explains why the Heller case invalidating DC's gun laws could be a good thing for liberal jurisprudence in general. The idea is that the case involves an expansive reading of the 14th Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause which forbids state governments from abridging any rights that the federal government wouldn't be allowed to abridge. When you combine this with the 9th Amendment, it creates a justification for requiring states to respect a whole host of individual rights that aren't specifically enumerated in the Constitution.

Ben and Matt will have to explain what happens in this post beyond that little tidbit. Either way, this seems like a philosophy that could create some sort of liberal jurisprudential movement that could turn the intellectual tide away from the Scalitos of the world. I've often mused that the giant hole in Scalia's theory of originalism - oh, okay, one of the giant holes, let's face it, Scalia isn't exactly Mr. Intellectually Consistent - involves an annoying tendency to ignore the 9th Amendment. Good to see someone with actual legal knowledge is fleshing this out.

I'd like to see the 9th have its day, since it is the most frequently shit-upon amendment in the Constitution (though the 4th is quickly catching up)... this despite the fact that I think it's one of the most important amendments in there...

Adventures in Word Salad

This person is awesome.

I wonder if he sent it from a Waffle House in Hickory...

A Short Response To Ben's Post

Wow, it has been a while since I blogged, hasn't it? I haven't had a lot of time with the trip to New Orleans and all, but I'll get back into the swing of things, I promise. I was actually so far out of the loop in NO that I had no idea what had happened news-wise during the ten days I was out (8 days there, two driving days). I got online, like, twice, and watched TV exactly once (the NCAA selection show, if you're curious). There's better things to do in New Orleans. Like argue with dick FEMA contractors, for example.

Anyway, once I figure out how to download pics from my phone to my computer en masse and then post them on Blogger without it taking up way too much room on the blog, I'll share. But until then, I'll rant about terrorism. How's that sound?

Ben exhaustively analyzes the latest DoJ report outlining the Obama Administration's "war on terror" policies. The general worry is that Obama is continuing the same strategies pursued by the Bush Administration, only with a little candy-coating. Ben explains why this isn't necessarily the case. I suggest you read it.

Anyway, I guess my concern isn't so much with the way in which the "war on terror" is being conducted - it's with the concept altogether. Ben points out that the AUMF against al-Qaeda and the Taliban is tantamount to a declaration of war against them. With the Taliban, and in the context of defending the Afghan government against insurgents, I think this is reasonable. Be that as it may, however, I think that we ought to question whether we should really be treating our conflict with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in general as a "war" at all.

I guess I view terror attacks differently from most. I look at September 11th and I see a crime. A big, gruesome crime, yes, but a crime nonetheless. There's no reason why the American criminal justice system can't deal with the perpetrators of this crime in the same way we dealt with domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski. The same goes for other terrorist attacks carried out, or planned to be carried out, on American soil. Jose Padilla falls into this category; so do the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings (remember, our embassies are technically our land).

See, declaring "war" on a criminal enterprise like al-Qaeda makes no more sense than declaring "war" on the Mafia, and the "war on terror" isn't a real war any more than are the "war on poverty" or the "war on drugs." But the parallel with the "war on drugs" is instructive. Anyone who reads Radley's blog as regularly as I do recognizes the corrosive effect that the treatment of drug enforcement policy as a "war" has on civil liberties and police accountability. In the name of the "war on drugs," we've legalized wholesale theft, for God's sake (see: asset forfeiture), not to mention untold police thuggery and Fourth Amendment-breaking. We shouldn't assume that treating our attempts to bring terrorists to justice as a "war on terror" would be any less damaging to civil liberties in the long run.

So when Ben points out that civil liberties fans ought not to be as worried about Obama's policies as, say, Glenn Greenwald, he's probably right, but the source of my worry isn't Obama's policies specifically. My worry is in the AUMF itself - when we decided to declare war against what was essentially a criminal enterprise, we turned what ought to be a primarily criminal justice matter into a primarily military one. And my worry is in the language we use to discuss this whole affair - we need to bring terrorists to justice, but we don't need a "war on terror."

Of course, there's clearly a legitimate military component in the battle against terrorists. After all, the 9/11 perpetrators were hiding out in a country - Afghanistan under the Taliban - that was never going to agree to extradite them, and this is unacceptable. A better AUMF would have stipulated that the military's role was to bring 9/11 perpetrators and their co-conspirators onto American soil where they could be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as well as to remove regimes that refuse to turn over those suspected of terrorist activities against us. I have no problem with holding Taliban POWs captured on the battlefield until the Taliban is defeated. But terrorists themselves should be treated as common criminals, since that is essentially what they are, whether or not they're politically motivated.

Go Ahead, Go "Galt"

There's been some buzz recently on the Internets about businessmen, entrepreneurs, and other assorted monied types "going Galt." Jesse Taylor talks about it here, and McArdle (especially her comments boodle) deals with it here.

John Galt, of course, is the jackass from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged who decides to just say "fuck you" to society and its stupid rules and leave it behind, taking all those he refers to as the "productive" people - by which he means inventors, entrepreneurs, executives, etc. - with him. (I haven't read the novel, just the Wikipedia page, so I'm probably oversimplifying here. I'm sure Jacob will correct me sooner or later.)

Of course, the problem with this idea is that it assumes that the upper echelon of society is irreplaceable. That is, if someone who would sell widgets decides to leave society instead, no one will sell widgets. This is foolish - of course someone would end up selling widgets if people wanted to buy widgets. In a society of 300 million people, it's somewhat fallacious to assume that profitable market niches would go unfilled because someone decides to abandon said niche.

As for inventors - if Edison hadn't invented the light bulb, do you honestly think we wouldn't have incandescent light right now? Of course we would. Someone else would have come up with the idea. If Bell hadn't invented the telephone, Gray still would have done so. If Google didn't exist, Yahoo would be dominating the internet advertising market (possibly with a slightly different algorithm, but whatever).

Put differently: what do you suppose would happen if, say, upper management of Google were to bail en masse? Here's what would happen - middle management would start running the company. And current programmers (and a few MBAs from outside) would become middle management. And Google would hire a bunch of programmers. The pyramid would remain in place - there would just be a change of cast.

So you know what? If you top-dogs want to "go Galt," that's fine by me. Get your bitter asses outta here. You leave, and someone else will gladly take your job. And someone will take that person's job. And someone who's currently unemployed will take their job. In fact, with the labor market as slack as it is, rich people "going Galt" and taking themselves out of the labor market might be the best job creation program of them all!

Conservative Brits: Legalize It

The well-respected British conservative/libertarian magazine The Economist (in my opinion the best world news source out there) argues in favor of legalization of all drugs, calling it the "least bad" option. They note that it's not a desirable outcome - just the one that does the least harm compared with various models of prohibition.

Note that they don't just favor legalizing marijuana or the less dangerous ones. They want it all legalized, taxed, and regulated. Their argument is extremely convincing (of course, convincing me of this point is not hard to do). They've been arguing this for the past 20 years, but there's reason to believe that now that the country with the world's 13th largest economy has become a war zone, people might be willing to listen.

The world needs U.S. leadership in this endeavor, though - it's mostly our willingness to fund anti-drug efforts in producer countries that keep drugs illegal through much of the rest of the world (this is certainly true of Latin America). Obama has political capital up the wazoo right now - what better way to use it than to end the misery of the war on drugs?

It's Good To Be The King

OK, this is friggin' hilarious.

Seriously, why do Republicans feel the need to apologize to a giant bag of hot air like Limbaugh when they give him the disrespect he has worked so hard to earn? Wouldn't marginalizing idiots like him be good for the GOP?

Federalism +1

More good news from the Obama camp:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.

Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy.

"What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing here in law enforcement," he said. "What he said during the campaign is now American policy."

OK, I'll file this under "I'll believe it when I see it," or when I don't see it for a while as it were, but there's reason to be cautiously optimistic here. If it does happen, great. It's not complete transfer of drug policy control to the states, which I think desperately needs to happen, but it's a pretty good start. The question now becomes: what will Obama and Holder do when the inevitable happens and some state repeals its law against marijuana altogether?

(I'm taking bets on what state will be the first. My money's on Oregon.)

Spotted on Brayton.

Obama +1

I've bellyached a lot over the past weeks about Obama's reneging on his promise to get us out of the legal quagmire Bush put us in with respect to terrorism. He has made use of the "state secrets" defense and has continued to hold other Bush Administration legal opinions. However, Ian reports that in at least one case, the Obama DoJ has actually chosen to try a terror suspect in a court of law instead of detain him indefinitely.

It's a nice gesture. Let's hope there's more where this came from. I've never understood why conservatives talk about approaching terrorism from a law enforcement perspective as if that were a bad thing. Because it is just a crime. A big, obnoxious crime, yes, but a crime nonetheless.

A Reasonable Yet Completely Unworkable Solution for Israel and Palestine

The Land of Milk, Honey, and Political Parties recently held its parliamentary elections, which doesn't really decide the prime minister because no one ever gets a majority. Instead, the president (currently the ubiquitous Shimon Peres) gets to decide who gets first crack at putting together a workable coalition. The full results are here, but the major parties will be given seats as follows (there are 120):

- Kadima (center): 27
- Likud (righties): 26
- Yisrael Beiteinu (think Jewish Pat Buchanan): 15
- Labor (lefties): 13
- Shas (Jewish Pat Robertson in party form): 11

Assorted small parties, often single-issue types, make up the balance.

Technically, that means that Kadima leader Tzipi Livni should get first crack at the government. However, the only natural major ally for Kadima is Labor - there are more right-wingers total there than left-wingers and centrists. As a result, Peres is letting Likud chief Binyamin Netanyahu (a former PM - Israeli political power is passed around between approximately six people) form the government. However, Netanyahu will probably bring Kadima into the coalition so he doesn't have to rely on crazy people like the National Union (4 seats).

Anyway, it's probably unlikely that any steps towards peace over there are going to come out of this mess. Before the election, Livni made waves by stating plainly that Israel is going to have to give the Palestinians a state, and that's just the way it is. Netanyahu responded by saying that he'd rather focus on economic development and to hell with a second state. The sad part is, they both have a point. A single state is simply a non-starter with too many people, and the PA is currently nowhere near economically viable as a separate unit.

So here's my idea. It's loosely based on Britain's arrangement with China over Hong Kong. What should happen is this: the PA should submit itself fully to Israeli authority. Israelis would be in charge of policing the West Bank and Gaza and ensuring that nobody blows anything up. In return, Israel should:

- Remove all internal roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza
- Freeze all Israeli settlement in the West Bank and continue the settlement ban on Gaza
- Remove the economic blockade on Palestinian goods; allow PA residents to trade freely with other states
- Guarantee property rights of Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza, and issue Arab landowners deeds for their land
- Implement programs encouraging entrepreneurship among Arabs in the WB and Gaza
- Most importantly, guarantee the creation of a Palestinian state on land consisting of 90% of the land area occupied by Israel in 1967 on a set date, say, 20 years from now.

The advantages of this are obvious. Palestinians need economic development to be a viable state, but there's not enough resources to keep things stable and they can't agree on a leadership. And because there's no political stability, there's no economic development. It's clear that Palestinians are in a vicious cycle that they can't get out of on their own - statecraft requires money, and there's no money there because there's no state. What this plan does is give the PA territories the political stability necessary to form a reasonable economy, along with giving them the tools needed to start an economy (property rights and capital). PA nationalists ought to be mollified by the promise - hopefully backed by American administrations - to grant independence to Palestine on a set date, and the PA can improve its governing ability as the economy grows. That way, an end to the occupation is in sight, and that would only encourage the Palestinians to take control of their own affairs. And when the occupation does end, the West Bank and Gaza will have an economy that will leave them able to survive as an independent state.

Of course, nationalists on either side are too strong to allow this plan to occur. Oh well. I think it's a good idea, anyway.

Newspaper Ad, Waffle House Style

Some years ago, a couple of friends and I were driving from Raleigh to Nashville, and we decided to stop for food at a Waffle House in Hickory, NC. At our booth, we were approached by a guy who tells us a nonsense "joke" about Communists and proceeds to rant incoherently for several minutes before pointing us to a website (whose URL I have forgotten) that was equally incoherent.

So when I caught wind of this via Ed Brayton's blog, I immediately thought of that guy.

Seriously, what is that ad trying to say? Can anyone make heads or tails out of it? And the website is full of equally incoherent rantings and ravings. Does virulent anti-gay hate lead to aphasia or something?

Swedish-Made GDP Enlarger

Apparently there's talk going around normally laissez-faire-friendly circles that we should nationalize the banks, kind of like the Swedes did when their financial system was going pear-shaped in the 1990s. (The Wonkette site linked to here contains links to FT articles at the bottom that are a lot more information-friendly.) The advantage here would be that the taxpayers would stop being sugar-daddies and start being shareholders in the banks - meaning that if the banks are managed back to health, we come out okay revenue-wise when we sell the banks back to shareholders in the private sector. (Which kinda means we buy banks from ourselves and sell them back to ourselves when we're done with them. Economics makes no sense.)

Anyway, I don't see this as a particularly bad idea. If we're going to bail out banks, and it seems we've made the decision to do so, we might as well go all-in with it. The half-assed way we've been conducting the bailout hasn't done a damn thing where loosening up credit markets is concerned, and it's far from clear that we'll see that money again if banks get back on their feet.

I still think it would have been best to let one of the investment houses go into bankruptcy proceedings - this would have panicked people a little bit, but it would have settled once and for all what those damn mortgage-backed securities were worth and could have saved us a lot of trouble in the long run. But we're past that point now, and as long as we're involved with this bailout, we might as well do it right.

Musically Challenged Writer Alert

OK, I'm no music expert, but isn't the thesis of this article basically destroyed by recent history? The article claims that music sucks when Democrats are elected, but that ignores the fact that under Clinton (1/20/93-1/20/01), the following happened (and I'm realizing full well that not everyone who reads this is going to like everything on this list):

Smash
Dookie, Nimrod, Warning
Throwing Copper, The Distance to Here
Somewhere More Familiar, Fortress
In Utero, that MTV Unplugged album
Vs., Vitalogy
Jar of Flies
Californication
Purple
August and Everything After, Recovering the Satellites, This Desert Life (I think)
Automatic for the People, Monster
Weezer's blue album

Also assorted awesomeness from Hootie and the Blowfish, Dave Matthews Band, Aerosmith, Blues Traveler, the Cranberries, Rusted Root, Collective Soul, Seven Mary Three, Foo Fighters, Presidents, Everclear... so yeah, music under Clinton definitely sucked. Idiot.

Another Adoption Memo

To: Morons in the state of Kentucky

From: Jeff

Re: Idiocy

Listen. Just because 57% of Arkansans are friggin' idiots doesn't mean you have to be that way too. What, did you think that Arkansas' extending a middle finger to the kids in foster care was such a brilliant idea that you had to copy it? Sure, it takes a jackass to think that kids are better off in orphanages than with loving parents, but it takes some severe stupidity to mimic this idea. I mean, I know you're a state full of people who thought Tubby Smith was an awful coach who needed to be run out of town, but still, I didn't think you were this stupid.

I dunno. Maybe you're not stupid. Maybe you just hate children too. Yeah, that's gotta be it - Kentucky hates kids too, just like Arkansas. That's what you should call this bill - the Fuck You, Kids Act of 2009.

Blame the Jews, Volume 663

I suppose, given his proclivities, that I shouldn't be surprised that Hugo Chavez has launched his own little anti-Semitism campaign down in Venezuela.

Chavez' Venezuela wasn't the most free place on the planet in the first place, but ethno-religious hatred and violence was never part of the equation. But it's still true that, as the old adage goes, anti-Semitism is often the first sign of a much darker turn in a country's politics. Expect Venezuela to get worse and worse, kids.

It'll also be interesting to see if the mini-Chavezes in South America follow suit. Evo Morales, already from an oppressed minority, doesn't seem like the hating type, and there are barely any Jews in Bolivia anyway. I don't know much about Correa in Ecuador, but that's worth watching, as is Lugo in Paraguay.

Happy 200th!

Happy birthday to Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin, who were improbably born on the same day in 1809. Also Cotton Mather and Ehud Barak, who weren't born in 1809.

No Playoff, And Now This?

Dear college football leaders:

When you have a ridiculously awful rule on the books, you should be thinking about canning it... not strengthening it.

Thanks,
Jeff

...And Some Good News

Normally I'm suspicious of programs that put your personal information on the Web, and normally I'm suspicious of Google in general, but this seems like a kick-ass idea. I would definitely like to know what I'm doing that makes my power bill so frickin' ridiculous. Sign me up.

I Fail at Voting

And to add to the crap sandwich that is Tuesday, February 10, 2009, the Washington Post reports that Obama is doing his best Bush impression when it comes to civil liberties.

I would comment on this, using every nasty word I can think of, but Greenwald sums it up without even using a swear word. From his other piece on the issue:

Countries that are nations of laws rather than of men don't rely on blind faith in the good character of leaders to prevent abuse. They rely on what we call "law" and "accountability" and "checks and balances" to provide those safeguards -- exactly the type that Democrats, when it came to the States Secret privilege, long insisted upon before January 20, 2009.

We've been had, civil libertarians. Obama's proving himself to be a weak-willed power whore, passing off panic and secrecy as policy.

Fuck it, I shoulda voted for Barr. There, I said it. Jacob, cackle all you want.

UPDATE: I know it's old news, but this isn't helping matters.

Tom Daschle: Everyone's Personal Lisa Cuddy

So buried in the Super-Necessary Scamulus is this provision that says the government can tell doctors how to treat patients. Which is quite possibly the only thing worse than our current system, where insurance companies tell doctors how to treat patients.

This day is awesome already.

Timothy F. Geithner - The F Stands For Fail

Timothy Geithner gave a speech today starting at 11 AM. In it he spreads panic and asks for more bailout money. Fun.

Anyway, click here and move to 11 AM on February 10th. What do you notice occurring?

Jackass.

UPDATE: Ben Bernanke started testifying before Congress at 1:00. Check out stocks at that time too.

Italian for "Terri Schiavo"

Hmmm... a government controlled by right-wing religious nuts decides to try to score cheap political points by ham-handedly intervening in a personal tragedy with which the government ought to have no business interfering... must be Italy?

Perhaps Italian MPs have seen too many soccer matches, and think she's faking it in order to draw a penalty kick?

Yer Fake Persecution Watch

Get a load of this video put out by the right-wing nutcases at the misleadingly benignly-named American Family Association. I didn't have time to watch much past the first couple of minutes, but the summary presented at the intro basically says this: "because America doesn't hate gays anymore, they hate Christians." The first part of the show tells us that because kids are told not to bully gays in school, they're anti-Christian.

Anyway, if you have the time, fast-forward to about 10 minutes in - there's a ham-handed pull-on-your-heartstrings bit on children that made me laugh out loud. There's lots of unintentional comedy in there, actually.

Seriously, righties. Get a grip. Dictionary.com defines persecution as "a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religion, race, or beliefs." Is this happening here to Christians? No. In fact, what you call "the homosexual agenda" is an attempt to get right-wingers to stop trying to "subjugate" people because of their sexuality.

It's also kind of amusing (and a bit disturbing) that they seem to be trying to turn "After the Ball," a book so important and influential that it doesn't have its own Wikipedia page, into the Protocols of the Elders of Gay.

Your WTF Moment of the Day

I'm not usually one to laugh at religious beliefs, but... really?

First off, I'm not sure I understand the problem Christians have with this. Mencken described puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy." This falls into that category. Second, and more importantly, who the hell would wear that shirt in public? Third, taking up Balko's point, they'd probably have to take that shirt off and put an "ex-liar" shirt on right afterwards.

Blogging Malpractice

So it's been a long month, but even so, I'm not sure how this bit of awesomeness slipped through the cracks. I mean, we beat Pat Summitt and Tennessee for the first time since I was a junior there, and I somehow missed it? You may subject me to my e-beating now.

The Coolest Thing You'll Read All Week

First, my heart goes out to all of you who turned off the game last night after three quarters. Tough luck, there. Kinda like those of you who turned off the Boise State-Oklahoma game after OU's interception return (you know who you are).

Anyway, this Balko rant is incredibly full of win. Enjoy.

On Drinking and Dying

Jacob posts about a paper that compares mortality rates from alcohol to age. The paper finds that there is a discontinuity in the graph at age 21, when alcohol becomes legal - the mortality rate spikes as young people celebrate their newfound freedom. That's a logical conclusion to draw. However, the researcher uses this as evidence that the drinking age should not be lowered to 18 as many college presidents are suggesting, citing the potential for higher mortality rates at age 18 than we currently see.

But look at the graph closely, and you'll note something:

1) The amount of drinking also spikes at age 21.

2) The mortality rate hardly varies between ages 19 and 23. The only deviation from a pretty-much-flat line is the hiccup at age 21, which tapers back to age-19 levels at 22.

Combined, we see that the increased drinking among those who have been of age for a while isn't leading to a significantly higher mortality rate among of-age drinkers. What that suggests is that moving the drinking age will change the numbers on the X-axis but leave the overall shape of the curve unchanged. Yes, lowering the drinking age to 18 will cause an increase in fatalities among 18-year-olds. But it will cause a roughly equivalent decrease in fatalities among 21-year-olds who, now having been of age for a while, will adopt the drinking patterns of the 23-year-olds in the current study.

So the study shows that moving the drinking age will have little effect on overall mortality, at least in the long run. (The study also suggests that you'll see a spike among 18-20 year olds for the first few months of the new lower drinking age.)

What the graph suggests to me is not that increased drinking causes increased mortality, but that the drinking age itself causes increased mortality. This is an intuitive result, as well - without a drinking age, there wouldn't be any social pressure to binge-drink on your birthday and drinking wouldn't be as baffling to someone recently of-age...

Gitless

Let's see. In two days Obama has:

- Outlawed torture and ordered the repeal of every Bush executive order on interrogations
- Prevented the CIA from operating "black site" prisons
- Closed the detainee camp at Guantanamo, probably initiating a review for the detainees held there
- Asked government agencies to give FOIA requests the benefit of the doubt, which will free up a lot of government documents
- Disallowed ex-presidents from claiming executive privilege in order to hide their records

Spiffy. This more than makes up for the stimulus scam, in my mind.

Add to that this unexpected heaping helping of win from Congo (which is awesome for a multitude of reasons, not least of which it signals that Rwanda might quit trying to screw its neighbor over), and it's a pretty good week.

The Inaugural

Thanks to the snow, I was able to actually watch Obama's inaugural address live yesterday. The speech was good, but something bugged me about it. Obama (along with most other politicians) has a habit of claiming crisis whenever there is a somewhat serious problem. The financial meltdown is a mess, but it's hardly a crisis. Terrorism is a threat, but it's hardly a major one.

Civil War? Crisis. World War II? Crisis. Missiles in Cuba? Crisis. 25% unemployment at the height of the Depression? Crisis. But while this financial mess is a crisis on an individual level for a lot of people, it's hardly a national emergency. It's basically the early '90s all over again, and we came out of that okay with a minimum of government intervention. And though we're due for another major terror attack involving Americans, terrorism is hardly an existential threat or a national crisis. From an American perspective, it rises to the level of "kinda annoying." (Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan can legitimately consider terrorism a crisis. I'll let India and Pakistan slide. The rest of you? Quit bitching.) I can only think of one issue of the top of my head that deserves "crisis" consideration - securing loose nuclear weapons generated by the fall of the Soviet Union. Which, of course, none of our politicians talk much about.

So yeah, I appreciate Obama's determination, but I really wish he wouldn't make mountains out of relative molehills.

Appropriate Mencken quote of the day: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins."

Canada's Mix Tape for Obama

CBC wants to make a 49-song playlist for the new US President, and here are the songs that are up for nomination. I'd like to point out that the songs include:

- "Canada's Really Big" by the Arrogant Worms, the point of which is basically that Canada has no defining characteristic other than its size.

- "One Great City!" by the Weakerthans (awesome band, imagine the offspring of TMBG and the Decemberists), which ends each verse with "I hate Winnipeg." Oh yeah, did I mention they're from Winnipeg?

- "Acadian Driftwood" by The Band, the first song on the list - the vocals of which are provided by a dude from Arkansas.

- "American Woman" by the Guess Who, because the first thing you want the new American President to hear is "American woman, get away from me..."

- "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies, which given the state of our economy should really add a few zeroes to the title. "If I had a trillion dollars, I'd pay down our debt..."

- "Rockin' in the Free World" by Neil Young, which blatantly lampoons Bush 41.

- A song by the Crash Test Dummies that isn't "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm"

- Not a single song by The Dears, which is a HUGE travesty.

I think we should send them a mix tape back... first on the list should be "Blame Canada."

50-49 Really Isn't That Much Of A Majority...

...as has been proved by the Tennessee House of Representatives, which despite its 50-49 GOP majority somehow allowed the Democrats to choose a moderate Republican speaker over the GOP's favored right-wing candidate. The speaker pro tem is a Democrat. Heaven only knows what the committee assignments are going to look like, since the Speaker gets to choose those and he's not exactly winning any popularity contests among the Tennessee Republicans nowadays.

Politics: more amusement than you ever thought possible.

What's In A Name?

The world is full of personal-liberty conundrums these days. Here's the latest.

On one hand, doesn't taking kids away from someone because you object to their political beliefs seem a little bit, well, fascist? On the other hand, naming a kid "Adolf Hitler Campbell" can be seen as dooming the child to a life of social ostracism and thus as a form of child abuse...

This government crap is harder than it looks, folks.

(Side note: could Social Services simply demand that the couple change the kids' names? And can a court reject a baby name because it's ridiculous?)

Warning: Foreboding Ahead

I voted for Obama, and I'm not too upset about the way his transition is going, but I can't help but think that this is a bad sign.

Or maybe Robertson has realized that the GOP is teh suck right now and if he still wants some relevance he should pretend to be a Democrat until this all blows over?

It's Not Really Alcohol If They Can't See It

Apologies to my Beehive State readers, but this kind of thing is the reason why the other 49 states laugh at your state. Don't get me wrong, I love Utah, I just shouldn't have to drink my beer out of a brown paper bag when I go there.

H/T Jacob

The Libertarian's Dilemma

I was talking about this puzzle at work today with a couple of libertarians, and since I ran across this story I figured I'd pose it to the often libertarian-leaning regulars here.

A hotel in Nashville fires a guy explicitly for being gay. Should they be allowed to do so? If so, is the man's right to live his own life the way he wants threatened by inaction on the part of the government? If not, are companies' rights to make their own personnel decisions threatened? Here I'm assuming most liberals (myself included) would come down on the side of an anti-discrimination law while most conservatives would be against it. But it seems like this is an issue where two libertarian ideals conflict... what of it?

Help! Help! I'm Being Oppressed!

I don't know why this list of Top Ten Instances of Christian-Bashing amuses me so much. Maybe it's because, while the ADL (the main anti-Semitism watchdog) deals with synagogues desecrated with swastikas and war protesters telling Jews to get back in the oven, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has... drunk ESPN anchors.

Seriously, Christian missionaries are getting murdered in India and you're whining about a Sarah Palin political cartoon? Cry me a river.

College Football Postmortem

Tell me: how many college football seasons have ended with us being less certain about who the best team in the country is than we were at the beginning? Remember when everyone thought Georgia would run all over everyone this season? Yeah, kinda makes me chuckle too. For a laugh, check out this preseason top 25 poll. Georgia's at the top, and they got Oklahoma, USC, and Florida vaguely right. But Clemson at #6? They couldn't even beat Nebraska in the Gator Bowl. Auburn is at #10... and didn't make a bowl game. Ditto with Tennessee at #14 and Arizona State at #15. And what genius thought Illinois should be ranked #19? Wrong Illinois team, dude - shoulda gone with Northwestern. Meanwhile, Penn State languishes at #24, and Utah isn't even on the radar.

(Side note here: I think I remember saying at the beginning of the season that Utah had a pretty good shot at going undefeated this year. They had scads of returning seniors, their only loss since September of last year was a close call to BYU in Provo, and all their tough games - TCU, BYU, Oregon State - were at home. Their only remotely difficult road games would be against always-mediocre Air Force and rebuilding Michigan. Why did no one else see this? Why?)

Anyway, we now know that the BCS will never die, because if anything could destroy it, it was this season. This season was like a giant nuclear bomb exploded directly over the BCS... and it's going to survive, despite yet another disputed national championship.

Of course, disputed national championships are nothing new. But can you remember a season that ended with four teams that all have a legitimate argument? Florida beat nine bowl teams, won the SEC, and only lost to a team that ended up ranked #14. Texas played a tough Big 12 schedule and only lost an away game at on-fire Texas Tech after having played three straight ranked teams. USC didn't play anyone, but dominated everyone outside Corvallis and gave us the biggest bowl smack-down of the year against a pretty good Penn State team. Utah beat four currently ranked teams and, oh yeah, didn't lose. Go ahead, you pick a winner. I think the Utes have the strongest argument (the whole undefeated thing), followed by UF, Texas, and USC, but reasonable people can disagree.

This isn't the first time more than one team could claim a championship in the BCS era. Auburn and Utah had claims in 2004 when USC took the hardware home (and Auburn, in fact, won the AP poll). So that's twice in five years where the BCS system has completely exploded. The BCS was meant to settle two-team debates like the 1997 season where Michigan and Nebraska finished undefeated but were unable to face each other because Michigan was tied to the Rose Bowl. It can't settle debates among more than two teams, so it was designed with a very short memory. More than two teams have laid claims on a national championship before - the goofy 1970 season ended with three consensus national champions and two other teams that had an argument - but with the exception of 1993 it hadn't happened recently.

So as college football parity increased at the beginning of the decade, the BCS was caught with its pants down. More and more large-conference teams began playing well enough to get a title. And the small conferences suddenly became relevant. Before the founding of the BCS, you almost never had a small-conference team lay a claim on a title. Since Army won the title in 1945, only once - BYU in 1984 - has a consensus national title been claimed by a team currently outside the major conferences. (SMU sorta had claims in 1981 and 1982.) It has happened three times in the past five years (Utah in 2004 and 2008 and Boise State in 2005). The more teams and conferences that are relevant, the more often you'll have arguments among three or more teams that didn't play each other during the regular season... which means BCS disaster.

So we get what we had this year, with a national champion that half the country thinks doesn't deserve it and a President-elect calling for a playoff and an entire state suing the system. And it'll happen again, because a playoff is the only system that could conceivably settle a multiple-team championship debate, and we're not getting a playoff.

The BCS is what it is - a means of getting around conference tie-ins so that two teams in the national championship argument can play each other. It just needs to drop the idea that it is the final word in college football, especially in years where five teams have national championship arguments going into the bowl season. By conferring an air of finality upon a clearly disputed national championship, the BCS makes the system worse. Lose the pretension, and the BCS is fine.

One final note. That preseason poll? It's actually pretty important because it helps set television schedules for the year. Utah's only game on national television was a less-than-impressive road win at patsy Michigan (yeah, that's not an oxymoron this year). It's completely inexplicable why national television wouldn't pick up a game between #8 and #12... yet Utah's game against TCU was banished to satellite. Utah's poor poll performance - as well as that of USC, whose games tend to finish after most of the East Coast is asleep - is almost certainly related to low exposure.

In Real Life, Juno Took Place In Mississippi

USA Today has put out data on teen pregnancy that demonstrates that Northeastern teenagers don't get pregnant very much, while Southern and Southwestern teens do.

Of course, let the blathering over sex ed and TV and all that crapola continue. The correlation here is pretty simple. Let's look at the top three and bottom three states. I'll put the state's average income rank in parentheses.

1. Mississippi (51)
2. New Mexico (45)
3. Arkansas (49)

49. Massachusetts (7)
50. Vermont (22)
51. New Hampshire (6)

Vermont's a bit out of place, but otherwise? Looks like poverty is probably our biggest factor. North Dakota and Maine also buck the trend, of course, so poverty may not be everything. Perhaps it's pockets of concentrated poverty we're looking for?

"National Champion Utah" Has A Ring To It

Everybody, just listen to Rick Reilly. That is all.

Also, I think we can all agree that it was only a matter of time before this happened. You don't screw over half of a state (the other half roots for BYU) TWICE and expect everyone to be happy with it.

Eyeless in Gaza (Again)

Wow, it has been a while since I've posted. I didn't realize it until I looked at Jana's blog where she has the cool gadget that lists the time since the last post underneath everyone's name (yes, Trish, I know you have it too, I was just on Jana's blog first today), and it said "Jeff, 2 weeks ago." I don't think I've ever gone two weeks without posting. Sheesh. Anyway, my baby isn't throwing up everywhere anymore and the Middle East is exploding so now is as good a time to post as any.

So my wife and I were talking yesterday about the recent invasion of Gaza by Israeli ground troops. At first, we both thought that the invasion was pretty much unavoidable. I mean, if Cuba was firing rockets at Key West, even if they were total POSes like the Qassams, wouldn't we bomb them back to the Stone Age? I don't see how we can reasonably blame Israel for doing the same. However, my wife had a thought - wouldn't sending in the black ops be better?

Follow me here. Hamas operatives like to launch rockets from civilian-occupied buildings and use civilians as cover. That way, Israel has two conventional options - destroy the rockets and a bunch of civilians, or do nothing. The first option is what Israel chose, and it gets rid of the rockets but kills a lot of people and pisses off a bunch of other people who aren't really paying attention and so apparently didn't notice the rockets. The second option risks the lives of your own people... not cool either. The third option is better - treat it like a hostage situation because, really, that's what it is. Hamas rocketeers are holding civilians hostage by firing from their buildings.

I'm sure Israel has some black ops people lying around somewhere. Rumor has it they're pretty badass. How hard could it be to sneak into Gaza, pick off a couple of rocketeers, and come back? The rumors about the all-powerfulness of Israeli intelligence agents (probably all BS, because rumors have a tendency of getting out of hand when Jews are involved) work to Israel's advantage here, because after the black ops kill a few rocketeers, they'll start to freak out. The best part? No civilians get hurt, and no one has any excuse to complain. It's a win-win situation. Someone should tell whoever's running the show over there now.

Sick silver lining to this whole episode? If this war goes well for Israel and they basically lay waste to much of Gaza, it'll boost defense minister Ehud Barak's credibility among the hard-liners. That'll help Barak in the upcoming election, where currently hard-liner Binyamin Netanyahu holds a strong lead. And if Barak does get elected, he'll have all the political capital he needs to pursue peace (remember Barak was willing to give up a lot in 2000 but got shafted by the intransigent Yasser Arafat). And Hamas will be out of the way (at least temporarily) because they'll have just gotten their butts kicked in Gaza while Fatah and its West Bank base remained relatively unscathed. Should this war propel Barak into office, it may be the best chance for peace the region has seen in a long, long time.

A few other random thoughts:

- Rod Blagojevich belonged on the set of "Happy Days," not in the governor's office. Seriously, Illinois, the loss of a Senate seat is what you get for electing the Fonz.

- My teams are three for three on the bowl game front. 'Horns, don't screw this up. Speaking of college football, have you ever seen a season that will likely end with four teams (USC, Utah, Texas if they beat OSU, and whoever wins Fla-OU) who could legitimately lay claim to the title of "best team in the country"? Playoff. Now. Or else Obama says knock you OUT.

- Speaking of football, if you're wondering how you can gain 200 yards of total offense for a game, go 1-15 on third down, and win... you just play the only no-turnover, no-penalty game I think I have ever seen. And get really lucky on a punt play. Oh, and Who The Heck Is Larry Smith might turn out to be a decent QB down the road...

- Since it looks like Stuart Smalley won Minnesota's Senate race (which, incidentally, is the only statewide or national race I can think of that has ever pitted two Jews against one another), can we cut costs by combining the official Senate trips to Iraq and Afghanistan with the USO? Franken's still a pretty good stand-up comic, right? And who wouldn't want to see Kay Hagan do a little burlesque? Incidentally, if you're C-SPAN, wouldn't you be finding out when Franken is scheduled to deliver a speech on the Senate floor and advertise it? If they can encourage him to throw a little comedy in there, it could set ratings records for them. I know Franken's got a serious head for policy, but man, the possibilities of a stand-up comic in the Senate are endless.

- Just because:

That's our Selah... the next Brian Rosenworcel.