Week of: |
5:10 PM
Shame on the Ninth Circuit!
Shawn Gementera, who stole mail from mailboxes on the streets of San Francisco, may soon find himself in front of his unfriendly local post office with a sign saying: "I stole mail. This is my punishment." So ruled the federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- one of the nation's most liberal courts -- by unpholding an earlier ruling which threw in this "shame punishment," in addition to Gementera's jail-time. Critics of the decision worry that it will spur the revival of archaic Scarlet A punishments which they argue are ineffective, dehumanizing, and generally unworthy of a liberal democracy such as the United States. As lawyer Dan Markel, who is advising law profs seeking a rehearing in the case, writes in the The New Republic:
"Such punishment involves an unacceptable form of preening and immodest sanctimony. What's more, the condition imposed here constitutes a coerced self-laceration that conjures images of the denunciation rallies and ritual debasements of history's least liberal regimes.
Of course, from many people's perspective, standing with a demeaning signboard around one's body for eight hours in a public square is better than spending many more months locked up in the teeming and fetid pestholes that are some of our nation's prisons. But this merely shows that there's more work to be done in the name of decency and dignity, not less."
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5:04 PM
No exoneration for the butcher of Beijing
Fifteen years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the official most associated with the crackdown is trying to distance himself from it.
London's Guardian reports that former premier Li Peng - long nicknamed the "butcher of Beijing" for his role in Tiananmen - has written an essay in the Chinese Communist Party magazine Seeking Truth, in which he claims he was only following the orders of Deng Xiaoping. In his (translated) essay, Li writes:
"In the spring and summer of 1989 a serious political disturbance took place in China. With the boldness of vision of a great revolutionary and politician, comrade Deng Xiaoping - with other party elders - gave the leadership their firm and full support to put down the political disturbance using forceful measures."
But whether the order came from Deng or Li is largely semantic. Both vociferously endorsed the action at the time, and in the years since. Whether Li's essay is the truth or just propaganda, it doesn't wash the blood from his hands.
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3:10 PM
What does a guy have to do to get a briefing round here?
Normally, the opposition presidential candidate receives a classified intelligence briefing shortly after he formally accepts his party's nomination.
Not so for John Kerry, as the Washington Post reports, as the Kerry campaign and the White House are still arguing over the terms:
"Those on Bush's side say the Kerry campaign is insisting on having briefings outside of Washington - a hardship for top CIA officials during a time of heightened threats - and is demanding that an unusually large number of Kerry advisers be permitted to participate in the highly classified sessions. Those on Kerry's side say it is the Bush administration that has been slow to deal with the logistics, including security clearances, needed for the briefings."
The Post reports Condoleeza Rice and Kerry adviser Rand Beers spoke with each other in early August to set up the overview briefing, which usually takes several hours and is given to the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, as well as a small number of aides. But two weeks later, Kerry has still not been briefed.
Kerry's campaign took the high road, with spokesman Chad Clanton saying it is just waiting for the White House to finish security clearances. But Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt couldn't resist jumping on Kerry's desire to be briefed outside of Washington, trying to discredit the Democrat's national-security credentials:
"During the eight years Kerry served on the intelligence committee, he missed 76 percent of the public hearings. And he refuses to disclose to the American people how many classified briefings he missed. John Kerry's campaign trail rhetoric about intelligence reform is disconnected from his record of chronic absenteeism."
Kerry has received two specific briefings, comprising threats to the conventions and the election, but not the overall briefing. So at a time when intelligence is arguably more important than in previous elections, Kerry has to speak on the subject without access to all the information. As the Post laments, this delay is "an indication that even routine matters have become highly charged in this campaign."
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2:12 PM
Who's talking about potential Supreme Court nominees?
Legal Affairs, that's who. The latest issue has three good articles about what we might expect from Bush and Kerry on court matters. Georgetown's Mark Tushnet takes the middle road, arguing that the Senate confirmation process is so divisive, so polarized, that neither party would be able to get substantial nominees through -- so it doesn't much matter who wins.
That seems unconvincing -- would Bush really be above making recess appointments to the Supreme Court? That's a rather crucial assumption there. Meanwhile, a two-term Bush could very well promote Clarence Thomas, judicial radical, to Chief Justice. With that in mind, David Strauss makes the case for Kerry's influence on the courts here (and the pro-Bush case is here).
Most interesting, though, is Tushnet's contention that the Democratic Party (and liberals in general) don't really have a coherent legal philosophy:
The Democratic Party doesn't have a vision on the Constitution broader than discrete positions on subjects that matter to the party's important constituencies. A Kerry nominee would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Until last year, the only other "Democratic position" was that affirmative action was constitutional, but the court itself took that issue off the table for long enough that it won't feature in nomination and confirmation politics over the next few years.
Republicans (and conservatives), of course, have a highly activist constitutional vision -- including rolling back Congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce, rolling back federal regulations, strengthening the presidency, protecting property rights, and dismantling much of the legal framework upholding the New Deal. Right now, the Democrats have no countervailing ideals. Bland Kerry appointees in the mold of Stephen Breyer may cast liberal votes here and there, but they will likely do little to fight the Rehnquist Court's rollback of federal regulations. Without a stronger legal vision, liberals could ultimately lose the battle of the courts, even if Kerry does get elected.
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1:55 PM
Al-J at the GOP
As it did the Democratic convention in Boston, Al-Jazeera will cover the GOP meeting in New York. And this time, a spokesperson said, the network's sign will banner will hang prominently.
During the Democratic convention, Al-Jazeera had to remove its sign, which was replaced by a John Kerry banner, even though no other network suffered the same treatment. Republican organizers have assured the pan-Arab news channel that it won't happen again.
"We're delighted and thrilled," Al-Jazeera spokeswoman Stephanie Thomas said.
Soon we'll see how thrilled Republicans are with the coverage.
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11:44 AM
What's the deal with Zell Miller?
The Republicans have named the keynote speaker for their convention in New York later this month. And they've decided a yellow-dog Democrat is the right guy to encapsulate the GOP message.
Retiring Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga., sort of) will deliver the keynote Wednesday night. GOP chairman Ed Gillespie seems excited about it:
"In 1992, Senator Miller delivered the keynote address in the very same arena at the Democrats' convention. We're honored he'll be taking the stage at the Garden this year for President Bush."
Granted, Miller was speaking about a different George Bush in his 1992 address. But some of the content just screams out for a revival:
"I am a Democrat because we are the party of hope. For 12 dark years the Republicans have dealt in cynicism and skepticism. They've mastered the art of division and diversion, and they have robbed us of our hopeŠ""Americans cannot understand why the rich can buy the best health care in the world, but all the rest of us get is rising costs and cuts in coverage, or no health insurance at all. And George Bush doesn't get it?
"Americans cannot walk our streets in safety, because our "tough-on-crime" president has waged a phony war on drugs, posing for pictures while cutting police, prosecutors and prisons. And George Bush doesn't get it?
"Americans have seen plants closed down, jobs shipped overseas and our hopes fade away as our economic position collapses right before our very eyes. And George Bush does not get it!"
Twelve years later, Zell Miller is willing to argue against all those points he made so eloquently in 1992. Maybe he's the one who doesn't get it.
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11:42 AM
When will we begin to "get" Arab media?
The National Review tries to rationalize the recent expulsion of al-Jazeera reporters from Iraq, and stumbles on a wee bit of wrongheadedness:
Disturbingly, since its inception in 1996, Al-Jazeera has served as the foremost source of information about the West for much of the Arab and Muslim world. The station helps shape the worldviews of an estimated 45 million Middle Easterners, in addition to scores of Arabic-speaking Europeans and 150,000 American households.
And therein lies the problem: Al-Jazeera portrays the United States and Israel as twin Satans while casting jihadists and despots as courageous victims of Western aggression.
But this isn't what al-Jazeera is, or does. The network's motto is "The opinion and the other opinion." Usually that means putting two equally shrill viewpoints on the show and letting the opinion holders go at it. Still, this is a well-defined format, and U.S. officials could easily use it to their advantage. In November 2001, Christopher Ross, an adviser to the State Department, went on one of the talk shows and debated (in Arabic) the U.S. position on the Afghanistan bombings. The talk show host was more or less swayed by Ross' view that the U.S. was trying to avoid civilian casualties, and from all accounts, Ross' appearance was a hit with viewers. Subsequent appearances -- by Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and others -- made some headway in reaching out to Arab viewers, though perhaps less so than Ross' debut.
It's incomprehensible to me that an administration that can work over the American press with such abandon has no idea how to gain sway in the Arab media. Unfortunately, al-Jazeera isn't going to cozy up to Israel anytime soon -- it does work within cultural norms, after all. But the U.S. could certainly do more to send Arabic-speaking diplomats on the show and try to convince those 45 million viewers that we aren't the Great Satan. (And no, the U.S.-backed Radio Sawa, with its musical jingles and sound-bite news shows, won't cut it.)
The alternative is censorship, and it's far from apparent that censorship will work. Plenty of Iraqis own satellite dishes, and can still watch al-Jazeera -- though the network may now be less inclined to stump for the interim government. And, as Spencer Ackerman has observed, it's hard to keep a good al-Jazeera reporter out of the country. I've noted before that Allawi may have thought he could ban al-Jazeera for a bit in order to win a propaganda war against Moqtada al-Sadr (and attack the Mahdi army in Najaf without pictures being broadcast worldwide). Well, he lost that bet and the Shiites are mighty pissed off anyways. Maybe it's time to try engaging the free press.
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4:17 PM
Chaos and confusion in Najaf
On Monday I mentioned that the soldiers in Iraq were wholly unequipped for the occupation in Iraq. Apparently, "wholly" was an understatement. The New York Times today tells us that the battle in Najaf all started because of a blunder by the Marines:
Just five days after they arrived here to take over from Army units that had encircled Najaf since an earlier confrontation in the spring, new Marine commanders decided to smash guerrillas loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Acting without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials, the Marine officers said in recent interviews, they turned a firefight with Mr. Sadr's forces on Thursday, Aug. 5, into a eight-day pitched battle, one fought out in deadly skirmishes in an ancient cemetery that brought them within rifle shot of the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. Eventually, fresh Army units arrived from Baghdad and took over Marine positions near the mosque, but by then the politics of war had taken over and the American force had lost the opportunity to storm Mr. Sadr's fighters around the mosque.
Most observers (including me) had assumed that, under the terms of the handover, the military would have had to receive authorization from the interim government before making a "major decision on the use of force." As Spencer Ackerman notes, though, the ambiguity surrounding our military's position in Iraq has led to some conflicted decision-making.
It's also worth asking whether mere blunders will explain everything that's happened in Najaf. The Times article notes that Iraq Ambassador John Negroponte "decided to pursue the case" after the fighting had started. Why? And why, if Iyad Allawi didn't want an attack, did he initially come out with his dramatic "no negotiations, and no truce"? Why have his negotiators said, rather ominously, that if they can't agree on a resolution with Sadr, "the government will to a large extent be absolved" of having to handle him carefully? Why has the Iraqi defense minister belligerently announced that he'll "teach [the Mahdi] a lesson they'll never forget"? It sounds like many in Baghdad were eager to go into battle, whether or not it was started by accident.
As I've mentioned before, it's entirely likely that the central government is ready to risk mass Shiite outrage in order to knock off Sadr. But consider: the U.S. military is suffering from a confused chain-of-command, and there are signs of infighting between the Army and the Marines; the Iraqi army, meanwhile, would rather run away than fight fellow Iraqis. The odds of success are growing quite slim.
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4:10 PM
Illinois joins the prescription drug bazaar
Add another state to the list of those helping citizens buy prescription drugs from Canada.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced Tuesday that his state plans to join New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota in setting up an Internet system that links state residents to pharmacies in Canada. Taking things a step further, Illinois will also link to pharmacies in the UK and Ireland.
The moves comes less than a year after the FDA rejected Blagojevich's request to import cheaper drugs directly from Canda. As the governor explained Tuesday:
"We have taken every possible step we could think of to convince the FDA, and convince the Congress, and anyone and everyone who will listen, that people across Illinois, and across our country, deserve access to safe and lower cost prescription drugs. The federal government has failed to act. So it's time that we do."
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2:43 PM
Even smart people are falling for Bush's social security charade
Martin Feldstein, an economics professor at Harvard, is a smart guy. So it's fairly appalling that he's coming out and endorsing President Bush's smoke-and-mirrors Social Security plan:
The basic Bush strategy is to permit individuals to augment their traditional tax-financed Social Security benefits with funds accumulated in an investment-based personal retirement account (PRA).
The PRA assets would be invested in a mixture of broad-based stock and bond mutual funds. When the individual retires, the PRA assets could be used to purchase an annuity. The combination of those annuity payments and the traditional Social Security benefits that could be financed without increasing the current tax rate would be expected to be at least as large as the benefits projected in current law. In short, there would be no cut in the expected combined retirement benefits and no increase in taxes.
Got that? Bush is promising no benefit cuts, no tax hikes, and returns that will be "at least as large" as current benefits, all while patching up the program's impending deficit. It's brilliant! Except, as Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong points out, Feldstein's using a bit of rhetorical trickery to obscure the fact that stocks and funds could easily do worse than current benefits. (That's why he talks about the "expected value" of private assets, rather than "risk-adjusted present value.") It's also worth noting that the transition to the private program will cost at least $1 trillion. This means a bigger budget deficit, higher interest rates, and likely, a slumping stock market. (And just imagine if our whopping trade deficit explodes.) In fact, in Bush's deficit-happy world, the chance that private accounts will perform poorly is really quite high.
More appalling still is Feldstein's overblown prediction of what Kerry might do. True, Kerry hasn't laid out a plan for Social Security, but it's unreasonable to suppose that any benefit cuts or tax hikes by Kerry will be devastating. As Peter Diamond and Peter Orszag have shown, you can "save" Social Security with a modest combination of cuts and taxes hikes -- the payroll tax, under this plan, need only rise from 6.2 percent today to 7.1 percent in 2055. (Alternatively, you could just index benefits to prices instead of wages, so that benefits stop growing in real terms over time.) Just because Feldstein can imagine Kerry wrecking the system doesn't mean that's what's actually going to happen.
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2:37 PM
Jerry Falwell starts a law school to counter "left-wing" Harvard (!)
Jerry Falwell wants a generation of right-wing lawyers to represent his views in court. And his personal law school will begin the training process next week, when 61 students start classes at the law spinoff of Falwell's Liberty University in Virginia.
In Falwell's words:
"We want to infiltrate the culture with men and women of God who are skilled in the legal profession. We'll be as far to the right as Harvard is to the left."
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12:13 PM
Kerry weak on security? The guy's related to Ivan the Terrible!
Burke's Peerage & Gentry, which has been tracing the royal roots of the two U.S. presidential contenders, concludes that Senator John Kerry is more blue-blooded than President George W. Bush. So blue-blooded is Kerry that he's connected to all the royal houses of Europe. So I suggest that the next time the Bush administration takes his "sensitive" war remarks out of context, Kerry should play up his shared roots with Ivan the Terrible. Weak on terrorism? I think not. Does any of this matter? Well, yes. It means that Bush -- who is more regal than his 2000 presidential rival Al Gore -- is no match for Kerry. (Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek.) As Harold Brooks-Baker, Burke's publishing director told Reuters:
"Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American presidents. Because of the fact that every presidential candidate with the most royal genes and chromosomes has always won the November presidential election, the coming election -- based on 42 previous presidents -- will go to John Kerry."
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11:26 AM
Bush and missile defense: still missing the point
It's budgeted at more than $50 billion over the next five years -- having been passed after a heated Senate debate -- and has failed multiple tests. But that hasn't stopped George Bush from touting the planned missile defense shield as the future of American security.
At a campaign stop Tuesday at a Boeing plant near Philadelphia, Bush criticized missile-shield opponents of "not understanding" the threats of the 21st century:
"We want to continue to perfect this system, so we say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down."'
He also said, inexplicably, that opponents of the plan are "living in the past," while his administration pursues a defense shield cooked up early in the Reagan years - and still does so after the 9/11 attacks showed terrorists could inflict massive damage with box cutters and a well-coordinated plan. Kerry advisor Rand Beers responded:
"Despite this administration's near obsession with missile defense, the greatest threat facing our homeland comes from terrorists who would do us harm. In the months preceding 9/11 George W. Bush and his closest advisers were preoccupied with missile defense and their misunderstanding about the threats we face continues to this day."
But Beers gave Bush more ammunition for the "trying to have it both ways" file, saying Kerry supports a missile-defense shield in principle:
"John Kerry believes an effective missile defense is crucial to our national security strategy. But John Kerry also understands the importance of facing our most pressing national security threats while continuing to develop and deploy a national missile defense which we know will work."
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10:36 AM
Let ex-felons vote!
Kevin Krajick has a good question in his Washington Post column today: Why can't felons vote? It's rather telling that the "best" reasons for keeping ex-convicts away from the booths are either conspiracy-minded (seriously, an "anti-law-enforcement bloc"?) or disgustingly partisan:
Some say those who break the law lack the trustworthiness to make it. Todd Gaziano of the Heritage Foundation argues that felons might form some kind of "anti-law-enforcement bloc" and elect bad officials. But last year Alabama Republican Party Chairman Marty Connors stated a bald truth: "As frank as I can be," he said, "we're opposed to [restoring voting rights] because felons don't tend to vote Republican." He is right: People with low incomes, low education or minority status -- all benchmarks of convict populations -- vote Democratic 65 to 90 percent of the time.
Krajick spends some time making felon voting as appealing as possible to Democrats -- had they voted, Dems would have won the 2000 election and at least six or seven close Senate races. But that doesn't begin to scratch the sheer absurdity of disenfranchisement -- where even one-time nonviolent drug offenders in Florida can't cast a ballot. (Excuse me, make that African-American nonviolent drug offenders; white drug users are much less likely to be caught or convicted.) More importantly, no one has yet explained the rationale behind destroying all hope of rehabilitation for ex-convicts. If we don't want to integrate them back into the social fold, why not just keep them in prison forever? That would be less absurd than what we do now.
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11:57 AM
Bush refusing to pray? What's going on?
Americablog brings to our attention an overlooked anecdote from the president's weekend trip to Oregon:
Bush had to calm the ardor of the crowd at Southridge High School in Beaverton. One woman noted that Oregon has one of the nation's highest percentages of "unchurched" citizens and asked the president to "take a minute to pray for Oregon."
Bush, who had won loud applause earlier when noting his Christian faith, told the woman "I appreciate what you say" but then seemed to rebuke her statement. "People can choose church or not church, and they're equally American," he said, adding that it is important that "we jealously guard" the tradition of protecting religious freedom.
The crowd, seemingly surprised by Bush's refusal to endorse the woman's statement, responded with only a smattering of applause.
Is Bush worried about his faith-first image? It sure seems so. Can you imagine what the media would say if John Kerry recoiled from his own faith for the sake of political expediency? We'd have ourselves a public hanging! I don't think this is evidence of media bias per se, so much as evidence of the strength of media narratives. The line on Bush is that he's resolute and steady, so this "uncharacteristic" stunt gets buried deep in the papers.
But we can probably expect more of this in the months ahead. Bush is really, truly in trouble. For too long he's swung to the right, rallying his fervent supporters and forcing attendees to sign loyalty oaths. Now Kerry has pulled ahead in several battleground states, while at the same time fortifying his support among the Democratic base. Even in swing state-Oregon, Bush attracted only a modest following, while Kerry/Edwards spoke before a Super Bowl-size crowd. Bush needs moderation, and fast. Trouble is, it's not that easy to tack sharply to the center -- sudden surprises like refusing to pray tend to alienate supporters. Time to revisit the old question: is Karl Rove really the boy genius we thought he was?
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9:55 AM
Robert Zoellick's strange notion of "free trade"
Over the weekend, George Will talked to U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, and decided that trade policy under the Bush administration has been just wonderful:
Zoellick, the man Kerry slandered, is President Bush's trade representative, and on one day last month in Geneva he did more discernible good for his country than Kerry has done in 20 years in the Senate.
On July 31, the World Trade Organization reached an agreement that the industrialized countries -- especially the United States, members of the European Union and Japan -- will eliminate their agriculture export subsidies, which inhibit and distort trade, and will make "substantial reductions" in domestic farm supports, starting with a 20 percent cut. Poor countries will make similar cuts.
Will suggests that the agricultural agreement was a case of free trade at its finest. (This prompted Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect to wonder: "George Will: Liar or Moron?") What gave him that idea? As currently devised, the agreement will leave untouched a wide swath of U.S. farm subsidies. And that ignores the fact that as soon as the dollar declines -- an inevitable event, given our trade deficit -- our agricultural products will be even cheaper than they are now. Meanwhile, the small gains from the farm agreement pale besides the real harm done by Zoellick's cynical push for extending U.S. patents and copyrights. As free trade triumphs go, this is pretty watery fare.
Zoellick, it's been noted, is more mercantilist than free-trader, bent on enhancing the U.S. trade position at the expense of other nations. This is the same man, after all, who uses trade agreements to bully other countries on security issues; who pushed for harmful steel protections to help Republicans in the 2002 midterm elections; and who never saw a shrimp tariff he couldn't stomach. And George Will thinks John Kerry is the one with the protectionist problem?
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6:00 PM
Violence resurgent in Burundi
U.S. media drew criticism worldwide for their lack of Sudan coverage even as the situation there grew increasingly violent. Unfortunately, history appears to be repeating itself with this weekend's massacre of Tutsi refugees in Burundi.
On Friday, more than 150 Tutsis -- mostly women and children -- were slaughtered in a refugee camp near Burundi's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo - a story that drew little notice in the States. The killers were reportedly Hutu extremists, as in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that killed more than 800,000 people.
Rwanda's foreign minister told the BBC his country would pursue any Hutu militias that cross into Rwanda, and blamed the international community's indifference for the militias' continued activity.
The militia that claimed responsibility for Friday's attack, the Burundian rebel group Forces for National Liberation, is the last faction refusing to join that country's power-sharing government after a decades-old civil war between Hutu and Tutsi factions.
This sounds all too familiar.
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5:55 PM
Dick Cheney: Know-nothing CEO
This week, BusinessWeek flays Dick Cheney for his "see no evil" defense of his tenure as Halliburton's CEO. In 1998, Cheney's company used a few accounting gimmicks to boost its stated profits -- without telling investors. Recently, the SEC ruled that Cheney couldn't possibly have known about the maneuvers. BusinessWeek wonders how dumb the SEC thinks we are:
The second-most important political executive in our country claims to be ignorant of one of the key business decisions his company made during his tenure as CEO. It may well be that an underling was willing to make such an important call without telling Cheney, but make no mistake: This type of scenario would be very rare, even in pre-Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate America.
Even if Cheney didn't know about the disclosure decision, he should have. CEOs are paid big bucks for a reason: To stay on top of the important events going on in their companies. When it comes to maneuvers that have such a critical -- and obvious -- impact on earnings, ignorance is no excuse.
Alas, according to the law, ignorance is still an excuse. Remember, after the big corporate scandals, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill pushed for laws that would punish CEOs for "negligence" on these sorts of accounting issues. (Even under Sarbanes-Oxley, CEOs are only punished for "knowingly falsifying" the records.) But some in the administration thought O'Neill's idea too harsh. I wonder if Dick Cheney was one of those voices?
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5:50 PM
How powerful should the intel czar be?
The Sept. 11 Commission's report not only recommended creating a national intelligence czar, but supported giving said czar power over the budget and the hiring and firing of underlings. The Bush administration has yet to endorse those provisions, but the recommendations did meet with the approval of three former CIA directors.
William Webster, James Woolsey and Stansfield Turner all spoke with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, urging the senators to include the recommendation for a powerful national intelligence director in their draft bill:
"The intelligence community does not need a feckless czar, with fine surroundings and little authority," Webster said.
Sen. Pat Roberts, the committee chair, said its bill would closely follow the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Committee member Joe Lieberman said he's hopeful the administration will agree with those positions:
"Last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) appeared to have left the door open on the question of budget authority for the NID, which is an encouraging sign, and I hope her comments indicate the White House is reconsidering."
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5:10 PM
Soldiers speak out on military cover-ups
A soldier who was stationed in Iraq earlier this year relates a disturbing story over on his blog:
On January 2 of this year, a team of soldiers in my brigade stopped a couple of Iraqis near the town of Samarra. We were engaging in counterinsurgency operations there, trying to stabilize the town so the area could begin to recover and rebuild from the rigors of war. And on that day, one of the men I knew and had worked with, CPT Eric Paliwoda, lost his life during a mortar attack.
Four soldiers stopped two Iraqis. In the passion of war, on a day marred by anger and tragedy, the two Iraqis ended up getting thrown off a bridge. The bridge in question was, if I recall correctly, about 15 feet above the Tigris. The river, at that point, was about 6 feet deep.
That much we know; that much is beyond dispute. Beyond that, everything is in dispute. A man may or may not have died--the soldiers claim he lives, the other man who was flung into the waters says he met a watery doom.
But there is one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet that is also beyond a doubt. No matter what happened on that bridge, the soldiers were ordered to lie about it. And they were ordered to lie about it not just by their team leader, but by the entire leadership of their unit, from their company commander all the way up to their battalion commander.
Read his whole story; it's a stark and depressing look at the pressure that soldiers in Iraq are often under, and describes how their lack of training has led to ugly encounters like this one. It's also a case study in the culture of secrecy surrounding the military's operations in Iraq. The blame, meanwhile, goes straight to the top:
We never should have been sent to Iraq without any clue of how to win the peace, the hearts, and the minds of an Iraqi public who knew full well that we supported Saddam when it suited us, that we backed a rebellion against him when it was convenient, and that we left their brothers to twist slowly in the wind when it wasn't.
There's no way around this point. You can say what you want about the decision to go to war in Iraq. But the Bush administration's stark refusal to prepare for the occupation was wholly inexcusable -- the sort of negligence that should be criminal. Our soldiers have been put in a peacekeeping situation they are ill-equipped to handle. Did anyone honestly expect victory would come of this? (Never mind, don't answer that...)
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5:00 PM
Anarchists for Kerry? Well, they do oppose "power-based governments" ...
The Bush presidency has made some anarchists so angry that they are going to (gasp) vote this November. At least that's the heretical intention of some who attended the North American Anarchist Convergence this weekend in Athens, Ohio. The convergence was devoted to pondering the "practical alternatives to problems associated with power-based governments, institutions, and internalized systems of oppression." The likely anarchist voters raised some eyebrows at the anarchist get-together. As one anarchist told the Associated Press: "Ultimately, those who are voting are either bad anarchists or not anarchists at all. No one can represent my interests. We reject political professionals." But for some anarchists, desperate times are calling for desperate measures -- even voting for the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Some anarchists!
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2:53 PM
We can't grow our way out of debt
The lead Washington Post editorial today wonders whether or not we can just grow our way out of our yawning deficits. The editors say no, because we probably can't sustain the high level of worker productivity that occurred during the 1990s.
[W]e don't know how to repeat the 1990s miracle, and the government's policy options -- a trade deal, tort reform, deregulation -- aren't powerful enough to do it. The productivity revolution inside American companies seems to have reflected technological and organizational changes that had been percolating inside corporations for at least a decade, none of which had much to do with government policy. It would be nice to believe that a second productivity revolution will fix the looming fiscal crisis. But it seems unwise to count on it.
They're right; we shouldn't count on miracle growth. At the same time, it's not clear that miracle growth would fix the budget deficit even if we did get it. Generally, as productivity rises, wages rise -- and hence tax revenue goes up. But government spending -- mainly health benefits and Social Security payouts -- also tends to rise in lockstep with growth. In other words, without serious entitlement reform, the deficit would stay right where it is. So much for the easy solutions.
Strangely enough, the Post leaves out perhaps the best policy option -- increased immigration. Immigrants tend to be revenue positive -- paying Uncle Sam more than they take, especially on senior entitlement programs -- and would certainly solve our "aging society" crisis. Unfortunately, judging from the right-wing furor over President Bush's immigration plans, this doesn't seem like a popular idea at the moment. Still, if we keep peddling half-solutions to our fiscal problems, policymakers are eventually going to throw open the immigration gates as a last resort.
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1:02 PM
The extreme views of Clarence Thomas
A while ago, my colleague Jeff Fleischer wondered why no one was talking about the presidential election's potential influence on the Supreme Court, especially since Bush, if re-elected, would likely promote Clarence Thomas to Chief Justice. Well, here's one more reason to worry. Jonathan Ringel has just noticed a frightening little tidbit in Thomas' new biography:
[The most noteworthy part of the book is] a comment from Justice Antonin Scalia, whom critics have suggested is Thomas' ideological guide on the high court.
Thomas, says Scalia, "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period."
"If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right," says Scalia. "I wouldn't do that."
It's worth spelling out how extreme this is. Most liberals probably assume that a Bush-appointed Supreme Court could only go so far in dismantling the existing legal order. After all, they still have to respect legal precedents, don't they? But according to Scalia, Thomas doesn't feel bound at all by past court decisions.
Look at it in concrete terms. Law commentators generally agree that Justice Blackmun's opinion in Roe v. Wade was sloppy and badly written; but the doctrine of stare decisis requires continued adherence to the law. On that basis, Scalia would need extraordinary reasons to overturn the decision; Thomas wouldn't. Decades of accepted court practice -- tossed out the window.
In her most recent New York Times column, Dahlia Lithwick debunked the idea that conservative judges are somehow less "activist" than liberal judges. Indeed, the "conservative" Thomas may prove to be one of the most radical justices around.
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11:53 AM
Chavez escapes yet again
The results are in, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has survived a recall election with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Once again, it appears the former army paratrooper has used his support among the country's poor to thwart his opposition.
As the New York Times reports, Chavez's opponents predicted victory after the polls closed, an expectation they have voiced continuously since forcing the recall election onto the ballot in late June. After hearing of the president's victory, the opposition reportedly claimed that Chavez had been defeated by a large margin but cheated. But that criticism is founded, according to Jimmy Carter. The former president led a team of election monitors in Venezuela, and said the results support Chavez.
According to Bloomberg News, the election result brought oil futures down from a record high. Some had worried that a Chavez defeat would disrupt the flow of oil to the U.S., which gets 14 percent of its oil from Venezuela.
So add the recall election to the short-lived coup and the oil industry strike Chavez opponents have used in failed attempts to oust him, and stay tuned for their next stratagem to emerge.
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9:47 AM
Is the U.S. still planning to kill Sadr?
Buried in today's major New York Times story on Iraq was this curious passage:
Deliberately killing or capturing Mr. Sadr, as American commanders vowed during an earlier Sadr insurrection in April, has now been ruled out, American officials say, since the cleric, if harmed in circumstances for which the Americans could be blamed, could become more of a rallying point among his following.
I'm not sure the military is being entirely honest here -- have they really ruled out "deliberately killing or capturing" Moqtada al-Sadr, or are they just saying that? After all, no one can be sure that killing the cleric would be a bad idea. On the one hand, you have ample evidence that Sadr's lieutenants are driving the recent violence, perhaps forcing the cleric into a more hawkish position than he would prefer. And experts like Juan Cole have often suggested that any full-blown attack on the Mahdi Army could lead to a mass Shiite revolt. So perhaps assassinating Sadr would solve little while sparking riots nationwide.
On the other hand, the Mahdi Army's popularity owes much to the fact that Sadr is a household name -- his father, of course, was the revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr. Without that calling card, the movement might quickly deflate. (As journalist Christopher Albritton has reported, the damage caused by the militia is more symbolic than actual.) Likewise, the modern "Arab street" has rarely shown much inclination to revolt, especially without a popular leader at the fore. And without Sadr in the news, the anti-occupation ayatollahs and disgruntled delegates might have less pretext to denounce the Americans. These might all be bad assumptions, but I have a feeling that is what Ayad Allawi and John Negroponte were thinking when they ordered an attack on Sadr's household on August 2nd and sparked the current standoff. (They may also have expected more support from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.)
Still, if we've reached the point where killing opposition leaders is our best option, we can probably kiss the prospects for a democratic Iraq goodbye. Either we gun down Sadr and usher in an Allawi mini-dictatorship, or Sadr sues for peace and continues to build his dangerously radical Shiite movement. As Fred Kaplan says, "messed up" doesn't begin to describe the situation.
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