MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 28, 2007

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November 3, 2007

Lisa Nowak: Separating the Women from the Girls

Lisa Nowak, the diaper-wearing astronaut who went whacko over a man, is probably going to get away with stalking, assault, attempted kidnapping (to God's know what end) and, setting feminism back a thousand years.

A judge has thrown out everything but the supposed bats in Lisa Nowak's belfry. The evidence obtained from her car (including diapers, allegedly both used and unused): gone. Her statements to the police: gone. Her electronic ankle monitor: gone. Hell, it wasn't even me that Nowak stalked cross country and pepper-sprayed but I'd like to know where she is at all times; what if I'd accidentally scored some killer shoes on sale that she'd been eying? Fire alarms should accompany her every movement. This matters because Nowak's attorneys "in August filed a notice of intent to rely on an insanity defense, saying in court documents her diagnoses include a litany of more than a dozen psychiatric disorders."

How novel, women just can't control their emotions and shouldn't be held accountable. She was in love! I guess we should be grateful she isn't going with the PMS defense. "More than a dozen psychiatric disorders" and NASA never noticed? Females like Nowak hurt women everywhere with this kind of sorry-ass, female jealousy and emotional collapse. It's not bad enough that she was going to put a beat down on another human over a man, now she's going to make every woman in a high stress environment wonder if those around her are watching to see if she'll buckle and go haywire on the corporate retreat, let alone the flight deck.

Puh leeze. She's no crazier than the violent, stalker ex-boyfriends that feminists like me just love to see do hard time. You just don't get to go crazy in this way because you're a divorced mom of three who thinks no one will ever love you again, no matter how fucking brilliant you are. Because of how brilliant you are.

That was Susan Smith's deal, too, remember? I totally understood why she thought she had to make her children disappear so she could escape the no doubt loveless future in store for a plain, ignorant, hick town girl with a boatload of fatherless children. I also totally understand why she should never see the sky again--life's a bitch for women, no matter your income bracket, once you bring either children or a successful career into the picture. But we just don't get to handle our gendered problems this way. Astronauts don't get to make that other brilliant chick disappear just as 'hood rats don't get to make their children disappear. If infanticide occurs to you more than once, have some backbone: give them up for adoption, or, I don't know, decide to be happy without a man if it works out that way. If it's too hard to get laid as an astronaut hire a Chippendale. Hire two. Or, I dunno, stop being an astronaut. That was part of the reason for my leaving a shiny, but mostly dateless, career in the military. Don't know why it never occurred to me to take a few hostages.

Career, children, love, and sex - women don't usually get to have more than one of these at a time. Sucks. Totally unfair. Utterly sexist. I understand the pressure, believe me, but, women, find another kind of crazy if crazy you must go—get monstrously fat, become a religious nut and bother folks in the park with your ravings, become an obsessive scrap booker, marry your own personal K-Fed. Anything but out-sourcing your problems to innocents and dragging the rest of us back with you to the age of swooning. Feminists have no problem condemning male violence for exactly what it is, no matter how lunatic his state of mind, and we should feel no differently towards Lisa Nowak. She made her choices but she wasn't women enough to either live with them or make new choices. She's not crazy. She's weak.

The Conjugal Classroom

The latest female teacher caught boffing her young male student got busted in Mexico. Even women-haters take the weekend off, but you can bet that come Monday, the right wing blogosphere will be afire 'proving' that feminism = female monsters and that female criminals benefit from a double standard in public reaction and come sentence time.

These are crimes, to be sure, whatever the perp's gender but there's no arguing that the grown woman-paperboy thing is qualitatively different from the football coach abusing youngsters in his care. According to William Saletan at Slate, both should be punished but female abusers are rightfully punished less severely and regarded with less animus:

Move over, Mrs. Robinson. The new public enemy is the bespectacled babe who teaches our kids math in the classroom and sex in the parking lot. Dozens of female teachers have been caught with male students in recent years, and the airwaves are full of outrage that we're letting them off the hook. On cable news, phrases like "double standard" and "slap on the wrist" are poured like pious gravy over photos of the pedagogue-pedophile-pet of the month. "Why is it when a man rapes a little girl, he goes to jail," CNN's Nancy Grace complains, "but when a woman rapes a boy, she had a breakdown?"

I hate to change the subject from sex back to math, but this frenzy—I'm trying hard not to call it hysteria—reeks of overexcitement. Sex offenses by women aren't increasing. Female offenders are going to jail. And while their sentences are, on average, shorter than sentences given to male offenders, the main reason is that their crimes are objectively less vile. By ignoring this difference, we're replacing the old double standard with a new one.

The data are startling; women who having sex with young boys are wrong and deserve punishment, just not as much as the average, and far more numerous, male abuser. Now if we could just figure out why a love of children can lead to sex and how to stop it.

November 2, 2007

The Chutzpah of Bernard Lewis

A small group of Middle East studies academics, led by Bernard Lewis, have formed a new professional group, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, according to InsideHigherEd. Their stated reasons for establishing the group are "the increasing politicization of these fields, and the certainty that a corrupt understanding of them is a danger to the academy as well as the future of the young people it purports to educate." Funny, that, because Lewis, from his perch at Princeton, is probably the country's greatest practitioner of Mideast studies in the service of politics. A few of Lewis' greatest hits:

Participated in a pre-9/11 "study of ancient empires, sponsored by [Donald] Rumsfeld's office, to understand how they maintained their dominance," according to the Times.
Became one of the earliest and most public proponents of war with Iraq soon after 9/11, writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, including "A War of Resolve" and "Time for Toppling."
In a series of personal meetings after 9/11, helped disabuse Dick Cheney of "his former skepticism about the potential for democracy in the Middle East," according to Time.
Earlier this year, received standing ovation after defending the Christian crusades in his speech accepting the Irving Kristol Award at the American Enterprise Institute.

The new association rounds out its apolitical "Academic Council" with U.S. News columnist Fouad Ajami, National Review writer Victor Davis Hanson, and former Secretary of State George Schultz.

—Justin Elliott

Hindu American Foundation on the Defense About Lobbying Practices

Last month, the New York Times published an article about how the Hindu American Foundation, a "human rights group whose purpose is to provide a voice for the 2 million strong Hindu American community," sees Jews as a "role model in activism." The article states that HAF "learned from the success of Jewish groups that it needed a full-time staff member to lobby Congress."

The HAF has shot back with an online statement accusing the NYT of skewering the "views expressed in an interview" with one of its member. The statement says that "as a non-profit organization, the Foundation does not lobby officials for any legislation, and our efforts are limited to educating legislators as to issues of importance for Hindu Americans."

The thing is, there's a thin line between "educating" and "lobbying." HAF's response probably has a lot to do with the fear of being accused of prohibited lobbying activities as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, but they proudly post press releases and photos about their "achievements" on Capitol Hill, like this Washington D.C. reception in September of this year —the fourth annual get-together of its kind during which they meet with senators and Congress members. In addition, they have a D.C. office to bring a "consistent Hindu American voice to Capitol Hill, the White House and non-governmental organizations in Washington, D.C."

None of these actions are unlawful, and non-profits brief Congress members on special interest issues all the time. But HAF's statement makes it seem like they aren't vigorously inclined to be politically active in Washington when they are clearly skirting the line between lobbying...and well, lobbying.

—Neha Inamdar

The Players Behind Anti-Muslim Pogrom Caught On Tape

Last week, the Indian independent weekly newspaper Tehelka published the findings of their six-month long undercover investigation into the Gujarat 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom which left more than 2,000 people dead. Armed with spy cams, journalist Ashish Khetan captured incriminating evidence of the state's collusion.

The expose reveals how various government and political party affiliates were involved in planning the carnage. One attacker said that Muslims should not be allowed to breed, and recounted how he ripped open the stomach of a woman nine months pregnant and pulled her fetus out, and then threw it in the fire.

The state's complicity is not new news. In 2002, the Human Rights Watch published a 68 page report pointing to the state's involvement and in 2005, the U.S. State Department revoked Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi's visa to the U.S. for his involvement. But the importance of this expose is that this time, it was all caught on tape.

At first, the expose elicited mud slinging that had little to do with the actual evidence of state complicity. Modi's party, the BJP, claimed that the expose is a "political stunt" and it's "confident" that it will still win the elections. Others charged that it was a "political conspiracy to defame the Hindus." But long time politician and Railways Minister Lalu Prashad Yadav has demanded the immediate arrest of Modi, while the Concerned Citizens of Gujarat, a civil society organization in Gujarat, protested yesterday, urging citizens to depose Modi's government and demanded a re-broadcast of the Tehelka expose since it has been banned in most of Gujarat. Let us hope that state officials do not escape justice.

—Neha Inamdar

Breaking: Schumer and Feinstein to Support Mukasey's Nomination

No sooner had Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy said he'd oppose Michael Mukasey's nomination when Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced they'd support him. Yesterday, David posed the question of whether the Dems would unite to torpedo Mukasey's nomination, in light of his views on executive power and refusal to call waterboarding torture, or whether they'd wimp out. Looks like we have our answer.

And Then There Were Five

Citing Michael Mukasey's reluctance to answer questions about the legality of waterboarding, Senator Patrick Leahy just added his name to the expanding list of Judiciary Committee Dems (five currently) who plan to vote against the president's AG nominee on Tuesday. "There may be interrogation techniques that require close examination and extensive briefings," Leahy said during a press conference in Vermont this afternoon. "Waterboarding is not among them. No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture."

When Did Negroes Become Nerds?

Mark Anthony Neal never fails. He finds a way to use his love of black music to talk about everything black at once. This time, he's gotten at something that's been worrying me for awhile now: when, and why, did public black culture become so degraded? I don't just mean rap's excesses but the paltry cultural footprint we're leaving these days when we used to mesmerize with our art.

No matter how much harder being black used to be, at least we knew we were the coolest people on earth. Hang us from trees though whites certainly did, they still envied us our style and rightfully so. We bad! and the world couldn't keep its eyes off us, on stage, screen or vinyl. The Temptations, afros, Chuck Berry, Lena Horne, The Cotton Club, jazz, blues, gospel. Now, public black culture is mostly rap, reality shows, overwrought r&b and over-priced clothing lines. Neal notes:

In his too-brilliant-to-be-dismissed collection of essays bloodbeats: vol. 1, Los Angeles cultural critic Ernest Hardy writes that "selling blackness is permissible in the mainstream marketplace; celebrating it is not. Few folks know the difference." The occasion for Hardy’s observation was the release of the music video for Janet Jackson’s "Got Till It's Gone," of which he writes that the video "not only works the artfulness and artsiness that lie at the heart of everyday blackness but envisions a world of African cool, eroticism and playfulness that is electrifying in its forthrightness." "Got Till It's Gone" was released a decade ago and Hardy’s argument is no less true today. Indeed blackness seems an industry unto itself, accessible on myriad media platforms and as pervasive as the air; there’s rarely a moment where one can’t conceivable choke on blackness—especially as the remote surfs past another reality show under-written by the Viacom Corporation. But where does one celebrate blackness at this moment?

Blackness is everywhere but it doesn't seem to be about much. Ironically, this occurs to me on the ever rarer occasions when black artistry does what it's supposed to, what it used to do so much more reliably—remind me that blackness is amazing. Dreamgirls, the Color Purple and Corinne Bailey Rae shocked me. They made me cry; all those beautiful shades of black and all that talent. I had no idea how much I'd missed seeing myself being incredible, transcendant. Seeing blackness loved. They literally made me ache a little—I have to get out more—and realize that I missed blackness. I think the world does, too. 50 Cent is a poor replacement for Curtis Mayfield.

My days are filled with race. It's how I make my living when it used to be how I lived my life. But integration came and now, most of the time, blackness is work—Jena 6, Don Imus, Dog the Bounty Hunter, nooses, Barack Obama, predatory lending and crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparities. Blackness as problem, as politics. Blackness as duty and something for which I have to travel—back home to see the family, a soul food restaurant, a post-scandal rally. My bi-racial children wouldn't know collards and fried chicken if they tripped over them or how eight people shared one bathroom in the home their mother grew up in. They'll never be able to enjoy the bilingual's blessed retreat into Ebonics after a hard day fitting in on the job and they'll never know what they're missing. All they do know is when Mommy's talking to Grandma, though, because she "talks funny". At 6 and 4, they already sound like nerds, not Negroes. I'm as proud of their advanced vocabularies as I am worried that they'll grow up incog Negro. Credentialed, but bland. In an integrated world, how are they supposed to access a cultural blackness? There's a limit to how many times can I make them watch the Flip Wilson tapes I bought from Time-Life Books.

We eggheads are doing our part; what's up with the black artist contingent? It used to be much harder to be black but it was also a hell of a lot cooler. Ellington, Gaye and Pryor saw to that. Did they leave so few successors?

CBS' Vital Campaign News Coverage, Elizabeth Kucinich Still Has a Tongue Ring

Yesterday, Casey made the point—while reporting that the South Carolina Democratic Party voted not to include comedian Stephen Colbert on the state's primary ballot—that fringe candidates often get, well, pushed to the fringe during election season and never get a chance to weigh in on real issues. Case in point—CBS' interview with Dennis Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth. You can watch the entire interview here and Salon's Tim Grieve makes it so you don't have to. Basically, following a painful series of the same question ("So, you would be willing to meet with him?") surrounding Kucinich's already well-publicized assertion that he would be more than willing to speak directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he were elected president, CBS' Hannah Storm launches into how hot his wife is and asks to see her tongue ring. Honestly, I'd rather hear about what's in the presidential candidate's pockets or I don't know, what he thinks about healthcare or the world's energy crisis, but I guess I'm expecting a bit much from the Early Show.

Dueling Videos in the Aftermath of Hillary's Debate Stumble

After Hillary Clinton's subpar performance in the most recent debate, the Clinton campaign tried to take the spotlight off her blunders by releasing this video, called "The Politics of Pile On":

And it may come back to hurt her, because it invited the Edwards campaign to release this video, called "The Politics of Parsing":

Obama has been talking a lot about how he's going to start attacking Clinton. Edwards, on the other hand, has actually started attacking Clinton.

A Recess Appointment for Mukasey?

As David noted yesterday, Senate Dems will have a chance to block Michael Mukasey's nomination on Tuesday when the Judiciary Committee puts him to a vote. Whether or not they will do so remains a big if, given that it will require a no vote from each of the 10 Democrats on the committee and, as yet, only four have signaled that they will oppose his nomination. As it stands, New York Senator Chuck Schumer appears to be waffling. An early advocate of Mukasey, he said yesterday that “no nominee from this administration will agree with us on things like torture and wiretapping. The best we can expect is somebody who will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule of law first.” Later today, Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy is expected to announce whether he will support Mukasey's nomination.

As the Los Angeles Times points out today, even if the Dems on judiciary stand firm on Mukasey, the president could attempt to install his AG pick in a recess appointment—one that will remain in effect until the close of his presidency—over Congress' upcoming holiday break. In that case, the Times notes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could try to out maneuver the president, "by keeping some lawmakers in Washington over the break to ensure that the chamber was always in session."

Depending on the outcome of Tuesday's vote, the Dems could find themselves (again) in a showdown with the president, who came out swinging yesterday in defense of his nominee. Playing the Dems-won't keep-you-safe card, the president said that “on too many issues, Congress is behaving as if America is not at war” and that blocking Mukasey "would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war." The latter is a bit of a strange comment, one that doesn't display terribly much confidence in Peter D. Keisler, the acting attorney general, a founding member of the Federalist Society (the conservative lawyers group), and an ideological soulmate of the administration.

Blathering About Bill and Hillary: The Right's Lazy Attacks

Charles Krauthammer's column in the Post today accomplishes nothing. Offering no evidence, Krauthammer posits Americans are gripped by a "deep unease" over the possibility of a Hillary Clinton-Bill Clinton co-presidency. He doesn't use polls or anecdotal evidence to support this claim. He has done no interviews. He just declares this to be true.

And as for why Americans are wary of such a situation, Krauthammer insists that it goes beyond the psychodrama of Bill and Hillary's troubled marriage, but repeatedly falls back on that troubled marriage to make his point. For example, take this paragraph, with my thoughts in bolded brackets:

The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. [invokes Bill's infidelity while insisting that Bill infidelity is not the issue] It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. [why is that a bad thing?] The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. [it will? evidence?] Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage? [presents no evidence that Americans object to "unique two-headed presidency"; again invokes Bill's infidelity while insisting Bill's infidelity is not at issue]

I can't help but note that considering how disastrously this administration has run the country, most Americans would probably welcome Bill Clinton back in the White House. But that's not the point. The point is Krauthammer has no evidence. The sort of sloppy, lazy writing on display in that paragraph is found throughout his column.

The real culprit here may be the standards of column writing, which have gotten so low that even columnists for the Post and the Times can blather on without making any substantive points and without including evidence. Here's a great example.

Did the Mormon Mafia Work Its Magic for Kyle Sampson?

Despite his spectacular fall from grace, Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson has nonetheless managed to land a lucrative revolving-door post at the powerhouse law firm Hunton & Williams. Sampson, you'll recall, was the guy who drew up the hit-list of U.S. Attorneys slated to get fired for not being loyal enough to the GOP.

Hunton & Williams has hired Sampson for its food and drug practice, where business is booming thanks to Rep. Henry Waxman's renewed focus on the FDA. Sampson got a plug from Hunton partner David Higbee, who was Sampson's roommate at Brigham Young University. But the folks at Hunton aren't just providing a soft landing for a disgraced Bush administration official out of the goodness of their hearts. A Utah native and former Mormon missionary, Sampson also has close ties to one Orrin Hatch, for whom he worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee and who is a notorious foe of the FDA. Hatch is almost single-handedly responsible for preventing any meaningful regulation of dietary supplements, and will be a key focus of all major anti-FDA lobbying efforts.

Opening Salvo in the War on Halloween

Liberals make war on Christmas, conservatives make war on Halloween.

More on Bush PR Maven Hughes' Departure

Slate's Fred Kaplan weighs in on Karen Hughes' decision to quit her job as undersecretary of state to burnish America's image abroad and return to Texas:

It may be that, as [Hughes] focused more on the substance and less on the flash, she realized that what she'd been asked to do simply couldn't be done. If the measure of success was how well she was selling U.S. policy, she was failing because there was no good story to sell.

"My guess is that the next year is going to be brutal for anyone doing 'message' control and with the elections they will be irrelevant as well," a recent Foggy Bottom denizen explains Hughes departure to me. "Life is too short, so she threw in the towel."

Unmarried Women are the Democratic Party's Christian Evangelicals

There's a new poll out that reveals a key Democratic voting bloc for 2008. According to research done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner on the 2006 elections, the gap between Democrats and Republicans amongst unmarried women is 36 points, a massive difference. At just over a quarter of the eligible voting age population, unmarried women are the single largest Democratic-leaning voting bloc, bigger than African-Americans and Hispanics put together. And they're loyal, too. Over the past several cycles they are second only to African Americans in terms of commitment to the party.

In terms of size, party ID, and loyalty, they resemble a key voting bloc from a different party: Christian evangelicals. According to the poll (see this pdf for full details), "In a generic presidential match-up, unmarried women favor the Democrat by a 70 – 24 point margin and in named match-up, Hillary Clinton leads Rudy Giuliani 66 percent – 30 percent among this cohort." [Ed. note: "Cohort"?] Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 24 percent margin in 2004, which means the advantage Democrats have in this group is growing.

The key difference is turnout. Evangelicals' ability to get out every last vote is legendary, as is the Republican Party's willingness to pander to them. On the other hand, no one has ever focused a messaging or get-out-the-vote campaign exclusively towards unmarried women. Considering the fact that the percentage of America that is unmarried has risen from 27 percent to 47 percent over the last half century (and that number is only getting bigger) some serious organization, messaging, and hardcore focus on the part of the Dems is worthwhile here. Critical, even.

Oh, and PS — Hillary Clinton has been playing to women strongly in the last few months. Maybe Mark Penn has already done this research.

Update: My MoJo colleague Stephanie Mencimer writes me to take issue: "The democrats have an enormous message aimed at unmarried women. It's their stance on abortion/contraception, which has been completely unwavering. I would wager that this is one reason unmarried women stick to the party, which has of late tried to tone down the abortion rhetoric a little but still is pretty militant on this front. Get out the vote efforts are obviously a little different, but even then, abortion rights groups do a lot to turn out single women voters." Point taken.

November 1, 2007

What Does 60 Minutes Tell Us About "Curve Ball" We Didn't Already Know?

From the looks of this press release not much. Here's the news they're claiming to break:

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons. 60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s. Simon’s investigation also uncovered an arrest warrant for theft from the Babel television production company in Baghdad where he once worked.

Ok, his name is new. And that's big. But him being a liar, and a thief (and also, a sex offender) and a whole bunch of other things 60 Minutes is claiming to have uncovered have in actuality been known for years. You can read all about the Curve Ball saga in our Iraq War Timeline. And much of the original reporting on Curve Ball was done by the LA Times. And former CIA official Tyler Drumheller, the apparent big source for 60 Minutes, has been speaking out for years.

Which is not to say that Bob Simon's two year investigation won't yield some great new stuff. I'm sure it will. But I just wish they'd give credit to the LAT and others who broke or championed the Curve Ball story back before it was fashionable to call out the Bush administration.

Re: Serviam

Good for the conservative operatives behind Serviam for advancing the "We Are Rome" narrative by choosing a Latin name for their new merc mag. In explaining "what we mean by serviam" (Latin for "I will serve") they declare an "unabashed … professional editorial commitment to old-fashioned values." So it's pretty clear the Serviam folks want the Roman connection drawn. But perhaps they didn't think through all the implications.

Exactly why the Roman empire fell is a topic classicists have been debating pretty much since it happened (and when it happened is itself unresolved). But one oft-cited reason is—you guessed it—Rome's increasing reliance on vicious, untrustworthy mercenaries to police its empire. For any aspiring merc mag publishers, that's an, um, awkward fact you might consider before going with the cool-sounding Latin name. For fellow classics nerds, there's more on the Roman experience from Edward Gibbon's 18th century classic, The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after the jump. Be warned, florid Augustan prose ahead:

[Traveling in Constantinople around 400 A.D. the Grecian philosopher] Synesius observes and deplores the fatal abuse which the imprudent bounty of the late emperor had introduced into the military service. The citizens and subjects had purchased an exemption from the indispensable duty of defending their country, which was supported by the arms of barbarian mercenaries.

In the same passage, Gibbon outlines Synesius' proposals to solve Rome's mercenary problem. Sixteen centuries later, in an America where "outsourcing war" has been called "an explosive trend," his ideas seem only slightly dated:

The measures which Synesius recommends are the dictates of a bold and generous patriot. He exhorts the emperor to revive the courage of his subjects by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury from the court and from the camp; to substitute, in the place of the barbarian mercenaries, an army of men interested in the defence of their laws and of their property; to force, in such a moment of public danger, the mechanic from his shop and the philosopher from his school; to rouse the indolent citizen from his dream of pleasure; and to arm, for the protection of agriculture, the hands of the laborious husbandman.

—Justin Elliott

SC Dems Bar Colbert

The South Carolina Democratic party voted today to keep comedian Stephen Colbert off the state primary ballot, saying they considered him an insufficiently serious candidate. I guess he wasn't such welcome competition after all.

Putting aside the issue of whether or not Colbert makes the grade (though I don't see anyone else asking supporters to donate $100,000 to schools), what does it take to be considered a "serious" candidate? Do you need supporters? Do you have to want the job? The designation of "seriousness"—and, by extension, viability—tends to reflect the conventional wisdom of the media echo chamber far more than the candidate's actual merit. Call it the spoiler effect, wherein third parties and so-called "fringe candidates" are deleted from polls, kept off ballots, and literally forbidden to debate their better-heeled challengers. With such sparse options, it's no wonder that pundits and voters alike spend hours parsing the lead candidates' general statements for nuance and difference.

Bottom line, this country should welcome candidates who stray from the center and take principled, controversial positions, even if they lose in the end. If we broaden our definition of productive debate, we'll broaden our choices too, and maybe alleviate some of our cynicism. You want to be considered a serious candidate? Earn it.

—Casey Miner

Senators Warn White House on Iran

Thirty Senators have signed a letter sent to President Bush today, expressing concern with the administration's increasingly bellicose rhetoric on Iran.

"We are writing to express serious concern with the provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran," the letter states. "These comments are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy."

"We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran," it continues.

Among the thirty members who signed, Senators James Webb, John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Byron Dorgin, Jack Reed, Max Baucus, Debbie Stabenow, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Boxer, Daniel Akaka, Tom Harkin, Thomas Carper, Amy Klobuchar, Jay Rockefeller, Robert Casey, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, John Tester, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Barbara Mikulski.

You can read it here.

Meantime, as David Kurtz points out, it is notable that Vice President Cheney gave a speech today at the American Legion in Indiana in which he did not once mention Iran. An accidental omission? I doubt it.

More here and here.

Update: Now Barack Obama has introduced his own Iran measure. "Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President George W. Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country's nuclear ambitions."

Mike Davis on the SoCal Flame Blame Game

The search for someone to blame for the Southern California fires continues. Current top suspects: climate change and kids with matches. In today's TomDispatch, master of urban disaster Mike Davis lays the blame for the San Diego conflagrations at the feet of former city mayor Pete Wilson. Before he went on to become "the baddest governor to ever grab the mic and go boom!"*, Wilson sparked the development boom that turned the city's backcountry into "pyrophiliac gated suburbs and elite estates." And if you think the appeal of these little tinderboxes on the hillside has gone up in smoke, think again, says Davis:

...the new fire cataclysm seems to be rewarding the very insiders most responsible for the uncontrolled building and underfunded fire protection that helped give the Santa Ana winds their real tinder. While conservative ideologues now celebrate San Diego's most recent tragedy as a "triumph" of middle-class values and suburban solidarity, the business community openly gloats over the coming reconstruction boom and the revival of a building industry badly shaken by the mortgage crisis.

* For a recap of Wilson's greatest hits, check out the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's 1992 version of "California Über Alles," which memorably skewered the then-presidential aspirant: "I give the rich a giant tax loophole / I leave the poor living in a poophole."

California Ballot Initiative: But That Didn't Stop it, it Came Back for More...

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that California Republicans are reviving an effort to change the state's winner-take-all system for allocating electoral votes (a move that could hand the 2008 Presidential election to Republicans). But progressives are raising questions about Arno Political Consulting, the group organizing the new signature drive. In a letter to the California Attorney General, Kristina Wilfore, the Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), wrote:

In 2006, BISC worked extensively with the committee that opposed an extreme measure known as “TABOR” . . .Our work with these groups placed BISC in a unique position this cycle to witness firsthand several different types of fraud perpetrated by certain signature gathering firms, including but not limited to, Arno Political Consulting.

So there are some doubts about the reputation of the firm promoting this measure. I'm not surprised: the whole thing seems pretty stinky in the first place. But, as I've written before, none of this matters very much because there's a pretty convincing case (via Doug Kendall) that the ballot measure is unconstitutional:

In Article II, Section 1, the Constitution declares that electors shall be appointed by states "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." That's legislature.

Let the GOP and Arno waste their time and money gathering signatures. Even if they get the 650,000 signatures they want, it won't do a bit of good. Unless they want to throw out this part of the constitution, too...

(The title of the post is from here. Hail to the King, baby.)

Evangelicals: Clinton, Giuliani, Anyone? Anyone?

According to a Pew Research Center survey released yesterday, 55 percent of white evangelical Republicans say they would consider voting for a conservative third-party candidate in the 2008 presidential election if Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were nominated by their respective parties.

Evangelicals make up a third (34 percent) of GOP and Republican-leaning voters, according to Pew and they're divided pretty much evenly among Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain. It's unclear whether a third-party bid would be launched should Giuliani become the nominee. Several dozen conservative Christian leaders met privately in September to discuss that very possibility. Who knows, now they might just meet again.

Oh man, James Dobson is psyched.

Ron Paul — It's Slightly Less Real Than I Thought

This is interesting. It appears that a portion of Ron Paul's online buzz is fake, and actually illegal. According to the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project (quite a name, that), which looks at hundreds of thousands of spam emails a month and recently got its hands on some Ron Paul forwards, some of the email support for Paul is coming out of spambots.

The university project received Paul emails with subject headers like "Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO" and "Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO." According to Wired:

The e-mails had phony names attached to real-looking e-mail addresses. When lab researchers examined the IP addresses of the computers from which the messages had been sent, it turned out that they were sprinkled around the globe in countries as far away from each other as South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Brazil.

More after the jump:

"The interesting thing was that we had the same subject line from the same IP address, and it claimed to be from different users from within the United States," [project head Gary] Warner says.

One e-mail was designed to look as if it came from within a major Silicon Valley corporation, he notes. But when the researchers looked up the IP address, the computer from which the note was sent was actually in South Korea.

The emails, which actually include portions of Ron Paul's platform and recite many of the Paul talking points, apparently have been laundered through something called a botnet, which is illegal. The campaign has denied any knowledge of the phenomenon.

Okay. So here's the thing. The massive amount of support Ron Paul gets in the comments section of blogs across the internet can't be faked. (It was so extreme that Redstate.com went all Judge Dredd on its users and banned newbies from discussing Paul.) The money raised and the event turnout can't be faked.

So the well-intentioned Paul supporter who was trying to get his (or her) man's word out through this botnet operation probably did Paul more harm than good. The very real support Paul is getting can now be wrongfully dismissed as no more than internet shenanigans.

Move Over Soldier of Fortune, Here's the New Mag for Mercs

It was only a matter of time before an entrepreneurial publisher seized on the private military contracting boom—and all those untapped ad dollars—in order to give Soldier of Fortune, long the preeminent mag for hired guns, a run for its money. That time has arrived and the mag is called Serviam (Latin for "I will serve"). Edited by conservative author and think tanker J. Michael Waller and published by EEI Communications (whose president, James T. deGraffenreid, is a board member of Frank Gaffney's hawkish Center for Security Policy), the magazine bills itself as a provider of "accurate and actionable information about private sector solutions to promote global stability." Serviam is a sleeker, tamer version of SOF, which, like the companies it caters to, is seeking to soften the mercenary image, casting soldiers-for-hire as international peacekeepers.

To hear Waller tell it in his inaugural editor's note, private security firms are as central to America's heritage as the pilgrims themselves.

Private initiative, innovators, soldiers, pilgrims and missionaries, and entrepreneurs of all stripes founded what became the United States. With vision and ingenuity, toughness and grit, they built a new land of prosperity and safety for all who sought to participate. The early English colonists came to the wilds of America with no military support from their government, despite constant threats from Indians and other European powers. The immigrants and settlers and the investors who financed their expeditions defended themselves on their own and hired professionals to help them.

The spirit that embodied our country’s early pioneers—seeking one’s fortune while generously serving others—ideally motivates the best of today’s providers of private global stability solutions. That’s why in our first issue of Serviam we trace the history of one element of today’s global stability industry: private security contractors, or PSCs. As the nation celebrated the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement in the New World, the establishment of Jamestown, Va., it coincidentally observed four centuries of PSCs in America.

(h/t Danger Room)

Homies and Hospitals

Black people are so weird.

For some reason, which will no doubt take eons to figure out, blacks are those most likely to check themselves out of the hospital against medical advice:

In an analysis of more than 3 million discharges from U.S. hospitals in 2002, the researchers found that 1.4 percent were made against medical advice. Compared with white patients, African Americans were 35 percent more likely to opt for such a "self-discharge," the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

In contrast, Hispanic patients were 10 percent less likely than whites to check out against medical advice...

It's unsurprising that men bolt more often than women and the young more than the old, but why blacks? The discrepancy holds true even when the researchers controlled for income (a brother can't lose his job) and Medicare/Medicaid receipt. Given that past studies (and common sense) indicate that going AWOL from the hospital is bad for your health, this is the kind of issue blacks should tackle as opposed to this one.

The Judge Gets Judged

Finally.

Philadelphia's Bar Association rebuked the judge who refused to punish a rapist since the victim was a prostitute. No comment from the judge but her lawyer put things nicely in perspective: ''The transcript doesn't necessarily tell the whole story,'' Bochetto said. He said Deni also considers a witness' tone of voice, demeanor and other factors in her rulings."

Can't imagine what those "other" factors were.

Posted by Debra Dickerson on 11/01/07 at 8:31 AM | | Comments (0) | E-mail |