Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
If it can't run away, don't eat it
By Tom Smith

Until recently the American Meat Institute and their subsidiary, the US Department of Agriculture, held that there was no problem feeding us with beef from cattle too sick to walk. Pardon me, but I think I might throw up every hamburger I have ever eaten, and let me assure you, that is quite a few.

Thank goodness for the government. Now that it turns out that doing so might turn hundreds or thousands of us into stumbling vegetables with brocoli for brains, the Department of Agriculture has ruled, if Betsy can't make it on her own to the slaughterhouse, then she's not fit to be et. I would not have thought it necessary to ask before, but does the DOA have any position on roadkill? And what about the definition of "beef"? Does it include, say, rats? I think the time may have come to go organic, meat-wise.

To be more honest about it, I should probably admit there isn't a lot that I won't eat. I need the DOA to make sure there is nothing disgusting in my hamburgers, because even a big sign at Ralph's saying "Warning: You don't even want to think about what is in this stuff" wouldn't deter me much. One summer I worked on a ranch, and there was a beef critter with a large mass on its leg, a tumor perhaps. The ranch manager decided it had to be slaughtered and would be fed to us. As the new guy, I got the honor of dispatching the creature, for which I was given a none too sharp GI bayonette. I learned something profound from the experience, which is, if you have to kill something with a big knife, make sure it is sharp. Actually, I also learned that cows deserve respect, fear death, and look really sad right before you kill them. I would be a vegetarian myself, except that I really like to eat meat. Anyway, the point is that all of us ate up this sick steer. It was tough, but tastey. Ranchers know their human primates. They'll eat anything.

I'm into small government, but I think it's fine if the feds say -- Novel thought! Let's not grind up the brains of cows with a horrible, deadly disease and mix them into America's favorite food! Whaddiasay, guys!


posted by thomas at 12/31/2003 08:01:00 AM

 
What would we do without the Times
By Tom Smith

You would think that with a whole Sunday magazine devoted to people who died in 2003, the Times could have found room for at least one soldier or marine who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. But no. There is an endlessly admiring obit of Serigo Vieira de Mello, the UN special envoy killed by a truck bomb some weeks ago in Bahgdad. After his death, the UN promptly pulled out. Am I missing something here, or is there something fundamentally useless about an organization that 'fights' for peace right up until the moment somebody gets killed? As to the people who are dying and not running away, the Times has nothing to say.

In fairness, I should say this week's magazine is well worth reading, with several fascinating profiles of people I had never heard of, such as Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn. For all that the Times (especially the Book Review) seems to have a requirement that authors try (and usually fail) to make some profound observation or other, this piece actually makes a good point: that the taming of the road trip for the American middle class, by providing clean, reliable accomodations on the road, made it psychologically much easier for baby boomers' kids to leave home for school and career.

But it also would not be the Times if it did not manage to include something that was at once stupid, pretentious, somewhat offensive and at least a little goofy. And the grey lady does not fail us. Allow me to quote from the description of the late Paul Moore, episcopal bishop and patrician do-gooder. With his death, the Times laments, "America lost one of its last dashingly handsome, abundantly sexual WASP crusaders for social justice." Don't they have editors at the Times? What is this supposed to mean? Abundantly sexual? I guess if you're a salesman, you're just horny, but if you're a bishop, you're "abundantly sexual"? I like the use of the churchy "abundantly." You could, I suppose, be "bountifully sexual," or even "bountiously sexual," but perhaps that should be reserved for a female partician WASP saint with a great figure. Pardon me for asking, but just how abundantly sexual was he? Did he bless his flock with his abundant sexuality and crusade for social justice at the same time? That would be something.

Maybe it's a Catholic thing. We have trouble thinking of our saints as, well, hot. But I guess the idea is to suggest that Bishop Moore is so far above all that holy stuff. He was a saint, but not a saint, if you, nudge nudge wink wink, know what I mean. I understand from looking at Albion's Seed, a great book, that the Puritans were, contrary to popular opinion, quite into sex, but it just really, really had to be within marriage. Maybe there's some Episcopalian thing I'm missing about liking Bishops to be studly. But I doubt it. I think the Times is just being its usual toadying, simpering self when it comes to the long-gone WASP ascendancy.
Update: Here's an interesting piece on Paul Moore and the Episcopal Church in the US.
posted by thomas at 12/30/2003 03:29:00 PM

 
Tivo heaven
By Tom Smith

I can now record 140 hours of TV on my Tivo. Perfect for the James Bond marathon, every show about exotic, disgusting animals, incomprehensible Japanese cartoons for your children, the Lehrer news hour, K-1 fighting events to watch with your kids, cheesy Sci-Fi movie, ESPN classics from when football was football, and I could go on, and will. I was impressed by the prices at digitalrecorder.com. You give them money, and they send you the machine, just like they promise!

Speaking of disgusting animals, how about this? The male angler fish is about a hundredth of the size of the female. To mate, it attaches itself to the side of the female like a little leech. It is then literally absorbed into the body of the female until it is nothing more than a kind of wart with sperm in it. Somehow from there the female absorbs what it needs and reproduces. You can learn a lot from TV.
posted by thomas at 12/30/2003 12:45:00 PM

 
Stock up before it's too late
By Tom Smith

The feds are banning ephedra it seems. I'm not too ripped up about it (little gym joke there). Here's a dirty little secret of gym rat culture. A lot of those ripped guys and gals you see at the gym? How did they get that way? A lot of them did by taking stimulants such as ephedra. It's popular because it works. You're so buzzed up, you can't wait to get from the bench press to the squat rack. But, you might get a heart attack and die. No pain, no gain. I've never taken ephedra, but I've talked to plenty of people who have. Most of the other stimulants on the market now are just expensively packaged caffine. It's cheaper to go to Starbucks. And that works too! Lots of people use caffine to get them over the hump between the couch and the gym. Maybe it's wrong to invade a country just because they have oil. But I hope no one would suggest we couldn't invade South America if they ever threatened to cut off the coffee supply.
posted by thomas at 12/30/2003 12:32:00 PM

 
Cool new space telescope
By Tom Smith

Check out the pics from the new Spitzer space telescope at the JPL website.
posted by thomas at 12/26/2003 12:11:00 PM

 
Gift suggestion
By Tom Smith

Both Professor Rappaport and my lovely wife Jeanne would groove on this.
posted by thomas at 12/26/2003 10:41:00 AM

 
Cards with kids
By Tom Smith

This is a fun card game for the whole family. It is more sophisticated than it looks, with room for adult fun. For "ridiculous" for example, I chose "Eleanor Roosevelt," which would certainly have annoyed some players. Kids like it too. And, if you like, you could spice it up by playing for money. If you do this, I suggest you shuffle the cards before they are judged, to prevent various strategems. If you play it, you'll see what I mean.
posted by thomas at 12/26/2003 10:37:00 AM

 
Royal dog fight
By Tom Smith

One of the queen's corgis was mauled to death by her daughter's bull terrier. You can see how it could happen. Every time I see a corgi I sort of want to grab it in my teeth and shake it until it is dead, but maybe that's just me. Oh, alright, I'm just kidding. Any time someone loses a dog, it's a very sad thing. But you would think, with god knows how many lickspittles hanging about, the royals could manage to control their dogs. "James, take Dotty outside, and please don't let her kill anything." How hard is that? Anybody should be able to figure out that you don't let a bull terrier with a violent record play with an annoying little weiner dog with an attitude.
posted by thomas at 12/26/2003 09:31:00 AM

 
On the First Day of Kwanzaa, My True Love Tortured Me ...
By Gail Heriot

If you visit a card shop at your local shopping mall these days, chances are you will see Kwanzaa cards. It's big business. (Well, maybe it's just medium-sized business, but it is evidently lucrative enough for card companies to bother with.) And if you go to swanky private schools like the one attended by the children of my fellow Right Coaster Chris Wonnell, you may well receive instruction on this traditional African-American holiday. Taking Kwanzaa seriously is all part of the spirit of multiculturalism.

Except, of course, Kwanzaa isn't traditional at all. It was invented in the late 1960s by convicted felon Ron Everett, leader of a so-called black nationalist group called United Slaves. I use the word "so-called" because United Slaves' veneer of black nationalism was very thin; most of its members had been members of a South Central Los Angeles street gang called the Gladiators, just as the Southern California chapter of the Black Panthers had been members of the Slauson gang.

In the early 1960s, these gangs were mostly concerned with petty and not-so-petty crime in the Los Angeles area, including the ever-popular practice of hitting up local merchants for protection money. By the late 1960s, however, they discovered that if they cloaked their activities in rhetoric of black nationalism, they could hit up not just the local pizza parlor, but great institutions of higher learning as well, most notably UCLA. Everett re-named himself Maulana Ron Karenga ("Maulana" we are told is Swahili for "master teacher"), donned an African dashiki, and invented Kwanzaa. And the radical chic folks at UCLA went into paroxysms of appreciation.

In theory, Kwanzaa is a Pan-African harvest holiday, except that it is not set at harvest time. And in theory, it celebrates the ties of African Americans to African culture, except that it purports to celebrate those ties using the East African language of Swahili when nearly all African Americans are descended from West African peoples.

But those are just details. Many of the best-loved holidays in the Christian calendar have traditions connected to them that don't quite fit if you examine them too closely. But those rough edges have now been smoothed over by the long passage of time. No one really cares if the Christmas tree was once used to celebrate pagan holidays; many generations of credible Christians have earned the right to claim it as their own.

Kwanzaa is different. It has connections to still-living violent criminals. It is an insult to the African American community, very few of whom celebrate Kwanzaa and even fewer of whom would celebrate it if they knew the full story of its recent history, to suggest that it is an "African American holiday."

UCLA soon found that a bunch of street thugs calling themselves United Slaves can dress themselves up in colorful clothing, learn a few words of Swahili but they will still be ... well ... street thugs. The beginning of the end for United Slaves as an organization came with a gun battle fought on the UCLA campus against the Black Panthers over which group would control the new Afro-American Studies Center (and its generous budget). In the end, two Black Panther leaders--Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Jerome Huggins--were dead. Two members of United Slaves were convicted of their murder. (Under UCLA's High-Potential Program, which admitted politically-active minority students during the late 1960s, often regardless of their academic credentials or even whether they had graduated from high school, many members of the Black Panthers and United Slaves were registered as students at UCLA.)

No, Maulana Ron Karenga was not among them. But not long after the incident, Karenga proved himself to be every bit as brutal as his followers when he was charged and convicted of two counts of felonious assault and one count of false imprisonment.

The details of the crime as reported in the Los Angeles Times (and quoted last year by Paul Mulshine in an article for FrontPage magazine) are horrific. The paranoid Karenga began to suspect that the members of his organization were trying to poison him by placing "crystals" in his food and around the house. According to the Los Angeles Times:

"Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."

The Los Angeles Times went on the state that "Karenga allegedly told the women that 'Vietnamese torture is nothing compared to what I know.' "

Karenga spent time in prison for the act. But if you are worried are what has become of him, you needn't be. He served only a few years. When he got out, he somehow convinced Cal State Long Beach to make him head of the African Studies Department. Happy Kwanzaa.
posted by Gail at 12/20/2003 03:14:00 PM

 
The Padilla case
By Tom Smith

Good post on this on Volokh, including link to PDF file of opinions.

It seems to me Eugene Volokh, and John Yoo (last night on Lerher news hour), get it right on the Second Circuit opinion. It is hard to see why the Congressional resolution authorizing military force did not include the power of military detention. On the other hand, given that it is such a potentially dangerous power when exercised against US citizens on US soil, it seems prudent at least that citizens should have the right to contest their status as enemy combatants before a judge and while represented by counsel. At least until things get much worse, and they might, it is hard to see how this would be inconsistent with national security. Such hearings could be in camera if they involved classified material. E.g., we know Johnny Jihad is part of this plot to release weaponized smallpox at the annual ACLU convention because of the following NSA intercepts . . .

As to the 9th circuit opinion on Gitmo detainees being entitled to lawyers, personal trainers, first run movies, and individual de-lousing kits, I know only what I read in the New York Times and saw on TV, but I can at least share my attitudes. Apparently the decision rests on the base being a U.S. territory, and individuals being entitled to certain rights on U.S. territories. All I know of the law of U.S. territories is that it is very complicated, not at all intuitive and understood by perhaps a half dozen people in the country, one of whom is my friend Gary Lawson at Boston U law school. Perhaps Gary would hazard an opinion? However, the 9th Circuit's opinion on such a question has exactly the same odds of being correct as you have of guessing which way the stock market is going to move. The 9th Circuit could be right. Anything can happen. But it would be a pretty silly result if enemy combatants captured in the field of battle had rights to counsel while the conflict was still going on and while they were being held on a military base not in the U.S. It's possible. If it's true, it's dumb, and Congress should change the law. But the Ninth Circuit saying it is the law, increases the probability of its being so by zero, or perhaps even a negative amount.

A final thought for civil libertarians. I actually do worry about federal agents pounding on my door in the middle of the night and hauling me away under some nebulous authority. Oh, OK, not really very much. But it is easy to imagine this power getting out of hand, especially if there is another big terrorist attack. People who care about liberty should think about what is really necessary to prevent something like a dirty bomb, or my favorite nightmare, a biological attack. If say 50 or 100 thousand people were killed in such an attack, our liberties would be far more threatened than by John Padilla not getting a lawyer. Sometimes the choice is not between a slippery slope and the high ground, but a slippery slope and ground that could give way beneath you at any moment. A dose of Richard Posner's pragmatism is needed here.
posted by thomas at 12/19/2003 09:09:00 AM

 
A little political humor from my 12 year old son Luke, who is not allowed to watch this kind of thing
By Tom Smith

I wonder how little what's-his-name is doing these days. Not as well as Janet Reno I bet.
posted by thomas at 12/18/2003 06:16:00 PM

 
Jesus the Movie
By Tom Smith

Controversy over Mel Gibson's forthcoming movie about the Passion of Jesus.

I agree with most of what Medved says. However, I don't think you can really separate telling the story from the effect of the story. If Spielberg decided to do an historically accurate and graphic movie about the Inquisition and its effects on the Jews of Spain, for example, it would make the Church look very bad, and I would suspect Spielberg of Christophobia. The analogy isn't perfect, because the Crucifixion is at the core of Christian dogma and faith, so for Christians it's a story that must be told. On the other hand, you can't really expect Jews to shut up already about being persecuted.

This makes me think of the essential weirdness and oddity of Christianity. It is a religion that centers around a guy who was tortured to death in a way intended to be extremely humiliating and painful to even think about. I remembering reading that in Japan, Catholics used to carry around little crucifixes in boxes, where the crucifix was behind a curtain, because the image was considered so shocking and horrible it should not be displayed openly. Gibson clearly gets this, as he says his intent is to make everyone who watches the movie, not just Jews, uncomfortable. The thing for Christians to remember is that every Jew who died in a concentration camp, or was killed by a Christian in a pogrom was as much a victim, and a victim to the same things, as Jesus was. As some wise thinker said, the dividing line between good and evil runs not between Christians and Jews, but down the middle of every human heart.
posted by thomas at 12/18/2003 10:28:00 AM

 
You can't make this stuff up
By Tom Smith

Did the Butcher of Bahgdad retain his sense of style to the end? Christopher Hawthorne in the Design Notebook in today's New York Times contemplates this profoundly trivial question. It's hard for we Americans to really understand what it's like for a perpetrator of crimes against humanity, but one with some taste, to try to make a spider hole a home. Did you notice that Sadam had with him moisturizing shampoo? That desert air plays havoc with your locks. And last I saw him, I would definitely say he was having a bad hair day.

For Christopher's sake, I want to assure him that I at least really am aware that Sadam must have really had his feelings hurt to see the soles of the boots of the Army special forces men who captured him. I really do feel that in his culture, this is deeply insulting. And right now I'm going to cry about it. Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. There, I hope you feel better now, Christopher. I know I do.

We need more aritlces like this. What should a terrorist wear before he slaughters innocent people? The whole jeans and white T-shirt thing is just so generic.

This one definitely is a contender for the most idiotic and pretentious New York Times missive of the year, and that's saying something.
posted by thomas at 12/18/2003 09:32:00 AM

 
Habermas on eugenics, and life issues
By Tom Smith

When smart Germans talk about the dangers of eugenics and other 'life' issues, its a good idea to listen.
posted by thomas at 12/17/2003 04:41:00 PM

 
Utilitarian Democrats
By Michael Rappaport

The Evangelical Output discusses the results on the ethics test of various bloggers. After accurately listing me as a utilitarian, he says of utilitarians: "Make Good Democrats." For a blogger who is so focused on morality, he sure knows how to hurt a guy. I guess I will just have to lick my wounds and re-read those "Democrats" Richard Epstein and David Friedman.
posted by MichaelTom at 12/17/2003 12:13:00 PM

 
Just say we ain't payin'
By Tom Smith

Jack Kemp gets it right:

It is my hope that Baker presents America's position to
Saddam's debtors this way: Much, perhaps an overwhelming
amount, of Iraq's debt falls under the category of "odious
debt" - debt contracted not for the needs and benefit of the
people but to strengthen and support a despotic regime.
Bankruptcy is a fundamental concept of capitalism that wipes
the contractual slate clean. There is a political analogy to
bankruptcy - today it's called "regime change" - in which the
country begins de novo. It occurred in Nazi Germany,
imperial Japan, Soviet Russia and Warsaw Pact Europe. It
has now occurred in Iraq. Tabula rasa: The slate has been
wiped clean; things begin de novo. Thus, rather than going to
France, Germany and Russia hat in hand asking for debt
"forgiveness," I hope Baker presents them with the stark
reality that a free and sovereign Iraq will be perfectly
justified in repudiating much, if not the overwhelming
majority, of the debt contracted by Saddam. Better for those
countries to step up to the plate on their own now than play
the role of Shylock later.
posted by thomas at 12/16/2003 05:30:00 PM

 
Yale Law School annual letter arrives. Life is complete.
By Tom Smith

The annual holiday (it would be wrong to say Christmas) dean's letter has arrived from the Yale Law School. It is always good for a few laughs. For example, on Jan Deutsch's retirement:

"To say that Jan Deutsch approaches constitutional and corporate law from an original point of view is--as all Jan's former students can attest-- a wild understatement . . . Well, you can say that again. An insane point of view would be more accurate . . . of the utterly fresh contribution he has made, during his 38 years on the faculty, to their understanding of these subjects. "Fresh" is good. I would be surprised if Deutsch was aware of any corporate law case after Perlman v. Feldman or indeed that Learned Hand had in fact, died, and therefore was no longer shaping corporate law. But I have an ax to grind. I was actually ejected from Professor Deutsch's class after disagreeing with him about the Holocaust. He said after the US Army took Germany, all the Nazis should have been summarily executed. I said, no, there could be cases of mistaken identity, false denunciations and so forth, so there would have to be some kind of procedure to figure out who the Nazis really were, then they could be executed. Professor Deutsch told me to get a drop slip and he would sign it. He wasn't kidding. He had, as far as I could tell, absolutely no sense of humor. Jan has helped his students see the unexpected in the familiar and the mysterious in the known. Such as how a person with a flagrant mental illness is allowed to continue teaching for 38 years. I like tenure as much as the next guy, but sheesh, give the kids a break. In Jan's discerning eye, a single case becomes the proverbial grain of sand in which the whole universe of law may be glimpsed . . . it's called obsessive-compulsive disorder and it responds well to SSRI's but hey, who's complaining and those who have walked the path of the law with this extraordinary guide can never forget the depths he has shown them. Oh, puhleeeese. More like, left the path of the law and fallen into the depths of a very strange man's extremely personal obsessions. This insanity was enabled by a slavish band of groupies Deutsch managed to surround himself with every year, many of whom were a few fries short of a happy meal themselves.

Abe Goldstein is also retiring. He was a good teacher and a nice man. Unpretentious in a place where that was, let us say, an uncommon virtue. He gave me my only 'low pass' and it was richly deserved. I knew practically nothing about criminal procedure and he crafted a deadly exam about grand jury intricacies, I remember. He probably was just too nice to fail me. I'm a corporate law person. All I know about criminals is I don't like 'em.

There is now a David Boies Professorship at Yale. Well, OK. I'd rather have that than Al Gore as President. Could we have a Sidney Blumenthal professorship maybe? A William Jefferson Clinton Internship?

Burke Marshall died, we are reminded. He was a brave man, and what really took courage was walking into his office if you were a member of the Federalist Society.

Yochai Benkler has joined the faculty at Yale, an event, I judge from the letter, roughly equivalent to the Second Coming. The importance of his scholarship, apparently, "cannot be overestimated." I'm sure it's swell scholarship, it's not my area and I've never heard of him, but is it really impossible to overestimate its importance? Haven't you just done so? Is he as great a legal mind as, say, Sandra Day O'Connor? Jan Deutsch?

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I went to Yale. I would have been lost in the crowd at Harvard, eaten alive at Chicago, and spent all my time skiing and playing outdoors had I gone to Stanford. It was nice to be able to get Honors without going to class, which was a relief, since sometime in my first year my butt-kissing gene just poof! turned off, just like that. In many places, like graduate school, that would have been the end. Fortunately, at Yale, as long as you did not attempt to talk to the professors, with some exceptions, they would not hold this against you. I liked a few of my professors, but I'll only mention Bob Bork, a brilliant and extremely kind man who was abused by his colleagues at Yale. It was a great irony that this former Marine who wouldn't hurt a fly was savaged by these people who never run out of nice things to say when they're talking about themselves. The we're-so-wonderful-we-can-barely-stand-it tone of these letters, going back over more than a decade, is always a bit hard to take.
posted by thomas at 12/16/2003 04:33:00 PM

 
You can have my copy of Red Dawn when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers
By Tom Smith

Sasha Volokh is implying that Red Dawn lacks artistic merit, I think, and I won't stand for it. He seems to admit he has not seen it in awhile. Well, I own my own copy and watched it fairly recently thankyouverymuch. I can report it makes a pretty good treadmill movie. How can you beat the scene where the Cuban colonel tells his goons to go to the gun store and get the federal government forms revealing where the gun owners are, who end up in Commie concentration camps of course. We told you so. And how about the scene where the Wolverines execute the rat in their midst who was captured by the commies and made to swallow a radio homing device. That's what I call drama. And when the red soldier actually does pry a handgun from the cold, dead fingers of a dead Murican with just such a bumper sticker on his pickup truck. Chatterbox misses the point. If you are an elite Special Ops guy in your twenties, you have probably watched Red Dawn a hundred times. You would get a kick out of being called Wolverines. Moreover, doesn't anybody here remember 1984? It was the era of Sting singing "I hope the Russians love their children too," and nuclear freeze and we better surrender before its too late. And it turned out to be too late, too, but for a different reason. I guess that theory of history still has a few bugs in it. By the way, the DVD of Red Dawn has some interesting background material on the making of this classic film, the difficulties getting it made and released (imagine that!) and how it became a cult classic. Test your knowledge of the movie: The answer is "Shoot straight for once, you Army pukes."
posted by thomas at 12/16/2003 11:39:00 AM

 
Moneyball
By Tom Smith

I don't even like baseball. I was never any good at it as a kid, and my dad made me play it anyway. It has generally been mysterious to me how people can seem to enjoy it so much. But even with that, I am finding Michael Lewis's new book, Moneyball, extremely interesting. It is tempting me to actually watch baseball, look at pitchers' stats, and batters. Is there perhaps out there an undiscovered statistic that would predict, at least better than what most people use, the outcome of a game? The spread on a game? Better than the sports books on line? No, no, no. The way lies madness. I must remind myself. I am the guy who bought cubes when the NASDAQ was at 4700. But if you like baseball, markets or both, you will surely love this book. It is also full of very funny baseball lines, great stories of undiscovered geniuses, etc.

I wonder if the Padres could play some moneyball? Do some sophisticated hiring? Win?

Could this approach be applied to football? Nah. It's probably just too complex a game.
posted by thomas at 12/16/2003 08:46:00 AM

 
Regulation: the more you do, the more you need to do
By Tom Smith

The new medicare drug benefits probably forebodes price regulation of drugs in the future. There are many things I like about Bush, but he's no Ronald Reagan on the economy. Tax cuts, good. Spending like a maniac, bad. Steel tariffs, very bad. I'm glad Yurp said, du can play that game. Biggest bingo game in history for seniors (drug benefit giveaway)-- very expensive way to buy reelection. It's called compassionate conservativism. It would really hurt the conservatives' feelings for Bush not to win.
posted by thomas at 12/15/2003 09:38:00 AM

 
France and Germany have done enough harm already
By Tom Smith

I am really tired of conservative journalists criticizing the Pentagon's decision to exclude non-coalition members from bidding on Pentagon contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq. First, David Brooks on the Lehrer News Hour, now George Will. If they weren't trying so hard all the time to strike the "I'm conservative, but I'm reasonable" pose, they would be wrong less often.

It is only because pundits spend so little time in the real world that they don't understand that there really are national security considerations to who gets these contracts. I think the story was in the news, but I heard directly from a high-ranking Marine officer deeply involved the planning of the Corp's brilliant advance on Baghdad, that the French satellite phone manufacturer whose phones many journalists were using, really did give the codes to the Iraq army that allowed them to track the Marines and Army movements. This was flat out sabotage by a French contractor. Many, many infrastructure projects that need to be completed in Iraq are sensitive to terrorism. Not just phones, but power, water, roads, and on and on. Why on earth should we give those contracts to firms that we know have worked closely with the Baathists in the past? How stupid are we supposed to be? We don't want to find out that all those bio-chem weapons are not a myth by finding 10,000 dead Iraqis some morning in Baghdad after M. de Grotesque has given the keys to the water supply to some al Queda operative in exchange for a case of champagne and a night with his sister. The French and German governments have proven that they are unwilling or unable to stop their firms from doing business with terrorists. The missiles shot at Secretary Wolfowitz were French and brand new -- so why on earth should those companies get the key ring for the systems that will be a big part of Iraqi security? I don't want the French in charge of air traffic control over New York, either. If the French want to prove they are capable of sensitive projects bearing on civilian security, they can show it by protecting the Jews of Paris.
posted by thomas at 12/15/2003 09:26:00 AM

 
Journey of a man of the left
By Tom Smith

This interview of Christopher Hitchens is interesting. I stopped being a leftist beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I'm glad I never really knew much about the anti-Soviet left, or I might never reached my current state of reason and enlightenment. Anyway, Hitchens is an interesting, if annoyingly self-congratulatory and pompous guy. At least if he becomes a neo-con, he won't have to get a new personality.
posted by thomas at 12/14/2003 10:02:00 AM

 
Christmas guy toys -- Part I: Coffee
By Tom Smith

My favorite things I often buy for myself. But here is an update on various toys, many fitness related, that might make a good holiday gift, or you can just buy for that techno-nerd fitness geek on your shopping list, i.e. yourself. (I-am-not-a-sexist disclaimer: I use 'guy' to mean male and female guys.)

First things first. Caffine. You wake up but you don't want to get up. At all. Then your mind moves to that first cup of java. You find you have gotten out of bed. Life may not be good yet, but there is hope. What works? The best coffee, short of the little coffee bar on the corner up from your pensione in Sienna or even the occassional Starbucks, comes from a French press. This is cheap, effective technology. Here's one at a great price.

But sometimes you want to make a big pot of the stuff at home, like every morning. What to do? I think the dirt cheap brewers you can get at Target for $20 can do a pretty good job. But if you want something more reliable and longer lasting, or just want to indulge your coffee fetish, here is a dandy machine. The milk frothing device really works, but don't expect to be as good as your local espresso bar. If you are really a nut with money to burn, buy this and invite me over to try it. I'll even set it up for you!

Another promising type of device is this thing. I've never tried it, but some people swear by the vacuum method. It looks like a bit of a hassle to me. If I had time to do this, I would just use the French press instead.

If you are sick enough, you may want to buy a conical burr grinder. I don't have one, but it's the next step.

Where should you buy coffee? I know lots of bean-heads turn their noses up at Starbuck's, but I don't think they are that bad. If you want something better, you can buy it at Peet's. Or look around locally. There may be a coffee roaster in your area that does a good job. Look for beans that look really oily, almost like they've been dipped in olive oil. That oil is where the flavor comes from, or most of it. That's why a french press is better than a gold filter, and gold better than paper--it lets more oil through.


posted by thomas at 12/13/2003 10:25:00 AM

 
Texas A & M Asserts its Independence
By Gail Heriot

God bless Texas A&M University President Robert Gates. The Supreme Court told him that he could racially discriminate all he wants; all he has to do is refrain from using a mathematical formula. But he doesn't want to engage in race discrimination. "My concern," he said, "is that I want every student at Texas A&M to be able to look at every other student and know they all got in on the same basis, on the basis of personal merit and achievement."

For the past several years, like other Texas public colleges and universities, Texas A&M has been working under the Fifth Circuit's Hopwood decision, which prohibited racial double standards in admissions. When the Supreme Court's twin decisions in Grutter and Gratz overruled Hopwood, other Texas schools announced that they would be returning to race-based admissions standards. But not the Aggies. Gates has announced that A&M will continue to combine aggressive outreach with universally-applicable admissions standards. Diversity is indeed a worthy goal in the view of President Gates, but he isn't willing to sell the soul of his university to get it.

Gates is already facing opposition. State Senator Royce West (D-Dallas) said, "This policy sends the wrong message to young ethnic minorities .... Race must be a factor in getting the results we need in the state of Texas." And West is willing to go to threaten adverse consequences if A&M does not show significant improvement in its ethnic diversity by Fall of next year.

This in itself is nothing new. Such threats have been made in other states as well. California Legislators, particularly members of the Hispanic Caucus, have been anything but subtle in demanding that the University of California increase its Hispanic enrollment or face budget cuts. But perhaps West has one-upped his California counterparts. He is threatening to seek legislation mandating that race be considered in the admissions policies of all Texas public institutions of higher learning.

Good luck to President Gates. He is swimming upstream in the academic world. It won't be easy.
posted by Gail at 12/12/2003 08:12:00 PM

 
Guardian of our liberties does it again
By Tom Smith

I have not read the Campaign Finance Case Opinions and do not plan to. If I can spare the time to read 60,000 words by (largely the law clerks to) second class minds struggling with a mess made by Congress, I think I'd rather spend the time reading, oh, gosh, I don't know, maybe this excellent biography of Vince Lombardi. Reading the New York Times on the decision was bad enough. They noted the swing vote was cast by our favorite cowgirl, Sandra Day O'Connor, the only justice, the Times smugly noted, who has ever served in elected office. I think she was posse leader back in Cowbone, Arizona or something. Those doggies know a thing or two about money and politics, I can tell you. Would somebody please tell her it is time to retire and start boring the hell out of students at the U of A?

I am not an expert on campaign law. It is one of those areas, like employment discrimination, I prefer just not to think about. From reading the daily prints, however, I take it the geniuses on the high court have concluded that, for example, if a bunch of private citizens put together a group called "Don't Vote for Congressman Bob; He's Corrupt, Inc." and then buy an ad that says "Don't Vote for Congressman Bob; He's Corrupt!" anytime close enough to the election to make a difference, it will be illegal. Why? Because allowing that would, yes, you guessed it, promote corruption!

If BCRA, as the monstrosity is known, was really intended to reduce corruption in politics, it raises the following intriguing puzzle: Why on earth did Congress pass it? Aren't they for corruption? Don't they like it? Profit from it? Do it for a living? I have seen the fat men from the plains chasing their aides around the tables at Bullfeathers as their horrified (hopefully soon to be former) wives looked on in horror. I have seen the Great Manatee of Hyannis Port rise up on his hind flippers to denounce immorality. I know of corruption. Children, here, as nearly as I can make it out, is the deal. BCRA makes it harder for challengers to say harsh things about those fine gentlemen and ladies who occupy their spots in the great domed playground where the people get governed. To my innocent eyes, this is what the bill seems designed to do. We should be grateful things designed by Congress rarely work.

What I can't understand is how the Supreme Court could possibly reach this decision. After all, they are not stupid people. Well alright, O'Connor may be stupid. And Kennedy. Stevens, well, no rocket scientist he. But there's David Souter. Is he smart? I don't know. Every time I try to read something he has written, I fall asleep. I still get traumatized thinking about Virginia Bankshares.

But, boy, I am sure glad that devil Bob Bork is not on the Court! He thought the first amendment applied only to political speech! Sure dodged a bullet there! I guess when we weren't looking, the mainstream took a turn through Cowbone, Arizona, and it turns out the first amendment does not apply to things like saying Congressman Bob is Corrupt, at least before an election! Good to get that learnt. I am just embarrassed about how confused I was about that. It's not my area, as I said. I had this whole "free-speech--politics--say-what-you-want-about-the-government,-it's-America-after-all" thing going on in my head. That mainstream is a tricky, deceptive thing. Now I will be free to look at my fake images of 11 year old girls being raped, free from government interference, as long as I don't mess with Bob's job.

William Buckley used to say he would rather be governed by the first 500 people in the Boston phonebook than the faculty of Harvard. How about any 9 lawyers, or any 9 people who can read "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech"?
posted by thomas at 12/12/2003 11:36:00 AM

 
Troubling questions above 8000 meters
By Tom Smith

You don't normally see mountaineering stories on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. (subscription required.) But Wednesday morning, I was taken aback to see a drawing of Reinhold Messner's hairy face staring at me from the cover of the Journal, along with this headline: "High Drama: 30-year-old mystery roils climbing world."

Reinhold Messner, most climbers, including wannabe's such as myself, would agree, is the greatest mountaineer who ever lived. First to climb Everest without oxygen, first to climb all the peaks over 8000 meters, all in alpine style and without oxygen, numberless epic first ascents, as well as articulate (sort of) spokesman for the freedom of the hills. O yes, and the first to cross Antarctica without machines or dogs. Authour of many books.

The crux of the controversy is this. In 1970, Rheinhold and his brother Guthner were climbing Nanga Parbat, one the world's highest and most difficult peaks (far, far more difficult than the normal route up Everest, for example). They became the first to ascend the Rupal face, the biggest and highest mountain face on the planet. Any man who really appreciates what is involved in a feat of this sort, well, will for a while find that his jockey shorts are too big. Reinhold and Guthner made climbing history by reaching the top. The question is, what happened next?

For certain we know that Guthner did not return alive, nor was his body found. Reinhold says when they reached the top, Guthner was seriously ill with altitude sickness, and said he was unable to descend down the face, the way they had come. Instead, Reinhold says, Guthner begged him to descend instead down the western Diamir Flank of the mountain. During this descent, Reinhold says, Guthner was swept away in an avalanche and lost.

The story is problematic. For one thing, Reinhold and Guthner has ascended without tent or sleeping bags, intending to return to their camp. It is not clear how Reinhold thought he could save his brother by descending down a route where there was no shelter or help waiting. On the other hand, the ascent route may have been very sketchy. Perhaps descending the Diamir flank really was more practical. Or perhaps they were both so brain addled by hypoxia that they did not know what they were doing, and Reinhold cannot now distinguish what he remembers from what he imagined or hoped.

The plot thickens. By descending down the Diamir Flank, having come up the Rapul face, Messner had completed a traverse of Nanga, having already scaled its previously unclimbed, enormous wall. In moutaineering terms this elevated the feat from the historic to the legendary, equal to Herman Buhl's first legendary, and controversial ascent of the mountain, chronicled in one of the classics of mountain literature. (Among other things, Buhl reached the summit far too late to get back down before dark and so stood all night on a ledge a few inches wide until he had enough light to move again.) It was the first traverse of an 8000 meter peak, as well as the first ascent of the Rupal wall. Several of the climbers who were on the expedition with Messner claim (though they were not with him on the summit) that they suspect Messner abandoned his dying brother on the summit in order to secure the glory of this amazing traverse of Nanga Parbat. One of the accusers, however, is a much reduced German baron who was on the expedition, and whose wife Reinhold took away after she nursed him back to health as he recovered from serious frostbite (he lost six digits) back in Germany. The baron obviously has an ice ax to grind. Messner succeeded in getting an injunction against the sale of the baron's book in which he made these accusations, and there have been other suits and counter-suits as well.

I hope Messner's reputation survives intact. No one accomplishes what he has without being driven to the point of near madness. But I don't believe he left his brother, who was his climbing partner of many years, on the summit of Nanga to die. But perhaps he and Guthner agreed the sick climber would make his own way down the face, so Reinhold could complete the traverse--though this would also be an almost indefensible decision. More than likely, this will remain one of the unsolved mysteries of high altitude mountaineering.


posted by thomas at 12/11/2003 04:21:00 PM

 
Beautiful American actress marries scruffy British rock star of dubious talent
By Tom Smith

I guess she just looks smart. Oh well.
posted by thomas at 12/10/2003 04:43:00 PM

 
The Browns and the Greens
By Tom Smith

From Mark Strauss's "Antiglobalism's Jewish Problem" in the important journal Foreign Policy:


History is repeating itself. As in the 19th century, the far right is plagiarizing left-wing dogma and imbuing it with racist overtones, transforming the campaign against the capitalist “New World Order” into a struggle against the “Jew World Order.” The antiglobalization movement is, however, somewhat culpable. It isn’t inherently anti-Semitic, yet it helps enable anti-Semitism by peddling conspiracy theories. In its eyes, globalization is less a process than a plot hatched behind closed doors by a handful of unaccountable bureaucrats and corporations. Underlying the movement’s humanistic goals of universal social justice is a current of fear mongering—the IMF, the WTO, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) are portrayed not just as exploiters of the developing world, but as supranational instruments to undermine our sovereignty. Pick up a copy of the 1998 book MAI and the Threat to American Freedom (wrapped in a patriotic red, white, and blue cover), written by antiglobalization activists Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, and you’ll read how “Over the past twenty-five years, corporations and the state seem to have forged a new political alliance that allows corporations to gain more and more control over governance. This new ‘corporate rule’ poses a fundamental threat to the rights and democratic freedoms of all people.” At an even more extreme end of the spectrum, the Web site of the Canadian-based Centre for Research on Globalization sells books and videos that “expose” how the September 11 terrorist attacks were “most likely a special covert action” to “further the goals of corporate globalization.”

Unfortunately, conspiracy theories must always have a conspirator, and all too often, the conspirators are perceived to be Jews. It takes but a small step to cross the line dividing the two worldviews. “If I told you I thought the world was controlled by a handful of capitalists and corporate bosses, you would say I was a left-winger,” an anarchist demonstrator told the online Russian publication Pravda. “But if I told you who I thought the capitalists and corporate bosses were, you’d say I was far right.”

The browns and greens are not simply plagiarizing one another’s ideas. They’re frequently reading from the same page.

posted by thomas at 12/06/2003 06:22:00 PM

 
More on gay marriage
By Tom Smith

Catholic bishops on gay marriage.

I find myself moving to the position that gay civil unions may be OK, but not marriage. As much as anything, I object to the idea that marriage is just an exercise in self-realization. It may or may not be that. On a deeper level, I object to the anti-realist underpinnings of institutional revisionism, that it's all about what we feel, what our perspective is, etc., etc. If gays are going to form permanent unions, secure certain legal advantages, create a stable environment for raising children, and so forth, it would be a new thing, and it should be housed in a new institution. An ancient institution should not be "reformed" willy-nilly to accommodate the new thing, on the mere hope this would cause more good than harm. As I argued before, assuming a civil union statute could be drafted to secure legal benefits for gay unions, and it's hard to see why one could not be, the insistence that gays be allowed to marry is just an attempt to secure the prestige, the valorization of the ancient institution for relationships that ithat nstitution decidedly excluded. I also am cynical enough to think that well-meaning softie conservatives such as David Brooks underestimate the strand within the gay left that really would like to undermine marriage as such, which really is about hatred of most of the existing social order and would love to see one of its pillars knocked down.

[Update] If marriage is just a matter of self-realization, and not recognition of or dependant on underlying biological reality, then by strict analogy, should a biologically "male" person be able to identify himself legally as a female? Shouldn't you be able to claim the right to be female in the eyes of the law, whatever your biological sex, because you thought you could self-realize better as a female. Shouldn't you a fortiori be able to do the same with race? I might be biologically white, but want to identify and self-realize as a black. Shouldn't the state have to recognize this posture of mine, by the same reasoning they have to recognize gay marriage?
posted by thomas at 12/06/2003 09:46:00 AM

 
Wireless heaven
By Tom Smith

I finally have a wireless network in my house. I'm in wireless heaven. And I did it all by myself. OK. I didn't. My computer savvy nephew was in town for the baptism of our latest procreative effort, now a thoroughly clean milk bottle (pre Vatican II Catholic joke), and he, my nephew, helped. However, it was so easy I think I could have done it.

The thing to do, I think, is use Linksys products. Get a Wireless-B broadband router, the kind with four ports on the front and two little antennae. Then get Wireless B or G notebook adaptors for your notebooks, and that's it! The installation is a snap, at least with Windows XP, and then it screams, as they say.

Perhaps I should note I got the stuff at Staples, which carries a good selection of Linsys components in the Business Networking section. Their computer people were really helpful and gave me advice that was enthusiastic and completely inaccurate. They were, it turns out nearly entirely clueless, but they did a very good imitation of people who knew how to set up a network.

It's a wonder of technology. I even asked my lovely wife, Jeanne, if it wasn't amazing. She said, "yes, it's amazing." Now I can blog at the dinner table. You can imagine how thrilled everyone is.
posted by thomas at 12/06/2003 08:46:00 AM

 
Dinner Table Chit Chat in the un-PC household
By Tom Smith

Actual conversation from dinner, my house, 12/04/2003

Dad: These reports about anti-Semitism in Britain are really disturbing.
Patrick [age 10]: What's anti-Semitism?
Dad: Hating Jews.
Patrick: That's ridiculous! What did the Jews ever do to anybody? They're just sitting around, minding their own business . . .
Mom: . . . reading the Torah . . .
Luke [age 12]: Yeah. If you're going to pick a religion to hate, why don't you pick the one that hates everybody else? I mean, I don't mean to offend anyone, but you don't see any Jews flying airplanes into buildings!
Dad: Well, some people think the Israelis are oppressing the Palestinians . . .
Luke: No, it's the Palestinians who are trying to oppress the Israelis. They just suck at their job.
Dad: Don't say "suck."
posted by thomas at 12/05/2003 03:15:00 PM

 
The future of Christianity?
By Tom Smith

Evangelical Christianity is growing fast. Makes lazy old Catholics like me nervous.
posted by thomas at 12/05/2003 02:21:00 PM

 
More than one way to win a case
By Tom Smith

You probably saw this on volokh, but what a story. Influencing the make-up of the 6th Circuit so as to affect the outcome of the Michigan affirmative action case. Goodness.
posted by thomas at 12/05/2003 02:02:00 PM

 
A big deal
By Tom Smith

When a federal prosecutor is rubbed out, it is a very big deal. The Feds had better come down like a ton of bricks on this case, in which a young AUSA from Baltimore was murdered in what appears to be a gang execution connected to a drug ring prosecution. Gangsters need to know that federal prosecutors are untouchable. I hope Ashcroft and the White House are taking an interest in this matter. [Update: personal motive suspected]
posted by thomas at 12/05/2003 01:30:00 PM

 
No moral judgments please, we're British
By Tom Smith

You may think eating people is wrong. But it's just a taboo. (Hat tip to relasped catholic. Not for the squeamish.) Relasped catholic also points to this article on why it would be nice if Islam were more like Catholicism (my gloss).
posted by thomas at 12/04/2003 10:35:00 PM

 
Is this weird enough for you?
By Tom Smith

By understanding black holes, we see we might be living in a two dimensional universe that only seems three dimensional. Or maybe not.
posted by thomas at 12/04/2003 06:01:00 PM

 
And I'm glad
By Tom Smith

Athletes who cheat with drugs should be kicked out of the sport, and the governing body of track and field in the US agrees.
posted by thomas at 12/04/2003 10:35:00 AM

 
Marx dead or alive
Tom Smith

Brian Leiter has an interesting post on Marx. Here's an excerpt:

But what is equally striking is the accuracy of many of Marx's best-known qualitative predictions about the tendencies of capitalist development: capitalism continues to conquer the globe; its effect is the gradual erasure of cultural and regional identities; growing economic inequality is the norm in the advanced capitalist societies; where capitalism triumphs, market norms gradually dominate all spheres of life, public and private; class position continues to be the defining determinant of political outlook; the dominant class dominates the political process which, in turn, does its bidding; and so on. (The article, above, includes citations to supporting evidence.)

Much of the most embarrassing Marxian claims, I take it, many scholars of Marx are willing to jettison: declining profits, teleological history, etc. What strikes me about the above list is its relative plausibility, at least compared to where Marx was way off base.

Capitalism conquering the globe seems true enough, as does its gradual erasure of at least many cultural differences. Growing economic inequality? This I am not so sure about, in part because it is so difficult to measure inequality. But if it is true, I suspect it is because of the enormous wealth-creating power of capitalism, which enriches managers of assets to a degree scarcely imaginable in former eras. Absolute wealth of workers in the US is far above that of the rich in past eras. Yet the relatively poor still feel deprived.

It may be that in capitalist societies the ideology of property and freedom, let's call it, dominates discussion. But it does not follow that this ideology is not in the interests of the less well off, at least if free markets create the wealth that makes better lives for them possible, at least in absolute terms. It may also be there just isn't any very good alternative, if socialism is as impractical as recent failures of it as a governing theory suggest. So, it may be that market ideology dominates in capitalism because it seems to rational persons as the best available system, even if it is one that condemns them to relative deprivation. I mean this in contrast to some theory about class somehow shaping consciousness so that for example, a worker incorrectly thinks capitalism is better than socialism. A worker could think that capitalism was best, and be right, and still he would be adopting the view (albeit perhaps resentfully, wishing there was something better) that the managerial elite adopts much more gleefully.

As far as powerful economic interests dominating the political process, the only issue there is whether Marx should really get credit for what seems so obviously true. However, I'm also not sure how well these interests align with class, which I always took to be an essential part of the Marxist view. I suspect we are witnessing in the prescription drug benefit just passed, for example, one of the great give-aways in the history of government. Old people can spend unlimited money staving off death, and drug companies make a fortune helping them. The big winners are old people and shareholders of drug companies, a diverse group. The average income of the shareholders in the institutions that are the biggest shareholders is $30,000 -- In the US, workers do own the big corporations, at least most of them. Yet working taxpayers probably lose the most. Hard to see how this how all this maps on to class. How is this consistent with the tenets of Marx?

Finally, I wonder whether Marx really has a plausible causal account of why the things he may have foreseen, are happening, to the extent they are. Normatively, I am not convinced the average low wage American worker is happier than a hunter-gatherer, in fact, I doubt it. But she has got to be happier than the average subsistence farmer, which really does seem to be a miserable life. Even with increased inequality and increased intensity of labor (something Brian might want to add to his list of prescient predictions), most people seem to be better off under capitalism than any plausible alternative, something neither Marx nor modern Marxists seem to believe.
posted by thomas at 12/03/2003 08:48:00 PM

 
Thank you Maimon
By Tom Smith

You can imagine how I was at proof reading documents. But how do you know my mistake was not deliberate and fraught with meaning? Good lord, it is "fraught," isn't it?
posted by thomas at 12/03/2003 04:52:00 PM

 
Admission to the world at large
By Tom Smith

As Hugh Hewitt says, when you make a mistake, you should admit it to everybody. I actually think he is wrong about that, but perhaps that is one mistake he will not admit. In any event, a somewhat testy reader points out that I wrote 'tenants' when I obviously meant 'tenents' as in beliefs or is it beleifs, no it's beliefs, in my attack on the Straussians. My spelling, she points out, makes it hard to take me seriously as an intellectual. Unfortunately, there are many better reasons not to take me seriously, such as my somewhat splenetic (sp?) temperment. But, at least I am not a KGB spy, as some extremely serious intellectuals have been. As to how smart I am, I can think of no better person to answer that question than the inimitable Brian Leiter, who would probably be happy to rank me somewhere or other, and you know it won't be out of sympathy with my politics. (Brian, do you worst! But please don't hurt my feelings!)

But, really, how smart do you have to be? Here is this view, that says, roughly speaking of course, that there are a few really, really smart people, and they can figure out that everyone from Plato to Aquinas didn't mean what they apparently said (Aquinas? An atheist!), and they, when they are not too busy doing that ancient Greek symposium thing (you know what I mean), should run the world from the shadows by manipulating stupid but brave aristocrats and placating the animalistic masses, into which everybody is declining because it's the end of history, you see. Hegel and that French KGB spy said so. Because Stalin is the world historical whateveryoucallit. Oh, no, it turns out it's Bush. How smart do you have to be to say, Hooooooohkay; would the next candidate for a philosophy of government please come forward?
posted by thomas at 12/03/2003 12:35:00 PM

 
There goes 'the biggest gravy train in green history'
By Tom Smith

And there is the National Post on Russia's rejection of Kyoto.
posted by thomas at 12/03/2003 11:47:00 AM

 
Feedback
By Tom Smith

Unless I misunderstand what my computer is trying to tell me, I have been sent a virus by a neo-con. Well, I guess all is fair in love and war. I admit, I was not very nice in my post below, implying, inter alia, that neo-cons had trouble getting girlfriends, or to be more politically correct about it, friends of persons of romantic interest. Some disclosure might be in order. When I was at Cornell in the late 1970's, it was a hotbed of Straussianism. I lived at Telluride House, where Alan Bloom had lived for a while. Paul Wolfowitz and Frances Fukuyama were also Telluride Scholars in their day, and dropped by the House a few times while I was there. Werner Danhauser, a student of Leo Strauss's, was in the Government department, and I took ancient history and got memorably drunk with Paul Rahe, who was in the history department at that time. One simply could not avoid getting a big dose of Straussianism in such an environment.

I thought and still think Paul Rahe was a great teacher and a brilliant mind, and I'm not sure he really counts as a Straussian, though perhaps he was. But over time I came to the view that whatever else one might say, anyone who loved liberty would be crazy to trust with power anyone who really believed the Staussian tenants. Here is an unsympathetic, but as far as I can tell, largely accurate summary of those views, with a response here. I don't want to enter the perhaps stale by now cyber-debate on whether Paul Wolfowitz was engaged in Straussian noble lying when he claimed there were WMD's in Iraq. We're never likely to know without a spy inside the club (too bad Kojeve isn't available for the job). There are many other, good reasons for believing Iraq had WMD's besides taking Wolfowitz's word for it, which in any event would be unwise, in my view.

Ironically, those neo-cons who are Straussians (and it's far from all, I suppose) are not neo-conservatives at all. They seemingly reject modernity in toto, with all of its baggage of free individuals, rationality, tolerance, free markets, the whole classical liberal kit and kaboodle. To me, it's all very ferrin'. More Plato, Machiavelli, Neitzche and Heidegger than Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Smith, Locke and Reagan (hee-hee!)

Here's an imperfect metaphor. For many years liberal democrats played coalition politics with the far left in this country, many of whom, it turns out, really were Stalinist stooges. I think the Straussians are rather like the communists of the right. It is a creepy, conspiratorial ideology that may be temporarily useful for the cause of liberty, but it is a dangerous game to be playing. Give me a bible-thumping, foot-washing, snake-handling redneck cracker hymn singing fundamentalist any day. Remember! The friends of liberty have always been few!
posted by thomas at 12/02/2003 02:51:00 PM

 
I just don't get it about the Jews
By Tom Smith

Maimon's post below and its links to columns in the UK press is very much worth reading, including the links. I have not been to Europe in 20 years, Philistine that I am. I read this stuff, and frankly, find it hard to believe. But then, probably so did many Americans when they read about what was going on in Germany in the 1930's.

I grew up as a Roman Catholic in Boise, Idaho in the 1960's and '70's. I never met a Jew until my junior year in high school, unless you count the Jew who came to my comparative religions class and told us about such things as keeping kosher.

Then I went to Cornell, where most of my friends were Jews. Maybe if I had been excluded, or beaten up by Jews I could understand what is going through the heads of anti-Semites in the UK, but that was not my experience. (Not that that happens in the UK--quite the opposite apparently.) For many years in my life, not only were some of my best friends were Jews. My only friends were Jews.

It's not that I am so anxious to understand how an anti-Semite thinks. But it is uncomfortable to find unfolding events so mystifying. It is like that recent (pretty darn scary) movie 28 Days Later, in which normal people are infected by a virus that turns them into bloodthirsty zombies. It is as if anti-Semitism is a disease that inexplicably turns people insane and spreads according to some horrifying logic of its own. Communism you can understand as an intellectual delusion, prompted by resentment of the rich, exploitation by your boss, and misunderstanding of economics, which isn't that intuitive to begin with. It's evil, but it's comprehensible. But hatred of the Jews? It gives me a genuine shiver of American isolationism. It makes me think unhealthy things grow in the dark cracks of Europe that I want no part of.

posted by thomas at 12/02/2003 09:37:00 AM

 
Big Government Conservatism without the Conservatism
By Tom Smith

Just a little comment on Professor Rappaport's interesting post below on neo-cons versus economic conservatives: It helps to think of the neo-cons as not being either neo or conservatives. They are capable of being right on foreign policy, but not necessarily consistently. On domestic policy, they really believe in a big nanny state, they just want nanny to have a firm, upright, moral character. And I agree, if you have a nanny. Personally, I would not let a neo-con take care of my dog. This is because he would spend all his time on the phone or e-mail, trying to line up his next inside the beltway sinecure, while my beloved Biscuit's stomach grumbled. Thus they illustrate what the framers understood, that human nature is such that no one, not even a neo-conservative weenie, can be trusted with much power, which is why limited government is such a good idea. However, I would be willing to let them start a charter school somewhere in the country where they could wear kneesocks, cane each other to their heart's content and give speeches about how deep they are. As to "act like the governing party." Allow me to translate. This means, "I have a PhD in Government from Harvard and no prospect of an academic job. I do not want to go to law school, and 'I should have power because I'm smarter and better than you' doesn't cut it in the private sector. Hence, I need to govern, as my reading of the Republic tells me I should. To govern, I must spend heaps of other people's money buying votes for my guy, who happens to be Bush. I tell all my liberal friends in Cambridge that Bush is a rube so they will like me and maybe someday I will have a girlfriend. There is a profound philosophical justification for all of this you could not hope to understand. Now please take your dog as I have an important call to make." A neo-conservative is a liberal democrat who doesn't care about equality and likes a strong military, because he likes power. Appealing, no?
posted by thomas at 12/01/2003 11:00:00 AM

 
Mixed Metaphor of the Week Award
By Tom Smith

Goes to Tom McClintock, who is not governor of California. He notes in his true but insipidly written piece in the Wall Street Journal today:

These are the two roads diverging in the budget woods and the choice that is made in coming weeks may well determine whether California has the fresh financial start it deserves, or whether the ghost of Mr. Davis' excesses stalks a generation to come.

OK, so the ghost of budget excess is in the woods, but can only follow Arnie down one path and not the other? But going down one of the paths is a fresh start, even though it's the middle of the woods? And the "budget woods"? As in "The budget woods are lovely, dark and deep/ But I have miles to go before a bill emerges from Conference . . . " Ugh and yuk. Maybe the Journal is having sneaky fun at McClintock's expense by letting him publish without heavy editing.
posted by thomas at 12/01/2003 10:45:00 AM

 
Robert George on same sex marriage
By Tom Smith

Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George had an interesting piece on same sex marriage and the Massachusetts decision in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

George argues, too pessimisticly in my view, that the US Supreme Court will ultimately decide that all states must recognize the validity of same sex unions blessed by the Oyster State (or whatever they call Massachusetts). George says that this will force conservatives to seek a national constitutional amendment. He thinks the chances of such an amendment succeeding are pretty good.

For various reasons, the politics of homosexual marriage has been much on my mind lately. I am coming to think that this issue may be a large rock upon which social liberals wreck themselves. In all but a few very liberal states, I think the opposition to gay marriage is strong and unyielding, and likely to remain so. If the Supreme Court did attempt to impose it on all 50 states, it would encounter profound opposition.

The Court may have no principled reason for not enforcing universal gay marriage after Lawrence, as George observes, but having no principled reason only inhibits the Court sometimes, such as when it is highly convenient. Unless the Court's composition changes to a strong liberal majority, I can't see them not taking the sensible and easy way out of allowing different strokes to different federal folks. Even the Supreme Court is not stupid enough to decide a second and even more inflammatory Roe v. Wade, even if individual justices certainly are. However, I concede I am on shaky ground: Any sentence that begins "Even the Supreme Court is not stupid enough" has a good chance of being wrong. You might think any given justice might get, just randomly, the thought "Maybe we shouldn't force the American people to choose between the institution of the Supreme Court and the institution of marriage?" the way Steve Martin's medieval barber wondered "Maybe we should have a Renaissance?" But we know what happened there. The barber concluded "Nahhhhhh!"
posted by thomas at 12/01/2003 10:18:00 AM

 
Another Aggie Joke?
By Gail Heriot

Football is serious business is Texas. When Texas A&M suffers a humiliating defeat to Texas, heads often roll. But whose head? Should it perhaps be the head of Bill Byrnes, the highly-paid Aggie coach? He doesn't think so. His finger is pointing in a different direction--at conservative students protesting race-based admissions standards..

Like several conservative campus groups across the country, Aggie conservatives recently staged a "bake sale" to protest the inequity of race-based admissions standards at A&M. Asian Americans were charged $2 per cookie, white males were charged $1, and white females 75 cents. Hispanics were charged 25 cents and blacks were charged 10 cents. There was considerable protest against the protest. Unlike nearby Southern Methodist University, however, Texas A&M did not declare the bake sale hate speech and forcibly shut it down. The Twilight Zone argument that certain speech must be stifled in order to promote a diversity of viewpoints mercifully did not carry the day at College Station.

So Coach Bill Byrnes gives us a different Twilight Zone argument: Protesting race-based admissions standards will hurt A&M on the gridiron. "Free speech is not an issue for me, " he says, "[b]ut I'm disappointed over the national attention that Texas A&M received recently because of a few individuals and their idea of a protest." "The Texas A&M Bake sale plays right into the hands of those who recruit against us, in both athletics and in the general student population." Byrnes urges readers to "speak out against anything like this that discredits Texas A&M University."

Anyone like me who has ever been married to a Texan has heard enough "dumb Aggie" jokes to fill volumes. But they've also met enough of those Aggies to know it's just a joke. Somehow I get the feeling that Byrnes really believes that Aggies are stupid if he thinks he can convince them that his team's losing season should be blamed on campus dissent over affirmative action.
posted by Gail at 11/30/2003 06:40:00 PM

 
Dale Amon gets it
By Tom Smith

You probably saw this already on instapundit, but it bears repeating.

The interesting irony is that it will be hard for the Western press to blame the US for Iraquis purging the Baathists. And unless it can be turned into an anti-US story, it will hardly be covered at all. Also, journalists will not want to be embedded (in bedded?) with the Baathists when bullets start flying in their direction. And it's yet another reason for the UN not to be involved. While you may not actually have to be in the act of committing genocide to be protected by UN peacekeepers, it helps. The UN in Iraq is shorthand for giving the Baathists a screen from behind which to carry on its terror campaign. Anyone they kill while the UN dithers would be, of course, a victim of American arrogance and incompetence.
posted by thomas at 11/30/2003 03:34:00 PM

 
The New Yorker. You Betcha, The New Yorker
By Tom Smith

Here I was, about to write that the New Yorker really might have become worth reading again.

In the December 1 issue, there is an interesting account of a noise dispute in an expensive upper East side co-op building. On one side is an old time resident couple, on the other a resident and her recently moved-in boyfriend, who is the world's leading maker of replicas of famous diamonds. (Apparently some of the famous diamonds on display in museums are fakes.) He makes the fake gems using an industrial machine he moved into his girlfriend's apartment. And yet, upon inspection, it seems to be a remarkably quiet machine. The noise it makes is even kind of soothing.

Then there is a review of John Updike's new collection of stories by Louis Manand. It begins badly with this sentence: "I am not one who golfs." He's probably trying to be self-mocking to some extent. But that sentence stands at such a nauseating distance from "I don't golf" that it's hard to go on. But one must, mustn't one, if one wishes to be fair in one's reading of a review in the New Yorker. At least that's how I feel about it. At any rate, it turns out to be a pretty good review of Updike, and manages to say some true things about the modern short story, which is certainly more than one has any right to expect (especially if one has read any post-modern lit crit lately). And there are several cute to funny cartoons, such as one featuring two of Santa's elves, one saying to another "Well, at least it beats my old job working at Walmart."

But then, just as I was thinking I could safely open the covers of the magazine again, I foolishly looked at the "Talk of the Town" section. This section has evolved from discussions of urban trivialities to an op-ed space. It is a gaseous thing, so inflated by self-importance that one worries one might be injured by the explosion that surely must come at any moment. This week's flatus draws a strained comparison between the NFL and marriage, suggesting that people who care about "institutions" are a stupid, unprincipled lot. Institutions are what we run to when we can't find our principles, the writer opines, in a moment of astonishing pomposity. Here's the idea. The NFL is upset about the new steroids that avoid testing technology. This is silly of them, because professional football is such a violent, injurious sport that being concerned about damage inflicted by drugs as opposed to tackles is hypocritical. Limits of space and patience preclude one from listing all the ways in which this argument makes one want to pull out one's hair, if one has any hair.

But just a few points. Maybe the NFL thinks pro football is violent enough, and doesn't want it to become more violent, and so doesn't want defensive tackles getting any bigger or meaner than they already are. Maybe they don't want to pay any more for medical care than they already do when players' internal organs give out. Maybe they want to lengthen the careers of good players. Maybe they understand the game and business of football better than some writer at the New Yorker whose idea of violence is a really snide remark at a party, whispered so the lady it is about won't hear it and beat him up.

But it's worse, according to this chatterer. You see, people want to defend the silly institution of football, just like they want to defend the silly institution of marriage. Doing so, somehow, is supposed to lack principle. (At this point, I really wish this guy was a quarterback looking one way, and Dick Butkus, who had been sprinting for the last ten yards, was coming from the other.) I don't see how "football is worth keeping, and so is marriage" is not a principle. Or how about, "You folks seem to hold in contempt what I value, so maybe I should not listen to you." Sounds like a principle to me. And furthermore, what's wrong with taking refuge in institutions. When arguments fail, you need them to survive, or at least to make surviving worth doing.


posted by thomas at 11/30/2003 02:50:00 PM

 
Law professor and deadly hunter
By Tom Smith

A picture of yours truly with his trusty Indian sidekick.
posted by thomas at 11/28/2003 04:43:00 PM

 
To the Chargers: Please get lost
By Tom Smith

Here in America's finest city, we have a pathetic professional football team that is threatening to leave for LA or some other burb if the taxpayers won't cough up the dough for a new stadium in which the mostly losing team may be worshipped. I just want to say, go, please. Why are you still here?

San Diego just watched in horror as thousands of homes burned and more than a dozen died, partly because the city and county did not have enough fire trucks, modern radios and helicopters to stop the blaze. We could buy some of those. But, Oh, no! Bad idea! Instead, let's pad the pockets of millionare sports promoters and athletes. Come to think, evacuees did congregate at the stadium. I suppose there is something to be said for having a nice stadium to go to after your house burns down.

But, maybe, just a thought here -- we could spend more money on our struggling public school system. San Diego public schools range from the barely adequate to the dangerous and dysfunctional. And more cuts are on their way from Sacramento. But hey, why not spend the money instead on a new, different concrete monstrosity in Mission Valley, one more in the contemporary style of concrete monstrosity. The old concrete monstrosity does not have the thing every civilized society needs. You guessed it-- skyboxes. How can we hold our heads high as San Diegans when our stadium lacks the plush, private quarters that big wheels need to swill scotch and watch football in comfort? Johnny and Jose can learn to read latter, as long as the local elite doesn't have to watch football in the open air. I mean, the very idea of Chip and Porky not having a high definition plasma monitor on which to watch the Chargers punt, while working hard to add that next 25 points to their total cholesterol, just really makes me sad. Poor Chip. Poor Porky.

Or, if sports is the thing, how about spending more money on sports programs for kids? The are precious few public programs for kids in San Diego wanting to learn how to swim or surf or pay baseball. Sure, this can all be done privately, but if we are determined to spend the public's money, we might, just for novelty's sake, try using it to help people who don't drive Bentleys and fly private jets. What I am trying to say is, Mr. Spanos, why don't you pay for your own f@#$ing stadium?

If we are going into the business of bribing pampered, spoiled, foul-mouthed, excessively tattooed, drug-abusing, and generally bad-example setting professional athletes with the hard-earned money of people who suffer under inadequate police and fire protection, publc schools and other public services, why don't we bribe them to win? If we are going to crawl on our bellies to the Chargers, like peasants groveling up to evil lords, with pennies clutched in our hands, dare we ask that they actually win once in a while. It's humiliating enough to have to bribe people much richer than you are to play football. It is worse that they do it so badly. So, if we are going to buy a football team, why don't we buy another one? Maybe the Cowboys or the Steelers would like to change digs. But to the Chargers, I say, go long, and keep going.
posted by thomas at 11/28/2003 09:23:00 AM

 
Why traveling to Mexico scares me
By Tom Smith

I don't consider myself a travel wimp. But Mexico still scares me.
posted by thomas at 11/27/2003 08:20:00 AM

 
Bad manners in Congress
By Tom Smith

I confess I just don't get what the Democrats are complaining about. To me they look like a defensive tackle, who has been sacking quarterbacks all day, start whining when an offensive lineman finally manages to knock him down. Yes, the Republican leadership held open the roll call in the House for an unusually long period. But the fillibuster of judicial nominees is unusual as well. The Republicans are spending too much money--I happen to agree with the Democrats there. But come on, I am supposed to believe the Democrats would not spend just as much if they had the chance?
posted by thomas at 11/27/2003 08:15:00 AM

 
GOP Panty Raid
By Gail Heriot

I peeked into a Victoria's Secret store a few days ago. OK, I admit it. I was actually in the store, but I didn't buy anything. Honest. It was crowded with some very happy looking people, women and men (the latter seemed particularly happy), apparently from up and down the social ladder. I doubt you would have found a more diverse group of American voters somewhere else at the mall. They seemed blithely unaware of the effect the Bush administration's new tariff on Chinese imports will certainly have on their future purchases.

The mechandise at Victoria's Secret is largely imported from China; that's how the store is able to offer ladies' lingerie at prices that most Americans can happily afford. It comes in all shapes, colors and sizes; some with lace, some with bows and some even with diamonds encrusted on them. Some is even in fairly good taste. (I won't say that I've never purchased anything from Victoria's Secret; a lady has to have a few secrets, you know.)

Like Bush's ill-fated steel tariffs, the lingerie tariff is a cheap political tactic. For steel, Karl Rove thought Bush needed to do a favor for Pennsylvania, which he considers a potential swing state if the 2004 election turns out to be close. This time around, it's said to be the need to please the leaders of certain Southern states, which are feeling the pinch of competition from Chinese corsets, bras and panties. America's reputation as the world's leading supporter of free trade, however, should be worth more than that. A lot more.

Moreover, if Karl Rove thinks that the political ramifications of this will be positive for the GOP, he is likely mistaken. The fact that shoppers at Victoria's Secret appear ignorant of the Bush-imposed tariffs doesn't mean the GOP is insulated from harm. Consider this: As American women forgo these little luxuries (and substitute, for example, potato chips and dip), they will feel less desirable. Indeed, as time goes by that feeling may become a reality. In frustration, their menfolk will turn to alcohol and eventually to crime. All these changes will hurt the GOP. When women fell undesirable, they feel insecure and vote for Democrats. That's why married women are a strong Republican constituency while single women tend to vote the other way. The Republican party hence has good reason to want to keep them (and their husbands) happy in their marriages. When men are drunk, their loyalty to the GOP may be undiminished, but they can't find their way to the polls, so they don't vote. And, of course, once they are convicted of a felony, they lose their right to vote entirely. Bush may well lose the election on account of this misguided panty raid and never know why.

Sound far-fetched? Well ... ok ... you got me. But it would be no less than what the GOP deserves for its cheap political manipulations. That's all for now. I'm going back to the mall before the prices go up.
posted by Gail at 11/26/2003 05:48:00 PM

 
On line Dating
By Tom Smith

I had no idea on-line dating was such a big deal. For me, reading this article in the NYT magazine this Sunday was a visit to an alien culture. How could you go on 100 dates in a year? Five dates in a week and go to bed on three of them (spirtual suicide in one week)? Hook ups for cheating spouses, and everything else. Interesting and too weird.

While your there, check out Donald Trump's egregious comb over. I hope that model is getting well paid. (About half-way down the page, on your left. Click to see the whole portfolio. Do the shareholders of Boeing really have to spend $10 million to decorate the inside of the company's business jet?)
posted by thomas at 11/23/2003 04:48:00 PM

 
Finally a Ford Foundation Grant of which Henry Ford Would Have Approved
By Gail Heriot

The New York Sun ran a series recently on the Ford Foundation's million-dollar grants to virulently anti-semitic and anti-Israeli organizations. The Sun's website is by subscription only, so here is a secondary account. To add a little extra spice, these organizations apparently advocate terrorism.

What's interesting is that the Ford Foundation has probably not given a grant in years that the great capitalist Henry Ford would have approved of. Now at last they have. Ford's lunatic screed, the International Jew, is still canonical among the anti-semitic lunatic fringe in the English-speaking world. Maybe the Ford Foundation's hard left bureaucrats were just looking for some common ground between Ford and themselves.
posted by Gail at 11/23/2003 03:51:00 PM

 
David Brooks has sex?
By Tom Smith

There are some things I prefer not to think about. David Brooks having sex is one of them. His having multiple partners in one year, even more so. Just to make sure, I asked a certain lady with whom I am on close terms, but who prefers to remain anonymous, this question: "Does David Brooks having sex make you feel a little queasy?" She said "Yes. O God yes. Thanks for that visual."

Brooks says having sex with several partners within a one year period amounts to spiritual suicide. Trying to have sex with several partners in one year and failing might work too. I guess if you wanted to get it over with quickly you could have sex with several partners all at once.

Mark Shields can have sex, and even smoke a cigarette afterwards. Jim Lehrer, well, I'm sure he committed spiritual suicide years ago. Margaret Warner, well, I am not going to discuss ladies in this post. But David Brooks. No. For all of us, it is a topic he should avoid.
posted by thomas at 11/23/2003 12:28:00 PM

 
A Martyr to Blogging
By Tom Smith

Microsoft fires a blogger for posting photo on his blog showing Apple G5's arriving at Redmond campus.

I am so ready to switch to Apple, especially since Microsoft seems to be on a campaign to make WordPerfect unstable and happy to let Word remain unbelievably lame. But switching costs are real. It's almost enough to make you believe in all that networking, path-dependency balony.
posted by thomas at 11/23/2003 10:59:00 AM

 
History of Last Big Defensive War against Muslim Fanatics
By Tom Smith

You guessed it. Those much maligned Crusades. I like the crusaders, partly because my mother was recently made a lady of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, the oldest continuously existing order of nobility in the West. (Yes, I am proud of my mom.) It was founded during the First Crusade, a mere 1000 years ago or so, and has a fascinating history in its own right. The order is no longer military, and is devoted mostly to charitable work. On the crusades, here's a summary of recent scholarship. (hat tip to little green footballs.) For the general reader, there's this little book on The Monks of War. A little too much detail and not enough mayhem for my tastes, but pretty good so far. And this on the Templars. This is a legitimate history; beware the voluminous garbage published about the Templars, which figure in many conspiracy theories.
posted by thomas at 11/23/2003 09:25:00 AM