Update: Torture and Detention

The Senate reached a compromise toning down the language of the Graham "Screw Human Rights" Amendment. Now, a detainee who has been tried before a military tribunal receives an automatic appeal to the D.C. Circuit if their sentence is greater than ten years, and detainees can petition the D.C. Circuit for an appeal if their sentence is less. The new language, authored by Carl Levin (D-MI), allows the D.C. Circuit to rule on the constitutionality of the process case-by-case should an appeal be brought. It's a significant improvement over the original GSHRA, but it still robs detainees of many of the rights that form the basis of our legal system. There is still no recourse for those detained who don't even get a military tribunal. And there is no transparency at all for the military tribunal process. (This baffles me - why can we give Nazis a public military trial with access to lawyers, the right to defend themselves, etc. and not do the same for al Qaeda?)

Graham and Levin are asking the Senate conferees to link the language of this bill to the McCain Amendment. That may sound trivial, but realize that the GSHRA is something that the Administration dearly wants - Senators want Bush to realize that if he wants to strip people of their access to courts, he'll have to deal with not torturing them.

You know, five years ago I never would have dreamed of typing that last sentence.

Boredom + A Quarter = Hilarity

Michael Newdow is back on the beat, continuing his glorious - ahem - crusade against government-sanctioned displays of religion. This time, he's after the "In God We Trust" motto on our money.

Newdow's got a point. The currency's reference to God establishes a religious belief and is therefore unconstitutional. But seriously, dude, do you have anything better to do with your time?

And in the "tasty irony" department, NASCAR racer Kurt Busch was suspended from his racing team for driving recklessly around Phoenix. I'm not sure how he stood out from the rest of Phoenix's creative drivers, but I'm also not sure why his racing team was surprised when the guy they're paying to drive psychotically drives psychotically.

To sum: driving like a NASCAR driver in Phoenix gets you arrested. Driving like a NASCAR driver in downtown Raleigh gets you re-elected.

What A Beautiful View... That'll Be $1,000

Since New Hampshire has prevented itself from implementing a sales or income tax, they have decided to tax something they have plenty of: scenery. They could do that in North Carolina, but I'd only be paying about six cents.

Granted, this is supposed to be part of the property value, but... honestly. Why raise the property value $200,000 in one fell swoop based on a view? And what would happen if they tried this in, say, Montana?

I suppose this is somewhat of a setback for the Free Staters up there...

Also, the award for Losing A Game In The Most Absolutely Innovative And Heartbreaking Way goes to the Washington Redskins... I still can't tell whether Mike Alstott actually got the ball across the goal line on that two-point conversion.

Politician Admits Mistake

Former NC Senator John Edwards admits he was wrong in voting for the Iraq war in 2002. Also, my head just exploded.

In other news, Pat Robertson is an idiot. Not that this is news, per se. It's just funny.

Here is the e-mail letter I sent to Senator Burr regarding the Graham Screw Human Rights Amendment (link to Ben's blog). I would have sent it snail-mail, but there was no chance in hell it was going to get there by Monday. I sent a shorter version to Senator Dole, since her e-mail interface only accepts shorter letters. Chance that either will read it: scant. But it's worth a shot.

Senator Burr,

First, allow me to commend you for your support for the McCain Amendment. Your vote in this matter clearly demonstrates your concern for human rights and your desire to ensure that we conduct the war on terror in the most effective way possible. By voting for this amendment, you have made a statement that you do not wish us to sink to the moral levels of our opposition in the conduct of this global struggle.

I am dismayed, however, by your support for the Graham Amendment, which strips the federal courts of the jurisdiction to hear statutory habeas corpus pleas. This ensures that those detained in foreign countries and brought to Guantanamo Bay will not be able to challenge their detention in the courts.

I appreciate the importance of the aforementioned detentions in the conduct of the war on terror. However, suspending the habeas rights of these detainees weakens our ability to successfully struggle against terrorism by undermining our claim to moral superiority and by providing terrorist recruiters with another tool to stoke the fires of anti-American hatred within young Muslim men.

The right to challenge one's imprisonment is just as fundamental a human right as the right to be treated humanely while in detention, a right for which you expressed support when you voted for the McCain Amendment. There can be no claim of perfection here; therefore, though most of the detainees are terrorists, many of those imprisoned at Guantanamo were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. In order to ensure that we are detaining the right people, all those detained must be allowed to challenge their detention. To deny detainees these rights is tantamount to saying that the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people is acceptable.

Allowing detainees to challenge their status in court will not only ensure that we do not detain anyone wrongly, but will also ensure that our interrogations are only conducted upon those with actual information. Imagine the waste - not to mention the embarrassment - of interrogating someone who has never been a terrorist about supposed terrorist activities! If we institute a process by which the wrongfully detained are freed and the rightfully detained are held, we avoid much of this waste of resources. Furthermore, any information that comes out during the challenge can be utilized by intelligence agencies as well.

Finally, the specter of indefinite wrongful imprisonment looms large over the heads of those who may be subjected to it. Terrorist recruiters will almost certainly distort any unjust detentions into evidence that America is attacking the Muslim world and thus should be destroyed. In order to win the war on terror, we must not only destroy existing terrorists but prevent new terrorists from being recruited. Allowing detainees access to the courts will reassure those who fear that they may be next that justice will be served, and that if they avoid participating in terrorism, they will not be hurt.

It is apparent that the Graham Amendment undermines our claims to moral superiority and harms our ability to conduct the war on terror in an efficient and effective manner. I have heard that your colleague from New Mexico, Jeff Bingaman, is planning to offer an amendment on Monday that would reverse, at least in part, the Graham Amendment. For the sake of our consciences and for the sake of our struggle against violent extremists, I urge you to support Mr. Bingaman's efforts.

Thank you for your time,
Jeff Woodhead

Election Day Retrospective

Yesterday was Election Day. Unless you lived in Virginia or New Jersey, you probably didn't notice. (And boy, did Virginians notice.) So here's the rundown:

Congratulations to Tim "Candy" Kaine, who continues Virginia's long march to purpleness with a victory in the race for governor. He succeeds the wildly successful and wildly popular Mark Warner, who managed to raise his profile for the '08 Democratic presidential nomination in the process.

In the process, blue America's border moved from the Potomac to the Occoquan. Congratulations to Chuck Caputo especially, who defeated gay-basher and immigrant-basher extraordinaire Chris Craddock in his southwestern Fairfax County race. (Craddock ousted incumbent Gary Reese in the primary, in part by linking him to an decade-old endorsement from a gay-friendly publication and by questioning his sexuality. Reese, a moderate Republican who often sided with Warner, likely would have held the seat. This reinforces the notion that primary voters are often fools.)

The Post describes the election as a "backlash" against Republicans in the suburbs. I doubt that. The fact that Kaine (the lieutenant governor) came so close to losing is testimony to how Republican Virginia still is - he was barely able to ride Warner's 80% approval rating (!) to victory. However, a lot of Republicans thought Warner's ambitious budget-balancing tax hike would play out badly, but Virginians realize that the state budget was in a hole after Gilmore, and Warner's tax plan helped the state as a whole. My point: people aren't as anti-tax as we might want to believe, even in the South.

I'll add this as well. Kaine's opponent, Jerry Kilgore, ran for the most part on the death penalty (to which Kaine is opposed) and abortion (Kaine is mildly pro-choice). He lost. Since most Virginians like the death penalty and don't like abortion, this means that a significant chunk of Kaine's votes came from so-called social conservatives. This just goes to show that a plurality of voters care about much more than just social issues, and it's time the pundits recognized that.

I'll go out on this limb while I'm at it - Bush's social conservatism had nothing to do with his 2004 victory. Discuss.

Of course, when the ballot is a social issue, the demagogues will often have their way. So it is in Texas, where voters approved a constitutional amendment denying gays the right to marry. At least sanity still rules in Maine, where voters rejected an effort to repeal their new gay-rights law. Will somebody please tell me why allowing gays to claim the legal rights associated with marriage threatens anyone? MA voters discovered this for themselves: gays were allowed to marry, and heterosexual marriage didn't implode.

Attempts in California and Ohio to take the power of drawing congressional districts away from state legislatures both failed. We can all look forward to more geographically improbable districts and uncompetitive races from those two states. Ironically, Democrats supported the Ohio measure and opposed the California measure; Republicans supported the CA measure and didn't like the OH one. Guess who holds the congressional majority in each state. Personally, I supported both, so it's a disappointment for me. I think it's somewhat important in our democracy to have the capacity for high turnover in the House. We won't have that unless we make the redistricting process non-partisan, or at least bi-partisan.

Corzine wins in N.J., to absolutely nobody's surprise.

Non-election fun:

This is my hometown, y'all. I'm glad there are people with enough time on their hands to harrass illegal immigrants who are looking for work so they (and their families back home) can eat. You want to curtail illegal immigration? Tackle our broken immigration system that forces people to immigrate illegally. You want to engage in a self-aggrandizing stunt that accomplishes nothing but intimidating people looking to better their lives? Do what these people do.

Congress is investigating the CIA's secret prisons. Oh, wait, no. They're investigating who told the press about the CIA's secret prisons. Apparently the fact that the CIA is keeping secret prisons - a tactic usually reserved for the Saddam Husseins of the world - doesn't faze Republican Congressional leaders at all. Focus, people. Focus.

Of course, the non-secret military prisons appear quite porous. Anyone else think that this wouldn't have happened if they'd been in San Quentin instead of somewhere in Afghanistan? Would your average Californian give shelter to four people in orange prison jump suits? And they probably couldn't read English, so finding John Walker Lindh's house in the phone book is out of the question.

(Thanks to Leah for those three stories.)

I was watching The Daily Show yesterday. John McCain was the guest. Jon Stewart asked McCain if VP Cheney, who wants to maintain the government's right to torture, was insane. McCain had to think about it for a little while. I was amused.

Fun With Surveillance

So far, this report from a left-leaning blog is unsubstantiated by a second source. If it's true, however, that the White House is using the Patriot Act and National Security Letters to gather information on people for no reason other than the fact that they're Bush's political enemies, then this administration truly has crossed the fine line between clueless and evil. I'll reserve judgment on this until I find another source - you're encouraged to help too.

This reminds me, however, of an excellent Post article about national security letters and their impact on the war on terror and our right to privacy. It's very balanced and well-written, but sadly, I can't get to the Post's site right now so I can't give you a link. Boo.

We Don't, Do We?

Bush is on the record this weekend as having said "we do not torture." Oh? If we don't, then why are we maintaining secret prisons in other countries? And why are we so opposed to the McCain Amendment outlawing "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of detainees?

Come to think of it, why is anyone against that amendment? Admittedly, I live in a somewhat liberal bubble, but I read Will and Krauthammer and Hoagland on the Post's site when I get the chance, and occasionally happen across a World Net Daily story or two. I haven't seen one argument against the McCain Amendment. Not one.

So I pose to you, my readers, this task. Find me a published column/piece/something opposing the McCain Amendment. You will earn my thanks, as well as a blog shout-out.

Also, if you're at a loss for where to find actual news, Leah's latest blogosphere contribution is a good place to go. She's pretty thorough.

Frank Lautenberg: Smart-ass

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced an amendment that would rename the Republicans' cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and other programs for the poor the "Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportions Reconciliation Act." Which, if it passes, gives Senate Republicans the opportunity to say that they passed a moral disaster of monumental proportions.

As long as we're using this naming convention, the Senate will probably be voting on the "Line The Pockets Of Our Campaign Donors Act" and the "Let The CIA Do Whatever The Hell It Wants To Whoever It Wants, Damn The Geneva Convention Act" fairly soon. And the "Protect Your Poor Congresspeople From Pesky Challengers Act" will almost certainly make it through state legislatures across the country.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes about it here.

It Can't Happen There

If I have any Muslim readers, Eid Mubarak to you.

The CIA has been hiding and torturing detainees in secret prisons located in other countries. While this comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who knows the history of the CIA, Dana Priest's report on the issue makes our suspicions more concrete - and more chilling.

It is unthinkable that our country should be responsible for the "disappearance" of anybody, even of 100 undeniably evil creeps. This is immoral, un-American, and downright scary. It is the American way to give everyone a fair trial. Terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols received that courtesy. Hell, even Goebbels and Goering got their day in court. Do people lose their right to a fair trial when their names become harder to pronounce?

I understand that the intelligence being extracted from these detainees is probably very valuable - or at least was. I don't know how much useful intel is being produced three years after their capture, but I'll give the intel people the benefit of the doubt on that one. Why, though, do we need to keep them in a secret location without at least the rights a prisoner of war deserves? Is there something inherently more productive about interrogating them in secret?

Congratulations to the 90 Senators (including my own Senators Burr and Dole) who voted for the McCain Amendment mandating humane treatment for all people in U.S. custody. As the Senate version stands, the regulation would apply to those in CIA custody as well. But the amendment is being threatened in conference committee by Cheney operatives who want to exempt the CIA from the regulations. I don't understand why Cheney wants to keep people in secret prisons and torture them - seems superfluous at best and counterproductive at worst.

In other news, Denver legalized the possession of an ounce of marijuana. It's a toothless law, since state and federal anti-possession laws still exist, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Toke up, Broncos fans.

It Can't Happen Here

Leah draws my attention to a really scary news item that occurred a little too close to home. As Leah points out, this is the kind of thing that happens when dictators are in power. No one should be harrassed for dissent ever, and certainly not 200 miles from my front door. I wonder what would happen if Wal-Mart found this blog, and I posted something like this:

DUBYA IS A BIG FAT IDIOT!!!

The timer now starts on how long it takes the Secret Service to show up at my door. I'll keep you - heh - posted.

Senator Sheehan?

Laugh. Cry. Cringe. Cheer. Whatever. The Village Voice has been the first to mull over a possible Cindy Sheehan challenge to Senator Hillary Clinton. It's worth noting that Sheehan herself hasn't weighed in on the possibility of running, but if you think she wouldn't do it, you've got another thing coming. Her branch of the anti-war movement seems to have morphed into a Sheehan-based cult of personality, and it's hard to say that this isn't what she had in mind ever since leaving Camp Casey. She might have some trouble given some of the vehemently anti-Israel statements she made at Camp Casey (especially in New York), though she could probably write those off as the ravings of a grieving mother if she wanted to. (Thanks to Andy for the tip.)

Elsewhere, Mike writes about a story I was going to write about yesterday before my post got too long: the United Methodist Church's defrocking of a lesbian minister. I wonder what reason the UMC will come up with for her dismissal since lesbianism is not outlawed in the Bible (the verse states that "man shall not lie with man as man lies with woman" - not the other way around).

And chalk another one up to Lighthorse Harry, who pulled a massive parliamentary rabbit out of his hat in order to speed along the investigation into the use of faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war. (For those of you who don't know, Reid sent the Senate briefly into a closed session to protest the slow movement of the investigation.) And Bill Frist's whining about being slapped in the face rings hollow - after all, who is it that's been threatening to use parliamentary theatrics of his own in order to get a judge confirmed? Oh yeah, that's right. Shut up, Billy. Ben reports on this one.

Ramble On

Another "collection of random thoughts" post.

First, the world mourns Rosa Parks, who died last week. Those of us who grew up in the 1990s tend to forget how much black Americans had to pay for their freedom - and continue to have to pay for it. We will never have a true democracy until the voices of the poor and oppressed are heard alongside those of the rich and powerful. Acts of simple defiance like Parks' have built our democracy - acts of simple defiance will continue to build it. (Not the acts of self-aggrandizing defiance that characterize today's activists on both sides.)

Second, Samuel Alito has been nominated to the Court. I think he's a Scalia clone. In fact, I hear they're having trouble finding his birth certificate. They can only trace him back to a super-secret robotics lab built thirty years ago by Barry Goldwater and the Federalist Society. That probably won't affect his confirmation - Republican senators can easily paint Alito's opposition as anti-android.

Seriously, though, I'm surprised Bush picked someone who might force him to break his citizen detention habit. Alito seems to have a fairly thin record on terrorism cases - at least, the Post didn't report any as among his bigger decisions. He doesn't seem to have much use for discrimination/harrassment laws - one of his more interesting decisions is a case where he overruled a Pennsylvania school district's anti-harrassment policy on First Amendment grounds. (This is a really interesting opinion, and as both a gay-rights advocate and a First Amendment geek, I'm somewhat torn...)

Alito seems to have overruled state law a lot, which is a bit hypocritical since his famous dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey is based on the principle of deference to the legislature. Oh well, I guess consistency isn't what anyone would expect from a Scalia clone. At least he's pro-student media - he ruled against a state law forbidding a college paper from accepting an advertisement from an alcoholic beverage vendor.

Third: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadickheadijad apparently thinks Israel should be destroyed. My colleague Andy wryly noted that the only way he could have made those comments more offensive is by saying, "You know what? We should gas them while we're at it." The hell with crossing the line - he didn't even wave at the line on his way past. When the French accuse you of being anti-Semitic and when the U.N. rebukes you, you know you're pretty dumb. One Iranian satirist put it this way: "Now there’s Iran on one side and Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Oceania against us on the other." But there's a silver lining for the Iranian idiotocracy: Antarctica hasn't gotten into the mix yet.

Fourth: Scooter Libby has been indicted. We can all sleep soundly tonight.

Fifth: 36-0?!?!?!?! What happened? Did some high school team sneak in, put on 'Skins uniforms, and play? Actually, probably not - a high school team would have at least scored some points. Also, Rutgers is bowl eligible - which means that unless Vandy takes out two of its last three opponents (and Tennessee looks beatable, so that is possible), we'll lay claim to the longest bowl drought in Div. I-A. Whee.

Sixth: More stupidity from Hugo Chavez. Seriously, dude. Halloween is not an American government plot. You're starting to sound like Joseph McCarthy. All you need is a lot of alcohol. Also, Iran expands its "destroy Israel" policy to include mannequins.

Seventh: check out this guy who tried to charge women to date him so he could raise money for a political campaign.

I Can't Go To Turkey

Your "Dumb Law of the Day" comes from Turkey, which apparently outlaws the use of the letters W and Q (those letters are not in the Turkish alphabet). So if I were to go to Turkey, I would have to write my name as Jeff Oodhead. And my passport would be confiscated. Wow. Or, rather, o.

Runner-up: a Houston law outlawing sex toys. My favorite line from this article: "Police take into account just how much an item resembles an actual penis when making an arrest." So I guess you can't be arrested for possession of a cucumber. (Incidentally, laws like this have really got to mess with the heads of New Orleans evacuees, who are used to, well, Mardi Gras.)

And: can we now all admit that Brad Lidge is actually Byun-Hyung Kim in disguise?

Jeff's Computer (2002-2005)

My home computer died about a week ago, so I don't have the power to blog at home anymore. I'm writing this from work, so it won't be particularly in-depth. It will be a series of mini-rants. Here goes:

George Will writes an interesting article about how GM is dealing with mounting health care costs to its retirees, and how those health care costs affect their ability to come out with new products. What Will fails to realize, I guess, is that he just made an excellent argument for single-payer health care systems. If corporate benefits packages are weighing down companies, it would ironically enough be pro-business to expand government in this area. If Washington (or Lansing, or Raleigh) is paying for it, the board room won't have to - and that will free up funds for the innovation that drives a successful market system. Furthermore, the cost of providing health benefits will no longer have to be borne by small business owners, which allows them to put more money back into their business (and maybe pay their employees better).

The hitch is in the ridiculous costs of health care. A single-payer system would occupy a good tenth of our budget all by itself - but since I don't trust the market as far as I can throw it when it comes to providing health care, we're left with either companies or governments paying the bills. If we accept Will's argument, government is our only solution, however costly it may be.

Another Post article chronicles the short life span of an eighth-grade reading assignment where students were asked to choose one book from a list of a hundred banned/challenged books, read it, and analyze why it was controversial. Predictably, some idiot parents decided that because they didn't want their kids reading some of the books on the list (reasonable, given that Madonna's "Sex" was on the list, among others), they didn't want anyone else's kids reading any of the books on the list. The school, being spineless, withdrew the assignment. Raising your own kid seems hard enough; someone please tell me why there are parents out there who want to be everyone else's mommy and daddy too.

Also on the education front, students have shown no appreciable gains from the No Child Left Behind act yet. I don't know that we can gauge the success of an education program a mere four years into its existence, but NCLB certainly isn't the magic bullet that the Bush administration was wanting it to be. Looks like Curious George will actually have to put a little more effort into solving our education problems.

And finally, well met, Astros. Why you didn't walk Albert Pujols in the ninth inning of Game 5, I'll never know. But I guess it didn't matter.

What Bush Is Really Up To

A lot of people are asking: why Miers? Why would Bush ignore the legions of conservative legal minds that have been elevated to appellate courts throughout the past decades? Why would Bush nominate someone from his inner circle when he's already facing charges of rampant cronyism? Bush seems to have made no one happy with his pick - is he stupid?

No. Miers was Bush's best pick. And here's why.

I think Bush could care less about "strict constructionism" or abortion or gay marriage or all that other crapola that the media throw about during nomination time. He's really trying to curtail the Supreme Court's interference with his war on terror, and doing a pretty good job of it.

Remember Hamdi v. Rumsfeld? In that case, the Court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen, had the right to challenge his "enemy combatant" status in court. The decision was 8-1, with only Clarence Thomas stating that the exigencies of the war on terror supersede Hamdi's habeas plea. Certainly no Bush nominations are going to change that balance at all.

But look at the case closer. Four justices went further in their opinions, saying that not only could Hamdi challenge his status in court, but that the government was wrong in holding Hamdi as an enemy combatant. The four justices were Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, and - here's the kicker - Scalia.

Scalia's argument was that the only way the executive could have the right to detain a citizen as an enemy combatant was through an invocation of the Constitution's Suspension Clause. That requires an act of Congress, and Congresspeople aren't about to face re-election with the suspension of everyone's habeas rights on their records.

Scalia was in the minority - barely. Had another case come up challenging the right of the Executive to hold citizens as enemy combatants, it would have been decided 5-4 in Bush's favor. Both Rehnquist and O'Connor, the two justices being replaced, were part of the five.

Therefore, the last thing Bush wanted at this point was another Scalia. Another Scalia would seriously limit his ability to detain citizens that might be al-Qaeda members indefinitely. But neither Roberts nor Miers is "another Scalia." Roberts has ruled in favor of the Administration in a war-on-terror case that came before the D.C. Circuit. Miers is the current White House Counsel. Both are reliably on the side of deference to the executive when it comes to terrorism cases. Bush didn't want to take any chances - one false step, and his entire power grab comes a-crumbling down.

The only pick that would have made as much sense as Miers was Alberto Gonzales. But Gonzales made the mistake of making his moderate views on social issues public, so he would draw even more flack from the conservatives than Miers is getting. And Gonzales is a lightning rod for issues of executive power. He drew a lot of opposition during his confirmation as Attorney General, and that would only be amplified by the intense pressures of a Court confirmation battle.

Bush's political calculus is this: neither Miers nor Gonzales would make conservatives happy. So nominate Miers and get the support of liberals and Democrats who'll see Miers' moderation on social issues and who'll think they wouldn't get much better than that from Bush. He'll lose the Dems' support if the Miers debate becomes about executive power, but he knows the media and interest groups will focus on her views on abortion and church-state separation just like they do for every judicial nominee. Now he'll need to pull off just enough Republican votes to win confirmation in the Senate - it should only take five, and Bush could probably get fifteen in his sleep. Thus, the detentions are safe.

Sure, Bush's picks look confusing if we think they're about social policy issues. But Bush's entire presidency has been about the war on terror since September 11, 2001. It's what he ran on in 2004, and it's what keep his approval ratings above 40. Somehow, people seem to forget that when they start looking at the Supreme Court. If we look at the nominations of Roberts and Miers through that lens, it all becomes crystal clear.

Nope, Never Heard Of Her Either

Bush just nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's spot on the Supreme Court. The collective punditry releases a great big "huh?"

Miers has never served as a judge. (Neither had Rehnquist, nor had Earl Warren. Chief Justice Roberts - that's gonna take some getting used to - has only two years.) She has, however, had extensive experience as a lawyer, so maybe she'll know what she's doing up there. At least as much as anyone else, anyway.

Bush has managed to do the previously unthinkable with this one, though - win the praise of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ("I like Harriet Miers") and the condemnation of the conservative National Review ("The Miers nomination is an unforced error"). Which probably means he made as good a pick as he can make - at a time when his approval ratings are dropping, the last thing he needs to do is initiate a bruisingly partisan confirmation battle that will push the moderates even further from his camp.

Though it is kind of funny that he's following a suggestion of massive spending on hurricane relief with a judicial nomination that drew Reid's praise. Impersonating a Moderate, on the offense, five yards, repeat third down.

If You Believe...

Shit. Even in our good years, we can't beat MTSU. What the hell?

And then Arizona State forgot the existence of this clever little thing called "run defense." So all in all, it was a pretty shitty day for college football. At least Virginia Tech won.

Clever Form of Population Control

The Washington Post reports that the Streamlined Procedures Act, which would make it easier for states to execute people regardless of their actual guilt by trimming their right to federal appeals, is coming before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Benhas blogged on the Streamlined Procedures Act previously, and I don't have much to add to his comments and the Post's comments.

Republicans in Congress seem to have no concern for the rights of the falsely accused and unfairly tried, and it's flying far enough under the radar where it won't create popular outrage if passed. But I think there's another motive behind Republicans' support for this bill: population control. Hey, what better way to do our part to fight overcrowding than by arresting people who may or may not have committed a crime and killing them?

I'm going to write to my Senators (Burr won't listen, but Libby might), and y'all should too.

Quick notes:

DeLay - Somewhere, Dan Rostenkowski is laughing his ass off.

Rita - Where have we seen this before? So much for learning lessons from Katrina.

Screw This

Just when you thought nothing dumber could possibly emanate from the Administration, Alberto Gonzales has directed the FBI to start a Porn Task Force. And they need your help - since the agents themselves seem reluctant to join. I wonder why.

Apparently, this is part of the Bush Administration's War on Porn. War on Porn? Kinda cheapens the rhetoric a bit, don't you think? You declare war on terrorism, on poverty - you know, serious problems. You don't declare "war" on something that mildly annoys you. What'll be the next "war"? The War on Plastic Lawn Flamingoes?

Of course, pornography featuring consenting adults is one of the great threats to America. In fact, it's just like terrorism, except instead of people dying, people have unauthorized orgasms. We can't have that. If you're not with us, you're with the pornographers, right?

Las _____es

Some people sued a town to remove the Christian cross from their town seal. Which would be a legitimate lawsuit if they were anywhere but Las Cruces ("The Crosses"), New Mexico. I guess the defendants really don't get the whole Spanish thing. What should their seal be, then? Addition signs? A big "X"? Or should they try to get the probably 300-year-old town renamed?

Set Love Free?

Before discussing the actual topic of today's post, I'd like to give today's First Amendment Award to Cindy Sheehan and the other 370 demonstrators who were arrested in front of the White House for the bullshit crime of demonstrating without a permit. Why should anyone have to ask the government to protest against the government? And the anti-First Amendment Award goes to Gene Feldman of the NC State ACLU (who I have had a class with), who wrote a letter to the Technician (link unavailable) criticizing the NCSU College Republicans for violating their demonstration permit while protesting against Sheehan's NCSU appearance. Dude... you're supposed to be protecting civil liberties, not applauding efforts to limit them.

Anyway, I just returned from visiting Danielle in Phoenix. I flew Southwest, since they have about the only affordable nonstop flight from RDU to Phoenix. While I was waiting for my flight out, I sat in the airport under a sign proudly proclaiming "Set Love Free." At first I thought it was a cheesy marketing campaign by Southwest, whose logo is a heart. It took me twenty minutes and a map to finally figure out what the sign meant - it is a reference to an obscure law called the Wright Amendment, and is the slogan for Southwest's campaign to get the law repealed.

Probably only policy geeks and North Texans are familiar with the Wright Amendment. It was passed in 1979 and limits flights out of Dallas' Love Field airport to neighboring states (thus the slogan). It has since been expanded to include Kansas, Alabama, and Mississippi. Furthermore, if you live outside one of these states, you cannot book a connecting flight into Love Field. The effect of the law is to channel most out-of-state flights into Dallas through the behemoth Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The law was first passed to "protect" DFW, which was then a relatively new airport. Why DFW needed protection is anyone's guess - Love is a fairly small (32 gate) airport that could never hope to handle the amount of traffic that goes into and out of DFW every day. And certainly traffic generated by the roughly 5 million people in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex can fill up two airports - similarly-sized Houston supports two quite well. Indeed, most Wright supporters focus on the idea that repealing Wright would hurt DFW, but it seems that any decrease in DFW activity would be offset by the increase in business done at Love. Another argument in favor of Wright is the increased noise that would affect residents near the airport - but you've got to be fairly dim to live near an airport and not expect noise.

Indeed, the Wright Amendment seemed aimed at protecting American at the expense of Love-based Southwest from the start. American's lobbying power is likely the only reason why the law still exists - the congressman standing in the way of hearings on the issue, Joe Barton (R-TX), received campaign cash from American.

It's interesting that Republicans - supposed champions of the free market - would be on the side of the Wright Amendment. The law is obviously anti-competitive, and I can think of absolutely no reason why Wright is beneficial to anyone except American Airlines. Keeping this law in place amounts to a pointless corporate giveaway.

What's remarkable is that Southwest took so long to mount an organized public opposition to Wright. You would think that a transportation company whose home base is so severely restricted would be up in arms about the restrictions from the very beginning. But while Wright prevented them from launching a full-scale operation out of Dallas, it never really got in the way of Southwest's national success. Wright is a dumb law, but it makes a point: anti-competitive legislation alone does not prevent the most clever companies from succeeding.

Visit Southwest's campaign here.

And visit DFW Airport's campaign to keep Wright here.

Following Rita

Looks like another major hurricane is bearing down on the Gulf Coast. Rita (a tropical storm now but expected to strengthen once it reaches the Gulf) looks to miss the areas affected by Katrina for the most part. Right now it's aimed at Houston. Which is really obnoxious irony for all the New Orleans evacuees now making their temporary home in the Astrodome.

Speaking of hurricanes, Katrina has turned Bush into something very odd - a tax-and-spend liberal. (Actually, just a "spend" liberal. He still doesn't seem to grasp the idea that taxes generate the revenue needed for the requisite spending.) Not that I'm complaining. It's just amusing to listen to the overwhelming silence from the small-government crowd when it comes to relief spending. I guess economic libertarianism has its limits.

But we have to pay for the hurricane somehow, and Bush seems content just to take us further into debt. Sadly, the most obvious solution - the repeal of tax cuts to the super-rich - doesn't look like it's in the cards. Nor does the other obvious solution - trimming down spending on our Iraq expedition and thus the scope of the occupation. To wit, an intelligent idea has come from the Heritage Foundation, which usually just spews the tax-cuts-to-the-rich-and-cut-programs-for-the-poor gospel. They suggest eliminating all the pork from the recent highway bill, which will produce some $12 billion. They have a point - I think that bridge to Nowheresville, Alaska can wait.

Of course, come Saturday when Rita hits, we're likely to have another big cleanup on our hands. Here's hoping the feds don't screw this one up as bad as the last one. Really, we'd best start preparing now - get the Red Cross ready in San Antonio or Austin, stockpile food within a day's drive of the Texas coast, prepare the National Guard, etc.

Police Brutality

Some looters deserved to be arrested. This one didn't. Hell, the deli's owner doesn't even want her charged with anything.

And why would bail for "theft" of $63 worth of essential goods - like food - for survival during a natural disaster be set at $50,000? Is a 73-year-old woman a flight risk?

When I'm told that Louisiana has a Napoleonic legal system, I didn't think that the 19-years-for-a-loaf-of-bread thing followed with it. Next thing you know, the Kenner police chief is going to be changing his name to Javert. Barricades to follow soon.

Free-Floating Hostility, Vol. 2

More random comments on the state of the world:

The Bush administration, for whatever reason, is refusing to let 1500+ Cuban doctors into the Gulf Coast to help Katrina victims. Apparently Honduran immigrant communities were hit hard, so there's a need for Spanish-speaking doctors in the area. I can't imagine that the Red Cross wouldn't want 1500 extra doctors helping them out. Somebody please point out the sense in putting diplomatic bitterness in front of humanitarian need, because I don't see it.

Speaking of which, British columnist Julian Baggini describes why many Britons aren't sending aid to the victims of the storm: "We don’t want to plug the gaping hole created by inegalitarian American social policy because we want to expose it for what it is, and shatter the US’s self-image as the most fair and free country in the world." So let me get this straight. You're going to teach the U.S. a lesson about how it treats its poor people by refusing to help its poor people. Yeah, that's a brilliant idea.

Both the above pieces are from the Post's World Opinion Roundup.

Stephen Pearlstein writes on the little-noticed news that poverty is increasing in America, and not just thanks to Katrina. Indeed, the only section of America that has seen any "recovery" in our supposed economic recovery is the upper class. You know, the ones getting the tax cuts. Seems like our policymakers have failed to notice that when it comes to the poor, the Invisible Hand of the market is off somewhere picking an Invisible Nose. And the poor get hit by the Invisible Boogers.

Signs that there are more important things on demagogues' minds: the Massachusetts state legislature rejected a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage by the ever-so-close count of 157-39. Last year, during the height of the political furor over the issue, Massachusetts legislators voted for the ban 105-92. However, in Massachusetts, a constitutional amendment must be approved in two straight legislative sessions and be passed by a public referendum in order to become official. One Republican legislator explained why he switched his vote: "Gay marriage has begun, and life has not changed for the citizens of the commonwealth, with the exception of those who can now marry." I hear the Society for the Ridiculously Obvious has decided to award him its highest honor. Read the Post article here.

And finally, in the "here we go again" department, a California court ruled that the mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools is unconstitutional. The suit is being brought by the same guy, but this time he found people who actually have standing to sue with him. This means that the Supreme Court (should the suit get there) can't duck the issue this time. Of course, this case will invariably produce exactly what the world needs: a bunch of paranoid religious conservatives complaining about our collective moral perdition while a bunch of paranoid atheists/agnostics warn us of an impending theocracy. Chance of this issue being handled with anything resembling reasonability: zero.

Shocked! Shocked!

A Florida mother was apparently dismayed to learn that her eleventh grade daughter was assigned a book containing an oral sex scene. Idiotically but not surprisingly, she is not content to opt her student out of the book. Instead, she wants it banned.

She calls the book pornography - apparently failing to realize that this is a book about 1940s India containing oral sex, not a book about oral sex containing 1940s India. Hell, I was assigned a book containing a sex scene in ninth grade, and a play with truck loads of sexual innuendo in tenth grade (Aristophanes' Lysistrata).

Guess what? Your daughter is (presumably) 16. She almost certainly knows what oral sex is. You're not protecting her from anything. That having been said, it is her right as a parent to limit what her daughter should and shouldn't read. However, she's not all the other students' mommy, and she does not need to be given that authority. Nor does the school board.

Worst... Idea... Ever

In the Things No One Noticed That Could Result In Armageddon department, the Washington Post reports that the Pentagon is set to endorse the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, they would recommend that the President have full authority to use this power whenever he damn well pleases. And Congress hasn't heard about it until now - Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner (R-VA) hasn't received a copy yet.

Has anyone seen Dr. Strangelove? Yeah, it's kinda like that.

To be fair, we haven't used nuclear weapons since 1945 - a time period which has seen undeclared and unconstitutional wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq (twice). Back then traditional weapons were often just as destructive as nuclear ones - for example, Tokyo was more severely damaged by a single firebombing run than Hiroshima was by the nuclear bomb. However, nuclear bombs have grown up significantly since 1945 - today's bombs carry at least 100 times the destructive power of Little Boy.

But it's scary to think that Bush could just nuke Tehran tomorrow. Given the state of our ability to tell when someone is about to attack us or not, this policy could mean that we'll end up nuking somebody somewhere for absolutely no reason. "Preemption" is always dangerous, and it just got more so.

And nuclear weapons aren't specific. Lots of people die when a nuke is set off, even one of the small "bunker-buster" ones that were in planning until Congress wisely pulled the plug. The potential for so-called "collateral damage" - by which I mean the death of innocent civilians - is far greater. A scorched-earth policy of warfare is not useful in a delicate fight such as the war on terror, nor should it be a tool for diplomacy. We ought to have more concern for those whose hearts and minds we claim to be pursuing and less for the well being of our nuclear arsenal.

What Was Today, Again?

I was cruising away messages today when I noticed that Zhubin had posted the following (yes, I still away-message stalk Zhubin)...

"There's something important about today...but I can't quite remember it...

Oh, right! Season premiere of Simpsons and Family Guy!"

The most obvious sign that terror has failed is the fact that today's anniversary has gotten scant if any notice from anyone.

All catastrophes fade into memory. It's tough to notice Andrew's mark on South Florida anymore. New York is back to obsessing over how to beat the Red Sox. With time, New Orleans will be back to playing jazz and eating red beans and rice. When we help each other get by, Americans can be a pretty resilient bunch.

Rules of Mankind

From today's Chicago Sun-Times:

"But if high gas prices don't faze you and you're in the market for a car, maybe you'd enjoy the Fine Motor Auction and Luxury Lifestyle Expo in New York this weekend.

A three-day ticket will run you $100, but you can bid on the Batmobile Michael Keaton drove in the movie (estimated at $500,000), or a 1969 Dodge Charger (only $50,000) that was used in promotions by the "Dukes of Hazzard" TV stars.

The auction organizers think a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda might bring $5 million, but if that's too rich for your blood, there will be booths selling cigars, fine wine, Swiss watches and other items living up to the "luxury lifestyle" part of the thing's name.

Keith Martin, publisher of Sports Car Market magazine, described the idea behind the event to Bloomberg News: 'Put sparkly things in front of people who can afford to buy them without thinking twice.'"

Mr. Martin, I think "put sparkly things in front of people who can afford to buy them without thinking twice" describes at least half of all consumption among the upper and middle classes. You should have a law of economics named after you. Perhaps I should construct a plot of sparkliness vs. demand, give it a snazzy name, throw in a few formulas with integrals, and publish it in an economics journal. It's a Nobel Prize winner for sure.

More Hurricane-Related Incompetence

The Salt Lake Tribune brings our attention to another reason why FEMA management should be slapped silly. I have this macabre, Catch-22-style scene in my head right now - a firefighter comes across a family that needs to be rescued, hands them a flier with FEMA's number on them, says something like "if you need anything, that's the number to call, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to do more," and leaves.

I draw your attention also to this line from the end of the article:

"But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas."

Now I doubt Bush himself is going to be going on any rescue missions in southern Mississippi or Louisiana. So there are fifty less people out there looking for people who need rescuing so President Bush can make himself look good.

What a clusterfuck.

Thanks to Zhubin for the link.

I Get A Kick Out Of You

Congratulations to goalkeeper/beast Kasey Keller and the U.S. men's soccer team, who qualified for the World Cup by beating Jared Borgetti and fifth-in-the-world Mexico 2-0 in Columbus, Ohio. (The Americans are ranked 6th.)

What excites me is that US-Mexico has the potential to turn into a great soccer rivalry along the lines of England-France and Brazil-Argentina. Since both teams are ranked so highly, a rivalry that gets both sides determined can help both the US and Mexico make the next step to the rarified heights of the soccer elite. Not to mention it would increase interest in soccer here in the States.

Already the words are flying. Mexico's coach Ricardo Lavolpe said that the Americans "play like my sister, my aunt and my grandmother." So Ricky, how does it feel to lose to your sister, aunt, and grandmother? And US forward Landon Donovan said, when asked about Mexico's team, "they suck." Yeah, because you get to #5 in the world by sucking.

Goodbye, Bill

The coverage of Hurricane Katrina has rightly garnered the lion's share of the headlines this weekend, and in the mass of death and destruction left by the storm, it's tough to justify eulogizing just one person whose death had nothing to do with the hurricane.

But I feel the need to say something about Justice William Rehnquist, who died late Saturday night at the age of 80. He spent 33 years on the Supreme Court, the last 19 of them as Chief Justice. I agreed with almost none of his opinions, but I had more respect for him than I did for Scalia and Thomas. With Rehnquist, it's tough to say that he was pushing some sort of ideology like the other anchors of the Court's right wing - he was deciding cases the way he thought they should be decided, and that was that. Sure, his political conservatism made his decisions inconsistent, but show me a judge whose politics doesn't affect his/her decisions and I'll show you a robot.

Of course, now we have to deal with the acrimony of not one but two confirmation hearings. Glorious. Roberts will probably take over as C.J., at least if Bush has his way. Looking at Roberts as Rehnquist's replacement will likely make his confirmation easier since he'll be a conservative replacing a conservative. The next person nominated - who will doubtlessly be as far right as Roberts and Rehnquist - is going to have a tough road, though, especially with Bush's failing approval ratings and the return of Arlen Specter's maverick ways.

Your Daily Amusement

This guy rules. On this site, you will find not only a third theory of how the earth came to be, but also proof positive that a lack of pirates causes global warming.

More evolution crap

This New York Times article, shamelessly mooched from Zhubin's blog, chronicles a poll regarding the increasing appeal of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. 42% of people are strict creationists. That means they think that life has always existed in its current form, presumably since God created the earth in exactly six days.

That's not particularly disturbing, though - it just means that some people put more faith in science than others. The most disturbing sentiment revealed by the poll is the following:

The poll showed 41 percent of respondents wanted parents to have the primary say over how evolution is taught, compared with 28 percent who said teachers and scientists should decide and 21 percent who said school boards should.

So basically, 62% of people believe that someone other than the experts should decide how an academic subject is taught. Teachers and scientists know more about evolution and its discontents than your average parent or school board member. Would you want someone with a degree in chemical engineering telling your school how to teach English? I doubt it. Parents and politicians need to realize that, when it comes to science, scientists probably know what they're talking about.

Furthermore, meddling with a subject in order to give it some sort of moral purpose has already ruined the teaching of history (see anything written by James Loewen). I don't want that to happen to science too. The purpose of teaching science should not be to make people feel good about their worldview - it should be to teach state-of-the-art scientific knowledge. And if science troubles your faith in God... well, it ain't science's fault.

Hurricane Post

I don't know what I can post on the hurricane without sounding trite. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour compared it to Hiroshima - and it's tough to argue with him. It's tough to find anything good amid all the destruction, but I just wanted to point out a couple of things that may be signs that everything will eventually be alright again...

Hugo Chavez put aside his anti-American rhetoric for the time being and offered fuel, food, aid workers, and all kinds of useful stuff for the hurricane victims. He was the first foreign leader to do so. Since then, China's Hu Jintao and the Saudis have joined in (even though China just got hit by a typhoon, which is like a hurricane, only smaller and in the Pacific).

Even though 80% of the city is underwater, as of yesterday, beer and gumbo were still being served in the French Quarter.

Texas is opening its public schools to hurricane victims, and universities are trying to figure out how to house displaced Tulane, UNO, and other students.

So my heart goes out to the families of all those killed by the hurricane, as well as all those killed in the stampede in Baghdad that claimed some 900 lives.

On an unrelated note, applause to the lady who quit the FDA over its blatantly political refusal to approve the emergency contraceptive pill. Guess she's frustrated that the FDA seems content to keep that abortion rate in the stratosphere. Seriously, can this pill be any more dangerous than Vioxx?

North Carolina has a lottery now, despite the fact that 26 senators were opposed and 24 were in favor. How did this happen? Senate Majority Leader Marc Basnight cheated. One opponent was on his honeymoon, and another had a staph infection in his leg. Basnight held the vote anyway, and the lieutenant governor cast the deciding vote. So North Carolinians can thank bacteria like staph and Basnight for the lottery. I would have preferred a fair fight, but that's just me.

And Mike points out that Art Garfunkel has been arrested for marijuana possession. I guess upstate New York doesn't have enough real crime to fight. (It is amusing that he was arrested in Woodstock, though.)

Vote for Kinky

I think I've just found my ideal candidate. I don't know anything about his views on the issues. I can't even vote for him. But damn, he just emanates coolness.

I'm referring to Kinky Friedman, Jewish writer and musician, who is running for governor of Texas. You can't help but vote for a candidate whose campaign slogan is "why the hell not?" And one of his policy arguments is "I'm a Jew, I'll hire good people."

If that's not enough of a reason to vote for him, he's friends with Willie Nelson. They're both biodiesel-obsessed (not necessarily a bad thing).

Of course, a Jewish candidate in Texas has about a snowball's chance in, well, Texas of winning. But that's beside the point.

And let's bask in the awesomeness of this campaign promise as well...

“If elected, I would ask Willie Nelson to be the head of the Texas Rangers and Energy Czar and Laura Bush to take charge of the Texas Peace Corps to improve education in the state. I’d ask my Palestinian hairdresser, Farouk Shami, to be Texas’ ambassador to Israel. We’ve worked together to create Farouk & Friedman olive oil. The oil comes from the Holy Land and all of the profits go to benefit Israeli and Palestinian children.”

So those of you who live in Texas - Mike, I'm looking at you - vote for this guy come 2006. Why the hell not?

Wake Up, Wake

In the wake of the lottery collapse, the North Carolina state legislature just allowed counties to hold a referendum in various counties on allowing them to raise the sales tax. Wake County, my home, decided to take part.

I hope this referendum dies a horrible, painful death. A sales tax is the absolute worst way to raise money since it is the ultimate regressive tax. A lottery would have been less regressive than this. I doubt I'll ever be on the same side as ultraconservative Apex representative Paul Stam on anything again, but I have to say he's right when he says "there has to be a fairer way."

I'm not sure what that fairer way would be, though. Property taxes? Income tax? Telethons? Anyone have any suggestions? The problem with my opposition to this referendum is that I don't have any better ideas for raising more money...

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Apparently, western N.C. was hit by an earthquake last night. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the magnitude 3.8 tremor, and the only thing damaged was one mobile home. I didn't even feel it here, 300 miles away.

Not sure what to blog about. I feel like saying that all this flap over memos John Roberts wrote in the '80s is somewhat misplaced. Sure, he should be asked questions about his controversial statements about pay parity and other civil rights issues at the upcoming Judiciary Committee hearing, and Senators would be amiss if they didn't bring it up. But good judges don't base their decisions on their personal feelings about the issue at hand - they base rulings on law. Someone could believe that all cats should be drowned in turpentine and dropped on Saskatchewan and still be a good judge as long as their rulings are based on a reasonable interpretation of the law. (Presumably, drowning cats in turpentine and dropping them on Saskatchewan is illegal, and laws against it are constitutional, so he would be bound to uphold such laws.)

Furthermore, I don't assume that Roberts feels the same way now as he did twenty years ago. I don't hold Aimee Mann responsible for her atrocious '80s hairdo, and I won't hold Roberts responsible for his opinions from twenty years ago unless he demonstrates that he still holds them.

Also, California is back in black. That sound you hear is former governor Gray Davis cackling maniacally.

Dictators Are Silly

Sometimes, dictators can be cruel, heartless, murderous, and any number of other horrible traits. But sometimes they can have just enough whimsy to be hilarious (when viewed from a distance, of course).

Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan is one such figure. In his twenty years as Turkmen dictator, he has fought moral crusades against some of the worst scourges to befall mankind: opera, ballet, facial hair, and gold tooth caps. Now, he's turned his attentions to lip synching. He says it negatively affects the development of singing (which can also be said for, oh, say, outlawing opera).

So much for Milli Vanilli's Central Asian tour.

More Fun With Automated Mailings

Jacob posted earlier on a letter sent by Comcast to one of its many satisfied customers addressing her as "Bitch Dog." Now, banking giant JP Morgan Chase enters the fray by sending a credit card solicitation addressed to Mr. Palestinian Bomber. Apparently, when victim Sami Habbas (a Palestinian-American who has been here for 51 years) called to complain, the ever-so-helpful folks at Chase greeted him, "Yes, Mr. Palestinian Bomber, how may we help you?"

I'm waiting for my "Dear Christ-Killer" letter...

A la Mr. Grier, instant update: apparently a NJ couple got "Jew Couple" written on their restaurant check - story from Daily Kos here. Not quite Christ-Killer, but funny nonetheless.

Election 2008 Preview

So we finally found someone who would seriously challenge Christopher Walken in '08. (He'll be 46, in case you were wondering.)

Let the race begin. It may not be any cleaner than '04, but it'll be a darn sight funnier.

Fun With Kickbacks

Call it poetic justice: in China, American companies are forced to bribe Chinese government officials in order to win contracts. Whereas in America, states bribe companies to locate an operation in their state. If only corporations would bribe me...

Bet On It

North Carolina is five votes away from getting a lottery. It's about the only Southern state without one right now. Certainly the lottery looks good on its face. Georgia's lottery has established the remarkable Hope Scholarships, which send any Georgia high school student whose GPA is above 3.0 to a state school for free (not bad, when your options include UGA and Georgia Tech). Virginia's lottery has contributed immensely to its public school system. Why not try to give North Carolina's schools a boost?

Let's look at who opposes this lottery. The mommies and daddies in the Republican Party say that nice boys and girls don't play at betting games. I don't respect that point of view enough to argue with it. But the objections pointed out by the five Democrats who stand in the lottery's way (including Janet Cowell, my Senator) and the three moderate Republicans who are being lobbied by the lottery (among them Cary's Richard Stevens, who is about three blocks away from being my Senator) give me pause.

Stevens and the Republicans are concerned that the money won't be spent well. One Jones County senator points out that the money his district will be getting will barely be enough to build three portable classrooms. If the money is divided according to the current plan, Jones can forget about the two new schools it needs. (Ironic moment: the legislative building is located on Jones Street, which is named after the aforementioned county.) They also point out that the funds can be diverted from education when the state needs them, which essentially turns an ostensibly education-oriented lottery into just another revenue generator.

Cowell and company say that the lottery is a "poor tax" - i.e. it hits the poor, who need the money, more heavily than the rich. And they have a point. In this legislative session North Carolina has given money away to corporate interests, lowered the top income tax bracket, and raised the sales tax. We don't need yet another revenue generator that acts regressively. But this isn't your everyday tax - no one is forcing people to play the lottery. If you can't afford the ticket but buy one anyway, it's your own fault for being irresponsible. We're getting dangerously close to the "mommy and daddy" philosophy held onto by Republicans.

But the liberals have a point - there are better ways of generating revenue. Not making irresponsible tax cuts when the state is having budget troubles might help too. (And I thought that was just a Republican problem.) A higher tobacco tax - NC's is currently lowest in the nation - would also do the trick, though that might end up being just as regressive as the lottery. Sales and property taxes can be restructured so that they fall progressively instead of regressively.

And the moderate conservatives have a point - don't expect the lottery to magically make our school system better. At its base, it's just another way of making money, and not even a good one.

I still support the lottery. I've never heard of anyone going broke from playing the lottery. Hell, I even support taxed privately-owned gambling since it would tend to take money from the more affluent (N&O columnist Dennis Rogers is with me on this one). But I worry about how much good this lottery's going to do. We can hope it will work the same miracles it worked in Georgia, but don't bet on it. Our trusty state will find a way to screw it up.

Speaking of Georgia, the Washington Post published an op-ed by David Becker that brings attention to an onerous law being pushed by Georgia Republicans. They want to require photo IDs at polling stations. They say it will limit fraud, even though Secretary of State Cathy Cox points out there hasn't really been any fraud in Georgia except by absentee ballot. No, Republicans realize that the harder it is to vote, the less poor people and minorities will vote. And the less poor people and minorities vote, the more Republicans win.

Honestly, I can't believe that people would actually want to make it harder for people to vote. Voting is kind of central to our democracy. The hard work should be in making the decision, not in physically casting the ballot.

If Only...

Words cannot describe the disappointment I felt when I found out that this site was false. Because if we can't have a president that can singlehandedly fight our wars for us, we might as well have someone that could creep the bejesus out other heads of state.

Evolution, Baby

Surprisingly, there really isn't a whole lot to write about this week. The only big story is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and the eviction of a bunch of people who are willing to fight to the death for the right to live in a useless patch of desert. Honestly, Israel has useless patches of desert to spare (I'm thinking of the entire southern half of the country here). If you really want to live in the desert, there's room for you. Personally, I'm not sure I understand the problems with the settlements in the first place - or the return of the refugees who inexplicably left during the 1948 wars. (Inexplicably, because thanks to their departure Arab say in Israel's government is all but nil. Ten seats in the Knesset ain't worth crap.) Why not just let people live where they want to live?

And with regards to the security barrier that's mucking up peace talks, I don't have much to say. Robert Frost might, though:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Thanks, Bob.

On to other things: evolution. Seems the creationists want to get their two cents worth in high school biology classrooms. An article in Time describes their new tactic: creating problems with Darwin's theory, then proposing a new one called "intelligent design" (or creationism lite). They aren't the exclusionists they used to be - they don't want Darwin out of the classroom anymore - but they still want their "theory" given equal time. Never mind that unless you spend a lot of time on evolution, biology doesn't make much sense.

(Time's article is as heavily biased against the creationists as this opinion column. Be forewarned.)

I would like to say a couple of things. First, the next person to say that evolution is "just a theory" is going to be a severe challenge to my pacifism. Sure, evolution is a theory that can't be observed directly. So are gravity, relativity, electricity, magnetic fields, atoms, subatomic particles, wave-particle duality... I could go on. Science IS theory. Making inferences based on observations is what we do. Some theories are weaker than others, but evolution is one of the strongest theories out there. It has withstood, explained, and even predicted some 150 years of new data from paleontology, zoology, and the biological sciences. No observation has posed a significant challenge to evolution yet. We'll never see macroevolution occur (we've seen microevolution), but thanks to Heisenberg uncertainty, we'll never see an electron either. Why don't these "just a theory" people take on particle physicists for a while?

Second, let's not kid ourselves. Intelligent design is creationism and therefore religious in nature. It's constructed cleverly enough to avoid establishment clause critiques. But as one of the leading intelligent design proponents said, if it walks, acts, and quacks like a duck, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Sure, intelligent designers could be referring to an alien race who came to Earth and tinkered with DNA for a while until they had finished having their fun (see Parke Godwin's hilarious novel "Waiting for the Galactic Bus"). But who honestly thinks that such things are what intelligent design advocates are referring to?

Intelligent design is not a scientific theory and therefore has no place in our biology classes. It is based on the perceived holes in the accepted theory. Most of all, it is not disprovable. It is the official handwaving operator, the "then a miracle happened" between one part of the math equation and the other. It is not subject to scientific scrutiny because it requires a leap of faith beyond that which is normally required of scientists. It asks scientists, essentially, to give up.

History classes and special seminars can be used to "teach the controversy," if indeed there is one (within the scientific community, there really isn't). But don't ask students to give up on science. It's the last thing we need.

Blogging Gap

Haven't blogged in a while, and won't blog again for a while since I'll be away. But I posit this question for y'all to argue over: iTunes or Napster?

'Skins Fans, Take Note

I'm sure all you hard-core Redskins fans out there are wondering whatever happened to former wasted first-round pick Heath Shuler. Well, wonder no more - he's running for Congress in North Carolina. Unfortunately for Heath, he doesn't have anyone to throw to anymore since Steve Largent retired. But at least he'll have Tom Osborne as a coach.

Revisiting the Farley Flap

Pardon the rambling nature of this post. I don't really have a point here - I just wanted to throw out ideas.

49 comments in fifteen days... that's a hell of a rate for this backwater blog. Sadly, the commenting at the "Blast from the Past" post has ceased to yield new insights and has instead turned into an argument reminiscent of five-year-olds arguing at a swingset, except with naughtier language. I wanted to start an intelligent, reasonable conversation on the merits of advocating violent actions, on when and where it would be appropriate to do so, etc. Instead, it devolved into a discussion about race. Fine then, let's talk about race. It's a conversation we obviously need to have.

Accusations of racism flew at me from the second I picked up the phone on July 3rd. In fact, one of Dr. Farley's messages on my machine started off with "Hi, you're a racist." Commentors lobbed the charges as if they were lobbing hand grenades. This, despite the fact that no one commenting here could reasonably be called a racist. Indeed, no one said anything derogatory about white or black people, nor did anyone imply that racial equality was undesirable, nor did anyone speak about the inferiority of one group of people. So no one's a racist here.

Or are we? Does the very fact that we buy into a classification system that groups people into "white" and "black" make us racist? Is the idea of race itself a racist one?

Anthropologists and historians have long known that race was not an absolute concept. Franz Boas found that the concept of race varied between cultures around the turn of the century. And any scientific doubt that still lingered was destroyed in 1981 when Stephen Jay Gould published The Mismeasure of Man, refuting the idea that "black" people are significantly genetically different from "white" people or from any other people.

So if race isn't an absolute, what is it? Michael Omi and Howard Winant posited the idea that races are formed by underlying power structures - a society's hierarchical structure determines what people will be classified into a race. In America, "white" and "black" developed as a way of justifying the slave trade, and has stuck around despite the death of slavery. Indeed, as the power structure changed, so did the meanings of "white" and "black."

This is why we feel threatened by liminal characters like those in Philip Roth's The Human Stain or Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist. When someone challenges the assumptions that go into racial formation, they necessarily challenge our power structure. And that makes us nervous.

So it would seem that race is indeed a racist idea. But it cannot be denied that the idea of race has fostered a certain sense of pride in the "black" community that kept people going in the face of oppression. George Wallace and Orval Faubus were products of the ideology of race, but so were Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. It's more effective to fight oppression as a group rather than as a bunch of individuals, and race, however shameful its history, provided the framework for that. Racial formation taketh away, but it also giveth. (We can see something similar when we look at the Jews in Europe - the sense of otherness that caused the horrors of the Crusades and the Holocaust also kept Judaism alive throughout the Diaspora.)

Is there a way to look at race as a positive ingredient in our social construct? Or do the negatives of the idea of race outweigh the positives? Is it time to move beyond race to a more meaningful social construct? Can we? One thing is for certain - we must avoid lobbing charges of racism when we ourselves subscribe blindly to an arbitrary classification system. If we start seeing "black" and "white" as labels society gives us rather than absolute parts of our identity, then we can have a conversation on race that rises above the invective. But don't hold your breath.

Also, go here. It's hilarious, and has nothing to do with what I was just rambling about.

And The Winner Is... Some Guy

So President Bush has nominated CBS Evening News correspondent and sometime anchor John Roberts to the Supreme Court. How... odd.

Wait, there's a different John Roberts? And he's actually a judge? Imagine that!

Some people will inevitably complain that Bush didn't nominate a minority or a woman. Democrats should avoid that fallacy. Why? My colleague Alex points this out - reject Roberts because we want a woman, and we get Justice Coulter. Shiver.

Seriously, who is this guy? And why was the John Roberts I've heard of not nominated? I, personally, would have liked all the Court's opinions to end with "For the Supreme Court, I'm John Roberts. Good night."

Post Completely Unrelated To Politics

So when you type "search engine" into Google, Lycos is the first search engine to come up. Google is fifth. I find this amusing.

Now This Is Ridiculous

Reasonable people can disagree over whether or not sex offenders who have served their time should be treated differently from other ex-convicts. But this doesn't just cross the line - it leaves it in the dust.

Tsk Tsk, China

Here's a note to the Chinese leadership: Communism is the most extreme pro-labor philosophy out there. It thrives on labor protesting against capital. So if you're afraid that labor protests threaten your regime, you should probably quit with the charade of calling yourself "Communist."

Another Short Post

There are many factors contributing to juvenile delinquency. Poverty. Lack of education. Uninvolved parents. But someone should tell Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman that a video game played by rich suburban people isn't one of them. Guess it's easier to attack video games than fix a broken education system, eh?

Dispatch From The Other Washington

"Just sex with an animal per se, you'd have to prove some sort of animal cruelty out of that and that's why we've got more investigating to do." - King County (WA) Sheriff's Dept. Sgt. John Urquhart, on a farm that apparently brought people in to have sex with animals. Bestiality is legal in Washington.

I'm picturing some guy in a sheriff's uniform going up to a cow and asking, "Did you enjoy it or do you feel violated?" "Mooooo."

The Plame Game

So then Susie told Marla that Johnny was going to dump Beth, but then Alison got all mad because she had told Susie that she liked Johnny and Beth found out and, like, it was so crazy...

Why is it that Washington seems to function more and more like middle school every time I turn around?

Seriously, with today's developments in the who-blew-the-CIA-agent's-cover sweepstakes, the method by which Valerie Plame's identity became known to the general public is starting to resemble a gossip chain. And then somebody told Robert who told Karl who was like, well, duh, and then Karl told Matthew and then Judith found out, and then Valerie and Joseph were really mad because, like, well, obviously...

This whole flap leaves me with two questions. First, how the hell is the CIA so godawful at keeping secrets? Those "undercover operations" that were supposed to be secret? Chile? Iran? Cuba? Guatemala? Yeah, we knew about them ten seconds after they happened. And if they can't keep their undercover operatives safe from politically motivated sabotage, something is horribly, horribly wrong. Is there an online database of this kind of thing? Can you type "undercover CIA agent list" into Google and get a response? No wonder we thought there were WMDs in Iraq - we can't keep people undercover, so I think the intelligence involved some guy somewhere flipping a coin.

Second, what possessed Novak to print something like the name of an undercover CIA agent? For now, let's ignore the fact that somebody was, to paraphrase Billy Crudup in Almost Famous, telling secrets to the one guy you do not tell secrets to. If you have a secret that you should probably keep for fear of endangering someone's life and the security of your nation but could tell to gain a really trifling political advantage, what would you do? To pose the question is to know the answer. In my opinion, Novak isn't getting anywhere near the amount of heat he deserves for this. It was his decision to make the information public. The least he could do is offer an apology.

We're not leaving middle school anytime soon, sadly. Here's the next Washington gossip chain: Then George told Harry he was thinking about going with Alberto, and Harry said okay, but then, like, Bill got all upset, and all his friends started, like, going nuclear and stuff, and then...

Not A Good Way To Run A Nomination Campaign

A note to the Conservative Caucus, whoever you are - if you want perennial gadfly Roy Moore to be nominated to the Court, the first person you should probably tell is Roy Moore. Or at the very least, the Washington Post shouldn't know before he does - which, apparently, is the case.

By Popular Demand

Here's a list of those much-ballyhooed sixteen intelligence agencies everyone talks about. Actually, there are seventeen on the list.

* US Air Force Air Intelligence Agency
* Army Intelligence
* Central Intelligence Agency
* Coast Guard Intelligence
* Defense Intelligence Agency
* Department of Energy: Office of Intelligence (!)
* Department of State: Bureau of Intelligence and Research
* Department of the Treasury: Office of Intelligence Support
* Federal Bureau of Investigation: National Security Division
* Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate
* Marine Corps Intelligence
* National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
* National Reconnaissance Office
* National Security Agency
* National Intelligence Council
* Office of Naval Intelligence
* United States Secret Service

That doesn't mean the government isn't hiding an intel agency here or there. It just means that because we don't know about it doesn't make it secret.

A Campaign I Can Get Behind

So who's going to be nominated to replace O'Connor on the Supreme Court? Personally, I think the President should listen closely to Richard Cohen and Kurt Vonnegut (second item down) and see what judicial luminaries lie unappreciated by the groups concerned with this nomination...

Man, this woulda made a great Slant article.

This Just In: Your Government Lies

In what is possibly the best court opinion ever, Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Interior to let Native Americans know that they're a bunch of lying scumbags who can't be trusted. Seems Interior has been letting fat cat miners and loggers use Indian lands and mismanaging funds generated from it. It's not just the Bush administration - Clinton interior secretary Bruce Babbitt was held in contempt for a while in the case (as well as Bush's Gale Norton). And the trust funds go back to 1879 - I'll bet Interior's delinquency goes back just as far.

My dad had to deal with the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs, the bureau in Interior that deals with this stuff) on a daily basis while he worked for the Navajo, and told me in no uncertain terms that they were slimeballs. Also, I've read a few other Post articles on the mistreatment of Indians and Indian lands by the government. So I can't say I'm surprised. At least now, Native Americans will know exactly what the BIA thinks of them.

"Therapy And Understanding" For This, Bitch

Apparently, Karl Rove has no problems calling liberals traitors while carelessly blowing a CIA agent's cover. So who's weak on national security again?

Blast From The Past

Vanderpeeps, you'll appreciate this. The rest of you, just play along.

A long, long, time ago, at a small private university far, far away (about 500 miles or so), a professor named Jonathan Farley was very angry about a building called "Confederate Memorial Hall." Traitors such as the Confederates, Farley thought, should not be memorialized in stone on such a great campus. He wrote a piece in the city's main newspaper, the Tennesseean, decrying the hall's name (article here from a small SF-based paper). A young commentator read this piece and found it interesting and sensible, except for one little part - sentences that stated that Confederate soldiers should have been summarily executed at the end of the Civil War. In agreement with the thrust of the article but disturbed by such a casual statement of destructive anger, the young commentator included a sentence about Farley's irresponsible comments in an article commemorating Martin Luther King Day.

Farley, unfortunately, became a victim of subtle censorship and was forced to move on (ironically, to a better job at Harvard). The commentator graduated and moved to North Carolina, assuming the whole issue was behind both he and Farley.

So the commentator was surprised when, on July 4th, 2005, he received a phone call from Dr. Farley. The professor, it seems, was irate about my description of his article as being "imbued with a violent rage." (One wonders why he didn't bring it up in the two and a half intervening years.) He was seeking a retraction to that sentence. Apparently, he feels it has been damaging to his reputation.

Dr. Farley, you're not getting your retraction. Even though, in the intervening years, I have come to understand that the neo-Confederate push to honor the Southern rebellion is almost always accompanied by a healthy dose of racism (read anything James Loewen wrote for a good overview of this). Even though I agree that Jefferson Davis, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and most other Confederate leaders were traitors and worthless bigots of the worst sort. Even though I understand that the black person in America is dealing with a system that is stacked against him, and even though I understand the rage that such a situation would engender.

Sure, it feels good to want to go back in time and kill the people who fought to keep you in chains. But what positive purpose does it advance? What point is there beyond simple revenge? And what about the 75% of Confederate soldiers who didn't own slaves? Or the fact that white Northerners were really just as racist as white Southerners? And what about Confederates like James Longstreet, who was involved with the Republican reconstruction of Mississippi after the war and who stuck his neck out for the rights of African-Americans at the expense of his own reputation?

I'm not saying there's no cause to be angry, or even that we shouldn't be angry. But there are two types of anger - constructive and destructive. Farley's anger, and the anger of those like him, is destructive. It serves only to divide further, to alienate those who would otherwise agree with you. But the anger of Dr. King, and of late-in-life Malcolm X, was constructive anger. Both channeled their anger into generating positive change, be it instilling pride within the black community or winning respect in the larger community. Some black militants didn't like King, but it's hard to argue with his results. I doubt segregation would have ended had Elijah Muhammad been in charge.

I understand the urge to seek revenge, to talk and act violently. I feel it whenever I see a neo-Nazi, or whenever I hear someone talk about vast Jewish conspiracies and the like. But if change is our goal, if we want to turn our world into something more just and better for all, then we must push aside those urges. We must realize that you rarely change someone's mind by insulting them, but you can by engaging them. Sadly, Farley failed to understand this. And that is why I cannot retract what I have written about him.

Let us now bury these little hatchets of ours and work on convincing people, not through words of violence and hate but through arguments, through facts, and through helping to uncover the truth.

Another Reason Why Sex Offender Registries Are A Bad Idea

Sure, sex offender registries seem like a good idea. Were I to be a parent, I would certainly like to know when someone who committed a sex offense moved into my neighborhood. But when cases like this get caught up in the dragnet, you have to wonder about how wise it is to brand with a scarlet letter all those charged with a certain crime. Rape, I'll give you. Child porn, yeah. Unlawful restraint of a minor? That could be anything. Why should someone like this be hit with the same stigma as a rapist?

Baby, You Can Drive My Car... Please

So the official safe driver study is in. It should come as no surprise to anyone who grew up driving there that Washington, D.C. is the most dangerous city to drive in.

It makes me feel somewhat better that Phoenix is the safest large city to drive in, though.

And it should also come as no surprise to any Northern Virginia driver that Marylanders are the fourth most clueless drivers (tied with D.C.ers and New Yorkers). Virginians are tied for 15th best.

O'Connor Retires

Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman on the Court and perpetual swing vote, is retiring. Personally, I expected Rehnquist to retire before O'Connor - and I think I would have preferred that. Since Rehnquist's retirement (and Bush's subsequent right-wing nominee) wouldn't have changed the balance of the court at all, the confirmation fight would be a little bit less of a circus. But now, Bush gets the opportunity to replace a "moderate" with a Scalia-Thomas conservative.

A reasonable President would look at the poisonous partisan atmosphere on the Hill and attempt to win a little goodwill by nominating a moderate. Pounding a conservative through the inevitable filibuster threat will only create more bitterness and disaffection from the people. Sadly, we don't have a reasonable President. Bush will probably take the bait, since he has no sense of compromise. (He seems to have forgotten the "advice" part of the "advice and consent" doctrine.)

I'm not sure I like anyone that is poised to be nominated. How could anyone like a short list where Alberto Gonzalez is the moderate choice? My guess: Bush will go with Michael McConnell, a judge who ruled (along with the Court) that city governments should not be liable for failing to enforce their own restraining orders. He may try to nominate a woman to serve on the Court - but I have this dread that he'll pick Janice Rogers Brown, who is quite possibly the most egregious conservative judicial activist since the pre-New Deal courts.

Watch out, folks. This confirmation battle ain't gonna be pretty.

DC Gets The Shaft, Again

So conservatives are all for federalism and local governments and non-interference from above. Except when it serves their own ideological purposes. Then it's time to repeal a popularly supported law without asking anyone.

Pick a side, Republicans. You can't be small-government and micromanagers at the same time.