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Saturday, March 31, 2007
Stats and Justice
31 Mar 2007 09:04 pm
Megan casts doubt on the inference from the overwhelmingly anti-Democratic prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department at the local level. But she doesn't clinch the argument that a 7 - 1 proportion is not statistically relevant. We need more data and better data. But there's an awful lot of smoke for no fire.
Face of the Day
31 Mar 2007 06:43 pm
Ross Minter of the UK in action against Freddie Curiel of the USA during the Contender Challenge Welterweight match between the UK and USA at the Metro Radio Arena on March 30, 2007 in Newcastle, England. (Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Dear Mr Clooney
31 Mar 2007 05:34 pm
You're real pretty; you're a serviceable movie actor; but please, please keep your politics to yourself.
Knitting a Dalek
31 Mar 2007 04:31 pm
It helps to be English, I guess.
Britons Shrug
31 Mar 2007 04:21 pm
But the Telegraph musters some outrage:
We could even, in extremis, impose the kind of armed siege, complete with no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam in the years between the two Iraq wars: we already maintain large coalition garrisons on both Iran's flanks. Limiting ourselves to trivial resolutions will be treated by the ayatollahs as a sign of weakness. If they hate us, let them also fear us.
Alas, they are merely humiliating Britain. And the EU will not back its own member up.
After Habeas Corpus
31 Mar 2007 04:08 pm
I never thought I'd read a post like this in America in my lifetime. Isn't this power of a sovereign to detain any citizen without charge at any time part of the reason this country was founded? And now it is simply assumed that this kind of monarchical power is fine. A country that grants its executive the power to do this is definitionally not a free country. It really is as simple as that.
Rudy and Kerik
31 Mar 2007 03:56 pm
This stuff is extremely damaging, it seems to me, to the Giuliani candidacy. The Christianist base may be able to swallow his social and cultural inclusiveness if he gives them the judges they want. But his key appeal is domestic security, the ability to manage a competent government that will protect us more effectively from terrorism. Knowing that someone had hazy mob connections, and still promoting him to police chief, and then proposing he become DHS head: this is seriously bad judgment, no? Cronyism is the enemy of effective governance, as we have discovered. If this becomes part of Giuliani's image, it's not good. Neither is the uxorial kerfuffle. I have to say I think stocks in McCain are currently over-sold.
The Other Surge
31 Mar 2007 03:24 pm
As some measure of calm arrives in Baghdad, last week was one of the worst ever for sectarian carnage in Iraq. Money quote:
The Interior Ministry gave its first news conference about the killing in Tal Afar, announcing that the total number of dead was 152 with another 347 wounded. It appeared that the 152 included both those killed in the initial truck bombing of a Shiite neighborhood and those killed in the subsequent reprisals.
Meanwhile, the Shiite militias appear to be flexing more muscles in Baghdad itself.
(Photo: An Iraqi family flees a mixed Sunni and Shiite Muslim neighborhood near the Baghdad Sunni strongold of Haifa street, 30 March 2007. Nearly 400 people have been killed in Iraq over the past three days, officials and medics said today, as insurgents and sectarian militias defied a massive US security crackdown billed as a last chance to restore order to Baghdad. By Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty.)
An American Conscience
31 Mar 2007 02:04 pm
More and more military prosecutors are refusing to prosecute "enemy combatants" in the terror war. Why? Not because some of these combatants are innocent. Many are not. But because many have been subjected to torture by the U.S.. From the WSJ today (subscription only, alas):
When the Pentagon needed someone to prosecute a Guantanamo Bay prisoner linked to 9/11, it turned to Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch. A Marine Corps pilot and veteran prosecutor, Col. Couch brought a personal connection to the job: His old Marine buddy, Michael "Rocks" Horrocks, was co-pilot on United 175, the second plane to strike the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The prisoner in question, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, had already been suspected of terrorist activity. After the attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower. To Col. Couch, Mr. Slahi seemed a likely candidate for the death penalty.
"Of the cases I had seen, he was the one with the most blood on his hands," Col. Couch says.
But, nine months later, in what he calls the toughest decision of his military career, Col. Couch refused to proceed with the Slahi prosecution. The reason: He concluded that Mr. Slahi's incriminating statements - the core of the government's case - had been taken through torture, rendering them inadmissible under U.S. and international law.
The Slahi case marks a rare instance of a military prosecutor refusing to bring charges because he thought evidence was tainted by torture. For Col. Couch, it also represented a wrenching personal challenge. Laid out starkly before him was a collision between the government's objectives and his moral compass.
The critical paragraph in the story for me is the following:
In the following weeks, Mr. Slahi said, he was placed in isolation, subjected to extreme temperatures, beaten and sexually humiliated. The detention-board transcript states that at this point, "the recording equipment began to malfunction." It summarizes Mr. Slahi's missing testimony as discussing "how he was tortured while here at GTMO by several individuals."
Remember the missing critical Padilla DVD? Recall that David Hicks has been put under a gag-order against discussing the torture techniques used against him by the US? Evidence is "disappeared." Detainees are gagged. Verdicts are pronounced based on testimony procured through torture. Col Couch is not stupid. He must also know that using evidence procured by torture is a war-crime. Every military prosecutor tasked by Bush and Cheney to prosecute torture victims is being set up as a war criminal. Bush and Cheney, meanwhile, secured their own legal immunity in the Military Commissions Act last year.
Under this president and vice-president, we are beginning to live in a banana republic.
InstaFoundit
31 Mar 2007 10:37 am
Glenn Reynolds discovers something called the Geneva Conventions.
Self-Esteem Hooey
31 Mar 2007 10:14 am
Good to see claptrap debunked.
Quote for the Day
31 Mar 2007 09:19 am
"I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations. I am currently studying Law in Al Azhar University. I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries," - young Egyptian blogger, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, just sentenced to four years in jail for blogging.
The View From Your Window
31 Mar 2007 08:15 am
Medellin, Colombia, 9.30 am.
Kael Well Met
31 Mar 2007 07:13 am
A lovely memoir of meeting the legendary critic when she was retired and in her Massachusetts home. Money quote:
Her house is stone and shingle and very large, and I saw a deer duck into the trees at the corner of the yard as I came up the driveway. I knocked on the screen door and she looked out. She was sitting in a wooden chair. "My God, you're just a kid," she said.
She told me to open the door. I tried it. I told her it was locked. She told me the lock had been stiff for 20 years, and that I should just fiddle with it. She said she knew it was 20 years because she'd just finished paying off her mortgage.
I fiddled with the lock for a minute and got the door open. We shook hands and I said: "It's very nice to meet you. How are you?"
"Old," she said.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Liberal Embeds
30 Mar 2007 09:35 pm
The netroots want to go to Iraq. The more viewpoints there the better.
Democracy in Egypt
30 Mar 2007 09:03 pm
A picture tells a thousand words.
Mogadishu Mayhem
30 Mar 2007 08:01 pm
The place is so wracked with violence it's beginning to resemble Baghdad.
Building Your Own Fast Lane to Sanctity
30 Mar 2007 07:09 pm
Benedict, new, self-made rules, and a nun cured of Parkinsons: JPII is on his way to sainthood.
Good Drugs, Bad Drugs
30 Mar 2007 06:59 pm
How do we tell them apart? Why is ritalin legit but cocaine not? An exploration.
"We Do Not Torture"
30 Mar 2007 05:54 pm
"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me. It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way. I just said those things to make the people happy. They were very happy when I told them those things," - Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, speaking of his time at Gitmo.
The transcripts have been censored to remove any details of the actual torture methods alleged. And here is the official response:
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield wouldn't respond to al-Nashiri's allegations, but said Friday that the agency's interrogation program is conducted lawfully - "with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives."
Notice that he does not deny torture. In fact, his words could be construed as justifying it. We have gone from "we do not torture" to no comment. One would like to disbelieve everything Nashiri says. But on what rational basis can we now do so?
Jesus and the Pledge of Allegiance
30 Mar 2007 05:33 pm
A reader writes:
Will Christianists ever stop violating his teachings?
Well, nothing's slowed 'em down yet. Here's my pet peeve: Christianists arguing about the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Jesus made it pretty plain that they are not to take an oath at all, much less one sworn in the name of God (which "under God" at least implies). In fact, in his discussion of the subject, Jesus counsels against taking an oath in the name of heaven, earth or Jerusalem, but doesn't even mention taking an oath directly in the name of God. I would guess that's for the simple reason that he couldn't even imagine such a thing.
I know all the hair-splitting arguments used to excuse Christians from this proscription on oath-taking, but Jesus' words seems pretty plain on this one:
"Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil."
Even if we make room for the necessary "civil" oaths used in courtrooms and other legal matters, it's plain Jesus was recommending that his followers dispense with any voluntary, self-initiated oath-taking. So why the constant agitation over the Pledge? Answer: It's not really Jesus that matters.
It isn't, is it?
Bears for Sanjaya!
30 Mar 2007 05:10 pm
The momentum builds.
Face of the Day
30 Mar 2007 04:47 pm
Sze Hang Yu of Hong Kong competes in the Women's 50m Butterfly Heat during the XII FINA World Championships at the Rod Laver Arena on March 30, 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Jailing the Sick
30 Mar 2007 04:25 pm
He's lived with HIV for twenty years and he faces a jail-term of six years for using medical marijuana to help him keep his meds down. In a state which has already legalized medical marijuana. I kid you not.
Another Stengel Stumble
30 Mar 2007 04:10 pm
Time magazine digs in. Who's Kyle Sampson? Has anyone here heard of Karl Rove?
Hildog For President
30 Mar 2007 04:07 pm
The conversation begins! And yes, I know they snuck a snuke in her snizz. She's still running.
Music vs Noise?
30 Mar 2007 04:02 pm
Alex Ross's guest-blogger, Justin Davidson, has some fun with Michael Tilson Thomas:
After establishing his street cred by remarking that "by Mozart's day, music was way more in your face than it had been before," MTT finally gets to the heart of his argument: that the densifying, intensifying and increasingly overwhelming sound of 19th and 20th century symphonic music arose from the need to compete with the rising din of urban life. That, I'll buy.
If you love classical music and you're not reading Alex Ross's blog, you now have no excuse.
Oh, Michelle
30 Mar 2007 03:56 pm
"It's like Pat Benatar wrote Braveheart."
Back to Sudan
30 Mar 2007 03:48 pm
Britain sends asylum-seekers back into hell.
Christianists vs Jesus
30 Mar 2007 03:36 pm
Will they never stop violating his teachings?
The HRC Politburo
30 Mar 2007 03:27 pm
They still refuse to be accountable in any serious way. Here's the editor of the Southern Voice, the major gay paper in Atlanta:
For our article interviewing [Human Rights Campaign president Joe] Solmonese, SoVo asked HRC a simple question about the HRC Atlanta Dinner: How much money did last year's event raise?
They refused to tell us numbers from the 2006 dinner, although we previously reported that the 2005 event grossed about $200,000.
There are three possible reasons why HRC doesn't want to tell Atlanta readers how much money we raised for the group at last year’s dinner: the event didn't raise enough money to make it worth the expense of putting it on, the event raised so much money that HRC fears we'll decide we should keep some of it here to devote to local causes, or they just don’t take our questions very seriously.
The usual secrecy and lack of accountability. A letter writer in the Washington Blade piles on today:
HRC remains an organization directed and led by a cabal of individuals who continue to use it, and the millions of dollars entrusted to it by its supporters, to promote themselves and their own agendas...
Perhaps it is time that HRC recognize that not everyone is fooled by its glossy, self-promotional branding efforts and that members of the gay community are beginning to seek some accountability.
Until they start answering questions posed by the media, stop giving them your money.
The Future of Social Norms
30 Mar 2007 03:08 pm
Paul Graham sparked a fascinating debate here on fashion and morals. What are we saying and doing today that one day will seem unfathomably bigoted and immoral? Hal Finney ran with the ball here. Ilya Somin thinks the death penalty will one day look like barbarism. Manifest Destiny takes a different approach and asks what immorality will one day look like. Money quote:
"My money's on voluntary limb amputation."
Tim Lee figures his libertarianism is biasing him. It's an interesting topic. My own candidates for what we find morally ok today that we won't in the future are: abortion-on-demand, factory farming, and discrimination against gays. But my biases may be showing too.
The Thugs In Tehran
30 Mar 2007 02:35 pm
Watching this video should remind us of the kind of people we're dealing with in Tehran. The British sailor is obviously under duress and forced to tell lies as a hostage. Displaying captive soldiers in this way is repulsive to all decent international norms and it has been approved by the central power-brokers in Tehran. This isn't a maneuver we can even try and blame on Ahmadinejad.
The salient question, however, is what this means. The hope is that it means that the gradual international coalition against Iran has had an impact. It may be a sign of desperation for the regime to try and use a bargaining chip in this way. The fear is that it reveals that the regime in Tehran cannot be in any way dealt with, and that a confrontation on a wider and larger scale is only a matter of time. Britain doesn't have the power. The U.S. does. But even then, military action to topple this regime, after the disaster in Iraq, is not a serious option. It would initiate something close to a world war with unforeseeable consequences. Probably the best response, then, is what Blair is doing: insisting on the truth, demanding unconditional return of the hostages, and using the incident to further isolate Iran at the UN. I'm afraid I see no other viable option.
"Law-Free America"
30 Mar 2007 02:15 pm
The truth hurts, and it hurts America most of all:
"We now fail to tell the full truth about our human rights conduct, or that of our allies in the War on Terror. Increasingly, we avoid application of universal standards: whether the rules against torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. But the United States cannot lead the world with moral authority unless we hold ourselves to the same high standards that we demand from others. The U.S. has put its own human rights practices center stage by promoting double standards for our allies, and arguing in favor of 'law-free zones' (like Guantanamo), 'law-free practices' (like extraordinary rendition), 'law-free persons' (who are dubbed 'enemy combatants'), and 'law-free' courts, (like the system of military commissions, which have failed to deliver credible justice and are currently being challenged in our courts for the recent stripping of the writ of habeas corpus). Through these misguided policies, the Administration has shifted the world’s focus from the grotesque human rights abuses of the terrorists to America’s own human rights misconduct, leaving other, equally pressing issues elsewhere ignored or unaddressed," - Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mar. 29, 2007
Pardon Libby?
30 Mar 2007 01:51 pm
Jon Rauch has a far more deserving candidate for presidential mercy.
Jonah And Conservatism
30 Mar 2007 01:26 pm
He actually seems to see my point:
Where is it written that conservatives have to have new popular ideas? If we can't make our existing ideas popular, is it really so terrible that conservatism become unpopular? Or does conservatism have to become a de facto political party of its own, constantly churning out new ideas that will get swing voters to call themselves "conservatives" not by converting them to conservatism, but by converting conservatism into some rightwing progressive agenda? This seems like a brand of me-too conservatism. See? People who call themselves conservatives can really be progressives too! Indeed, ever since his national greatness days, I occasionally find in Brooks a desire to keep riding the label "conservative" while quietly switching horses to something very different.
I'll respond more fully to this debate after lunch.
Vending Machine Viagra
30 Mar 2007 01:08 pm
An easy way for doctors to make some extra cash.
Quote for the Day
30 Mar 2007 01:02 pm
"I've had people come visit me saying "Pastor, here's where you're wrong." I don't spend a lot of time trying to convince people who are resolutely skeptical. What I do is I try to tell people what I believe and why I believe it, and the people who are persuadable are usually persuaded. There have been a couple of families who have left the church, because they listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Senator Inhofe just going off on this, characterizing everybody who cares about the environment as pagans and kooks. But yet for every one of those there are at least 20 coming up and saying, "Thank you, finally." The younger generation always goes, "Well duh, what took you guys so long?" But yes, I am vilified and attacked by a few in the community, and that's the price of any kind of leadership," - Pastor Joel Hunter, of the Evangelical Climate Initiative.
"Coercive Interrogation"
30 Mar 2007 12:59 pm
America now has a different kind of military alum:
Coercive techniques, including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions were employed on the detainees, he says. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger, he told me in a phone interview.
When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, other interrogators said, "Chain him up on the bed frame and then he'll talk to you." Lagouranis says he didn't participate directly in hangings from the frames.
The results of the hangings, shacklings and prolonged stress positions - sometimes for hours - were devastating. "You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time," Lagouranis told me. "I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."
In Front Of Our Noses
30 Mar 2007 11:14 am
A reader writes:
In light of your Reason link, consider re-visiting George W. Bush's 2000 convention speech. You might recall the theme from the convention: "Prosperity with a Purpose." The theme and recurring phrase of the speech was "They have not led, we will." The Brooks-Kristol argument was made to the American public, and they bought it, certainly without really understanding what they were buying:
"For eight years, the Clinton/Gore administration has coasted through prosperity. And the path of least resistance is always downhill. But America's way is the rising road. This nation is daring and decent and ready for change.
Our current president embodied the potential of a generation. So many talents. So much charm. Such great skill. But, in the end, to what end?
So much promise, to no great purpose. Little more than a decade ago, the Cold War thawed and, with the leadership of Presidents Reagan and Bush, that wall came down. But instead of seizing this moment, the Clinton/Gore administration has squandered it. We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence.
Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report. 'Not ready for duty, sir.' This administration had its moment. They had their chance. They have not led. We will."
Of course, I thought it was boilerplate. Dumbass.
Turkey and Iraq, Brother or Friend?
30 Mar 2007 10:31 am
Richard Miniter reports on an under-reported relationship.
Colbertology
30 Mar 2007 10:12 am
Jim Fallows debriefs himself. Don't worry. It's not obscene.
The View from Your Window
30 Mar 2007 09:50 am
San Francisco, 5 pm.
The Costanza Doctrine
30 Mar 2007 09:31 am
Michael Fullilove has finally discovered the real secret behind the Bush administration's Iraq war strategy: an episode of Seinfeld.
"Coercive Interrogation"
30 Mar 2007 09:03 am
Much ink has been split over what torture means. It isn't the first time. The original White House memo outlining the boundaries drew the line at death or failure of a major bodily organ. Hey: it's compassionate conservatism. But the exquisite ways in which human beings have found to describe torture that isn't torture or to call it something else or to place limits on it go back a very long way:
I don't know how much of your latin remains from your schooldays, but I just reread Ad Extirpanda (To Be Exterminated), the papal bull in which Innocent IV, feeling the Inquisition was not efficient enough in digging out heresy, introduced the occasional use of torture in extreme circumstances. At first, it was truly used this way. Within a few decades however, it had become the norm as legal strategy gave way to blunt force in the name of moral authority.
I found the terms used to explain what kind of torture was to be permitted to bee strangely familiar (translation mine):
"Extraordinary use of the question shall be limited to that which does not involve the effusion of blood or permanent mutilation."
John Yoo, meet your mentor.
An Anti-Gay Lynching?
30 Mar 2007 07:50 am
I linked to stories last February about the beating of an elderly gay man in Detroit that allegedly led to his death. It was reported as a hate-crime. The story now turns out to be much cloudier and probably not a hate-crime at all. Here's the latest story with the coroner's report. After the Matthew Shepard case, which was a vicious crime also distorted in the media (and milked for money by HRC), I should have been more wary.
Quote for the Day
30 Mar 2007 07:44 am
"To hear some of my colleagues say that we should dispense with this frivolous debate because the president has threatened to veto, what a waste of our time -- well, if you logically follow that through, Mr. President, why do we need a Congress? . . . Mr. President, we tried a monarchy once. It's not suited to America," - Senator Chuck Hagel, Wednesday.
Go Sanjaya!
30 Mar 2007 06:34 am
My fiance will kill me, but I urge everyone to vote for Sanjaya in American Idol. It's very, very important to subvert this compulsive but far too self-important show. Help can be found here. if the whole blogosphere got behind him, he might even win. Which would be fantastic.
And So It Begins
30 Mar 2007 12:06 am
This is the first of what one imagines will be a series of stories about Rudy Giuliani's record in New York City. He knew about Bernard Kerik's connection to a company linked to organized crime before appointing him police commissioner. Money quote:
Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.
Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.
This was the man Rudy pushed to run DHS. We also learn today that Rudy wants his third wife in his cabinet meetings if he were president. Who elected her? In Rudy's world, he does all the electing.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Mark Levin's Head Explodes
29 Mar 2007 11:50 pm
What a joy to watch.
"We Make The Bullets"
29 Mar 2007 11:45 pm
Who is Tim Griffin, the man Karl Rove inserted as the new U.S. Attorney for Arkansas, bouncing Bud Cummins? Just one of the most accomplished opposition researchers in the Rove machine - as Josh Green reported in this 2004 piece in the Atlantic. Why was he put in place by a provision slipped secretly into the Patriot Act to avoid Senate scrutiny? Isn't it obvious by now? His job was not to prosecute crime, but to prosecute, slime and obliterate the opposition party. Josh Marshall explains it in this video:
Gonzales, in my view, is not the real culprit here. He is now and always has been a tool. It's Rove the Senate needs to investigate, and Rove who needs to provide the answers.
Fisking My Fisking of Brooks
29 Mar 2007 09:30 pm
Hey, it's the blogosphere. The substantive challenge of the fisk is to force me to delineate exactly where I would draw the line between what government should and shouldn't do. I have.
McCain on Marriage
29 Mar 2007 08:24 pm
He's opposed to same-sex marriage but also in favor of a federalist solution. I think the GOP's best bet on this question is the exact formula McCain has laid out. I can live within a coalition with people who oppose my right to marry the man I love. But I cannot live within a coalition that would amend the federal constitution to forbid it for ever in every state.
Stengel Explains, Ctd.
29 Mar 2007 08:16 pm
A reader re-rexplains:
You wrote re Rick Stengel and the U.S. Attorneys scandal:
"One might even believe that a scandal a few weeks old isn't exactly the past."
I would go even further (as other Swampland commenters have) and argue that this US Attorney scandal has little to do with the past. These USA firings came in the wake of the 2006 elections, but are not about the 2006 elections. If this scandal really is what it appears to be, it is about using the DOJ to stack the deck in favor of the GOP for the 2008 elections. As such, this scandal is not about the past, but about the future. For this reason, both the media and Congress need to pursue this investigation vigorously.
A Christianist Epiphany
29 Mar 2007 07:22 pm
This is some recantation.
A CD Tip
29 Mar 2007 07:03 pm
A reader writes:
When I used to work at a record store customers were always asking me to open their new CDs for them. 99 percent of them were incredibly impressed that I could unwrap the plastic and remove the white tape-like label that seals the top of the case in under 3 seconds.
Your tip for the day: Hold the top of the CD on an angle slide the bottom side across the edge of a table. The plastic wrapper will comes right off. Then unhinge the case and the white tape-like label can be peeled off easily. Then just re-hinge the case.
Of course my speed developed from opening a lot of CDs...and boredom.
An Inadmissable Speech
29 Mar 2007 06:39 pm
The U.N. shows how depraved it can get.
In Defense of Brooks
29 Mar 2007 06:35 pm
A reader writes:
As a liberal, I hate to defend David Brooks, but you and Greenwald are piling on to him as if he'd never written another word before today's column. Brooks isn't advocating neoconservatism as Greenwald alleges, or big government liberalism as you're alleging. If you've read him before - and I know you have - you know he sees himself as a Hamiltonian conservative who advocates opportunity as a social good. That is a value that if embraced could bring the Republican party back to relevance.
Personally, I hope the Democrats get there first. Opportunity is the flag in the middle of American politics; whoever grabs it wins.
I hope the Democrats get there first as well, because it is the authentically liberal vision: government taking care of its citizens, as parents take care of children. My vision is one where the government leaves its citizens alone as much as possible, and treats them as self-governing adults. I'm not a pure libertarian. If David were merely offering some minimal government help to increase people's ability to enjoy freedom, I'd have no problem. I favor universal private health coverage; I favor strong public funding for secondary education. Like other conservatives, I believe in a strong small state - effective policing, strong defense, etc. But I don't want government re-moralizing families, as David does, or legislating someone's idea of virtue. I don't want more and more entitlements. I don't want a middle-class clamped to the teat of the redistributive machine. I don't want a government marching around the world advancing freedom either; I prefer a government prudently attempting to prevent and deter threats to our freedom. I don't support rendition, torture or the suspension of habeas corpus. I favor either prosecuting captured terror suspects through the regular legal system or treating them as prisoners of war. I want to see government spending on a whole range of areas slashed, not increased. I want Medicare and social security means-tested, and taxes flattened. I don't want the federal government involved in local schools. I have never bought into "compassionate conservatism" which is now and always has been big government liberalism re-branded for evangelicals.
I guess I should address a semantic but perhaps salient point. I believe a strong, limited government is the necessary precursor for any freedom. Hobbes is an intellectual idol of mine. Order leads to freedom. But David's formulation is importantly different. It is that security leads to freedom. That notion of security is for me dangerously open-ended. The point of freedom, to my mind, is to live in the constant presence of insecurity, indeed to embrace such insecurity. That to me is the essence of America: the nerve to live with insecurity. Life is insecure. The goal of America is for individuals to gain the self-knowledge and nerve to live with that insecurity. That can't be given to anyone; it has to be earned by each of us, as best we can.
David wants government to soothe and remove such insecurity, to allay and calm it. He wants a mommy-state at home and a daddy-state abroad. I want to be left alone. I want to be treated as an adult. I want the state to do the minimum necessary and do that really, really well, which is, by the way, really, really hard. That's the conservative understanding of freedom. David's is essentially a liberal vision, dolled up with religion and patriotism. And it has wrought a terrible toll on both America and the coherence of the conservative movement.
What Brooks and Kristol Wrought
29 Mar 2007 06:01 pm
A helpful reminder from a decade ago of how David Brooks and Bill Kristol paved the way for the Bush catastrophe.
Vive La Resistance
29 Mar 2007 05:36 pm
Another Republican blows the whistle on Bush and Gonzales. This one was working at Justice until 2005.
Face of the Day
29 Mar 2007 05:13 pm
D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, testifies during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 29, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee is investigating the firing of eight U.S. attorneys that critics charge were politically motivated. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Bush Alone
29 Mar 2007 05:13 pm
More evidence of his isolation. His own defense secretary appeals to the Congress to open dialogue with the White House in order to shut down Gitmo.
The Next Ann Coulter
29 Mar 2007 04:55 pm
Fox News is grooming her for prime-time. Salon has the scoop on her colorful past.
Time's Arrow
29 Mar 2007 04:42 pm
A riveting yet simple visual chronology of the faces of one family, captured in the same frame, over three decades.
The U.N. Human Rights Council
29 Mar 2007 04:19 pm
A farce. And a disgrace.
The Hedgehog
29 Mar 2007 04:19 pm
An analysis of Bush's mindset. Diagnosis: fundamentalist.
McCain, Nearly a Democrat?
29 Mar 2007 04:16 pm
Crowley explains. Here's the source.
Greenwald on Brooks
29 Mar 2007 03:33 pm
We do indeed have the beginnings of a realignment in American politics. As Glenn Greenwald recognizes, that is the core argument of The Conservative Soul. Conservatism has been highjacked by an ideology favoring an authoritarian, constantly-militarist, debt-ridden welfare state. It has no real roots in the Anglo-American conservative tradition. It explicitly rebukes Reagan and Goldwater as outmoded icons. David Brooks has decided to side with the Bush agenda - against individual freedom and for more government power over people's lives. Glenn Greenwald recognizes and grasps this new and essential divide in today's politics. It is not: are you left or right? It is: are you with this radical, new statism or are you against it? I'm against it, from the perspective of conservatism. And these people are not going to take that tradition away from me without an almighty fight. Money Greenwald quote:
To be considered "liberal" or "leftist" now means, more than anything else, to oppose that [Bush-Cheney-Rove] agenda. All of the people now deemed to be on the "left" - including many who have quite disparate views about the defining political disputes of the 1990s - have been able to work together with great unity because all energies of those "on the left" have been devoted not to any affirmative policy-making (because they have had, and still have, no power to do that), but merely towards the goal of exposing the corruption and radicalism at the heart of this extremist right-wing movement and to push back - impose some modest limits - on what has been this radical movement's virtually unlimited ability to install a political framework that one does not even recognize as "American."
Regardless of what other beliefs one might have, opposition to endless warmongering in the Middle East (and the wonderful tools used to promote it, such as rendition, torture and indefinite detentions) - combined with a belief in the rule of law, along with basic checks and balances, as a means of modestly limiting the power of the federal government over American citizens - is now sufficient to render one a "liberal" or "leftist." That's because the political movement that dominates our country is radical and authoritarian - "security leads to freedom." Our political spectrum is now binary: one is either a loyal follower of that movement or one is opposed to it.
This may shift as new candidates with more complicated policies and responses emerge among the Democrats and Republicans. But until then, vive la resistance! Come one, come all.
Mustard Packets ...
29 Mar 2007 03:14 pm
... that take five minutes to tear open and CD packages that have you screaming at the cat. And rocky four-legged tables, when three-legged ones would be completely stable. Don't you hate them? Why don't manufacturers? Virginia Postrel asks. Stephen Postrel answers.
Fisking Brooks
29 Mar 2007 02:32 pm
It's been a while since I did a good fisking, but David Brooks' column today angered up the blood. He's a friend. I mean no personal animus. He's a good guy. But I think he is deeply, deeply wrong about what ails conservatism. David's column is in italics. My responses aren't:
There is an argument floating around Republican circles that in order to win again, the G.O.P. has to reconnect with the truths of its Goldwater-Reagan glory days. It has to once again be the minimal-government party, the maximal-freedom party, the party of rugged individualism and states' rights. This is folly. It's the wrong diagnosis of current realities and so the wrong prescription for the future.
So far, nothing but rhetoric and cliches from David. "Rugged individualism"? Why the "rugged"? Why not just freedom to live one's life as one chooses, as opposed to the way in which David's allies in the religious and authoritarian right want to boss us around?
Back in the 1970s, when Reaganism became popular, top tax rates were in the 70s, growth was stagnant and inflation was high. Federal regulation stifled competition. Government welfare policies enabled a culture of dependency. Socialism was still a coherent creed, and many believed the capitalist world was headed toward a Swedish welfare model.
In short, in the 1970s, normal, nonideological people were right to think that their future prospects might be dimmed by a stultifying state. People were right to believe that government was undermining personal responsibility. People were right to have what Tyler Cowen, in a brilliant essay in Cato Unbound, calls the 'liberty vs. power' paradigm burned into their minds — the idea that big government means less personal liberty.But bigger government always means less personal liberty. This is simply a fact, not an opinion. The trade-off is always there. It may be worth it in some instances - which is why I'm not a libertarian. But it is simply true that every dollar taken by the government is one dollar less for you and me to spend on what we decide is best; every freedom removed or infringed by the government is one less for you and me to enjoy. You can defend the trade-off, and should at times, but please don't pretend it isn't there.
I'm a small government Goldwater conservative, but I think compulsory high school education is worth the trade-off of freedom. I think universal healthcare insurance is an infringement of liberty, but since we have committed to providing emergency healthcare for all, it's a trade-off worth making for fiscal and moral reasons. Small government conservatives don't want to abandon government. We want it small - but strong and focused on what government really ought to do. And we have learned from experience that the bigger government is, the less effective it often is; and the more confusing and massive it is, the less accountable it is.
We currently have a government planning to go to Mars, heal broken marriages, and build bridges to nowhere - and also one that cannot wage a war competently, cannot respond to a hurricane adequately, and cannot enforce borders. Is it too much to ask that it get the basic things right before embarking on grandiose schemes to make us all feel more secure in amorphous ways? The lesson of our time is the utter incompetence and dysfunction of government at all levels. The solution to this is not to enlarge government, but to remove from it what it shouldn't be doing, and focus like a laser beam on getting it to work right on the essential tasks no private entity can do.
But today, many of those old problems have receded or been addressed. Today the big threats to people's future prospects come from complex, decentralized phenomena: Islamic extremism, failed states, global competition, global warming, nuclear proliferation, a skills-based economy, economic and social segmentation.
And more government is the answer to all this? "Complex, decentralized phenomena" require clumsy, bureaucratic big government to solve them? When did David Brooks become a closet liberal? (Answer: in the 1990s.) What we desperately need is smaller, better government: a more effective use of military and intelligence to contain and deter Islamist terror, freer trade, effective education (which is best innovated at a local not federal level), a simple, serious carbon tax to foment private sector innovation in new energy technology, and shrewder diplomacy. This isn't big government. A Reaganite government could do all these things, after tackling the middle class welfare state that is slowly strangling the capacity of government to operate solvently at all.
Normal, nonideological people ...
Please. This is a straw man. Everyone who differs from David is ideological and abnormal?
... are less concerned about the threat to their freedom from an overweening state than from the threats posed by these amorphous yet pervasive phenomena. The 'liberty vs. power' paradigm is less germane. It's been replaced in the public consciousness with a 'security leads to freedom' paradigm. People with a secure base are more free to take risks and explore the possibilities of their world.
I'm sorry, but the security-before-freedom is and has always been central to small government conservatism, not the Christianist-dominated welfare state Bush has created and Brooks helped defend. None of us who believe in maximal freedom and minimum government believe the government should not be dedicated to security. In fact, it's the over-extension of government that has helped take its focus off security. I'd love to end farm subsidies, pork, the mortgage deduction, and to means-test social security - and spend the money saved on securing our ports and borders, rebuilding hollowed out necessities like FEMA, increasing the size of the military, and providing universal health coverage through the private sector. And all of that is compatible with small government conservatism.
People with secure health care can switch jobs more easily. People who feel free from terror can live their lives more loosely. People who come from stable homes and pass through engaged schools are free to choose from a wider range of opportunities.
But government has no business and no competence in creating "stable homes". That's the role of families, churches, local leaders, relatives, synagogues, mosques and all the institutions of civil society that David seems to want to be replaced or guided by government. Brooks "national greatness" isn't conservatism; and it never was. It's statism, overlayed with religious sanctimony and imperial ambitions.
The 'security leads to freedom' paradigm is a fundamental principle of child psychology, but conservative think tankers and activists have been slow to recognize the change in their historical circumstance. All their intellectual training has been oriented by the 'liberty vs. power' paradigm. (Postwar planning in Iraq was so poor because many in the G.O.P. were not really alive to the truth that security is a precondition for freedom.)
Well yes on the latter. But providing basic law and order is not what we are discussing in America. I might add I find it amazing that in an era when habeas corpus has been suspended for many, when the government is wire-tapping phones without a warrant, when U.S. citizens are "disappeared" without charges for several years, and when torture has been introduced as a legal government tool, David is actually charging that the problem with the liberty vs power paradigm is that it is outdated?? It has never been more relevant. It is Brooks who is stuck in the past - some time in the late 1990s when the intellectual experiment that created the Bush administration was in its infancy. The authors of that experiment should, to my mind, be leery of venturing out in public, not defending "no U-turns" in Bush conservatism.
The general public, which is less invested in abstract principles, has been quicker to grope its way toward the new mental framework. As a Pew poll released last week indicated, the public has not lost its suspicion of big government. Most Americans believe government regulation does more harm than good. But they do think government should be more active in redressing segmentation and inequality. Almost all corporations, including Wal-Mart, have extraordinarily high approval ratings. But voters are clearly anxious about globalization.
The Republican Party, which still talks as if government were the biggest threat to choice, has lost touch with independent voters. Offered a choice between stale Democrats and stale Republicans, voters now choose Democrats, who at least talk about economic and domestic security.Hmmm. I wonder why many Independents have become turned off by the GOP? Could it be that David's project of bringing in a cohort of religious zealots has tarred the GOP as a bunch of intolerant, bossy bigots? Could it be that the massive spending, debt and entitlement splurge has alienated fiscal conservatives in the Perot mode? Nah. It's the libertarians fault, isn't it? In my view, the obvious reason voters now pick Democrats is the astonishingly awful legacy - foreign and domestic - of Republican power under the aegis of Brooks's philosophy. If you have to choose between two big government parties, dedicated to taking care of everyone, why not pick the brand that knows how to do it and actually believes in it? And the one that isn't patently mean-spirited toward gays, immigrants, and non-evangelicals?
The Bush Republicans, following David's advice, have exploded spending, loaded massive debt onto the next generation, taken pork to record levels, and passed a biggest new entitlement since the Great Society. They've increased spending faster than anyone since FDR. Meanwhile their actual effective governance has been a shambles. Of course voters prefer Democrats when they have to pick between fundamentalist, insolvent, incompetent big government and secular, solvent big government. I sure would.
The Democrats have a 15 point advantage in voter identification. Voters prefer Democratic economic policies by 14 points, Democratic tax policies by 15 points, Democratic health care policies by 24 points and Democratic energy policies by 20 points. If this is a country that wants to return to Barry Goldwater, it is showing it by supporting the policies of Dick Durbin.
No, they're simply registering that the Brooks experiment in turning the GOP into a religious, statist party for cronies and incompetents has been a disaster for Republicanism and a catastrophe for conservatism. Given no true conservative alternative, voters have gone back to the Dems. Brooks was an intellectual architect of both visions - massive intervention abroad, and warmed-over socialism at home. No wonder the conservative coalition has fallen apart, and people are now backing Democrats.
The sad thing is that President Bush sensed this shift in public consciousness back in 1999. Compassionate conservatism was an attempt to move beyond the 'liberty vs. power' paradigm. But because it was never fleshed out and because the Congressional G.O.P. rejected the implant, a new Republican governing philosophy did not emerge.
The classic dodge: national greatness conservatism - big spending at home, big wars abroad - wasn't tried and therefore didn't fail. Please. It was tried, David, with bells on, and it has failed so spectacularly you need glasses with neocon thickness not to see it. In fact, its manifest failure may consign conservatism to the political wilderness for a generation - and has deeply increased the security dangers America now faces.
The party is going to have to make another run at it. As it does, it will have to shift mentalities. The 'security leads to freedom' paradigm doesn't end debate between left and right, it just engages on different ground. It is oriented less toward negative liberty (How can I get the government off my back?) and more toward positive liberty (Can I choose how to lead my life?).
Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they're not models for the future.And Bush and Cheney are? I know who I'd pick. Until the GOP thoroughly purges itself of the impulses of the Bush era - impulses enabled and supported by Brooks - they're finished. And they deserve to be.
Rove Raps
29 Mar 2007 01:49 pm
Money quote: "It's like Silence of the Lambs"