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July 31, 2005
See Helen Squirm
Ed Driscoll, with delicious exactitude, examines Helen Thomas's hypocritical indignation over having the tables turned on her--her remarks about a possible Cheney presidential candidacy were picked up by Drudge (hat tip Instapundit). According to Drudge, Thomas fumed:
"I'll never talk to a reporter again!" Thomas was overheard saying.
"We were just talking -- I was ranting -- and he wrote about it. That isn't right. We all say stuff we don't want printed," Thomas said.
But [Albert] Eisele [editor of DC newspaper The Hill] said that when he called Thomas, "I assume she knew that we were on the record."
"She's obviously very upset about it, but it was a small item -- until Drudge picked it up and broadcast it across the universe," Eisele said.
Still, he noted that reporters aren't that happy when the tables are turned. "Nobody has thinner skin than reporters," Eisele said with a laugh.
Ed Driscoll goes on:
...Thomas's meltdown--staggeringly ironic, as it comes from someone who spends her days praying for (and praying upon) similar gaffes from the president and his press secretary--is only the latest in a string of examples of reporters who specialize in playing "gotcha games" with their interviewees, and acting like hypocrites if the tables are ever turned.
Ed goes on to cite more examples of the same kind of brazen hypocrisy, as given by Roger Ailes and Bernard Goldberg--examples which are all too familiar to those of us who have been enduring this kind of arrogant crap for too long.
Posted at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Profiling: A Common Sense Approach?
Charles Krauthammer proposes a common-sense approach to "leveraging our resources" in the search for possible suicide bombers in the U.S.:
The American response to tightening up after London has been reflexive and idiotic: random bag checks in the New York subways. Random meaning that the people stopped are to be chosen numerically. One in every 5 or 10 or 20.
This is an obvious absurdity and everyone knows it. It recapitulates the appalling waste of effort and resources we see at airports every day when, for reasons of political correctness, 83-year-old grandmothers from Poughkeepsie are required to remove their shoes in the search for jihadists hungering for paradise.
Assuaging feelings [of minorities] is a good thing, but hunting for terrorists in this way is simply nuts. The fact is that jihadist terrorism has been carried out from Bali to Casablanca to Madrid to London to New York City to Washington by young Islamic men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin.
This is not a stereotype. It is a simple statistical fact. [...] But the overwhelming odds are that the guy bent on blowing up your train traces his origins to the Islamic belt stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia.
Yet we recoil from concentrating bag checks on men who might fit this description. Well, if that is impossible for us to do, then let's work backward. Eliminate classes of people who are obviously not suspects.
We could start with a little age-pruning -- no one under, say, 13, no one over, say, 60. Then we could exempt whole ethnic populations, a list that could immediately start with Hispanics, Scandinavians and East Asians. Then we could have a huge saving, a 50 percent elimination of waste, by giving a pass to women, except perhaps the most fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing, knapsack-bearing young woman, to be identified by the presiding officer.
I still have a smoldering anger at the exact scenario Krauthammer cites: my 76 year old mother in law was required to remover her shoes in the Houston airport last summer. Is there a serious advocate of true multiculturalism who would deny the absurdity of this scenario?
Actually my reference to Krauthammer's proposals as being "common sense" is a little misleading. I'm quite in favor of a rigorous profiling scheme based on an extensive (and fair) analysis of potential perpetrators. But in lieu of that, eliminating 76 year old women as a class, is a good start.
Posted at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)For Cryin' Out Loud...
...will Fox News please give me a break with the incessant murder case coverage?
I appreciate all they've done to balance the biased MSM, but this is getting damned ridiculous.
Posted at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)July 30, 2005
Blogs vs The MSM (Part XXXVII)
Mark at Decision '08 highlights a piece on the leftward drift of the MSM and collective power of the blogosphere. Mark quotes Richard Posner in the New York Times (emphases mine):
The mainstream media are predominantly liberal - in fact, more liberal than they used to be. But not because the politics of journalists have changed. Rather, because the rise of new media, itself mainly an economic rather than a political phenomenon, has caused polarization, pushing the already liberal media farther left...
I think it's probably true the the MSM has drifted leftward--but not as much as Posner thinks. I think it's a more relative reaction: the rise of blogs written by conservatives, libertarians and 9/11 Democratics have simply displaced the MSM to the left, without much if any conscious repositioning. The MSM is probably farther to the left overall, because there's now a lot more to the right of center. Posner again:
The charge by mainstream journalists that blogging lacks checks and balances is obtuse. The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media; only they are different. The model is Friedrich Hayek's classic analysis of how the economic market pools enormous quantities of information efficiently despite its decentralized character, its lack of a master coordinator or regulator, and the very limited knowledge possessed by each of its participants.
In effect, the blogosphere is a collective enterprise - not 12 million separate enterprises, but one enterprise with 12 million reporters, feature writers and editorialists, yet with almost no costs. It's as if The Associated Press or Reuters had millions of reporters, many of them experts, all working with no salary for free newspapers that carried no advertising.
Mark has picked two paragraphs by Posner that sum up the essence of the power of the blogosphere. Ever since Rathergate I've been in awe of the distributed intelligence exhibited by the blogs; Posner's link to Hayek is fascinating. And the freedom of blogs from ratings books and advertising rates keeps that distributed intelligence active and self-correcting. The blogs may not always be right, but they at least are dynamic--not hidebound in smug arrogance.
Posted at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)July 29, 2005
Becoming A Citizen While Dodging IEDs
Glenn Reynolds makes a sharp point today: If Hollywood had any real interest in the lives of our military people, they might make movies that weren't so insultingly bad. Glenn argues that the H-wood bozos should read a few blogs written from Iraq to get a sense of the real thing, and he gives a link to Michael Yon's blog (referenced earlier here). Yon writes with a first-person authenticity that immediately calls to mind Lt. Neil Prakash.
Today Yon writes on the inspiring story of non-citizen members of the Army or Marines, who have worked toward gaining their citizenship under fire:
I was privileged to witness the award ceremony for 12 new American citizens in Deuce Four recently. I hope America makes them feel welcome. If the folks at home could see what these people are doing in Iraq, they would make these special troops feel as honored guests. But now, better yet, they are honored citizens, giving life to the concept of active citizenship.
Today, I walked to noon chow with SSG William Suarez, from Puerto Rico. Suarez has a home in central Florida, and is as American as I am, except he comes complete with a very thick Puerto Rican accent. The soldiers love to have Suarez around; he has a great reputation under fire.[...]
SSG Suarez and I had lunch today with SFC Kim, who I had never met before and will probably never meet again. (Kim just happened to sit next to us at the chow hall.) SFC Kim was born in Korea 53 years ago, but he looks about 35, and didn't even join the US Army until he was 30 years-old. Kim says he's very happy to be an American, and that some of us don't realize how good we have it.
I'll be checking Yon's blog every day now.
July 28, 2005
Best Of The Year, So Far
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has coined one of the year's best insults. In the middle of a skeptical post on how some conservatives (like Ann Coulter) are questioning whether SCOTUS nominee John Roberts is conservative enough, he unleashed this gem:
Look for the liberal Democrats to end the "grace period" (such as it was) and turn up the heat. Impotence-drunk Senator Schumer's performance yesterday gave us a preview.
Impotence-drunk! There's one I'll write down.
Posted at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Constituent Service Trumps Conservative Values
Last November 2nd, conservatives were overjoyed at the defeat of Senator Tom Daschle by Republican John Thune. But in the months since taking office, it appears Sen. Thune has not been covering himself in conservative glory. In May the Pentagon announced that Ellsworth Air Force Base (in Thune's home state of South Dakota) was scheduled for closure by the BRAC Commission, and Thune has been on an extended conniption ever since. He's now roped Bill Frist and Trent Lott into supporting his efforts to keep the base open. According to Trevor Bothwell at Townhall.com's C-Log:
It might be one thing if these Republican senators were simply naive, but they are shamelessly exploiting a process in a time of war for personal gain. Contrary to their claims that we need all the bases we can muster during wartime, the economics of closing a base are sound. Quite simply, the BRAC process allows our military to eliminate waste, and more efficient management of our facilities frees up resources and monies that can be used to more effectively wage the wars at hand.
The arguments put forth by Thune, Frist, and Lott are really no different than those I heard Nancy Pelosi make last night after the CAFTA bill passed: Both sides are attempting to protect a localized special interest at the expense of all citizens througout the country. We are all consumers and benefit from free trade; likewise all of us across the country have family and friends serving in the military, and they deserve the most efficient use possible of our tax dollars.
I agree with Bothwell--this behavior, especially from a conservative, is reprehensible.
Posted at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Iraq's Growing Impatience With Syria
AJStrata highlights a very interesting post over at Captain's Quarters. Ed Morrisey, citing a CNN story, writes on the the increasing confidence the Iraqi government is showing in confronting Syria over its role as a conduit for foreign jihadists.
The fact that Iraq feels strong enough to publicly challenge Damascus tells us two things. First, Baghdad has increasing confidence in its ability to deal with Syria as equals. Second, Baghdad considers Damascus as a much lower threat than it would have before the Syrian retreat from Lebanon. Baghdad hopes to continue to increase its prestige by pushing Assad into further retreat -- and with American backing, that looks pretty realistic. It could be yet another victory in the war on terror -- the isolation of the Assad regime in Damascus
AJStrata says that the US can play a decisive role simply being there--the threat of our overwhelming precision-guided firepower will provide ample backup to any plans the Iraqi army might undertake.
The US does not have to move a muscle. It has survellience assets that can pinpoint and track every bit of Syria military equipment from the safety of Iraq and the skys above. It has ‘reach out and touch you’ stand off weapons it can bring to bear at the request of its hosts - the Iraqis. Syria never had to face GPS guided bombs, cruise missiles and artillery that can blast away with pinpoint accuracy.
And the Iraqi’s have ’safe base’ they can use if they do incursions into Syria. Any time they feel like pulling back to protect themselves they can escape to the Iraq border an hide among the 100’s of Abrams M1 tanks and Apache Gunships. Any Syrian force foolish enough to come within 20 miles of the US protectors would be demolished.
As AJ also points out, there are by now plenty of examples of what happens when Arab armies directly engage US forces; these examples should be quite sufficient to convince even a dictator as thickheaded as Bashar Assad.
This is all great news--the Syrian problem is one that is crying out for remedy.
July 27, 2005
Iraq: The Real Measure Of Success
Writing from Iraq, Michael Yon reiterates a point that should be obvious: The frequency or deadliness of the suicide bombings is not a measure of success in Iraq. (Thanks to LGF)
The enemy in Iraq does not appear to be weakening; if anything, they are becoming smarter, more complicated and deadlier. But this does not mean they are winning; to imply that getting smarter and deadlier equates to winning, is fallacious. Most accounts of the situation in Iraq focus on enemy "successes" (if success is re-defined as annihiliation of civility), while redacting the increasing viability and strength of the Iraqi government, which clearly is outpacing the insurgency.
Emphases are mine.
It's been pointed out that the Baader-Meinhof gang kept all of West Germany on edge for a decade or so, with probably less than a hundred members. The Red Brigades, the IRA--these groups exploded bombs and killed innocent people for years (and the IRA is by far the largest with maybe a thousand members), yet no reasonable person can argue that the countries they operated in were failures, or in chaos, or were quagmires.
Yet the Democrats, not to mention those farther to the left, check the latest reports of car bombings and ambushes as trumpeted by the New York Times and declare that that the Iraq war is a failure, a "Vietnam". So why is there so little attention being paid to the massive counterbalancing factors: The functioning representative Iraqi government? The rebuilding of the infrastructure? The expansion of freedom and human rights?
"Progressives" of the world, where are you?
Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (2)July 26, 2005
More Voices Like This, Please
Mona Eltahawy, who wrote this piece in the Houston Chronicle today, is a native Egyptian who spent her childhood in London. She says that the recent bombings in London have solidified her determination to not let terrorists commandeer her religion.
Sayed Mohammed Musawi, the head of the World Islamic League in London, insisted that "there should be a clear distinction between the suicide bombing of those who are trying to defend themselves from occupiers, which is something different from those who kill civilians, which is a big crime."
In a classic example of laying blame everywhere but at our own door, Musawi actually criticized the Western media (for supposedly confusing frustrated young Muslims) rather than those scholars who had blessed suicide bombings as long as they targeted Israelis.
Suicide bombings are the Muslim weapon of choice not only in London and Israel but in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They are killing Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and yet our imams and scholars cannot condemn them.
As I said, the London bombings did it for me. Or maybe it's the knowledge that the more these faceless cowards strike, the more Muslim men in the West like my brother are pushed onto the stage of suspicion. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ehab — who spends virtually all of his time caring for his cardiology patients or fulfilling his role as husband and father — was one of the 5,000 Muslim men questioned by the FBI; two years later he was among the thousands more who had to submit to being fingerprinted and photographed as part of a special registration. [...]
I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I'm done with the "George Bush made me do it" excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out.
And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is racist — or at least in some way bigoted — to think that Muslims can only react violently.
And what about assimilation? [...] Just as the British government has responsibilities toward its citizens, immigrants included, so too do those immigrants. Muslims ask for time off work for prayer, for example, and they often get it. But are they truly living in Britain or are they perpetuating an existence that even their relatives "back home" long ago left behind? Domestic policy is too often ignored by many Muslims who are more concerned with Palestine, Iraq or any other place where Muslims are believed to have suffered injustice.
I raise these questions because London might have done it for me, but I'm not done with Islam. The clerics and the terrorists will not take it away from me. God belongs to me, too.
Note especially that Eltahawy opposed the military action against Iraq. Whether she's right or wrong in that regard does nothing to diminish the praise she deserves for forcibly stating the obvious. We need many more Islamic voices like hers.
Posted at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)July 25, 2005
I Doubt If "Harmony" Is The Right Word
The redoubtable Andrew McCarthy raises a very pointed question regarding Plamegate (emphasis is mine):
My point here is: Doesn’t there have to be some harmony in our assessment of both the White House officials and the reporters in this case? Especially since it appears -- from what we know about Cooper at least -- that the reporters were actively soliciting the information, not passively taking it? If what they were asking for was a crime to provide, why are we giving them a pass for asking? And, in the alternative, if what the reporters were asking for was relevant, important, non-classified information, why was it not appropriate for administration officials to provide it?
Put another way, isn’t the Left trying to have it both ways here?
Exactly. So what else is new?
Posted at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Don't Call Your Travel Agent
Remember the "Guide For Mexican Immigration", published by none other than the Mexican government?
Now it seems there's a parallel version for jihadists on their way to Iraq.
(Hat tip: Coming Anarchy)
Posted at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)U.N. Reform: It's Time For The Big Stick
Everyone seems to be griping about the United Nations, but politics as usual seems to come before meaningful reform (no surprise there). Mike Franc at Human Events Online examines the current legislation aimed at reforming the hidebound behemoth (scroll down to find the article):
To withhold or not to withhold. That is the question.
Last month, the House passed the Henry J. Hyde UN Reform Act, a robust and long-overdue attempt to impose financial and moral accountability on the United Nations. The legislation would make our annual contribution to UN operations (expected to total $439 million in 2006) contingent on the UN’s adopting at least 32 of 39 proposed reforms. [...]
Now the issue moves to a reluctant Senate, where Senators Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.) and Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) have introduced a bill (S 1383) that closely resembles the Hyde bill. It also sets forth a powerful indictment of the UN and demands similar reforms.
Unfortunately, the Coleman-Lugar proposal is masquerading as reform. Rather than require that taxpayer contributions be withheld, the legislation takes its cue from House Democrats [who tried unsuccessfully to water down the withholding provision] and merely requires the United States to “use its voice and vote at the United Nations” to pursue meaningful reforms. As with the House Democratic plan, withholding funds is an option, not a requirement, and entirely subject to the whim of the President.
California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrbacher’s critique of this approach says it best: “If they’re opposed to withholding dues, they are not for reform.”
Rep. Rohrbacher hits the nail on the head. Haven't any of these people raised children? There must be some bite in the punishment, or the behavior will never change.
Posted at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)July 24, 2005
Some New Light On Iraqi Civilian Deaths
It is axiomatic among the anti-war Left that the US is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands innocent Iraqi civilians. If you believe the Lancet study, then the figure runs to over 100,000. There have been some pretty effective refutations of the Lancet figure, but the remaining estimates, according to sites like Iraq Body Count, still tend to hover at around 20,000.
I've been suspicious of a number even this high, assuming that number is supposed to represent deaths of a strictly collateral nature, i.e., truly innocent civilian bystanders. Anyone reading milblogs such as Armor Geddon can see for themselves the unprecedented care and control exercised in the use of deadly force--the US rules of engagement in this conflict would be considered insane by any WWII G.I. This, combined with the fact that the majority of the aerial bombing was done with precision guided munitions, led me (somewhat subconsciously) to regard even the lower estimate with a high degree of skepticism.
Now there's some welcome light on the subject. Rob Nordland, writing for the Newsweek website, has performed an extensive analysis of the data used to justify the figures presented by Iraq Body Count and the Lancet study.
But how often, really [have innocent Iraqis been killed by Coalition forces]? The answer: not very often, in fact. And not nearly often enough to make the 150,000 U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq the leading scourge of Iraq's civilians. That dishonor goes, hands down, to the insurgents. Even one incident is bad, of course, and there have been many. But civilian killings by U.S. troops are not nearly as common as the critics of the war in Iraq would like us to believe. It has become an article of faith among them that American troops have been slaughtering Iraqi civilians indiscriminately, and that one of the consequences of the war has been an unconscionable loss of life among the civilian population. It just isn't true.
Nordland goes on to meticulously examine the assumptions behind the figures. One such assumption is that every civilian death reported is actually a civilian. It is common knowledge that the uniformed Iraqi army faded into oblivion soon after the Coalition forces began their attack--most of the armed resistance came from fighters in civilian garb, contrary to the long-established rules of war. When these fighers were dispatched, they were invariably reported as civilians by their relatives. Nordland notes that given the fact that these irregulars were also using mosques, hospitals, and schools as cover it's a wonder there weren't many more civilian casualties.
Nordland's main point is that the insurgents are responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the Iraq conflict, and he shows that IBC is not exactly eager to highlight this fact.
The Iraq Body Count report goes through some interesting contortions to downplay the degree to which violence against civilians is predominantly caused by insurgent activity. U.S.-led forces alone, it says, killed 9,270 civilians, or 37.3 percent of the total (although it does not note at that point that 30 percent of that 37.3 percent was in the first six weeks of the war). Anti-occupation forces it blames for only 9.5 percent of the total, 2,353 civilians. Crossfires between insurgents and U.S. forces claim another 2.5 percent. And then most of the other deaths it attributes to "predominantly criminal killings" (35.9 percent) and "unknown agents" (11 percent). But it turns out that unknown agents are defined in the report as "those who appear to attack civilian targets lacking a clear or unambiguous link to the foreign military presence in Iraq. This may include some overlap with the groups above as well as with criminal murders." In other words, terrorists and insurgents. And the "predominantly criminal killings" are all those recorded in mortuaries, subtracting the normal pre-war murder rate from the totals.
Talk about lies, damn lies and statistics. It's abundantly clear to anyone who has been in Iraq that the great majority of those murders are political assassinations, and most of those are by anti-occupation insurgents against any and everyone connected no matter how remotely to the U.S. occupation or the Iraqi authorities, from ministers to off-duty policemen to cleaning ladies.
As Nordland relates, he himself came within a trigger twitch of being shot by US troops in what would have been a classic case of mistaken identity in the fog of urban warfare, a tragic scenario no one argues has not occurred. The even greater tragedy is that the barbaric jihadists, who think nothing of exploding bombs deliberately among crowds of children, are not being held accountable to the degree they deserve.
Thanks to the always excellent Mark Coffey at Decision '08. This is an absolute must read.
July 23, 2005
Jonathan Chait Loses It
I remember that some of the guys over at The Corner have expressed a guarded acknowledgement of Jonathan Chait's intelligence. But Chait, senior editor of The New Republic, has made sure that he'll get no respect whatsoever from me.
Pam at Blogmeister USA highlights one of most willfully stupid op-eds I've ever read, in which Chait sneeringly picks at GWB's intense interest in, of all things, physical exercise:
It's nice for Bush that he can take an hour or two out of every day to run, bike or pump iron. Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does.
Frankly, I’d rather have a president who spends his off-time biking or jogging than seducing young interns in the Oval Office.
Oh, and the bit about the rest of us having “more demanding jobs than he does” was a bit of overkill, wouldn’t you agree? Is helping to run the New Republic really harder than being the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth? In that case, Chait 2008! has a wonderful ring to it.
Here’s an exercise that might benefit Chait: exercising restraint of the obvious distaste he has for President Bush.
BAM!
This almost makes you wonder: Did Chait not sleep for two days before writing this? Did he dash this off after a three martini lunch?
And these guys make fun of bloggers for being unprofessional?
By Their Words They Shall Be Known
Mark Coffey at Decision '08 excels at the difficult but necessary task of surfing the blogs of the opposition. Hell, I can't even keep up with stellar blogs like Winds of Change or Austin Bay on a daily basis.
Mark recently found this gem in the miasma emanating from the Huffington Post--a screed by someone named Hooman Majd. Hooman is astonished we can't all see the GWOT is America's fault:
In agreeing with James Rubin, the former State Department spokesman, Tom [Friedman] writes that "after every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why the terrorists acted. And these "excuse makers" are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists." Really? I'm sure on this site alone Jann Wenner, Deepak Chopra, myself, and a host of other writers appreciate knowing how utterly despicable you think they are. As do the British politicians George Galloway and Ken Livingstone, and newspaper editors the world over. So there's your start Tom, but if you need more names, next time you're in Cairo, Damascus, Jeddah or Karachi; bring back the local phone book with you. Since any one person picked out of those White Pages will be happy to explain to you why the terrorists acted (but not ispo facto that terror is acceptable: get it?), there's your partial list of the "excuse makers" in the Muslim world. The others don't have a phone.
Hmmm...Jann Wenner, Deepak Chopra, George Galloway, Ken Livingstone. Is this a parody piece? Gee, these guys might outdo Haig, Foch, Baldwin, and Chamberlain for utter ineptness. Maybe he could throw in Grace Slick and Ken Kesey?
And in spite of my sarcastic tone, this is valuable stuff: we must always keep up with the talking points of the appeasers and defeatists. There is great danger in truth-by-repetition.
Mark punches great big holes in Majd's little bleat. Go read it.
Posted at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)July 22, 2005
Maybe They Should Consider Bicycles
Burning gas to protect the environment:
Activists Burning Oil to Keep Oil Rigs Out of ANWR
Environmental activists are taking their "Save ANWR" message on the road -- literally. They'll be burning lots of gasoline in an attempt to stop the United States from boosting its own supply of oil.
Vans emblazoned with images of polar bears and caribou are now traveling around the country, in a campaign intended to mobilize opposition to oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
I guess it'd be OK if they were using Volkswagon vans from the late sixies; then again, maybe not, since those old vans probably pollute the air much more than today's vans...I forgot about all that bad old technology that's made today's engines so much more fuel-efficient and cleaner-running.
Maybe they should just use bicycles.
Posted at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)July 21, 2005
Clarification On SCOTUS Representation
Jim Voigt is a conservative law school student (maybe graduated by now!) who has a fine blog named Accountability Is King. In response to my post on the non-representative nature of the Supreme Court, Jim posted a well reasoned comment in which he politely took me to task for ignoring the necessity of considering race or gender issues:
If the Supreme Court did only interpret laws and the Constitution on their text alone, then I would have no disagreement with your argument. In fact, I agree with you that Judge Roberts is the right man for the job. However, I do beleive you overstepped when you stated that race or gender has nothing to do with decisions handed down by the Court. Yes, they interpret laws. But they are commonly, if not always, called upon to interpret those laws within the context of the effect the law has had on an individual or group of individuals. The only way a case gets to the Court is if a law has had an adverse affect on an individual. Without understanding that affect, it is impossible to properly interpret the law. Race can be a factor in fully understanding that effect.
I agree wholeheartedly. I think one of the primary ideas of conservatism is the belief in the universal fallibility of people; and there have been many failures of our society's handling of race and gender issues and the SC has played a vital role in correcting those wrongs.
But the spur for my post was the headline concerning the minority reaction, the minority expectation, that the Court nominee should fit a particular racial criterium. I suppose it's really a rehash of the affirmitive action argument: Should a better qualified candidate be passed over on strictly racial or gender grounds? If two finalists have essentially the same qualifications, I have no problem with picking the minority candidate--indeed I would love to see a conservative Hispanic on the Court. My problem is making that the starting point for the candidate search.
In any event, read Jim's entire comment, both it and his blog are worth your while. To my blogroll he goes...
Posted at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)Telling The Truth...My Truth, That Is
Alan M. Dershowitz has the goods on a new book for adolescents, Americans Who Tell the Truth by Robert Shetterly. A mere glance at the list of Americans who Shetterly chooses to celebrate is revealing, to say the least.
In the guise of a “heartfelt book” that “grew out of soul-searching after 9/11,” Shetterly, has written a deceptive homage to radicals of the hard left. He glorifies such “great Americans” as Noam Chomsky, Emma Goldman, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman and Ralph Nader. The irony, of course, is that some of these hard-left radicals have provided justifications for precisely the kind of violence that occurred on 9/11.
Dershowitz goes on to fill in the details. These people are entitled to their opinion; they're not entitled to be recognized as great examples of the American ideal.
(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)
Posted at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)July 20, 2005
Supreme Court, Or Supreme Legislature?
Found in the Houston Chronicle today:
Hispanics and women let down, still waiting for representation
Hispanics and women on Tuesday night expressed disappointment — but not necessarily surprise — that President Bush picked John G. Roberts, a white male, instead of one of their own to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Bush's choice was a "letdown to the Hispanic community," said Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group.
"That we have no representation whatsoever in the highest court of the land — I think it's long in coming," said Flores, a South Texas native.
...still waiting for representation.
Well. I guess you could say that my feeling is one of "disappointment, but not necessarily surprise" that this is the reaction of certain activist groups. I initially wrote "certain minority activist groups", but after thinking about it, it seems that neither gender nor race is the problem here. Rather I think the crux of the biscuit lies in the phrase "we have no representation whatsoever...".
The Supreme Court has nothing to do with representation. Far more intelligent people than I have written reams about the proper role of the Supreme Court, but it doesn't seem hard for anyone to imagine that the Founders would not knowingly create duplicate branches of their new government.
I think it's clear that the role of the courts, from municipal court to the Supreme Court, is to interpret the laws made by the legislatures of the land. Can judges be judicial automatons unswayed by their unavoidable human influences and prejudices? Of course not, but on the whole I believe the best judges are quite able to put mind over heart and apply the established law to the case at hand.
This is a wholly different function, of course, than the role of the legislature. But why is this so hard to see? The clamor for a nominee of this or that particular color or gender displays a disregarding of the true role of the court (to rule only on the case at hand as determined by the admitted evidence), not to mention a backhanded insult to the person who eventually wins the position--isn't it rather prejudicial to assume that a Hispanic or African-American judge would be somehow more "in tune" with their cultural roots when a case arose concerning minorities?
If you're a judge in a court of law, your job is to interpret the law as made by the elected legislatures. Period.
Posted at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)Bush's Failure To Nominate A Consensus Candidate...
...blah, blah, blah.
Iowahawk smacks a satirical grand slam with this dead-on-target piece. Bush/Cheney/Rove hatred is so endemic on the Left that even if Bush were to bring John Marshall back to life and nominate him, he'd be subject to the same treatment.
(Thanks to Mark at Decision '08)
Posted at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Mowbray On Plame
Joel Mowbray points out that Matt Cooper was the initiator of calls to both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby. Only the hysterical Left could arm-twist this basic observation into a "Rove is shopping a vindictive leak" story.
Mowbray also reiterates his point that it is Joe Wilson who has the credibility problem:
Though the Left has largely been dismissive of the distinction that Rove was not telling Cooper to write a story but rather to be careful so as not to publish an incorrect one, at least one key Clintonite disagrees. Former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry recently wrote in the Huffington Post, “A two-minute call such as the one now reported is basically to get the signals straight -- green, yellow, red. Rove seems to have been telling Cooper that the yellowcake story was a flashing yellow and he needed to be cautious.”
As it turns out, Cooper did have reason to be cautious. Wilson’s credibity was later eviscerated by the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee. Not only did Wilson lie when claiming that his wife had nothing to do with him going to Niger, but his report back to the CIA was interpreted by analysts as being somewhat supportive of the Saddam-yellowcake intelligence.
Emphasis mine. Wilson's credibility is in the toilet. Matt Cooper's credibility ought to be--his wife is former Clinton media gure Mandy Grunwald. No conflict of interest there, no sirree.
Posted at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (1)July 19, 2005
Zarqawi: Losing The Endgame?
Bill Roggio over at The Fourth Rail has some good analysis of Zarqawi's latest strategy pronouncements. Bill concludes that Zarqawi is increasingly aware that he has failed in his fight to sway Iraqi public opinion in his favor; he now seems to be focusing on keeping secular Sunni factions from joining the legitimate government.
Bill goes on to document that although one of Zarqawi's most effective allies remains the mainstream western media, in the time-honored fashion of demented leaders (see Hitler vs. his generals) he has expressed hostility toward media friendly to him.
I agree with Bill that positive events are accumulating an inertia, however fitful, and that Zarqawi senses that an accelerating juggernaught of democratic Islam might well crush the life out of his murderous ambitions.
Despite al Qaeda’s best efforts to control the message, and sympathies in certain media corners, particularly in the Arab media, Zarqawi is giving signals that he is not in control. And for good reason. The enthusiasm of the recent election, the low opinion of the insurgency in Iraq (and a particularly low opinion of al Qaeda), the willingness of Muslims to enlist to fight in the security services, the relatively low numbers of foreign fighters entering Iraq, the progress being made in creating a constitution and a host of other political and economic successes (all documented by Arthur Chrenkoff) show al Qaeda is not appealing to the masses of the Muslim.
This is what happens when your grand strategy is predicated only on terrorism, religious fanaticism and oppressive rule.
Tell me again, why is fighting for the destruction of this guy such a heinous mistake?
Posted at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)More "Attention Deflection Syndrome"
Andy McCarthy at The Corner passes along a sharp comment from a reader in the military:
Far be it from me to deflect attention from a non-scandal to a real one, but if somebody in my branch of the federal government were sent on a mission and reported back that he'd spent his time in Nigeria "sitting by the pool, drinking sweat tea," he'd be under vestigation for dereliction of duty and his expense account would have been gone over with a fine-toothed comb. If it had later turned out that this officer had been sent on this taxpayer-funded vacation by his wife, who had clearly abused her authority in this matter, they'd both be looking at an investigation under AR 15-6 and another taxpayer-financed retreat, this time at FT Leavenworth.
Of course he's right, but don't hold your breath waiting for the outrage.
Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)July 18, 2005
A Deep Psychological Need
When Victor Davis Hanson is on, he's really on. Check out his precise demolition of the left's rickety hootch of anti-war fantasy (via The Hobbesian Conservative).
VDH on the left's misplaced assumptions of cause and effect:
The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.
On the "root causes" of the left's non-reasonable positions:
These tenets [moral equivilism, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism] in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.
These articles of faith apparently fill a deep psychological need for millions of Westerners, guilty over their privilege, free to do anything without constraints or repercussions, and convinced that their own culture has made them spectacularly rich and leisured only at the expense of others.
So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.
A deep psychological need. Again, we run into the basic hypocrisy of the "progressives": jumping through hoops to attack the administration's forceful prosecution of the war on the jihadists in Afhanistan and Iraq while ignoring the massive expansion of basic human rights in those formerly repressed countries. And witnessing the "progressives'" tortured attempts to explain away the obvious would be painful if the spectacle was more uncommon. Alas, it isn't.
Posted at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)That Ol' Credibility Thing
Joel Mowbray thinks that Karl Rove is not the one with the credibility problem:
As part of the cynical campaign to destroy the man who guided Bush to four straight electoral victories, the Left has hailed [Joe] Wilson as a hero. At first blush, the idiocy of exalting the man with a well-documented credibility problem would seem to rival the decision to roll the cameras as Dukakis gave the thumbs-up while riding in a tank.
But the left never met a set of facts that it couldn't ignore--witness the substantial evidence of the links between al Qaeda and Saddam.
Posted at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)July 17, 2005
The Academic Glass Ceiling And The Right Of Intellectual Dissent
David French has a thoughtful analysis of the ideological glass ceiling in academia, a barrier that is still as strong as ever. French cites the recent evidence, compiled from multiple and varied sources, that confirm that the left has an overwhelming dominance of the faculties of almost all of our universities. He then examines some of the possible reasons why this disparity continues to exist; he dispenses almost immediately with the first usual defense by the left: there's almost no direct evidence that a candidate's political party is questioned during the hiring process.
Well, there's a nice straw man waving a red herring. Just as in the case of the mainstream media, the bias is more indirect and organic--there's nothing as crude as a direct question. French argues that self-selection plays an important part in a more subtle way:
[...] because the academic disciplines themselves are by definition hostile to conservative viewpoints and prejudices, it is natural and logical for conservatives not to demonstrate much interest in joining, say, an anthropology or history department. By this line of reasoning, someone who defends, studies, or explains perceived national or cultural superiorities isn’t really studying “anthropology,” and a person who dedicates himself to the tactical and strategic nuances of “island hopping” during World War II isn’t exactly a “historian.” With the disciplines thus redefined, self-selection naturally follows.
French goes on to say that another reason exists: simple ignorance and prejudice in the academy. He cites his own personal experience with institutionalized prejudice against obviously Christian law school candidates. And then there's this gem:
Moreover, some applicants [to Cornell law school] of color who indicated interest in the world of commerce were said not to have “taken ownership of their racial identity.”
Astonishing, but all too believable--if you're familiar at all with the wonderful hermetically sealed world of academia. How in the world shall we repair this oppressive environment? French concludes:
[...]the response of the academic establishment to intellectual uniformity should be greater openness, an embrace of the rights of dissent (even from the academic party line), and a serious commitment to scholarly exploration from all sides of the thorny issues of our time. Intellectual diversity follows a truly free and open culture like the day follows the night.
An embrace of the rights of dissent. I can guarantee you that those rights are non-existent for overwhelming majority of faculty members of all our major institutions.
Posted at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)July 14, 2005
Have A Good One...
Blogging here will be, as they say, light until Sunday. We've got a last minute, throw-down dash up to Austin for the weekend.
Enjoy your weekend!
Posted at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Some Needed Light On The Stem Cell Issue
AJStrata has a powerhouse post up that really illuminates the science behind the stem cell debate. In addition to the intrinsic education on stem cells AJ provides, the post provides a good example of why sound science education in our elementary and high schools is so important: a good foundation in the sciences is increasingly necessary to understand the issues generated by our rapidly progressing technologies.
It's a long post, but AJ is lucid and deliberate in his presentation. It's well worth your time.
(Thanks to Mark at Decision '08)
Posted at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)July 13, 2005
The Dems' New Hope: More Poll-driven Policy
Andrew Levison at The Emerging Democratic Majority writes on how the Dems should change their approach to the war:
An extremely important new Gallup poll on Iraq (analyzed in a recent post by Ruy Teixeira) dramatically illustrates both the key problem and also the tremendous opportunity that now confronts the Democratic Party. [...]
This poses an extremely difficult opinion climate for the Dems. They face a hard uphill struggle to formulate a clear, coherent message that can appeal to these distinctly ambiguous sentiments among the swing voters while at the same time not alienating those who are firmly opposed to the war. [...] What the Democrats need is one clear core message that firmly expresses most Democrats' basic disagreement with the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq but which is presented in a form and language that seems reasonable and convincing to the ambivalent middle group.
This is just a little conflicted. On one hand, I have no problem with the Dems refining their message into one that "firmly expresses most Democrats' basic disagreement with the Bush administration..." But on the other, the majority of this piece details how the message should be shaped to target a particular voter segment as revealed by the latest polls.
The Republicans have also been urged to refine their message. But in this case what's urged is a more forceful emphasis on the ample empirical evidence that's at hand concerning the Saddam/al Qaeda link. I want my leaders to pick a sound course, then persuade the populace of that course's soundness. Chasing poll results is precisely what got the Dems in trouble in the first place.
Levison continues the somewhat wishful thinking that voters in the center will suddenly see the light and realize Bush really is as bad as Hitler--all the party leadership needs to do is focus, refine, and amplify the message. (That sounds like the same excuses made for all the failed Marxist governments over the years--it was always the implementation, not the source ideas, that was the problem.)
...the key current problems America faces in Iraq stem directly from Bush's profound failures of leadership and [...] public opinion polls clearly indicate that in recent weeks there has been nothing less then a massive collapse in public confidence in George W. Bush as a wartime national leader.
This is just rhetorical boilerplate combined with cherry-picked poll results. Effective leaders do not look to polls for their basis of action. If Levison really wants examples of "profound failures of leadership", he should examine the foreign policies of the Carter and Clinton administrations. Clinton's poll-driven paralysis was in no small way responsible for bin Laden's assumption that the US was a "paper tiger". And did anyone mention Rwanda or Somalia?
Polls are infamously malleable because the questions can be phrased in any number of ways to predetermine the answers. Should the future policy of your party be pinned to capturing a (maybe ephemeral) slice of voters as determined by a poll?
I think the electorate answered that question last November.
Posted at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)Base Closures And Local Economies
Jack Spencer at the Heritage Foundation busts some popular myths concerning Congress' Base Realignment and Closure process:
One of the primary criticisms of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process is that it devastates communities economically. Aside from the fact that the Department of Defense (DOD) is not a jobs program, these criticisms are simply not true. Most affected communities have recovered nicely from past BRAC rounds, with approximately 90 percent of all jobs being replaced. Indeed, approximately 115,000 jobs have been created through past recovery efforts, and many communities have actually prospered.
Not a jobs program, indeed. "Supporting the troops" means maximizing their effectiveness by making sure our tax dollars are spent most efficiently--and that means closing underutilized or obsolete bases.
Spencer concludes by listing ten examples of base closures that, through proactive and assertive planning by the local communities, have made successes out of initially negative situations.
Posted at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)July 12, 2005
Keeping An Eye On The NEA
I've often linked to the excellent work done by Bill Antonucci at The Education Intelligence Agency. Now there's a very useful post up at The Education Wonks that summarizes Bill's reporting from the recent National Education Agency annual convention. Be sure and read the comments--there's an interesting exchange on the mandatory payment of NEA dues.
Posted at 01:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)"Guaranteed To Break The Ice At Parties..."
John Hawkins at Right Wing News has a great post: Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq.
Print out and memorize--but if you make use of the information in the post, be ready for these kinds of reactions.
Posted at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)July 11, 2005
The Increasing Effectiveness Of The Iraqi Army
Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail recently posted a comprehensive (as usual) analysis of the recent offensive operations by Coalition forces in Western Iraq. Operation Sword, which focused on the city of Hit, west of Fallujah, and the more recent Operation Scimitar concentrated southeast of Fallujah, are battalion-sized exercises that incorporate Iraqi army forces (all emphases are mine):
The Coalition retains the ability to conduct multiple battalion sized operations indefinitely indicating a reserve forces is being built. This strength is likely attributed to the rise of the Iraqi Army, which is increasing its capability to operate in hostile locations. ...
One notable indication of this increasing strength is that after Operation Sword concluded, a garrison of Iraqi troops was stationed in the city. There are now substantial detachments of Iraqi Security Force (ISF) troops in Hit, Ramadi, Habbaniyah and Fallujah.
A measure of the importance of the increasing effectiveness of the ISF is Zarqawi's reaction, who has pronounced that Iraqi forces are as great an enemy as the Coalition forces. As Bill notes, the critical question to follow in the coming months is whether the domestic Iraqi insurgents will follow Zarqawi's edict and attack their countrymen in the ISF, who will be appearing in ever-increasing numbers.
And a reason for those increasing numbers might be given by a commenter to Bill's post:
The pace of offensive operations has increased dramatically in the last few months. The reason being that thousands of US troops have been relieved of garrison duty around Baghdad by IA forces, as well as additional IA forces coming to battle themselves. That is remarkably important news, and the pace will continue to increase as more and more Iraqi forces come online.
It certainly is important news. To my civilian eye, it allows a maximising of effectiveness of both Iraqi and Coalition forces: the Iraqis are ideally suited for garrison duty because they are, of course, native to the nuances of the culture, and there is no question of "exit strategies"; and it also frees the Coalition forces to practice their lethal efficiency at dispatching jihadists in combat operations.
Exactly How "Covert" Was Plame?
AJStrata has some first-hand insight into the most recent developments in the Plame/Wilson affair. I have not been following this "scandal" very closely, but this tidbit would seem to have a lot of leverage:
...Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC has already admitted her employment at the CIA was well known in these circles prior to Novak’s article.
Wouldn't this render moot Rove's supposed culpability? Given that Mitchell is an well-established figure in the MSM and that Rove is the holy of holies for the left's vitriol, I doubt this admission will get much play.
The whole post is well worth your time.
Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)July 10, 2005
Should Kos Ban Himself Next?
Dave at Logical Meme has a succinct analysis of the recent purge by Daily Kos of some of the most wacked-out of the wackos. Dave rightly points out that, while it is correct for Kos to ban unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, there isn't a definite line of departure from "rational left" to "irrational left":
The weird thing about all of this is that the Crazy Kos Kidz’s conspiracy theories are simply the end product of the collective psychosis that is the hard Left, and that like Zuniga himself they are simply playing out the natural logic of otherwise untenable theories about the world: when empirical reality and the rationality of Occam’s Razor won’t play nice together, bizarre conspiracy theories (Juden! Bushitler! Rove!) are the only means by which to maintain a theoretical ‘order’ to the cognitive dissonance.
This is just spot-on. The employment of empirical evidence and Occam's Razor are anathema to a majority of the left, and their efforts to avoid the product of sound reasoning leads to situations where supposed feminists excoriate Bush in deference to the Taliban, and to the proliferation of apologists for a man who murdered 300,000 of his fellow citizens.
Posted at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)July 09, 2005
Not So Fast...
As Cliff May notes in The Corner, it's early in the investigation, but it looks like the bombs set off in London were rather crude devices. According to the NY Times:
Investigators have concluded that the bombs that ripped through three subway trains and a bus on Thursday were relatively crude devices containing less than 10 pounds of explosives each. That finding supports a theory gaining momentum among the authorities that the plot was carried out by a sleeper cell of homegrown extremists rather than highly trained terrorists exported to Britain.
Crucial facts remained unknown in the case Friday evening. But senior British and American investigators said the morning rush-hour attacks in central London appeared to have been a low-tech operation, less expertly conceived than the cellphone-detonated train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800.
This would seemingly refute the opinion offered below that the terrosists' sophistication is waxing rather than waning. May goes on to argue that if the NYT story's conclusion holds, then it would suggest a downward trend in sophistication (not to mention death toll) from 9/11 to Madrid to London.
Posted at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)July 08, 2005
Keeping The One True Goal In Focus
Daily Demarche highlights an article by Efraim Halevi in the Jerusalem Post. Halevi exhibits the usual clear-eyed thinking one would expect from a former chief of the