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Thoughts from San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture
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September 30, 2004
Psychopathic monsters By Tom Smith What kind of monsters blow children to pieces? These sick bastards have no claim to defend Iraq from anybody. Martians or the French have a better claim to govern Iraq than these psychopaths. This was no accident. The suicide bombers must have seen the kids, then decided to detonate their car bombs. And Zarqawi's Monotheism and Jihad took credit for the atrocity afterwards, calling their exploding terrorists "heros." There is no defense, no apology for the deliberate targeting of innocents. These monsters deserve no quarter, deserve no protection from the laws of war, and just need to be hunted down and killed for the rabid dogs they are. The Big Fish By Mike Rappaport Its good to be the Instapundit. Reynolds receives books in the mail from publishers (ones that he wants to read) and he now writes a column for the Guardian on the election. But, of course, this is all well deserved, as his first column for the Guardian demonstrates. Here is an interesting excerpt: And, at any rate, the south's commitment to traditional values is, like Bill Clinton's, less strong than many might believe. Dayton, Tennessee - home of the Scopes "monkey trial", depicted entertainingly in Inherit the Wind, and more accurately in Ed Larson's book, A Summer for the Gods, - recently sponsored a "Gay Day" after overturning local anti-gay legislation. And, although driving around the rural parts of east Tennessee (which I do a lot, in the process of taking photographs like these) will expose you to a lot of church signs, most of them are rather sweet, really, and hellfire-and-brimstone is much rarer than most foreigners, or even Americans from the east and west coasts, might believe. Janet Radcliffe Richards By Mike Rappaport British philsopher, Janet Radcliffe Richards, has written a new book. Richards visited at the University of San Diego Law School some years ago, and she is both very smart and a delightful person. While I don't always agree with her, I always learn something new. Here are a couple of paragraphs from an interview with her about her book: 'If you had to settle the metaethical issues before you had serious discussions of practical problems, you might as well give up on them. There is nothing so useless, as far as I can see, as telling a doctor that if you're a Kantian you do this and if you're a utilitarian you do that - even supposing there were agreement among either Kantians or utilitarians - because they want to know what they should be doing. I think that's hopeless as a starting point.' September 29, 2004
Brooks on Violence and Elections By Mike Rappaport David Brooks discusses a previous situation where elections were held during an insurgency: Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign.This point seems a bit optimistic, but it shows that the assumption that violence will prevent or undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections is not necessarily true. September 28, 2004
Inside blog humor By Tom Smith heh heh. Please note: the blog linked to above is frequently very funny. but also sometimes uses bad words and says mean things. VRWC update. Iranian nukes By Tom Smith Bush and friends had better stop the Iranians from getting nukes. Apparently the terrorist-supporting, nutcase mullahs are months away, by some estimates, anyway. Iran is a big supporter of Hamas; it displays nuclear capable missiles with "Jerusalem" painted on them. Swastikas would be more apt. Iran is the real deal. It is more important than Iraq, and more important than democracy in the Middle East. If it is now too late to stop Iran, then invading Iraq really was a mistake. Bush will have to act on this within a few months of being reelected. If Kerry is elected, then I think Iran will get its nukes, and Kerry will spend four years changing his mind about what to do. If Kerry gets elected, it's time to give some serious thought to things like go bags and MREs. You know what I'm talking about. And just to be fair, it won't just be Kerry's fault. It will be Bush's fault too for letting things get into such a state. People on the right should be honest enough to admit that it is a complete outrage that Bush and his team have allowed Iran to get as far along as they are. Kerry is hopeless, and no solution, but Bush will have a lot to answer for if Iran and Israel end up exchanging nuclear bombs because we were busy trying to bring democracy to Iraq. Lileks on the Sunday Times By Mike Rappaport For a guy who moved from New York to Iowa -- make that San Diego -- this is especially delicious: The Sunday Times is the weekly sermon: let us reinforce your world view, your sense of belonging to the Thinking Class, the Special Ones. Let the Red Staters spend Sunday morning in itchy church clothes at Perkins, dumping syrup all over their pancakes and yelling at little Lurleen not to pour salt down her baby brother’s jumper; you’re in your elegant spare little apartment with a cup of coffee (frothed on top; sprinkle of nutmeg) and a pastry from that wonderful place around the corner (okay, it’s an Au Bon Pain – hell, they’re all Bon Pain now) and there’s some light jazz on the radio. Morning jazz, if you had to give the genre a name. Anyway, it’s a sunny fall morning – well, noonish. Now comes the capstone moment when you lay the slab of the Times in your lap and begin the autoposy of the week. Scan the A section headlines - yes, yes, yes, appalling. Scan the metro: your eyes glaze. The arts section – later. Travel – Greece again? Good for Greece. Six pounds of classifieds: discard. No comics . . . there was always comics on Sunday back home. But that was IOWA, for heaven’s sake, what else would you expect but Blondie and Ziggy and the rest . . . ah. Jeff's War By Tom Smith Jeff McMahan, well-known philosopher, has written an essay about Iraq, that was sufficiently annoying that I went through the whole thing, injecting comments and asides intending to show that it was, at turns, silly, self-serving, false, and other bad things. I did this for twenty pages, and lost 90 minutes of my life, and I don't know why. Anyway, here it is, for my few, loyal fans out there. I now have to go to the grocery store and pick up various family supplies. Because Blogger is such a POS, you have to go to our backup Typepad site and download it. It's in WordPerfect, another bad decision on my part. Steal This Book By Maimon Schwarzschild David Frum has thoughts on Lawrence Tribe, Harvard Law School, and plagiarism in Tribe's book against Robert Bork:
“[Dershowitz] said that judges frequently rely on lawyers’ briefs and clerks’ memoranda in drafting opinions. This results in a ‘cultural difference’ between sourcing in the legal profession and other academic disciplines, Dershowitz said.” As a 1987 graduate of the Harvard Law School, I have to reluctantly concede that there is some truth or anyway basis to Dershowitz’s defense. Law schools – and Harvard perhaps more than any other - suffer from a deep identity problem. They regard themselves and hold themselves out to the public as scholarly institutions, just like the other graduate departments of the university. Yet most of the faculty of the Harvard law school when I was there were not scholars at all. They were extremely clever lawyers who had been hired young for their intellectual potential – and who were then valued by the school for their charisma, their teaching ability, and their activist outside legal work. The only scholarship that was usually required of them – scholarship meaning original academic research and writing – was a single substantial article for a law review. A bright young man or woman could get tenure at Harvard Law School with a publishing record that would not even qualify him for a job interview at the Harvard History Department. There were exceptions to this rule, of course, and ironically enough Tribe was and is one of them. But Dershowitz is correct that most Harvard lawyers simply play by different rules than other academics do. Paul Campos on Iraq By Tom Smith Paul Campos has a point. He's a law professor at Colorado. I also heard a rumor he has taken up climbing 14'ers. September 27, 2004
Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens By Mike Rappaport I caught Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens being interviewed by Tim Russert over the weekend. Quite an interesting interview. Sullivan said he would be voting for McCain / Lieberman, whereas Hitchens said he would vote for the President. Just think about that. One interesting statement: Sullivan appeared to say that he thought there was only a 20 percent chance of success in Iraq at this point. I think he is far too pessimistic. Roots of Freedom By Mike Rappaport While I was on vacation a while ago, I came across a short book on the history of freedom: John W. Danford, Roots of Freedom: A Primer on Modern Liberty. This type of book is irresistible to me, especially when on vacation. It is a quick and easy read, a mere 193 pages. It covers the history of political theory, from Ancient Greece, to the Middle Ages, to the modern classics of Locke, Publius, Mill, and de Tocqueville. The book is written from a conservative – classical liberal perspective. Highly recommended for those looking for sound thinking and a light read. September 26, 2004
The Times on Bloggers By Mike Rappaport The New York Times is nothing if not consisent. It does a story on bloggers and it focuses exclusively on the left side of the Blogosphere. Here is an excerpt which is dripping with all of the Times's prejudices: But just as Fox News has been creaming CNN, the traffic on Kaus's and Sullivan's sites has flat-lined recently, while Atrios's and Moulitsas's are booming. Left-wing politics are thriving on blogs the way Rush Limbaugh has dominated talk radio, and in the last six months, the angrier, nastier partisan blogs have been growing the fastest. Daily Kos has tripled in traffic since June. Josh Marshall's site has quadrupled in the last year. It's almost as though, in a time of great national discord, you don't want to know both sides of an issue. The once-soothing voice of the nonideological press has become, to many readers, a secondary concern, a luxury, even something suspect. It's hard to listen to a calm and rational debate when the building is burning and your pants are smoking. This whole voter fraud thing is getting out of hand By Tom Smith We need some serious reform to put the fraudsters out of business. September 25, 2004
Pure Bias: The Vanity Fair Article on Bush v. Gore By Mike Rappaport I have decided to read this article out of obligation to find out what might have gone on behind the scenes at the Supreme Court. (Available here.) But is it a chore. I am about 5 pages into it, and the piece has no credibility whatsoever. Every action by the Republicans is viewed as improper; every action by the Democrats as legitimate. Republicans want to win by violating people's rights; Democrats just want to enforce the law, which will result in their legitimate election. Dan Rather has nothing on these guys. If you are a partisan Democrat -- I am sure there are many among the Right Coast readership -- just remember this. It may be fun to read the story, especially during the current campaign, but don't mistake the yarn with the truth. Debka reports assassination of top Al-Quaeda aid By Tom Smith Debka reports that US forces killed a top al-Quaeda aid in Baghdad in a missile attack. (Given that the mainstream US press both fabricates stories and ignores important news, it seems pedantic to point out that Debka's intelligence sources don't always prove out. At least they're trying to get the story, even if they sometimes tell all they know, and a little more.) A Jamul Moment By Tom Smith Yesterday, I stopped at the Mexican meat market to pick up some steaks. Great prices. I pointed to the ones that weren't brown. Also picked up a pint of the very hot "medium" salsa and chips. They may explain the failure of my recent Atkins attempt. Getting back onto the 94, I pause to let go by a large family unit. Mom is in her late 20's, but has a lot of miles on her. Deeply tanned, wearing clothes that could charitably be described as due for a wash, and/or the rag bin. She has on leash an enormous dog, maybe a Great Dane/English Mastiff cross or something. Huge. Behind her walk no fewer than six kids, varying in age from maybe 12 to 3. All attired in ragamuffin. A girl in the middle of the pack is crying her eyes out. Others look cheerful enough. Bringing up the rear is a small boy, maybe eight, who carries a gigantic snake. A python perhaps. They pass in front of my car. I infer they are heading toward the new vet's clinic on the corner. It sports a large banner: "We Have Rattlesnake Anti-Venom!" A half-mile from home I have to slow down to drive around the CHiPpie who is investigating an accident. A fellow Jamulian has plowed his pickup truck into a telephone pole. It's Friday night. Steyn on Kerry's no class act By Tom Smith I agree with Steyn the Kerry has ceased to be amusing. His criticisms of Allawi really were revolting. And the MSM isn't much better. Bush was right to come down on him hard for it. Doesn't Kerry have any advisors who are not completely tone-deaf? Here's what you say. You praise Allawi for being brave, you praise the Iraqi people, you thank the troops, then you say Bush is letting them all down. How hard is that? Part of Kerry's problem, as thousands of anecdotes illustrate, is that he is just a stone jerk -- never a line he doesn't cut, never a pose he doesn't strike, never a passing moment of humility or gratitude. He might be too much of an asshole even for the French, a risk I would be willing to take under other circumstances, true, but not in this case. M. Kerry is a walking advertisement against sending your kid to a fancy boarding school. I am beginning to credit the theory that Kerry is just a shill in the Clinton restoration conspiracy. I really hope the Democrats can come up with somebody vaguely admirable next time around. Is Joe Leiberman really all that bad? At least he has some mensch like qualities. But I fear it's going to be She Who Must Be Obeyed. She may be hair raising, but she is a smart pol. Oh well. Sufficient unto the day are the Democrats thereof. I HAD missed the comment by Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart. Bill Kristol: But Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips." Interesting perspective. Yet can any reasonable person doubt that Lockhart is not one-tenth the man Allawi is? When was the last time Lockhart risked getting his limbs blown off trying to build a new nation? And what a damaging thing for our prospects in Iraq to say. As Kistrol notes, deeply irresponsible. But at least it answers the question, how big a disaster would a Kerry victory be for American national security. Bigger than is easy to imagine. September 24, 2004
The Art of Losing Friends By Mike Rappaport Charles Krauthammer pens this devastating critique of John Kerry's campaign. While I suppose one must count Kerry as part of the loyal opposition, I would most definitely not count him as part of the responsible opposition. What If? By Mike Rappaport While I am as pleased with the blogosphere's victory against the CBS forgery as the next blogger, consider the following question asked by Ann Coulter: CBS was attempting to manipulate a presidential election in wartime. What if CBS had used better forgeries? What if – like Bush's 30-year-old DUI charge – the media had waited 72 hours before the election to air this character assassination?Even if the blogosphere could have detected the forgeries so quickly, the country would not have been able to digest the information. I have said it before. Watch out for the November surprise this year. I think some preemptive action needs to be taken. There needs to be a movement, among bloggers and the responsible media, to warn against such late election hits and to strongly criticize any information that is released immediately before the election, but could have been released earlier. September 23, 2004
Terrorist Networks By Mike Rappaport An interesting post by the Belmont Club, commenting on a case study "examining how mapping social networks and understanding their properties can be used to take down terrorist networks": [The] last paragraph is crucial to understanding why the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam Hussein may have cripped global terrorism so badly. Without the infrastrastructure of a state sponsor, terrorism is limited to cells of about 100 members in size in order to maintain security. In the context of the current campaign in Iraq, the strategic importance of places like Falluja or "holy places" is that their enclave nature allows terrorists to grow out their networks to a larger and more potent size. Without those sanctuaries, they would be small, clandestine hunted bands. The argument that dismantling terrorist enclaves makes "America less safe than it should be in a dangerous world" inverts the logic. It is allowing the growth of terrorist enclaves that puts everyone at risk in an otherwise safe world.Of course, this suggests that the Bush Administration's decision to allow Falluja to operate as a terrorist enclave was a serious mistake. I'd say it is high time to fix that mistake. Political Ignorence is No Bliss By Mike Rappaport Our recent guest blogger, Ilya Somin, has a piece on this subject here. The Leadership of the Presbyterian Church (USA) By Gail Heriot I am the only member of the Right Coast who is a duly ordained elder of the Presbyterian Church (USA), so I feel like I ought to say something about the shameful situation the Church has gotten itself into and respond in part Mike's question (immediately below). I haven't been active in the leadership for a while, but there was a time when I had a lot of exposure to church muckety-mucks, some of whom held national office. Many were fine (even extraordinary) people. Unfortunately, with a few of the others, you really had to watch your hat and coat. It's important to note, however, that I never I suspected any of them of being anti-Semitic. And I still don’t. The unattractive element of the Presbyterian Church isn’t anti-Semitic; it’s anti-Western. They don’t hate Israel because they consider it a Jewish state. They hate it because they consider it a Western imperial outpost in the Third World, and to them, the Third World is somehow more pure, more virtuous, and just plain more interesting than the world they inhabit. They would hate Israel just as much if it had been founded by Episcopalians (and more if it had been founded by fundamentalist Baptists, but that’s another story). Anti-Israel or Antisemitic? By Mike Rappaport The Presbyterian Church's decision to divest its funds from companies that do business with Israel is clearly an anti-Israel action. But is it also antisemitic? Consider the following: The divestment action manifests a singular animosity towards Israel. The Presbyterians have not divested their funds from any of the cruel regimes of the world: not from China for its ethnic cleansing of Tibetans, and its repression of Muslems and Falun Gong; and not even from Sudan, currently engaged in the extermination of Africans in Darfur.It is hard to know what is in the hearts and minds of the Presbyterian leadership. But they should explain their actions: Even if they think Israel has behaved badly, why do they single out Israel when so many others who have done such horrible things are ignored? Update: If it is not antisemitism, then what might it be? Two possibilities come to mind, neither too attractive. First, it could be an element of piling on. Many left wing groups attack Israel, so the Presbyterian leadership feels this is acceptable as well. Second, it could be that in certain circles attacks on Israel confer an enhancement of status, and the leadership desires that. In both of these cases, the question then becomes what accounts for the desire of these other groups to criticize Israel -- being antisemitic or anti-Israel? Moreover, in both of these cases, the actions of the Presbyterian leadership, while not antisemitic, are still not attractive. Update II: Gail has responded to this post, claiming that the Presbyterian leadership is not antisemitic, just against Israel because they view it as a western imperialist nation. (A variant of the Little Satan view, I guess.) I find this to be a very plausible. Of course, as Gail implies, this is also an outrageous view, but for different reasons than antisemitism is. Still, I would like to hear how the leadership would defend itself, but I am not holding my breath. I don't know how I could have missed this story By Tom Smith Stanford law grad repays loans working as call girl, and it goes on from there. I did manage to track down her site, and let's just say, discretion being the better part of valor, I decided not to link to it. It's quite a site, though, Brazilian music and everything. She charges about $700 per hour for her escort services. That's more than the vast majority of lawyers make, and they have to wear suits. Nor am I going to link to the site Glen Reynolds linked to of the photographer who publishes hundreds of pictures of his wife in her underwear. It may have been art, but it was not good art. A good rule of thumb for photographers is, if you're publishing pictures of your wife on the web in naughty little Bo Peep type outfits, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere. Not all roads less traveled lead somewhere you want to go. Nice underwear, though. We here at the RC have high standards to maintain. I'm not sure what the point is anymore, but what the heck. OOPS! My bad. I've disabled the link above because I meant to link to the story about the call girl, not the call girl's site. This was an accident, not a joke. I apologize to those of you who inadvertantly found yourself at a not work-safe site. More proof that bloggers are not afraid to admit when they're wrong. Also, I don't have the news story link anymore. Why not just forget the whole thing. It's best not to dwell on these things anyway. Shame on the Presbyterians By Tom Smith Mainline Protestant church joins the mainstream press in cluelessness. It is divesting itself of firms that do business with Israel. (via VC). I hope critics of the Catholic Church will remember this next time a hatchet job like Hitler's Pope comes out (you can find it yourself on Amazon; I'm not going to link to it) . You won't see the Catholics doing anything this stupid any time soon. Old Multiculturalism - Alte Multikulturalismus By Maimon Schwarzschild Colonel Walter Staudt, retired Brigadier of GWB's National Guard unit, gives an interview to his hometown newspaper:
It's an English-language paper -- nowadays. But New Braunfels is the heart of Texas German country. When you visit the town, you will see the big, German-style town hall: Kaiser Wilhelm would feel at home. The town even has a Hummel-figure museum. German language and German culture were alive and well, of course, for many decades among German immigrants and their children (and grandchildren) throughout the US. Many Germans came as quasi-refugees after the defeat of the liberal uprising in Germany in 1848. It's plausible that Hohenzollern militarism, and even Nazism, succeeded politically in Germany in part because so many liberal-minded Germans, and their descendants, had departed for the US after 1848. Germans gravitated to many parts of the US: Cincinnati (there's a reason that a medium-sized midwestern town always had a good symphony orchestra and first-rate museums); St Louis (the Germans were instrumental in keeping Missouri in the Union); Baltimore (home of H. L. Mencken, whose parents and relatives spoke German). But Texas was a major destination. The Herald Zeitung opened in 1852, and had a German-language section until 1964 (!). Prosit, Colonel Staudt! Es lebe New Braunfels! September 22, 2004
The Economists' Voice By Mike Rappaport This seems like it will be a great resource. With an all star cast of economist columnists, from both sides of the aisle, the new journal: is a non-partisan forum for economists to present innovative policy ideas or engaging commentary on the issues of the day. Readers include professional economists, lawyers, policy analysts, policymakers, and students of economics. Articles are short, 600-2000 words, and intended to contain deeper analysis than is found on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, but to be of comparable general interest. The Israeli Fight Against Terrorism By Mike Rappaport Take a look at this essay by Yossi Halevi and Michael Oren on how Israel has (so far) won the war against terrorism. There is plenty in it for hardliners and some for those who take a more moderate stance. The authors argue that the real hero turns out to be Arial Sharon. I would agree. His cleverness, flexibity, and focus on the essentials have been the key. In my view, no one from Labor would have been able to do it, nor would Benjamin Netanyahu, who appears to be better at engaging in debate than holding together a coalition and responding to real world problems. The last paragraph of the piece summarizes the lessons for the US: Americans would be wise to study this final lesson, too: Perhaps the greatest danger in fighting terrorism is the polarizing effect such a campaign can have—not just internationally, but domestically. To avoid this pitfall, a strong political consensus for military action is necessary. That means the president must actively reach out to domestic opposition. But American leaders must also heed Sharon's other lessons. That means an ability to endure criticism from abroad and even to risk international isolation, a willingness to define the war on terrorism as a total war, and a commitment to focus one's political agenda on winning, not on divisive or extraneous concerns. Fulfilling those conditions does not guarantee success. But it does make success possible--as Israel is, at great cost, showing the world.I agree that a national consensus is needed -- think how much easier Iraq would be with one -- but sadly that does not seem possible. And I would put most of the blame here on the Democrats who have been too consumed with Bush hatred to support his policies. Still, the President would have done better to have made more of an effort to seek the support of some of the more conservative Democrats -- the Joe Liebermans of the world. (He got Zell Miller already.) Should there be a second term for Bush, it is possible it might paradoxically be easier for him to get some Democrat support, since the Democrats will no longer expect to be running against him or Cheney in 2008. Don't get cocky By Tom Smith To make a long story short, Bush has to win in Florida to win, and polls there still show Kerry within the (realistically speaking) margin of error. We could be in for another mess in Florida. At least Ohio looks pretty good. Go Buckeyes! September 21, 2004
Egypt with snow By Tom Smith That's the description this blogger, an anonymous foreign service officer, gives to Canada, which he says has become a third world country. Very funny post. Check out this blog before the security section in the State Department shuts him down. Got it by chicagoboyz, also a great blog. Now that's what I'm talkin' about. And check this out. What a hoot! On that euro-paradise you've been hearing about . . . Tedious Andrew By Tom Smith Is it just me, or is Andrew Sullivan really tedious lately? I don't just mean all the gay stuff. I skip that anyway. It just seems to me to spends too much time and linkage sucking up to other famous quasi-bloggers. Like this. Sullivan says this piece is an example of why Jonah Goldberg is the most brilliant conservative writing today. Well, it's fine. I agree with it. But what is brilliant about it eludes me. You can read better stuff any day on any number of conservative blogs. Is Jonah more consistent, or something? I don't know. I suspect Sullivan is just sucking up to him because he's a player at NRO, which is still a major player in conservative politics. Though frankly, I'm not sure its status is justified by its content, except for the presence of Victor Hanson, who can publish anywhere. In a world where bottlenecks and gatekeepers are disintegrating fast, I'm not sure I would buy their stock. But anyway. Also, all Sullivan's deep concern about everything just seems a little drippy to me. He's very concerned about Iraq, like what's-her-name in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Frankly, I would be relieved to discover there was something about which he did not give a shit. Many things fall into the category for me, but then, I'm no Andrew Sullivan. Something about which I am deeply concerned. Also, his linkage never seems to dip very deep into the BSE (that's 'Blogospheric Entity,' a lovely term I coined myself). I don't expect him to get as far down the power law distribution as the RC, but he just seems to read the other 50K plus hits a day sites. How narrow. How snooty. How unbloggeriffic. Well, that's it; that's as mean as I feel like being for now. I used to think his site was so great, but it doesn't work for me anymore. I've moved on, I guess. If you can't call a terrorist a terrorist By Tom Smith . . . then why should we believe anything you say? Steyn out-steyns himself By Tom Smith Goodness. Steyn does things to Kerry I'm not sure there are words for. Bush's UN speech By Tom Smith Here it is, at C-Span (via LGF). LGF is right; Bush got a very chilly reception at the UN General Assembly. I guess they're mad at him for poking his nose into the so-called "genocide" in Dafur, as we neo-colonialist hegemonic power elites have a way of doing. As everybody knows, Dafur is just [insert intelligence-insulting, amoral, self-serving, racist, jargon-ridden, psuedo-explanation here]. Hmmmm. There's this. Who would have guessed terrorists took an unenlightened attitude toward race? I have one question that has been bothering me a little that maybe some of our African Muslim friends could answer for us. Is it OK to kill African Christians because they're Christian or because they're black? Or is it maybe both? Perhaps in its grandeur, the UN General Assembly could enlighten us. AND an alert reader reminds me that most of the victims in Dafur are not Christian but Muslim. The Christians being killed are in another part of Sudan. I was, however, just involved in a general sort of rant, noting that the Islamic terrorists are racist, in addition to their other faults. The conflict in Dafur is primarily, I'm told, not religiously motivated. Lots of other killing nearby, however, is. Faster than a U-turning Swiftboat . . . By Tom Smith It's Professor Estrich, saying it's time to move on! Excuse me for a moment while I roll around on the floor and choke with laughter. So, I take it the dirty tricks is not such a good idea after all? Am I following you? It's not time for the wrath of Democrats who aren't going to take it anymore? Dare we ask how it got to be time to move on so quickly? Is this a case of "The Blogosphere--she has no memory" or what? For those of you just joining us, the good Professor only recently penned this now infamous (but still pretty obscure) screed, in which she revealed that she and her Democratic friends were out for blood, hoping to bribe tattlers to tell all about W's inglorious past, everything from AWOL antics to illegally procured abortions, not because it was easy, but because it was the right thing to do. We are mean Democrats, hear us roar. But suddenly, all has changed. Just like that! A new dawn has dawned, a new day has dayed. Now that the dirt from the memo-gate hand grenade has exploded, lodging shrapnel in, to extend a metaphor, the collective Democratic hind-quarters, it's time to move on. But Susan, I'm not ready to move on! Couldn't we please have the Democrats try again, just one more time! There must be other stories out there that could be so unbelievably, spectacularly mismanaged that they could bring a major media institution to its knees, and kick the remaining life out of a floundering campaign! In fact, you must hurry, or Kerry-Edwards might just die of its own. You owe it to your fans. We haven't had this much fun since watching the anchor-persons' faces as they read the result in Bush v. Gore. Why do Islamofascist terrorists want women freed? By Tom Smith Oh, that's right! Two of them were the leading biological weapons experts for the Hussein regime! But that can't be the reason, because, as we all know (all together now) there were no weapons of mass destruction, and, there is no connection between Saddam and terrorism. What a relief to keep remembering that. It's just that those Islamofascists have such tender feelings toward the weaker sex. If you can't use them to make anthrax or Son-of-Smallpox, you can always turn them into walking bombs. Mainstream media looks at bloggers By Tom Smith You can't make this stuff up. Read this interview over at Powerline. And guess what, Gloria, computers don't have little guys inside them, either. View from Iraq By Tom Smith You may have seen this already, but I think it's worth posting here in full. [Addendum: Andrew Sullivan, who I guess doesn't know a lot of Leathernecks, says he can't "authenticate" this email. Well, I can Andrew. It was forwarded to me by a good friend and Navy wife who knew the Marine when he was posted in Lima.] It's a letter from a Marine officer posted now in Iraq. I got the letter from the wife of a Navy MD, mother of my 13 year old's best friend, and our very generous hostess when we visited Lima two summers ago for rainforest and high Andean adventure. The military being a small world, she knew the Marine when he was posted in Lima. Anyway, here's what he has to say: 17 September 2004 Al-Nasar Complex (FKA Camp Victory), Iraq PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO AS MANY PEOPLE YOU KNOW WHO WILL APPRECIATE IT AND PASS IT ON TO OTHERS. THIS NEWS NEEDS TO GET OUT..... A thought from Iraq - "Doom & Gloom about Iraq's future....I don't see it from where I'm sitting." [For those of you who haven't gotten my "Thoughts" before, I'm a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don't see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation - especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one's latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven't seen, or don't remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr. Beckwith. His experience is directly related to the situation here. You'll have a different perspective on Iraq after the movie is over.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq's future. CNN's website says, "[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was 'tenuous stability' and the worst case was civil war." That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency. From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn't the case. Let's lay out some background, first about the "National Intelligence Estimate." The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring - in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn't cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September. The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren't even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr's troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr's enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to "court" and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah - the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead. You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a "No-go" area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren't welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn't want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August. Boom, boom, just like that two major "hot spots" cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it - probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days - especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people's homes and lives. So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it's looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others. It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of "cutting our losses" and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war "Away" games are always preferable to "Home" games). Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here - not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It's terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we're doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week. Thanks for listening. Feedback is always welcome, though I can't promise an immediate response.... ADDENDUM . . . At the Major's request, I've removed his email address -- he's getting too many responses. He says they were (mostly) wonderful, but too much of a good thing. Ouch-o-rama By Tom Smith The IEM price graph of the winner-take-all presidential vote tells a story. I still tend to think the GOP is overconfident. Remember how Bush coasted into the last two weeks of Campaign 2000? Maybe Laura should follow him everywhere with a cane. Greatest living military historian on Iraq By Tom Smith Sensible as usual. Keegan sees disbanding the Iraqi army and police force as a major blunder, but says things could be a lot worse, and that the UK and US should stay the course. (via realclearpolitics.) Rathergate etc etc By Tom Smith I'm officially tired of Rathergate, CBS, and pajamas. However, if you still care, read this. The plot thickens; Kerry evildoers may be behind the dirty tricks. (via instapundit.) Lovely wife Jeanne really wants one of those "I'd Rather Be Blogging" onesies (baby underwear for you uninitiated) for 11 month old Mark. I'll try to get some pics of him in it and post them on my family blog. By then, the b-sphere will have moved on, probably. Oh well. I might get interested again if the trail of incompetence leads back to Professor and former Dean Estrich, who had us all quaking with fear at the onslaught of devlish back stabs about the descend upon poor W because the Democrats were really mad. I restate my point, if the Democrats can't even pull off a moderately successful political sandbagging, how can they be trusted to crush networks of evil terrorists, who are not as stupid as one would wish? G-d help me, I'm getting sucked into this story again . . . read this. September 20, 2004
Ilya Somin, Thanks By Mike Rappaport I wanted to thank Ilya Somin for his guest blogging the past week. Ilya provided some extremely interest pieces on a range of subjects. I think I agreed with nearly everything Ilya said, although as a Right Coaster who nonetheless grew up pretty close to Yankee Stadium, I can’t agree with his sentiments about the Red Sox. As Ilya will no doubt appreciate, one has to go back nearly to the time when there was a Czar of Russia to get to the last time that Boston won the World Series. While Putin may be attempting to become a new Czar, I don’t think either he, or Boston, is there yet. Aaron Director By Mike Rappaport One of the giants of Chicago Law and Economics died recently at 102. Director published very little but developed some extremely important ideas. This obituary from the Atlantic Blog explains one of his most important. Schwarzenegger Speaks By Gail Heriot Muscle men are not usually my type (and, in fairness, I am usually not their type either). But I am starting to have warm feelings for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over the weekend, for example, he vetoed a minimum wage bill. "Now is not the time to create barriers to our economic recovery or reverse the momentum we have generated," he said. "I want to create more jobs and make every California job more secure." Exactly, Arnold. Many politicians are afraid to do what they think is right in these situations for fear that they will be criticized as insensitive. In fact, I believe it's those who would raise minimum wage who are insensitive to the concerns of unskilled employees; they don't seem to care that unskilled jobs are lost when wages are artificially forced up. The minimum wage veto is not the only example of Schwarzengger's willingness to use his personal popularity to promote sound public policy. About a week ago, he endorsed Proposition 64, which, if passed, will restore the traditional common law requirement of standing to California unfair business practices law. The hallmark of a civil lawsuit is that it is a dispute in which a plaintiff asserts that the defendant has harmed him in some legally cognizable way. Ah .... but not in California. Alone among states, California allows anyone to sue a business, small or large, for unfair business practices; "standing" is no obstacle. A plaintiff need not be suing to protect his own interests; it's enough that he is seeking to protect some abstract interest of "the general public." In effect, every Californian is authorized to be a private attorney general roaming the state in search of wrongs that need righting. Who cares if he or anyone else has actually been hurt? That might have worked tolerably well back in the days when laws governing business were few in number and clearer in meaning. But in the modern regulatory state, it's difficult for anyone to be in perfect compliance with the law. Even lawyers don't know one-tenth of what's out there. California's freewheeling approach to standing has spawned a whole army of lawyers who specialize if finding some flaw (or arguable flaw) with some business's compliance and then shaking that business down for money. The Official California Voter Guide's Argument in Favor of Proposition 64 gives the following examples: "Hundreds of travel agents have been shaken down for not including their license number on their website. "Local homebuilders have been sued for using 'APR' in advertisements instead of spelling out 'Annual Percentage Rate.'" It also quotes from the following statement by Humberto Galvez of Santa Ana: "M y family came to this country to pursue the American Dream. We work hard to make sure our customers like the job we do. One day I got a letter from a law firm demanding $2,500. The letter didn't claim we broke the law, just that we might have and if we wanted to stop the lawsuit, we needed to send them $2,500. I called a lawyer who said it would cost even more to fight, so we sent money even though we'd done nothing wrong. It's just not right." I'm not familiar with Mr. Galvez's case in particular (or with the other cases cited in the argument), but it's consistent with the cases I have read and heard about. This a problem that needs fixing. I'll be interested in what California voters do in November. In the meantime, Schwarzenegger is looking more and more impressive. September 19, 2004
Left logic By Tom Smith Logic test of the day: Can you tell what makes this post at Crooked Timber silly? Time's up! The answer is, if a bunch of bloggers point out that documents are forgeries, and the documents really are forgeries, then that is not "spinning." That is pointing out a fact, which happens to be very embarrassing to CBS, and various other Democratic pundits who opined "Now we're really going to getcha!" after the world-historically, catastrophically mean Republican convention, the nastiest since the Big Bang. "Spin" is interpreting a fact in some more or less blatantly politicized way. You don't have to spin "Rathergate" or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps you'd like "the recent alleged forgery event involving CBS" better. Even if it is true (and in fine tradition, Crooked Timber does not even offer a rumor, merely that "Buckhead" is a well known Republican) that someone at the White House tipped off some guy in Atlanta (why him? Oh, no doubt there's some elaborate story for that. Stay tuned . . . ), so what? Is that what, cheating or something? It's an outrage, I tell you, an outrage! The White House dares tell bloggers that documents are fogeries! What's next? The Gestapo pounding on our doors in the middle of the night? Mind control? Flouridation? You've got to admire the logic, though. CBS does an attack story based on phony documents, and liberal bloggers accuse the White House of conspiring to defend the President. Well, I've got to go now. I see a big W projected by searchlight up on the clouds, so it's time to pick up my W-phone and get my secret instructions. Is this the year the Red Sox end the Curse of the Bambino? By Ilya Somin Although my time guest-blogging here is drawing to a close, as a Bostonian I cannot leave without saying a word about my beloved Boston Red Sox. The Sox lost 2 of 3 to the Yankees this weekend, and may not win the division title. But they will almost certainly take the Wild Card playoff spot. Baseball playoff predictions are rarely accurate, because pretty much anything can happen in a short playoff series, and the painful history of the Red Sox proves that pretty much anything does. However, this year will probably be the Red Sox' best chance in a long time to break the Curse and take revenge on the Yankees in the process. Although the Sox are a few games behind in the standings, there's a lot of evidence that they're actually the better team. They have outscored their opposition by some 70 runs more than the Yankees this year. Run differential is the most important indicator of a team's underlying strength, according to most experts. Furthermore, the Yankees' main advantages over the Sox - superior back of the rotation starters and long relievers - won't matter as much in a playoff series as in the regular season, because in the playoffs a team's top 3 starters and closer pitch the lion's share of the innings. Of course, we Red Sox fans can't get too confident, if only because those of us who lived through 1986 and 2003 can never forget about THE CURSE. But we do have as good a shot as anyone this year. And for all you West Coasters, remember that you don't have be a Red Sox fan to root against the Yankees! Rathergate: The Aftermath By Gail Heriot NewsMax.com is reporting that the CBS Radio affiliate in Seattle has fired talk show host Brian Maloney for saying that Dan Rather should resign or be forced out on account of Rathergate. Ugly. (Hat tip: Ratherbiased). September 18, 2004
I knew it! By Tom Smith Beer is good for you. Even better than wine? Now this is part of why the UK is great. Of course, banning fox hunting is a disgrace. Just so you know, I lived in England from 1979-81 where I blah, blah, blah. Sometimes I really miss England intensely. What I miss are the pubs, where you can sit for hours, talk to strangers, read a book. It is also a nation of walkers. There are national trails with easements across private land, where you can follow Roman roads or get lost in endless heaths and hills. Then finally walk out and find a pub. The high cuisine is foreign but the low cuisine is great. Fried eggs, sausage, camp coffee, tea that could dissolve the paint off a battleship. English women are not unlike what you see in the WWII movies, smart, outspoken, feminine . . . I haven't been back to England in 20 years, and I'm due. My health comes first. Does the Electoral College Make Sense? (Part III) By Gail Heriot I got quite a few thoughtful responses to my earlier postings (Tuesday and Saturday) on the Electoral College. Thanks to everyone who wrote me. Here are some of the arguments and some of my responses. I'm not going to be able to deal with everything in this posting, so look for Part IV later. Some of my correspondents pointed out that the Electoral College was part of a fair bargain at the Constitutional Convention driven by delegates from small states, who were concerned about the potential dominance of Virginia and other large states in the national arena. Without such safeguards, those states might not have joined the Union. All that is true. But it is not an argument for the Electoral College's continuation if members of the current (or some future) generation undertake to abolish it pursuant to constitutionally approved procedures (not that I'm holding my breath). Article V, which permits amendments to the Constitution upon adoption of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification of three-quarters of the states, is also part of the bargain struck between the delegates from small and large states. If they had considered the continuation of the Electoral College to be crucial, they could have exempted it from amendment. They did not. At this point, therefore, the debate over the Electoral College should be on its own merits. That's the system the framers put in motion. Another correpondent took the position that the Electoral College is a protection against mob rule. In the modern world, that kind of argument doesn't get made much (perhaps because the "mob" doesn't like to hear it!), but it is certainly a sentiment that would have resonated with many members of the founding generation, who frequently voiced concerns over the excesses of democracy. Those men surely would have had sympathy for a system in which Electors are chosen on account of their wisdom and experience and in turn those Electors employ their own best judgment in choosing the President. But the modern Electoral College does not function that way. Rather than exercise independent judgment, the Electors cast their votes for whomever the ordinary voters of their state have directed them to. (The so-called "Faithless Elector" is considered a scoff-law.) Hence, if mob rule is a problem, it is still a problem under the Electoral College system. Another suggested that the Electoral College insures that the winning candidate has widespread support, not just support in a particular geographic area. The problem I have with this argument is that I'm not sure it's really true (and if it is true, I am not sure it is an important enough consideration to deviate from our usual standard of election by a majority of popular votes). On the first point, it seems to me that both a straight popular vote system and the Electoral College system can elect a President whose support is concentrated in a particular region. Here are some hypotheticals that show both problems: (1) Suppose the country can be divided into four equal regions--North, East, South and West, each composed of 15 politically similar states. The Tory Party candidate has strong support(66 2/3%) in three regions, North East and South, but has no support whatever in the West. the Whig Party candidate can muster only 33 1/3% of the vote in the N0rth, East and South, but every man, woman and child in the West favors his candidacy. And by the way the populations (and the electoral votes) of our hypothetical regions are exactly equal except that the West has one more registered voter who makes it to the polls. The popular vote thus goes to the Whig Party candidate, while the Electoral vote goes overwhelmingly to the Tory Party candidate. I can certainly see why the Electoral College might be a good thing here. Widespread support may have some independent value in addition to popular vote. I am less sure that I would be enthused about the result yielded by the Electoral College if the Whig party candidate got 48% of the vote in the North, East, and South. (2) And here's another hypothetical that I think is a little closer the actual political landscape of our time. Suppose again the country can be divided into four regions--North, East, South and West--but this time the West has two more Electoral votes than the other regions, simply because it has more (and hence smaller) states in it. In addition, this time there are three candidates--a not uncommon occurrence these days. In the North and the South, the Tory Party candidate is favored over the Whig Party candidate and Ross Perot (who is commonly thought to take more votes from the Tory candidate than the Whig candidate) by a margin of 61% to 24% to 15%. In the East and West, the Whig Party narrowly defeats him with 40% of the vote going to the Tory, 41% to the the Whig Party and 9% to Ross Perot. Compared to Hypothetical #1, these numbers strike me a plausible--different candidates have different appeal in different regions, but not wildly different Yet they result in an Electoral College victory for the Whig Party candidate despite the fact (1) he seriously lost the popular vote and (2) his support is largely confined to two regions of the country. It's true that the Electoral College can, given the right circumstances, prevent a candidate whose support is largely confined to a particular region from winning the election even though he has won a majority of popular votes (though whether this is bad or good may depend on the degree to which the "regional favorite" carried the popular vote). But it can also have a far more pernicious effect--causing a candidate to win who has no substantial support in half the country and who came up massively short on the popular vote too. At least under the popular vote system you won't have that kind of massive legitimacy crisis. I'll mention some of the arguments that I find a little more persuasive next time. September 17, 2004
Political Ignorance in the Arab World By Ilya Somin Iraqi blogger Zeyad on the reasons for widespread anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in the Arab world: Try to imagine it this way: starting with your early childhood you hear adults around you blaming 'Jews', 'Israel', 'Zionists', 'infidels', 'colonialism', 'imperialism', 'the West' for all the ills of your society. At school you are taught a flowery refined version of Arab and Islamic history. One in which the Ummah was the center of the world. You revel in the glories of your ancestors ..... You then learn about the conspiracies against the Islamic Empire and its divine message for humanity. Colonialism. How the west came to enslave your countrymen and plunder your riches for centuries. You look around you at the Arab and Islamic world today and you wonder what went wrong. How can such a glorious 'chosen' Ummah suffer such a pathetic fate. Read his whole post! As Zeyad notes, "the process above is not exclusive to Arabs or Muslims." We faced a very similar problem during the Cold War, when the societies of the Soviet bloc were probably even more closed than those of the Arab Middle East today. Just as during the Cold War we found ways to cultivate the Sakharovs, Lech Walesas, and Vaclav Havels of the Communist bloc and spread their message to their people, so today we should do the same thing with the Arab world's Zeyads. And we must do a far better job of it than the we have so far. Freedom of Speech for People Other Than Politicians and Dan Rather By Mike Rappaport Stephen Moore, the President of the Club for Growth, defends 527 ads. How to think like a terrorist By Tom Smith Juan Cole on documents found in 9/11 highjacker's luggage. SORRY! Here's the link. It really is worth reading. It suggests the terrorists are to Islam what the Branch Davidians are to Christianity, a crazy splinter group. I'm not sure I completely buy it, but interesting. Also, interesting insights into why the terrorists live dissolute lives (in addition to being scumbags, that is), how they use mysticism, and other such matters. Maybe Professor Cole should take a temporary gig with the CIA. Deja Vu By Mike Rappaport Scientists are beginning to study deja vu experiences. (I thought I had posted on this already, but I guess not.) Although their work is interesting, I still prefer to think about deja vus the way Trinity explains it: "A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something." September 16, 2004
Political Ignorance and the Presidential Election II: Things the Voters Don't Know that Might Hurt Them By Ilya Somin Although the current presidential election has stimulated tremendous involvement on the part of political activists, most of the public remains shockingly ignorant about many of the major issues involved. Here are a few survey results from polls taken during the last few months, taken from a forthcoming Policy Analysis that I am writing for the Cato Institute I will e-mail cites to specific polls to anyone who contacts me and wants them: 70% of American adults don't know that Congress passed a prescription drug benefit (54% actually believe it DIDN'T, while the rest say they "don't know"). 68% don't know that Social Security is one of the two largest expenditure categories in the federal budget. 65% don't know that Congress passed a ban on partial birth abortion (48% actually believe it DIDN'T, while 17% say they don't know). 64% don't know that there has been a net increase in jobs this year(61% believe there has been a net decrease). 61% don't know that increased domestic spending has made at least "some" contribution to the increase in the deficit in the Bush years (57% believe that it made little or no contribution). I could list many more figures like this, but the key point is that the majority of the public is simply unaware of some of the most important new policies of the last 4 years. They don't realize, for instance, that the Bush administration has presided over a massive increase in domestic spending, of comparable magnitude to the increase in defense spending. Moreover, most are unaware of the every existence of the administration's prescription drug bill, not to even mention the fact that it is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years, and even more thereafter. Being ignorant of the very existence of massive increases in domestic spending, the public can't even begin to hold politicians accountable for dealing with the serious issues this spending raises. An obvious counterargument is that voters are focused on the war rather than on domestic policy. Perhaps, but runaway domestic entitlement spending is the greatest longterm threat to America's ability to continue bear the fiscal burden of the large defense establishment necessary to fight the war. Moreover, even in wartime, domestic policy remains important in its own right. After all, the costs of the vast increases in entitlement spending will be borne by taxpayers for decades. It would be easy to blame the media for this widespread ignorance. But whatever the sins of Dan Rather & Co., they did provide extensive coverage of many of the issues, including the prescription drug bill, Bush's spending increases, and even this year's job gains. The problem is not that the information isn't out there, but that most of public isn't paying attention to it. What they don't know is all too likely to hurt them - and all of us. You be the judge! By Tom Smith Here's your chance to be a judge and help out the moot court program at USD law school! OPPORTUNITY TO BE JUDGE AN APPELLATE ARGUMENT (TORTS PROBLEM) No need for experience in Torts. Any attorney or judge is welcome to volunteer. Volunteer Dates: Wed, Sept 22 and Thurs Sept 23 evening. Prior to the scheduled arguments, a board member will contact the volunteer judges to confirm participation in the tournament. Judges will then receive the tournament bench brief and detailed instructions to help prepare for the arguments. On the day of the arguments, judges need to arrive at the downtown Superior Courthouse by 4:45 pm. Dinner & refreshments will be provided. Prior to the start of oral arguments, we will host a brief judges meeting to highlight the relevant logistical details. Each judge will serve on a three judge panel and hear two rounds of oral arguments. The entire judging experience should not last more than three hours. If interested in judging, please fill out the interest form online at www.sandiego.edu/~mcourt and submit it to us via email or fax as soon as possible. Please feel free to sign up for more than one night of judging or more than one tournament. We will work to accommodate all preferences and will let you know which tournaments you have been selected for. Alumni Torts Tournament: This is our annual intramural tournament that gives individual competitors the opportunity to argue a case involving challenging issues in tort law. This year’s case, Ashley Mercer v Dennyland, Inc., arises from an alleged injury a guest of a local amusement park suffers after riding the park’s main roller coaster, the MindBender. The main issues involve whether common care liability should be the appropriate standard of care for amusement parks and whether the amusement park employees falsely imprisoned the guest. Comical Relief By Maimon Schwarzschild Has anyone made the obvious point that Dan Rather seems more and more like his professional colleague Comical Ali? Yet more martial arts By Tom Smith My martial arts dojo has a new website, and here it is. This way when I bloviate on about jujitsu and the like, you'll know what I'm talking about. I feel this dojo is a real find. The most important form of self-defense you can practice in taking up the martial arts is financial self-defense. Martial arts schools typically want you to sign long term contracts that are models of one-sided, scary adhesion contracts. Often you actually contract with third party collection agencies. You get dinged with new fees and charges every time you turn around. More threats to your wallet than bad guys in a Jackie Chan movie. Not pretty. Soke Scott has no long term contracts, no testing fees, no uniform you are required to buy from him (though he'll sell you one if you want, at the Century catalog cost) and none of that other BS. That speaks more than lots of yak yak about the soul of the fist or the fist of the dragon or whatever. Honesty, value, all that good stuff. Also, there's no substitute for a deep knowledge of several arts, and he has that in spades. Almost every week, I am impressed by the subtlety and detail that he conveys in the techniques. He is a 7th degree black belt and has worked with several prominent grand masters, but beyond all that, which I'm not qualified to judge anyway, his knowledge comes through in his instruction. The dojo is Christian in philosophy, which is not oppressive or heavy-handed. You want to have some strong ethical foundation if you're studying ways to kill people, which is what a good part of it is, and Christianity is as good as any. Soke Scott is into applied psychology, so the vast majority of it is more psychology than religion. How to be disciplined, how to form good habits, break bad ones, etc. "7 habits of highly effective people," not fire and brimstone. There is a lecture every session while we stretch, which gives you something to think about besides how stiff you are. It's all extremely organized and structured, which is good. Now we've been studying knife and stick (or escrima) for some weeks. I'm not crazy about knives, but boy can you hurt with and be hurt by them. More on this later. For now, just remember, grasshopper, if someone has a knife, run away as fast as you can. September 15, 2004
A Truthful Fraud By Mike Rappaport I watched the Dan Rather 60 Minutes segment tonight and it made me decide to go public with some information. I have a memo, signed by Dan Rather, acknowledging that he knew that the documents submitted to CBS concerning Bush's national guard service were likely to be fraudulent, but he did not care. Dan Rather is toast! Of course, this memo may be a fraud, but, according to Rather, that does not matter. The question is whether the information in the documents is accurate and there is a lot of evidence to support it. Should CBS really allow an anchor to stay on the air when there is a document, with his name on it, admitting his participation in a fraudulent scheme, and when no one has proved the assertions in the document are inaccurate. Political Ignorance and the Presidential Election I: Bush, Kerry, and Vietnam By Ilya Somin Having blogged about terrorism and war, I will now turn to almost equally depressing (but also equally timely) topic: political ignorance. Many observers have pointed out how strange it is that the current presidential campaign is so focused on Bush and Kerry's actions during the Vietnam War, 30 years ago, rather than on the many pressing issues we face today. A possible explanation is the political ignorance of much of the electorate. Decades of research show that most citizens know very little about politics and public policy. For my paper summarizing some of this evidence, see here. For example, most Americans don't know the name of their US representative, which branch of government is responsible for which issues, and the basic differences between liberal and conservative ideologies. Most voters know little about the details of Bush's policies and Kerry's proposals, and might be unable to understand those details even if they did know them. Thus, candidates have an incentive to focus on symbolic issues that even ignorant voters can easily understand, such as Kerry's war hero status, or the charge that Bush was "AWOL" at the National Guard. A voter with little knowledge of specific issues could rationally conclude that a candidate with a good military record would, other things equal, make a better president than one with a bad one. Unfortunately, while it may be rational for an individual voter to act this way, the ultimate result is a presidential campaign that focuses far more on tangential but easy to understand matters than on vital but complicated ones. More to come! Phoenix Park Murders By Maimon Schwarzschild No scalpels whatsoever: just knives, deployed in conventional stabbing-murder fashion. The Phoenix Park murders in Dublin were committed on May 6, 1882, by members of the "Invincibles", a small Fenian splinter group. The murderers' real target had been Thomas Henry Burke, Permanent Undersecretary in the Irish Office, himself an Irish Catholic, hence a traitor in the eyes of the Invincibles. The Chief Secretary, Burke's boss, Lord Frederick Cavendish, was walking with Burke when the killers struck, and he was murdered as well. The killings horrified Victorian Dublin: supporters of Home Rule, in general, certainly did not want to be associated with terrorism. If I may add . . . By Tom Smith Maimon, didn't those Irish Republicans not stab the government officials to death, but actually slice them to death with surgical scalpels? Our readers want to know these things. Or is that another famous Irish Republican atrocity I'm thinking of? New Year's Thoughts By Maimon Schwarzschild Very interesting reflections on the Jewish New Year (which begins tonight) from Dennis Prager:
And to all RightCoast readers so minded, a very happy New Year and new year! Muchos anos! (That's Judeo-Spanish for "[Live] many years!") Rather Be In Ireland? By Maimon Schwarzschild Connoiseurs of forgery, and of Irish history, will recall the Piggott Forgeries. In 1882, two senior government officials were stabbed to death in broad daylight by Republicans in Dublin. Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish home rule movement, a member of Parliament in Westminster, and a steadfast opponent of violence, offered to resign from parliament in protest against "these vile murders" -- an offer declined by Prime Minister Gladstone. Five years later, in 1887, the Times of London reported the existence of letters suggesting that Parnell had been complicit in the murders. A Commission of Inquiry was created, and it emerged that the letters had been forged by Richard Piggott, an "embittered" anti-Parnell journalist. Piggott then did the honourable thing and committed suicide. It should be added that the London Times had not been advised in advance by its own "experts" that the letters were probably forgeries. Nor did the Times "stand by" the forgeries when they were revealed as such, nor accuse those who vindicated Parnell of being "political operatives". Furthermore, nothing whatsoever was said about pyjamas (or pajamas). Hat tip to Peter Connolly of Washington, D.C. September 14, 2004
Brian, oh Briaannnn! Don't go there! By Tom Smith Brian over a Crooked Timber is making a mistake. He is toeing the water at the edge of Rathergate, thinking about jumping in and defending the memos, uh, sort of. This is not a good time to join the argument. The memos' state most resembles a rotten apple that has been twirling around in the garbage disposal for a few minutes and is just about to slip down the drain. If you're going to use philosophy to defend them, some of the following arguments might be more promising: CBS does not really exist. Dan Rather has no mind. Nothing matters anyway, so who cares. The ends justify the means. Time is an illusion, so 1972 and 2004 are the same anyway, as are their typewriters. It's sad, but it's one of those things, like Alger Hiss really being a Communist spy. He was, you know. Sorry. And Hollywood. Just crawling with Reds. It was! And Lillian Hellman never went to Berlin. Adlai Stevenson was no intellectual either, just a snob. But I should stop. Now I'm just being mean. But those memos? We're talking 3 dollar bill and Groucho where the dead President should be. He who fights and runs away, etc. etc. Now that's some useful philosophy. Iraqi WMDs Reconsidered By Ilya Somin There's a lot to criticize about the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq War. But perhaps no other problem has been as damaging politically as the failure to find WMDs. As prominent liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, puts it, "If a chamber of horrors had been found in Iraq's WMD factories, Americans would have judged the war a success even if the aftermath would have been as bloody and chaotic as it is today. For most, the necessity of the invasion would have been vindicated." For Marshall and many others, the failure to find WMDs has discredited what they see as the main rationale for the war. This widely accepted conventional ignores two critical facts: 1) US forces DID find an active WMD development program that posed a serious longterm threat, even assuming there were no actual weapons stockpiles. 2) WMDs have in fact been found in Iraq, though in far smaller quantitites than was expected. Let's take point 1 first. David Kay, head of the US government Iraq Survey Group created to investigate Iraqi WMD programs after the war, testified to Congress that "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002." I won't go through all the details here, but see the link above for some of them. There is much more in the ISG report submitted to Congress in January, which unfortunately I have not been able to find online. The bottom line: Iraq was working on a wide enough range of WMDs that Kay - while fully acknowledging that the prewar intelligence was seriously "mistaken" - concluded that Saddam was "far more dangerous than even we anticipated." Why should we care about WMD programs that had not (yet) been turned into actual weapons stockpiles? There are many reasons, but perhaps the most important is the fact that they could be turned into actual weapons whenever Saddam found it convenient to do so - especially if, as was likely to occur, the UN sanctions regime began to weaken under pressure from France and Russia. Furthermore, even simple R&D could potentially be transferred to terrorists in ways that would make it easier for them to make their own weapons. An active WMD program that can be converted into weapons in relatively short order is only marginally less dangerous than an already existing stockpile of WMDs. Ironically (in view of Bush's prewar belief that the actual stockpiles were there), the point at which a rogue state has a WMD program but few or no actual WMDs may well be the best time to attack it, since an attack after WMDs have already been deployed creates a serious risk that the enemy will use them. Point 2 is also significant. Although it was only briefly reported by the media, Coalition forces did in fact WMDs in Iraq on two separate occasions this year: In May, US troops found an artillery shell filled with sarin gas, and in June Polish forces found two shells filled with the deadlier cyclosarin. Even relatively small amounts of these nerve agents can be used to kill large numbers of people. More importantly - while the jury is still out, it is difficult to believe that Saddam's prewar stockpile was actually limited to these three weapons. If you were the Iraqi dictator, would you really get rid of all your other WMDs, but keep three artillery shells? Wouldn't you rather keep your last remaining cache of sarin (if it really was the last) in a more easily usable and/or more difficult to detect form? The evidence from the ISG and the sarin finds by no means refutes all the many arguments against the war. But it does punch a big hole in the claim most often heard from war critics: that the failure to find WMDs shows that Saddam's WMD program was not a real threat. The Bush administration bought into flawed intelligence and failed to adequately consider the possibility that we would find WMD programs in Iraq but few or no actual weapons. They deserve at least some of the resulting political damage. Unfortunately, however, there are far larger issues at stake than Bush's reputation, and that is why it is essential we put the WMD issue in proper perspective. What can I say? By Tom Smith I always liked that REM song: That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock,speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government forhire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furiesbreathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tetheredcrop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves itsown needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and thereverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, brightlight, feeling pretty psyched. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. Reading Cass Sunstein here made me think of it. Does the Electoral College Make Sense? (Part II) By Gail Heriot On Saturday, I posted an item critiquing the arguments for the Electoral College made in an OpinionJournal.com editorial entitled, “Electoral College Mischief: How to Make the 2000 Florida Brouhaha Look Like a Kerfuffle.” I continue to be unconvinced that the Electoral College is a good thing. I did, however, find OpinionJournal.com's view on whether the Electoral College will in fact be abolished interesting and plausible. “The effort to institute direct popular election of the President is also likely to go nowhere. That's because the Electoral College benefits two groups of states--sparsely populated ones, whose representation in the College is disproportionately high relative to their populations, and closely divided "swing" states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where both parties have a decent shot at winning. “Based on 2000 Census data and election results, only 11 states are both populous and politically monolithic enough that their influence would grow with popular election of the President: California, Texas, New Yo rk, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Indiana and Maryland. Amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College would require the assent of 38 state legislatures, so at least 27 of them would have to vote against the interests of their own states.” I’m not sure that I agree with the point precisely, but it sounds close to right. Large swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania would indeed be acting against interest to give up the huge advantage they get in securing promises of pork and other favors from candidates. But as to small states, the issue may be a bit more mixed–at least if short-run interests dominate the political calculations. My suspicion is that only small Republican states (e.g. Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming) would have clear reason to support the Electoral College. Small Democratic states (e.g. Vermont and Hawaii) may have their vote count disproportionately vis-a-vis larger states, but their advantage is cancelled out by the advantage gained by the more numerous small Republican states, so they might well be willing to give up their advantage. But if I’m right on that, then larger Republican states like Georgia, North Carolina and Georgia would likely see the retention of the Electoral College as in their interest. Either way, it’s hard to muster the 38 states necessary to amend the Constitution. My hope, however, is that Republicans don’t convince themselves that the Electoral College is a good thing simply because it happens to give them a slight advantage given the current political landscape. As far as I can see, it isn’t. It’s just a historical oddity–nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to be enamored of either, particularly given its unattractive tendency to produce pork for swing states. The time may come one day when the right thing to do is let it go–perhaps in trade for something that is more important. Right Charge, Wrong Country By Mike Rappaport Since 9-11, many liberal and left wing commentators have made various charges against the US: It provoked the 9-11 attacks through misdeeds, it used the attacks to undermine democracy and civil liberties at home, and it used the terrorism to fight a war for its own self interest of securing control over Iraqi oil. While these charges are largely baseless, there is a country where similar charges would make more sense: Russia. Many people believe that Russia's rule in Chechnya has been horrific over the years, that Putin is attempting to use the terrorist attacks in Beslan to seize greater political control, and that Russia's ultimate aim is to ensure that it can continue to dominate Chechnya to its own advantage. Sadly, though, the critics don't talk too much about Russia. September 13, 2004
Does He Mean What I Think He Means? By Mike Rappaport In Brian Leiter's absence, there have been some pretty disconcerting posts from his guest bloggers, but this one crosses the line. Benjamin Hellie titles his post, "On winning the cold war" and then writes "Well, at least freedom for Russia was a positive outcome, right?" While I certainly agree that Putin's rule is quite troublesome, he seems to be suggesting that nothing else was positive from ending the cold war. Let's be clear: Ending the enslavement of Eastern Europe was a massive human good. Benjamin Hellie should clarify his position. He should make clear that he agrees that freedom for Eastern Europe was a good or defend this moral outrage. Why Rather is wrong By Tom Smith Here is RatherBiased.com 22 point rebuttal of Herr Rather's rather pathetic defense of his documents' authenticity. It's pretty crushing. By that I mean completely devastating. It has lots of those, make sure the other guy is dead moves, along the lines of "even if the Texas Guard happened to have a specialized type composing machine, it could still not have produced the documents for the following 7 reasons . . . " That is to say, they don't just kill Rather's argument, they do a King Edward on Braveheart thing to it. Not pretty. If you read the whole thing, you may need professional help. I did, and I may. On the other hand, you probably need it less than a certain leading news anchor person. This is starting to get ridiculous, I know. It's rather like the crop circles debate, where some scientists give 328 reasons why, no, the flattened crops could not have been caused by microwave lasers or ultrasonic energy bursts, but are more consistent with the lonely guy with a 2x4 and a rope hypothesis. But no matter. It's up to the scientists to prove it wasn't ET, and the Hampshire Extra-Terrestrial Fellowship isn't really listening. BTW when I was in college I met Edward R. Murrow's protege Charles Collingswood, whom some of you oldtimers may have heard of. He was a nice man and could certainly hold his liquor, but an astute observer of anything, he was not. I know Murrow was a brave man and said "This is London" in a thrilling way, but could we agree to stop saying "The tradition of Edward R. Murrow blah, blah, blah . . ." I'm not sure he would have performed any better than Rather under the circumstances. Just a cranky thought. Look at Walter Cronkite. AND you must read this very important essay that may explain the weirdness going on at CBS. It makes sense. At NRO. When Terrorists Have a Just Cause By Ilya Somin Many acts of terrorism are not only despicable in themselves, but are also intended to promote an evil political agenda. Certainly that is true of Al Qaeda's plan to use terrorism to establish an Islamofascist caliphate spanning the Muslim world. But terrorism is a means, not a goal, so it can be used to advance just causes as well as unjust ones. For example, Russia's long history of oppressing the Chechens arguably justifies Chechen terrorists' demand for independence. Similarly, there is a strong argument (one I agree with) that France's law banning the wearing of head scarves by Muslim students is an indefensible violation of religious freedom. The abolition of this law is, of course, demanded by terrorists who recently took two French journalists hostage in Iraq. The fact that the terrorists' demands may be just does not in any way excuse their actions. But it does pose a difficult dilemma. If governments give in to any terrorist demands, including just ones, this creates an obvious incentive for future terrorism - including by groups with evil causes. If, on the other hand, the government keeps current policies in place in order to avoid giving in to terrorism, then an unjust policy is perpetuated. The same point applies to third party observers such as the media, international organizations, and political activists. If, for example, human rights activists call on Russia to grant Chechnya independence, this might be seen as urging concessions to terrorism. Indeed, one of the reasons why terrorists engage in terrorism in the first place is in order to attract attention to their cause from the media and the international community. Note that even if the government changes its unjust policies or third parties condemn those policies for reasons having nothing to do with the actions of terrorists, the terrorists themselves might still believe that their strategy has worked - and therefore try to repeat the "success" in the future. How do we solve the conundrum? There may not be any definitive solution, but here are a few tentative suggestions. 1. The elimination of the unjust policy can be combined with a stepped-up military offensive against the terrorists. This approach might reduce the chance that the change in policy will be perceived as a concession to terrorism. Such a strategy was consciously adopted Israeli government when it coupled its decision to withdraw from Gaza (although the Israelis understandably don't believe that they were wrong to occupy Gaza in the first place, an issue I won't try to address here) with a massive attack on the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, including killing its two top leaders. "Israeli officials . . . said they hope a string of military successes to show that the militant group was not driving it out of the coastal strip." 2. Delaying changes in the policy in question to ensure that they are not adopted soon after a terrorist attack. This, of course, has the cost of continuing the unjust policy longer than might otherwise be the case. But it might still be preferable to either an immediate change in policy or sticking to the status quo indefinitely. 3. The media, human rights activists, and international organizations should ensure that causes promoted by means of terrorism do not get more attention and support than equally worthy causes promoted by legitimate means. For example, even those who believe that the Palestinian cause is just should work to ensure that it not be given greater priority than that of, for example, the Tibetans - a people victimized by a brutal occupation who nonetheless have not resorted to terrorism to combat it. Indeed, in cases where terrorism is broadly supported by the group the terrorists are acting to "help," we should consider giving that group's cause LOWER priority than it might deserve otherwise. If this strategy is firmly in place, over time terrorists might be convinced that their efforts are futile. I don't underestimate the difficulties involved in getting the media and the international community to adopt this norm. But we should at least make a start. The above list is far from exhaustive, and may not be appropriate to every case. More needs to be done to address the dilemma created by terrorists who have a just cause. Sadly, the problem is unlikely to go away anytime soon! The Blogosphere as a Truth Detector By Mike Rappaport Lately, there has been a great deal written in the blogosphere about how it can detect inaccurate information. Witness not only the posts on Rathergate, but also this one from Andrew Sullivan about Shattered Glass. Part of the reason that the blogosphere is good at detecting inaccuracy is that there are a large number of bloggers who have access to disparate bits of information. The blogosphere then coordinates and transmits this information. It is a little like (not exactly like) Hayek's theory of a market as a information coordination mechanism. But there is another advantage of the blogosphere. Bloggers are generally required to link to their sources. Readers can then easily check to determine whether the source supports their claims. How could newspapers and networks provide the same accuracy check? Of course, editors are supposed to do that, but editors are, well, human. What if journalists were required by journalistic standards to have a link to their written notes from their interview with a source and were required to post an audio file of their recorded interviews? That would do much to stop fabrications before they occur. Which state has the biggest percentage saying they will vote for Nader? By Tom Smith My home state of Idaho, at 6 percent, at least according to this poll. No idea why. Maybe hight percentage of environmental tree-hugger sorts realizing there's no point voting for Kerry in Idaho? Democrats who would vote for Kerry, except they live in Sun Valley and know him? General Idaho weirdness? Also, Idaho's numbers seem to add up to much less than 100 percent than do other states. Why? Some places pollsters won't go? Beau Grits not on the response form? Curious. Glen Reynolds in a suit, sitting in tidy house By Tom Smith Here is Glen, in a suit, and sitting in a tidy house. I actually do frequently blog in my pajamas, which in fact are either nylon warm-up pants and/or boxer shorts, and T-shirts. And my house is clean, but quite untidy. This nothing for a blogger to be ashamed of. Is Professor Reynolds trying to imply that the rest of us are slobs? Provenance of Beslan monsters By Tom Smith Debka on Beslan. Interesting and important. Is it true? Hard to say, but they are least seem to know a lot more than the MSM who's too busy telling us whom not to blame to give us any facts. Debka on where the monsters of Beslan came from By Tom Smith According to debka.com, Islamofascist terrorism is rearing its ugly head in new places in the Caucuses. It's not just the Chechens anymore. It had to happen By Tom Smith Here it is. It's all Rathergate, all the time. A blog, devoted entirely to the evolving scandal at CBS. It's a good thing, because now that I am satisfied the docs are fake, it's time to move on, even as I hope CBS remains mired in it for a while. I heard a hint of a new line of defense that is particularly rich, that may raise its ugly and pathetic head soon. It goes, "yes, the documents are fake in a sense, but actually they are accurate transcriptions of other documents that are Out There Somewhere. Our Unnamed Source assures us they are accurate transscriptions." Hooookay. Ma, quick pluckin' that chicken and come to the wireless! CBS done got a new story for us, and it's summin'! All the way from New York City! Rathergate as Agincourt By Mike Rappaport The blogosphere as the longbow. I love these stories about bloggers defeating main stream media, and how the world is changing. If the blogosphere does defeat CBS on this one, it will be something of a double victory. Had the blogosphere not kept the Swiftboat case alive, it is not clear CBS would have been desparate enough to go with these fraudulent documents. Thus, the CBS story may be the result of main stream media's frustration at not controlling the news previously. Beware of a bear that is trapped, though. I fear there are going to be some awful October (or November) Surprises this year. September 12, 2004
Hello! By Ilya Somin Hello Right Coast readers! For the next week, I will be the East Coast (Or is it now Left Coast?) guest blogger here. I am a law professor at George Mason Law School in Arlington, Virginia. My academic work is primarily in the fields of constitutional law, property law, and political participation. I am currently working on a book entitled Democracy and the Problem of Political Ignorance, to be published by the University of Michigan Press. Check out my website here. I will be posting on some issues related to my areas of real or imagined expertise, as well as some other matters that I find interesting despite not having any relevant credentials. Stay tuned! Our First Guest Blogger: Ilya Somin By Mike Rappaport I am happy to announce The Right Coast's first guest blogger, Ilya Somin. Ilya is a law professor (what else?) from George Mason Law School. He has both a law degree and a doctorate in political science. Welcome, Ilya, to The Right Coast. Dowd speaks By Tom Smith It's sort of fascinating to watch a really medicore mind at work. Here's the Dowdette on Republicans as cowboys, again. Hugh Hewitt, journalist By Tom Smith Really good post over at HH's site. Excellent summary on the state of play on Rathergate, and very good reflections on the significance of the story for journalist in old and new forms. The link to the New York Times story should be followed. It looks like Kerry is putting his hopes on Ohio and Florida now; the map of battleground states has shrunk. Even NYT thinks so (I'm applying the admission against interest principle here). HH is also right about the North Korea explosion. I don't believe the line from the Pentagon that it's "no big deal." Maybe it is just a forest fire; I just mean the DOD statement adjusts my beliefs in neither direction. Maybe in the future bloggers (or whatever they/we are called then) will have the capability to second guess evaluations of sattelite imagery and not just typefaces. Today CBS, tomorrow the Pentagon. September 11, 2004
Yet more fontgate By Tom Smith This flash animation makes several points clearly. (disclosure: this is a pj post) In Memoriam By Tom Smith Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins wrote the following poem about 9/11: The Names Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night. A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze, And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows, I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened, Then Baxter and Calabro, Davis and Eberling, names falling into place As droplets fell through the dark. Names printed on the ceiling of the night. Names slipping around a watery bend. Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream. In the morning, I walked out barefoot Among thousands of flowers Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears, And each had a name — Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins. Names written in the air And stitched into the cloth of the day. A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox. Monogram on a torn shirt, I see you spelled out on storefront windows And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city. I say the syllables as I turn a corner — Kelly and Lee, Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor. When I peer into the woods, I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden As in a puzzle concocted for children. Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash, Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton, Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple. Names written in the pale sky. Names rising in the updraft amid buildings. Names silent in stone Or cried out behind a door. Names blown over the earth and out to sea. In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows. A boy on a lake lifts his oars. A woman by a window puts a match to a candle, And the names are outlined on the rose clouds — Vanacore and Wallace, (let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound) Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z. Names etched on the head of a pin. One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel. A blue name needled into the skin. Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers, The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son. Alphabet of names in a green field. Names in the small tracks of birds. Names lifted from a hat Or balanced on the tip of the tongue. Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory. So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart. Quotation of the day By Tom Smith ". . . thank God Al Gore invented the internet." Read the post and the links. This story is getting weirder and weirder, as the MSM throws more and more of its capital at defending a story that, it is getting clearer by the hour, is based on fake documents. I'm not sure if it is Karl Rove who is behind this, or the Big Guy, who is known for his perverse sense of humor. AND this. Does the Electoral College Make Sense? By Gail Heriot In a Wednesday editorial entitled "Electoral College Mischief: How to Make the 2000 Florida Brouhaha Look Like a Kerfuffle", OpinionJournal.com argued, among other things, that the Electoral College is a protection aganst voter fraud: "Direct popular election would ... vastly increase the risk of corruption and electoral disputes. With every vote competing directly against every other vote, dishonest politicians everywhere would have an incentive to engage in fraud on behalf of their parties. And a close race would make the Florida brouhaha look like a kerfuffle." I'm unconvinced. It seems to me that what the Electoral College does is increase the incentive to cheat in the so-called battleground states, since one can win the whole state by manufacturing just a few votes, while decreasing the incentive to cheat in the states that either party has a lock on, since it would take a huge number of manufactured votes to swing the state to the other party. The more votes that have to be manufactured, the more likely the fraud will be uncovered. By abolishing the Electoral College, we would decrease the massive incentive to cheat that currently exists in the battleground states while increasing the incentive in the locked-up states. The incentive would be uniform across the country but greatly reduced from what it was in Florida in 2000, where it appeared that the entire election could turn on the votes of Bob, Susie and Ethel. It's unclear which system is better; it may depend upon the circumstances of the particular election. The voter fraud argument is another is a long line of arguments I've heard from conservatives since the Electoral College came under scrutiny following the 2000 election. So far, none has convinced me that the system is worth retaining, although I'm still open to new arguments. I am not saying this as someone whose knee always jerks in favor of direct elections. For example, I believe that something was lost when the Seventeenth Amendment replaced the system under which United States Senators were appointed by the states with a system under which they are elected by popular vote. Up to that point, in 1913, Senators acted as the guardians of state interests in matters of federalism. After that, federal power exploded. I don't think for a second that there's any going back at this point, but it's worth understanding that the consequences have not been entirely positive. I am not certain, however, that the Electoral College serves any such good purpose, especially as practiced today with electors more or less being required to cast their ballots for the candidate who received the most popular votes in their state. In theory, it's a system that favors small states, since each state gets votes equal to the number of its congresional districts plus two. That's probably why Republicans tend to favor it now. There are more small safe states for Republican Presidential candidates (e.g., Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming) than there are small states safe for Democratic Presidential candidates (e.g., Hawaii, Vermont). Among the disfavored large states, two are considered safe for Democrats (California, New York), while one is safe for Repubicans (Texas). Other large states are battlegrounds (Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio). It's easy to see why Republicans would regard the Electoral College as an asset to the party--at least under current political circumstances. But that doesn't make it an asset to the nation. Rather than forcing Presidential candidates to pay more attention to small states, in practice it causes them to focus 98% of their attention on large battleground states. The Electoral College has become a pork-producing machine for those states. When George W. Bush realized he would need Pennsylvania to win re-election, what did he do? He threw them steel tariffs--great for Pennsylvania steelworkers, terrible for the nation. What about Florida? Bush realized that he needed more votes from the Florida geriatric set, so he threw then the new Medicare expansion in a conscious effort to win them over--again great for Florida retirees, terrible for the nation. I found the OpinionJournal.com editorial more persuasive on the issue of whether a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College is likely to pass. More on that later. New Bush Memo found! By Tom Smith Sent to me anonymously from an email address at the University of Southern California Law School is this troubling memo, linked to here. (The link will take you to a link on the mock up of our forthcoming Typepad website, coming in a few weeks, God willing. And it will be a pleasure to leave Blogger behind, I tell you . . . ) I am not an expert on typefaces and the like, but I can say I think the memo would pass muster at CBS. It clearly shows Bush did not fulfil his military obligations and should not be reelected. Indeed, preciently, Killian observes, as you will see, that it would be a bad thing if Bush were ever to be President. I feel shaken, root and branch. IBM Selectric Composer By Tom Smith I wouldn't blame you for being sick of this story, but just in case you're wondering whether maybe it's just possible that Killian used a state of the art, $30,000 (2004 USD) type setting machine to type his personal files (which his wife said he didn't keep), there's this. September 10, 2004
New York Times does damage control By Tom Smith Here's the NYT on fontgate or whatever we're going to call it. Now we know what the MSM damage control line is going to be: "Experts disagree! Oh darn! I guess we'll never know! What a shame!" Oddly, the experts who think the CBS docs are transparently crude forgeries have names, while the other experts are well, just experts. Now shut up. At least the Times, ever so briefly, notes the role of weblogs. This story was just designed to drive any Republican who knows a little bit about computers, printers, fonts, etc. etc. Absolutely crazy. But I shall try to have faith. I just don't think they can hold out more than a few more days against the accumulating evidence that the docs are forgeries. The fact that they're already at the fallback position of "we'll never know" is telling. Particularly disgusting on this has been CNN. I just watched Aaron Brown, or whatever his name is, you know, the nauseatingly sensitive anchor guy, ask follow up questions along the lines of "Now, without the original documents, is it really possible to know for sure who is right?" "Oh, no, Aaron, we'll never know . . ." When of course, the right question is, is there any reason to believe they are authentic? Do they appear to be genuine or not? On which side is the weight of the evidence? If some one tells you something is a moon rock and it looks like pool tile, you infer he's full of it, even if all you have to go on is the appearance of the thing. The standard is not, can we be absolutely certain they are forgeries. Not only do they fake up documents, which by the way is probably criminal in addition to being dirty, they insult our intelligence at the same time. Now all we need is a Roger Rosenblatt "essay" on ambiguities, all the things we'll never know, getting lost in minutiae and missing the big picture . . . It's coming. You just wait. AND there's this on Hugh Hewitt's site: Hi Hugh, I am a Professor of Computer Science at Rice University who has followed the evolution of word processing technology over the past 30 years. A cursory glance at the "Killian documents" shows that they are forgeries, the product of a modern word processing system. Even the most powerful word processing systems available in the early 70's were not designed to produce propotionally spaced documents. . . . "A cursory glance" is all that it takes. It goes on from there. And guess what? The professor is right, and the dunderheads at CBS are wrong. Hanson is the man By Tom Smith When an evil, vicious ideology is threatening the world and everything we hold dear, it's always nice to have someone willing to fight against it. Professor Hanson, you da man. More Rathergate By Tom Smith The documents are fake. This explains it yet again. Maybe this is one of those things you have to be in your forties or older to understand. Do people remember what a monumental pain in the butt it was to type papers in college? Erasing? White out? Fiddling around with the carriage to squeeze in letters or lines? Anyone who ever typed can tell by visual inspection that the documents in question are word processed. (I learned to type in high school in a class taught by the basketball coach; a guy so mean even the other coaches hated him. He finally left and all sighed in relief. Learned how to type, though.) Some old guy who didn't even type (his wife says he couldn't type) could not have produced such a clean looking document using a normal typewriter. As to the IBM selectric, come on. I was in college from 1975 to 1979, and nobody, even rich kids who would have had one, had a selectric. A grad student I knew got one in 1977 or so, but they were very rare. And they were no huge bargain to work with by today's standards. And the couldn't produce the proportionally spaced documents like those in question. Maybe there were some memory versions around, but the old army reservist was supposed to have one of these in his den in 1972. Doesn't anybody remember 1972? Hardly anybody had an electric typewriter back then for personal use. All this makes this a weird story for me. I know enough about typing and such to know the documents are fake, I really don't have any doubt, but CBS apparently doesn't know that. But over the next week or so, it is just going to get clear beyond peradventure that the documents are forgeries. Then how will CBS defend not revealing where they came from? Very awkward for them. And I am used to the blogger news cycle, so it all seems to be happening in slow motion. Welcome to the new world, Kenneth. (The REM tune keeps going through my head.) AND take a look at this. Now, ask yourself, what are the odds that anything produced on a typewriter could fit a Microsoft Word document so exactly? Time for us grown-ups to think for ourselves. The docs are in Microsoft Word, ergo are forgeries, ergo Karl Rove really is Svengali or the Kerryites are bunch of bumbling doofuses. I know where my money is. And the metaphor is . . . By Tom Smith Scores of hunters swarm over the mammoth and hack it to pieces. Hundreds of Davids pummle Goliath into submission. Network of amateurs proves superior to pros. Whatever. It is an historical day for the blogospheroidal entity. Belmont Club provides a nice analysis of 60 minutes and Dino Dan getting pulled apart by the ants. Dino Dan's line apparently now is, he's sure the story on W is true because he has other sources in addition to the documents. Can you see why this is not a good argument?, the law professor asks. If somebody tells you a story S, and gives you some documents D to substantiate it, and D turns out be a bunch of crude forgeries, well, I'm afraid the credibility of your story S has also just been shot to hell. Give it up Dan. It time to head out to Jurrasic Park and chase children around, eat lawyers and play in other dino games. There are some important lessons to be learned from all this. First, don't listen to law professors advocating dirty tricks. Or perhaps this wasn't the sort of dirty trick Susan Estrich had in mind, the actually illegal kind. I should think it's a rather awkward time for Democratic dirty trick advocates. On the bright side, I guess she can be famous now for something besides the tank photo. Probably the Kerry campaign ginned up the fake memos on their own. Could they really be that stupid? Well, apparently. Hard to credit, I know. (It was Karl Rove! It was ETs!) If they had only spent as much money getting these documents forged as Kerry spends getting his hair cut, let alone buying a mountain bike, Bush would be in a lot of trouble today, instead of trying not to laugh in public. So there's a lesson for you: when it comes to faking evidence against people, go with quality product. Second, a party that cannot even conduct a competent smear campaign based on fraudulent evidence is not fit to run this great country. I mean, seriously. We're going to let the reform of the CIA, the tracking down of nuclear terrorists, and fighting Al Quaeda and various other sneaky bad guys be run by fools who can't recall that they didn't have PCs back in 1972? I don't think so. Third, if you are a Democrat, stick to intimidating witnesses of sexual improprieties into silence. The Clinton people know how to do that. Any Arkansas thug will pretty much do. It's a simple formula: scare poor woman to death and deny everything. (Remember: this is necessary to keep abortion safe and legal.) But forging documents requires a whole other level of sophistication. In dirty tricks, remember, simple is better. And bimbo eruption squad superstar does not a skilled forger make. It may be too early to tell, but it may be the addition of Clinton hardball players to the Kerry campaign is not working out that well. Any other bright ideas? The CBS Documents By Mike Rappaport Betsy's Page writes: You know, if CBS were smart, they'd realize that they have a much bigger story than they thought they had. What they had was an unimportant story about Bush's service over 30 years ago. What they have now is someone forging documents to sabotage Bush's reelection. Isn't that a much [bigger] thing to investigate? They need to research who gave them those documents and expose the plot. They could admit that they were taken in by the forgeries and then expose the web of connections between this forgery and the Kerry campaign. Who is responsible for all this?Now, here is the question. Will CBS complete this story before O.J. catches the "real" murderer? September 09, 2004
The Bush Diaries By Maimon Schwarzschild Eveyone's first reaction to the emerging possibility that Dan Rather's documents (Bush, National Guard) were forgeries must be "These people surely can't be that stupid..." Perhaps they are not, and perhaps the documents are genuine. But people, even otherwise sophisticated people, often believe what they yearn to believe. A truly sad example was Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre), one of the better twentieth century British historians, a very good and readable author, who notoriously said he would "stake his reputation" on the authenticity of the "Hitler diaries", which of course soon turned out to be none-too-clever forgeries. (Adolf Hitler had a bohemian "artist's temperament". He was proud of it: he always flattered himself that he really was an artist. He loathed systematic work, alternated between bouts of feverish activity and complete inaction, conducted his monologues long into the night every night and seldom got up before noon. After taking over Germany in 1933, Hitler seems weirdly to have been a little afraid of the elderly old-fashioned President Hindenburg, and evidently made an effort to keep something like regular office hours until Hindenburg's death in 1935. Then Hitler reverted fully to his bohemian ways. All of this is well known to everyone who has read or studied the history of Nazi Germany -- surely including Trevor-Roper. In a word, the chances that Adolf Hitler would have been orderly and regular enough in his habits to keep a diary were just about nil. It would have been completely out of character. Trever-Roper ought to have known this. At some level he undoubtedly did know it. But he wanted to believe.) (Precisely why he wanted to believe is somewhat less clear. The Hitler Diaries were a scoop, and offered Trevor-Roper a new level of fame. T-R was always publicity-keen, and seems to have been socially insecure, which is a very, very dangerous thing to be in the piranha-like and infinitely class-conscious little worlds of Oxford and Cambridge. Still, it's a strange and really very sad story. The end of Trevor-Roper's life, by all accounts, was significantly more unhappy than it would otherwise have been, because of this affair.) Back to Dan Rather and "Sixty Minutes" and the famous documents. It is only a few days since Susan Estrich -- academic, former Dukakis campaign manager, angry left -- wrote her ill-advised column more or less boasting, and gleefully so, that rich Kerry supporters would soon be paying for, or had already paid for, fake "revelations" designed to hurt Bush and Cheney. (If you are doing such a thing, why write a column announcing it?) The "stories" so far -- the National Guard stuff; all the Kitty Kelly stuff -- seem to me very unlikely to do Bush much damage, or any damage, even if true. But if the "Sixty Minutes" documents are forgeries, the consequences for Dan Rather, and even for CBS, are apt to be dire. Obviously, Rather will have swallowed the forgeries because he wanted to believe. It won't be good for Kerry either. If the docs are forgeries, Kerry is [choose one] (a) less likely than otherwise to be President, or (b) toast. The fact that much -- not all -- opposition to Bush has been tinctured with sheer rage has been obvious for many months or years now. It's an obvious thought, under the circumstances, that "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad". PS: The original source of "Whom the gods..." turns out to be very uncertain. The phrase appears in a Dryden poem, but Dryden may have been paraphrasing Euripides. Erudite RightCoast readers (all of you, surely!) are invited to elucidate. Homework troubles By Tom Smith The textbooks we put in the hands of our school children are a disgrace. I'm trying to help Luke with his math homework, when Patrick, age 11, yells from the kitchen, "Dad, I need your help!" I am busy. I don't want to help. So I yell back, "Why? What is it?" Patrick says, "I need help taking notes!" Patrick is a good notetaker. I suspect shirking. "You know how to take notes!" I yell. He says, "I can't take notes on this stuff! It's just, just sap!" The conversation continued: Dad: What do you mean, sap? Patrick: You know. "People in the past lived on the same planet as we do and danced under the same sun . . . " That sort of sentimental crap. How I am supposed to take notes on that? It's too stupid! He had a point. I asked him to bring me his social studies book. Hmmm. It began with an extended quotation from a Greek source describing what a gentleman Attila the Hun was at a banquet. "Can't you almost see the tender expression on his face?" Atilla the Hun? He who laid waste to cities and put every man, woman and child to the sword? Wasn't he the one who built hills out of the skulls of his enemies? Now we have to be politically correct about the hun hordes? Why do you think they were called hordes? You think they got their evil reputation by being misunderstood? Meanwhile, grateful for the distraction from math, Luke comments "Dad, I think Atilla came as a conqueror, not a liberator," then cackles at his own wit. Then he adds, "I know: 'Vlad's Hospital for the Physically Impaled." More giggling. Jeanne gets home in time to listen to the ongoing dissection of PC history. "We've created monsters," she says, despairing. I suppose the book has its good points. It is trying to help kids understand the past is not that much different from today, in some respects. It is not a scary land inhabited by monsters, but a place that also had kids who liked games and so on. But really! Wouldn't history that was a little closer to the truth be more interesting and prepare kids better for the world? If the past is still present, then doesn't something like decency demand Atilla be treated as the mass murderer or at least the ruthless, bloody minded conqueror he was? He must have been responsible for the deaths of what, millions of children? The Romans saw Attila as a fierce warrior, but as this portrait shows, he was more than that. He was also a man with a unique personality and a family, just like people today. Well, except few people today can claim to have laid waste to continents, driving their enemies before them like cattle (his hordes, I think, thought of their victims exactly as cattle to be herded and slaughtered). It must have been some family. "Daddy, what ethnic sub-group are we going to wipe from the face of the earth today?" A fascinating family. He murdered his brother (as kings did often enough) and is said to have eaten two of his children. But maybe his angry wife killed them and fed them to him as an act of vengeance. Interesting family, in any event. So sorry. We are not going to cut the Hun Devil any slack in this household. There's going to be a little pocket of Western Civilization in Jamul if I have anything to do with it. Did CBS rely on forged documents for Bush National Guard story? By Tom Smith You have to be so careful these days. Well, you don't really have to. It's just that if you're not, some blogger or other internet bird dog will bite you where it hurts. Anyway, RatherBiased.com, dedicated to the noble cause of tracking Dan Rather's political biases, has some forensic, um, speculation that suggests CBS may have unwittingly relied on forged documents for its 60 Minutes story about Bush's unsatisfactory National Guard performance. Who could have done such a thing? It would be downright sleazy! My question is, does Susan Estrich have one of those old selectric typewriters? Maybe it's under her dogeared copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves and The Bell Jar.It G-d, I am so glad the 'seventies are over. But that's another story. MORE . . . Oh, dear. It looks like the docs might actually be forgery. How droll. I tell you, this blogosphere thing has gotten out of control. Men who have devoted their lives to public service are being blah, blah, blah! What right does some little pipsqeak have to question one of the great journalists blah, blah! If this story keeps developing, it promises to be the funniest thing since the blue dress. (Is that dress in the Clinton Library or something? It should be preserved somewhere . . . ) I don't care. Do you care? By Tom Smith Looks like the Democrat counter-attack has begun. I guess the gist of it is W skipped a physical and got his wings yanked, plus it's not clear that he showed up in Alabama, or maybe he did. I don't know. And I don't care. It would be a matter of concern if it told us something about Bush we didn't know already. We know he was an irresponsible youth. His Guard record seems adequate at best. But I suspect most Americans feel they know W pretty well. I doubt anything but really shattering new information will make much of a difference. Kerry, by contrast, is not well known, and was using the Vietnam service thing to brand himself with the public, better than NE liberal. That's partly why the Swiftboat ads hurt. They brand Kerry as a grown up sissy war protestor, and undercut the counter-narrative of war hero. It will be interesting to see how the polls react. I do agree, reluctantly, that the Democrats almost have to do this, though I object on grounds of morality and taste to super-sleazy attacks, like digging up old girlfriends' abortions and making them up if necessary. I just don't think the Guard attack will do much for the Dems beyond slowing their hemmorage. I get the feeling Kerry is really stalled, and attacks on W's Vietnam years won't change that. It may even be a rope-a-dope for Bush, enough to draw Kerry's fire, but all the while distracting him from his only winning issue, which is spreading false hope that a Democrat in the white house would somehow improve the economic picture. What happened to the good ol' days? By Tom Smith Gone are the days when reporters could just write up whatever popped into their heads over a few triple burbons. Now bloggers birddog their every little fabrication. It is unfair and inhumane. September 08, 2004
Another "New" Idea for UC Admissions By Gail Heriot The Los Angeles Daily News reports that State Senator Richard Alarcon and others are urging UCLA to give students who live within 15 miles of its Westwood campus a special preference in admission. UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale says the idea will be considered by the appropriate UC authority, but I suspect (and hope) it will die there. "Saying UCLA turns away too many talented minorities, Sen. Richard Alarcon called Wednesday for guaranteed admission for the top 4 percent of students from each high school within 15 miles of the Westwood campus. "Flanked by two dozen students and other community members, Alarcon marched to the Chancellor's Office at the University of California at Los Angeles to present more than 1,300 letters from people in the community. "'UCLA relies far too heavily on GPA (grade-point averages) and SAT (college entrance exam) scores,' said Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles. "He added that qualities necessary for success, such as organizational skills, 'can't be measured by the SAT; civic responsibility can't be measured by your GPA.'" Alarcon is only partly right on the last point. I suspect that high school GPA and the SAT are positively correlated with organizational skills and maybe even with a sense of civic responsibility. To be a good student it helps to be organized. Those with a sense of civic responsibility often also have a sense of individual responsibility for their own schoolwork and hence are often good students. But he is right that the correlation is probably loose and that some qualities that can lead to sucess are not measured by the SAT or by high school GPA. I might add, however, that UCLA is an academic institution, where academic skills always matter and that there are lots of routes to success in addition to attendance at a highly competitive academic institution. Alarcon's suggested remedy, however, has noting to do with the problem he claims to see. Living within 15 miles of the UCLA campus is no measure of "organizational skills" and "civic responsibility" at all. Zero. Zilch. Why would the location of one's residence help those applicants who have good organizational skills or a high degree of civic responsibility, but poor academic indicators? Alarcon's true aim is obvious. Many of the high schools around UCLA happen to have a fairly high minority population. Throughout the article he refers to the need to increase the number of minority students at UCLA. Evidently, he thinks this indirect way of raising minority enrollment will not violate California's Proposition 209 the way direct preferences would. This is error. Does he imagine that if the University of Alabama had been surrounded by white neighborhoods that Gov. George Wallace could have legally held down black enrollment by instituting preferences for neighborhood residents? It's not the silliest idea I ever heard concerning UCLA admissions. That prize would have to go to the proposal by a UCLA faculty member (made shortly after Proposition 209 passed) that juvenile delinquents be given preferences at UCLA as a means of achieving diversity. But it's close. September 07, 2004
How to be a loathsome New Yorker By Tom Smith Even funnier, James, is when kids drown in the tidal surge. What a hoot! And then there are those ghastly trailer homes that get blown away. Heee! Heee! They're so tacky, they deserve it. People losing everything, especially cherished, irreplaceable items like photo albums, is good for a chuckle or two. You go, Mother Nature! For just general, overall amusement, there are the marriages that break up because of stress, the kids whose lives never get all the way back to normal, and the jobs that get lost because of economic losses. There's nothing like massive human suffering for a good belly laugh. James, your penance is to go to Florida and help some people, whose feet you are not worthy to lick, clean up what remains of their lives, and then spend a week thinking of 100 ways to be less disgusting. And keep your next shameful admission to yourself. Remember that when people say they have a shameful admission, they are usually just kidding. September 06, 2004
The Russian Response in Beslan By Mike Rappaport The Israeli's explain some of what the Russians did wrong in Beslan: Former Shin Bet head MK Ehud Yatom said he supports Putin's policy of not ever bowing to terror. "However," he said, "how can it be that during three days of negotiations the Russian intelligence machine couldn't find its way into that building. They didn't have any operational intelligence, any idea of who was the enemy, nor did they prepare their elite forces. They failed to keep the public out of the area, and as a result you had every citizen in the area who had access to a gun breaking in with the armed forces. The initiative and schedule was dictated by the terrorists." The Long Term Effects of Beslan By Mike Rappaport Will Beslan change geopolitical alliances? According to the Jerusalem Post: The terrorist outrage in Beslan forged a greater solidarity between Russia and Israel but did not erase fundamental policy differences, Israeli diplomatic officials made clear Monday following the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. More on Chechnya By Tom Smith A Russian journalist says it's the Russians' fault. At least one US journalist at a real newspaper gets it. Radical Muslim Depravity By Tom Smith This story is making the rounds of blogs (I got it via Polipundit). It's a grim account of the depraved behavior of the Chechen and Arab terrorists inside the school in Beslan. They bayonetted babies, raped 15 year old girls, and of course slaughtered children indiscrimately. This sort of depraved behavior is not unprecedented in the annals of war, but it is still rare enough to make an impression. One naturally asks, how could they be so evil? About a year ago, I shot a rabbit that was chewing on my lawn. The rabbit screamed piteously, and I ended up having to club it to death with the butt of my air rifle. I felt bad about it. Now, I pretty much let the rabbits eat. How could someone be physically able to bayonette an infant, to murder a boy for begging for water, to drag a terrified 15 year old girl from her parents, and rape her, while your friends videotaped it? The animals who did this were far gone in evil, off in a place few of us can imagine, let alone go. I think part of the explanation for the depravity of the terrorists lies in their ideology. That ideology is an offshoot of the Islamic religion, though it seems fair to acknowledge that hardly all, presumably not a majority, of Muslims would approve of such acts. Though, like many, I am taken aback that the condemnations of these atrocities from Muslim leaders have not been exactly deafening. One thing missing, or at least not acknowledged enough, in discussions of terrorism, has been that the war we are in is not really a war against terrorism, which is only a tactic, but a war against an idea, or set of ideas. Because of the influence of various materialist theories of history, and other reasons, I think educated people tend to give ideologies short shrift as powerful forces. German nationalism was brutal and problematic enough, but mixed with the poisonous stew of ideas that was Naziism, it became truly malignant. The same could be said for Russian national imperialism and Leninism/Stalinism. I think a mistake people often make is to underestimate the power of idea systems that are facially ridiculous, but for whatever strange reason, are able to exert strange power over minds. Radical Islam, for want of a better term, seems to be one of those ideologies. I am no expert on it, but I gather that Islamic terrorists believe that if they die as "martyrs," they will get a big supernatural reward. They apparently believe any amount of murdering and cruelty in the name of Allah is permissible. Anything like a normal conscience has apparently been swallowed up by a cultish worship of death. Children are apparently raised to think this way. Infidels are diminished to status less than human, or at any rate, to a level where they can be killed without mercy. These kinds of ideologies are memetic diseases ,that have nothing to recommend them, but their ability to spread. I think it is the duty of civilized countries to suppress them, as we did with the Nazis and and the British did with the Thuggee in India. The "thugs" were worshippers of the goddess of destruction Kali, and made a living by traveling with pilgrims, strangling them and taking their money. They had existed for centuries and had an elaborate cult of deceit, cruelty and death. They were a rich, "other" culture alright, and they were deeply evil. The British did the world a favor by wiping them out. If you want to learn about predatory Hindu death cults, now you have to read a book, and in the pages of a book is the only place they ought to be suffered to exist. American multi-culturalists encourage a view that the world is a big family, marvelously full of exotic belief systems, all deserving of our respect. A more realistic view is that belief systems routinely spring up that are rooted in, and dedicated to, evil, on a scale the bigger, the better, and that such systems are dangerous and need to be destroyed. The sooner we realize this is the case about Islamic death worship, or whatever you want to call it, the better off we will be. Both Christianity and Hinduism have also thrown off weird, ugly and dangerous movements the world is well rid of. Some of the pre-Columbian American cultures were no bargains, either. (Capturing, sexually torturing, then murdering captives by the thousand, for instance, uses up all your multi-culti credits in my book, for instance. The Spanish were brutes, but I wouldn't want to live in a world with nuclear armed Aztecs, either.) Yet for all the variety of evil, it has a familiar face. It enjoys the suffering it inflicts, it even glories in it. Hence the videotaping of the rapes. Children and young women are favorite victims. The power of sex to humiliate is used, as are other human vulnerabilities, such as the love of parents and children for each other, and that as mere humans, we need food, water and respite from heat and cold. The monsters of Beslan join a diabolical fraternity that includes the sadists of the SS, Stalin's henchmen, the Khemer Rouge fanatics, and thousands of others stretching back to the dawn of time. The monsters of Beslan are trying to tell us something, and so are their childish victims, and we should listen. They're telling us there is an evil ideology loose in the world. It has happened before, and now it has happened again. The monsters are saying "we are the ones who murder children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. We rape the girls and relish the torments we inflict on our victims, the more innocent, the better. We know who we are. Do you dare oppose us?" It's a good question. Evil weather By Tom Smith It's supposed to be 105 in East County San Diego today: fire weather. Fortunately, the wind is calm. But already, I can smell smoke in the air. Something's burning, and I don't think it's love. A small fire broke out in Rancho San Diego Friday, in the middle of a developed area. Firefighters got right on it and put it out, but it was worrisome. I have increased my fire insurance and am thinking maybe I should spring for the $1200 pool pump/firehose thing. LSATs and all that By Tom Smith This is kind of interesting, from comrade Leiter. Teaching at USD now for more than ten (!) years has been interesting, partly because I have witnessed a steady improvement in the quality of our students (not to mention faculty). You don't notice it much from year to year, but it is striking over even as little as three years. Our director of admissions told me the other day that it has gotten to the point that students who defer admission for one year cannot be assured they will be readmitted, since the year over year in minimum LSAT scores and GPAs required for admissions, is rising so fast. It is interesting to ponder whether "smarter" students are more fun to teach. All other things equal, the answer is yes, but in my case at least, I have realized that intelligence is not the most important quality for making students fun to teach. Instead, it is something more amorphous, like attitude. An enthusiasm for the subject, a willingness or eagerness to learn. Which makes sense: Teaching is fun when it's successful, when you actually accomplish something. Helping a student go from level 4 to level 7 is more fun than going from level 9 to level 10. Before Blogging By Mike Rappaport There has been a lot of discussion of the role of the blogosphere in monitoring and limiting the power of the mainstream press. Witness, of course, the Swiftboat Veterans. Glenn Reynolds, however, discusses an incident from the 1992 campaign that might have turned out differently if blogging existed. In 1992, the New York Times and then the entire media made much of the idea that George H.W. Bush was so divorced from the world of ordinary Americans that he did not know what a supermarket scanner was. It turns out that the story was made up or at least greatly exaggerated. Had bloggers been around at the time, it is possible they could have caught, challenged, and publicized this misreporting. Mark Steyn By Mike Rappaport On the failure of the media to point out that many of the terrorists in Russia were Arabs: When your asymmetrical warfare strategy depends on gunning down schoolchildren, you're getting way more asymmetrical than you need to be. The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.Yup. September 05, 2004
Commentary on Joe Klein By Tom Smith I interject some comments (in italics) on Klein's piece in Time magazine below. Saturday, Sep. 04, 2004 Tearing Kerry Down The challenger's only hope is to get as nasty as the Bush campaign (or else miraculously grow a more appealing personality) By JOE KLEIN It should be noted that, after a long, lifeless recitation of an illusory domestic policy, George W. Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention came alive when the President gleefully skewered John Kerry's foolish claim to be the candidate of "conservative values." Presumably Republicans should skewer their opponents the way Democrats do, in a pompous, self-righteous way. It was the pivotal moment of the speech. From there, Bush went on to his favorite topic—his decisiveness in the war against terrorism, the need to stand firm, the need to be plainspoken. And everybody knows how silly it would be to stand firm against terrorism! For those who hadn't fallen asleep during the domestic policy trudge, Does being too drunk to follow it count? Because that would eliminate the rest of the mainstream press. this was a very effective speech—and it followed a very effective, if sometimes sleazy convention. And I, as an objective, detatched, unusually intelligent journalist, am a big enough man to admit. I know effective when I see it, which is why I can write like this. I write good upsucky novels about Democrats, too! The message of the week was: You know where Bush stands. You can't be sure about Kerry. But that headline also came with a misleading subhead: Bush is fighting the war against terrorism, and Kerry wouldn't. I agree, it is unfair. A fairer headline would have been, Bush will fight war on terror; Kerry might. It was a theme that was pounded from the very start of the convention, and it depended on a sly conflation— the notion that the war in Iraq and the war against the 9/11 terrorists were one and the same. We heard far more about Bush in the World Trade Center rubble than we did about the U.S. in the Iraqi quagmire. You're in a quagmire! You're in a quagmire! Just like Viet Nam! Just like Viet Nam! Na na na na Nah Nah! And Herr Klein is correct! It is sly, very, very sly! It has not been proven that Saddam and Al Quaeda were operationally synchronically coordinated at the strategic, tactical and operational levels, in the sense of long term planning, and global ideo-practical coordination, as any idiot knows. And when Iraq was raised, it was done in a deceptive and simpleminded way. We're Republicans. What do you expect? Even John McCain, who under normal circumstances I would suck up to like crazy who gave the most serious foreign policy speech of the week, presented a false choice: "Our choice [in Iraq] wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat." Actually, there were at least three choices: doing nothing about Saddam, going to war as Bush did or doubling down on the war against al-Qaeda, as Senator Bob Graham and others suggested at the time. And hope Saddam didn't turn on the chemical weapon spigot, give nasties to terrorists, or deploy some himself, as there is no conclusive evidence he would have done! Unfortunately, a serious discussion of the best way to fight Islamist radicalism isn't in the cards this election year. Because Americans are such idiots. In any case, campaign politics isn't about details. That's for us genius journalists, who constantly remind our readers of our uncanny ability to get the details right, at least when we're not making them up, as when we write reviews before the show. It is about impressions: Bush conveys an impression of strength While Kerry conveys the impression of spoiled, rich weenie who has grown up into a man even more unappealing than the typical prep school blowhards many of us suffered through in college—and the Republicans tried very hard last week to convey the impression that Kerry is Fifi the French poodle. As if you have to try hard -- the guy has a fancy hairdresser named Christophe who flies around the country in his wife's private jet (Fifi debated Barney, the Bush family dog, in an allegedly comic film shown at the convention.) I didn't see it, but it sounds promising! The attacks on Kerry ranged from the reasonable—he certainly has empretzeled himself on Iraq—to the outrageous: Zell Miller's assertion that Kerry would take his orders from Paris. In fact, Paris has no more reason to trust him than we do. But Klein is right. Fairer would have been, Kerry MIGHT take his orders from Paris. The Miller speech was the ugliest I've ever seen at a convention. And I'm going to tell my Mommy! It certainly trumped Pat Buchanan's 1992 "culture war" speech, in which the target was an abstract army of social liberals. Umm, I don't think so. Pat evoked the image of rifle toting cavalry men storming into LA, taking back the city from rioting African-Americans. But you go, Joe, Democrats are allowed to exaggerate This was a direct assault on the character and integrity of the Democratic nominee. Oh dear, it looks like Kerry's pompous frog disease is contagious. Remember, calling Democrats weak on defense is a dirty, rotten smear! And we ain't gonna study war no more, we ain't gonna study war . . . And it followed a familiar G.O.P. attack pattern: like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Miller wasn't an official part of the Bush campaign. Michael Moore He claims to be a Democrat, which we know he isn't really, because he's for a strong defense and so, several Republicans told me, he was free to say anything he pleased. Free to say whatever he pleased! What an outrage! Who does he think he is, a movie star? But Miller's speech wasn't the most disgraceful part of the G.O.P. show. That honor would go to the coverage of NBC and CNN That honor went to the Purple Heart Band-Aids ridiculing John Kerry's Vietnam wounds (is "wound" really the right word? Maybe "bruise," "abrasion," "scratch"? There must be a good word for something that doesn't require hospital time. I know! "Owie"!) that were distributed by a past associate of Karl Rove's. A tasteless, but funny gag. OK, we're sorry, but maps of Cambodia just wouldn't have the same impact It goes without saying that Rove had absolutely nothing to do with the idea—except perhaps for setting the scabrous tone of the Bush campaign. Am I the only person who remembers the Clinton years? Ken Starr as Grand Inquisitor. Disappearing pets of potential anti-Clinton witnesses? "Dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park." I guess once you rise to the level of obstruction of justice, it becomes sort of cool again, like the Godfather. I have never seen a presidential campaign in which the strategies of the two parties are so different, and so dreadful. pompous frog inflation alert! The Republican strategy is to demolish Kerry, whaaaaaah! whaaaaaaahhhhhhh! posit the President as a man of simple strength and do everything possible to avoid a discussion of Iraq or the effects of globalization on the American economy. Globalization? Where did that come from? Oh great, Klein is one of those looney anti-globalization guys. OK, Joe, Republicans are more for free trade than the Democrats. Deal with it. The Kerry strategy is to present an "optimistic" candidate with a "positive plan for the future." Yup. It is lame, alright, but you guys picked him The Kerry consultants, who actually believe this claptrap and have zero sense of political theater, sound like a bunch of low-budget Ginzu-knife salesmen when they represent their candidate on television: We're offering you a $4,000 college-tuition tax credit and—for no extra charge—a $1,000 reduction in your health-care costs! That's the risk when you think voters are morons They also seem to believe this election isn't about the most important decision Bush has made: to go to war in Iraq. That's because Kerry's record on Iraq is embarrassing, unlike his war hero record Kerry's adherence to that strategy—including the robotic repetition of the words strong and values—has made him seem weak, transparent, a focus-group marionette with neon strings. It burrrnnnnns! It burrrrnnnnnnns! Bush, by the way, used the word strong only twice in his acceptance speech: to describe the new Iraqi Prime Minister and to describe military families. That unbelievable mastery of detail again. News flash: Klein can count words in transcript of a speech After a week of gut-wound assaults on his character, What? And no medal to show for it! How about 'the Purple Butt-Sling for Self-Inflicted Political Wounds' (sorry . . . couldn't resist) Could it be Kerry has some weird karmic penchant for blowing up his own butt in both literal and metaphorical senses? Just a thought . . . Kerry finally fired back on Thursday night, assailing Bush and Cheney for having avoided service in Vietnam and for having "misled" us into Iraq. And boy, was it a hoot! How dare anyone criticize me! Don't they know who I AM? More speeches like that from John John, please! The latter may be an exaggeration, whereas Zell Miller's speech was a grotesque political mugging but after the G.O.P. assault, Kerry has a right to exaggerate with impunity. And should, because he is so good at it Indeed, if he hopes to win, Kerry will have to do much more of that. He will have to become a version of the young John Kerry not celebrated at the Democratic Convention—the eloquent, passionate, uncoached leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War who caused the Nixon White House serious heartburn not to mention a lot of Vietnam vets, including some with real "wounds". Oooops! Sorry! Forgot that was a dirty, rotten smear! Where did that fabulous young politician ever go, anyway? Where have all the flowers gone, long time pa-asssing? Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago? Yes, them were the days . . . We could have days like that again! . . . September 04, 2004
Olympic Wrestling and other Title IX issues By Gail Heriot I’m probably not the right person to make this argument, since I am a well-known sneerer at organized sports, but I nevertheless think this is true: The United States’ disappointing showing in wrestling at the Athens O1ympics is a likely result of Title IX. Title IX requires (with a few exceptions) that schools and colleges that receive federal support not discriminate on the basis of sex. That’s fine and good. But the regulations that implement the statute are something else again. They put schools and colleges under nearly irresistible pressure to ensure that actual participation in athletic activities is equal, even if women and girls have to be dragged kicking and screaming onto the playing field and men and boys have to dragged off. That’s not so good. And while the Bush Administration has made some valient efforts to change this, for the most part these efforts haven’t yet paid off. As a result of these long-standing regulations, schools and colleges have had to cancel many sports programs for males and institute more sports programs for females. Men’s swimming and men’s diving programs have been hard hit, but no program has been hit harder than men’s wrestling, which has basically been decimated as a college sport. These college programs are the training ground for future Olympic teams, as Dan Gable discusses in the Weekly Standard (and elsewhere). Without such programs at the college level, Americans don’t win medals at the O1ympics in wrestling. Meanwhile, more money is spent on sports programs for women and girls, when many of the supposed beneficiaries would prefer that expenditures be made on other kinds of extracurricular activities like chorus, drama club, foreign language club, or community service club, all of which tend to disproportionately attract women and girls. (Ah, now I may be getting to the part that really bothers me ....) When girls’ badminton team gets new uniforms, a travel budget, and a stipend for both a coach and an assistant coach, something’s got to give. If it’s not the boys’ team’s budget, it's probably the drama club’s budget or something similar. How did all this happen? Years ago, the Department of Education decided to ignore a simple fact: For whatever reason, the average male likes playing with small-, large-, and medium-sized spherical objects more than the average female does. It’s not that females don’t like sports, they do. And given the opportunity, many will happily participate. But the average female does not rank sports as high a priority as the average male does. The only way to get proportionality is to start twisting arms (and budgets). If a school finds that proportionally more males than females participating in its organized athletics, it must prove that it has taken all appropriate measures to attract the females. Sometimes they do so by expanding athletic opportunities for females to the point that no sane person could argue that women are getting fewer choices than they should get, and the money is taken from other non-athletic programs, like chorus and drama club. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is simply cut back on programs aimed at males, although the Bush Administration has tried to discourage this. Neither strategy seems to be a good thing. It’s probably true that, as a result of these regulations, more women and girls participate in organized sports than would otherwise have. But at what cost? Other extracurricular activities must inevitably suffer. There’s only so much money and so much time in a day. What not let the students choose instead of letting the Department of Education choose for them? This is not an insignificant issue. At schools serving high-risk students, the cancellation of a boys’ sports program may cause some boys to drop out of school and eventually out of society. Meanwhile, a girls’ hockey team may be the last thing on the minds of the girls. They might prefer the school to fund a daycare program, so their infant children can be cared for while they attend classes. Or they might prefer a madrigal choir. Shouldn’t schools have the flexibility to respond to their desires? Political Genius Estrich squawks out By Tom Smith Former dean of a major American law school, and political genius who ran Michael Dukakis's extremely funny presidential bid outdoes herself in this column (to which Maimon links below). Her nuanced view is that Kerry needs to get really dirty right now, and that his campaign is making a big mistake in not doing so. Her ideas? Maybe informants could be paid to come up with stories about former Bush girlfriends getting abortions, and Dick Cheney being an alcoholic, which is a rumor I haven't heard, but I'm not really plugged into the Democratic gutter line. I bet their quaking in their boots in Texas that Professor Estrich and her Hollywood buddies are putting together money to hire PI's to dig up dirt on W. I thought just the Clintons thought this way, but apparently not. I think this is why I would rather be mugged by a Republican than a Democrat. If Republican cut your throat and took your wallet, he wouldn't tell you before you died that really, the mugger was doing the right thing, and that he was forced into doing the crime to serve a Higher Moral Purpose. Don't worry, Susan, you go ahead and crawl into the gutter. We know you're not really the incompetent, scheming, dirty-minded political hack you appear to be. You rise above all that in your service to the noble cause of . . . what? Abortion, I suppose. Yes, we must seek out the dirt on Bush and Cheney and publish it in order to preserve the sacred right of abortion! Or whatever. Don't worry. You know you're right. Sometimes in order to get the party of decency in party, you have to behave indecently. Everybody knows that. No broken eggs, no omlette. And everybody loves a good omlette. We're just lucky such a decent bunch of people are willing to put out their hard earned entertainment and general hackery dollars to save us from those evil Republicans. Maybe when you're done, the President will give you one of those folded flags. After all, you are a kind of American hero. The self-appointed kind. Imagine, the Kerry campaign not wanting to listen to Estrich's advice! Hard to credit. What with her established track record of political astuteness, her Rove-like insight.! What a phone call that must have been! "Fight dirty now! Squaaawwk!" Maybe they just couldn't stand to listen to her. "There must be some dirt out there somewhere! Squaaawwwwk! Money is no object! Squaaaaawwwwwwwk! I know lots of movie stars! Squaaawwwwawk!" What justifies trolling for DUI and abortion tales? The Swiftvets ads, of course! The ads that will live in infamy. I thought I was following that story pretty closely, but I missed the part where it all proved to be a bunch of dirty lies. It seems to me at a minimum understandable that the sailors on the boats that stayed to rescue the ir comrades on boat 3, wondered, "where the hell is he going?," as they watched Kerry take off down river after the explosion. He came back long enough to pick up the guy who fell off his boat, and that was a good thing. Still, had I been on one the boats that stayed behind, I can see that a natural divergence of interpretation of the events, might have arisen. Put that together with Kerry's anti-war activity, and you can see their POV. I don't know that anything they said can be called lies. It seems closer to the truth, or at least, a reasonable interpretation of events, to me. But no matter. Sometimes you have to interpret reasonable interpretations as lies, in order to justify doing indecent things, in order to get the decent party in power, to make sure abortion is safe and legal. It takes someone of real moral stature to see that. On reflection, I think legal academia should give Susan Estrich a medal. Maybe John Kerry, flanked by various Hollywood stars who have played heroic figures in movies, could present it. We could call it the Golden Heart, or the Purple Abortion, or the Squawking Duck with cluster, for her brave moral stand on these difficult political issues. If she doesn't like them, she can always throw them away. She sets an example of decency for us all. Realclearpolitics rules By Tom Smith It's just too tedious linking to realclearpolitics every time it puts me on to something useful. So take this as a general, all around plug. Just go there every day, and look at what it links to. Follow its extremely useful poll page. Read Bevan's commentaries. Bookmark it. Tell your friends about it. SD U-T writer gets it right By Tom Smith Just so you don't get confused when you read this, remember that journalists who attack Republicans fraudulently, e.g. by writing negative reviews of the Republican convention in advance of the event, have not engaged in the sort of unfairness that would justify attacks on Kerry for his voting record, exaggerating his war heroism, and so forth. The journalists are committing innocent mistakes, while the Republicans are dirty liars. I hope that is clear; I don't know how I can make it clearer. Saving Caller ID By Mike Rappaport I am sure these threats were illegal, but I can't deny being happy about this story: Three days after the start-up company Star38 began offering a service that fools caller ID systems, the founder, Jason Jepson, has decided to sell the business. Mr. Jepson said he had received harassing e-mail and phone messages and even a death threat taped to his front door - all he said from people opposed to his publicizing a commercial version of technology that until now has been mainly used by software programmers and the computer hackers' underground. Steyn does it again By Tom Smith Steyn nails it again. Bush, Kerry, the difference. Lines like, no one is allowed to criticize Kerry, except his wife, and then only on days when she gives him his allowance. Oh, and we better be caweful, because we are huwting Democwats feewings, wight and left. Here's Richard Cohen, saying Republicans are big bullies. He saw a fight once, and there was this bully, and this bully lost the fight, but the bully's friend came out, and beat up the good guy, and Cohen is sure the bully's friend was a Republican. Who are these people? I mean, I feel sorry for myself often enough, but I at least try to hide it, because I don't want other people to think I'm a total weenie. Didn't their mothers or whoever reared them teach them it's bad form to wallow in self-pity? From the reaction to Zell Miller's speech, you'd think he was up there ranting about the master race or something. What he said was, Bush is a strong man with good character, and a big supporter of the national defense. The Democrats, after McGovern, have become very weak on defense. No is no time for a weak defense; we have our families to think about. That's what he said; he said it like he meant it, and he probably did. That is supposed to be the pinnacle of hate-filled, below the belt, dirty politics. Yet I did not hear anyone suggest Kerry is in the pockets of any particular interest group, is a "dry drunk," a religious fanatic (even though the faction of the Catholic Church he belongs to, which couldn't even exist but for the high transactions cost of ecclesiastical discipline withing the Church, is a lot further out than Bush's born-again Christianity), an idiot, and so on. Even right wing 527's are not suggesting this. Yet Michael Moore is a guest of honor at the Democrat's convention. Some Vietnam vets obviously hate Kerry's guts, but they have their reasons. They think he behaved badly over there, and the deeply resent his anti-war activities. Look, Bob Dole said it all when he observed that Kerry had three purple hearts, but never spent a day in a hospital. If there's isn't a rule that says your wound has to be serious enough to require some significant medical attention, to get the medal, maybe there should be. Anyone who's clever enough to land a billionairess on the deck, obviously knows a think or two about gaming the system. I know we're the stupid party, but our intelligence can still be insulted. And if you're a Vietnam vet, I bet you feel like more than your intelligence has been insulted by the enormous deal that Kerry has made about himself, the "genuine war hero." As long as I'm ranting, just one more thing, on this "questioning someone's patriotism" business. Unless I am very much mistaken, lots of people who will be voting for Kerry really are unpatriotic. I don't question their patriotism. I observe that they hate this country. They think its history is a chronicle of crimes against various classes of victims. They think it searches the world for pathetic countries to occupy and oppress. They think police, firemen, and people in the military are morons. They think 9/11 was at least partly our fault. They think invading Iraq was just the latest in a long series of crimes. They hate how America is spreading free markets around the world. They hate Americans for being so rich, so fat, so uncultured, so violent, and so successful. As an academic, I have met lots of people like this. I'm supposed to pretend I haven't? I'm supposed to pretend they really are patriotic, in some really nuanced way, even though they think America sucks? We all know people like this. Are we supposed to think any of them are Republicans? The Democratic party has plenty of patriots in it, true, but can there be any doubt that if you hate America, you should vote the Democratic ticket? That they are your persons? Democrats are the ones who make coalitions with the anti-American left. Are we supposed to be so polite as not to mention that when they get up, they're covered with doghair and fleas? No one's that polite, especially after being called a liar and a war criminal for months on end. This may be overconfident, but it may not be too early for Teresa to start thinking of a really nice present to give John John to make him feel better about suffering humiliating defeat at the hands of such a obviously inferior man. Maybe a jet of his own? A new, really boss motorcycle? Maybe she could buy him a country he could be president of? Susan Estrich's Secret Plan By Maimon Schwarzschild Leave aside Susan Estrich's round-the-bend tone here. Isn't the substance of this that Democratic donors either ought to assemble, or actually already are assembling, millions of dollars to "loosen lips" of people who will make last-minute scandal accusations against Bush and Cheney? The implication, of course, is that false accusations would be perfectly fine, and that false accusers can surely be found (and jolly well ought to be) in exchange for a cool million or so from George Soros or his like. I suppose the Bush campaign ought to be ready for just this sort of thing. But what do you do to prepare? I suppose no one needs to be reminded that relying on the fairness of the "mainstream media" wouldn't exactly be a good bet. Then again, if Susan Estrich or her friends are really planning such a thing, why publish a column announcing it? So perhaps this is just one more shriek of rage. The hatred is hard to fathom. It's not just Estrich, obviously. This is an American election. It is not (yet, anyway) a civil war. The Democratic nominee, at least on alternate Tuesdays, says he agrees with Bush about the basic policy in Iraq, i.e. with the basic policy of the past three years. And still, there is this cloud of apocalyptic fury -- not just on the hard core left, but evidently among millions of otherwise-mildly-leftish people. It's a little hard to see how all this will end well. September 03, 2004
Clinton's mysterious heart By Tom Smith My lovely wife the physician Jeanne, who is not a cardiologist, but an endocrinologist, says it is very odd that Clinton went from not knowing anything was wrong with his ticker, to needing a quadruple bypass, all sudden like. He presumably had thorough physicals every year, while in office. If his heart problem was as bad as we know it was, this would have shown up four years ago, in all probability. Any cardiologist readers out there are welcome to correct me, but isn't this kind of puzzling? Maybe there was something in Bill's medical records, which never got disclosed, did they?, besides five STD's you have never heard of, as well as most you have. Maybe that's why Hillary was always on him about his diet. Maybe his "slightly elevated" cholesterol was a big lie. Hard to believe, I know. This is a good story for the blogosphere. There must be some doctor bloggers out there who can tell us if are getting snowed by this story, which strains my credulity: The bad heart that came out of nowhere. Terrorists' war on children By Tom Smith That comedienne who doesn't seem to wash her hair on MSNBC remarked after Bush's speech how the President seemed to be bent on instilling an atmosphere of fear. Meanwhile, Islamist terrorists were preparing to murder children in the former USSR, which they eventually did. They made the children take off their clothes, presumably to make them feel more vulnerable. At least 150 are dead; CNN reports they may have been holding as many as 1200 hostages. The Russian special forces started shooting when the terrorists started gunning down children who were trying to run away. People should take a long, hard look at the photos linked to above and ask themselves how they would react to such an incident on American soil. It is unbearable enough taking place on the other side of the world. Maybe the press should feature these photos as prominently as those from Abu Ghraib. I think Bush is far from perfect. But at least he doesn't make criticizing efforts to stop this evil a full time job. When was the last time American soldiers took over a school, stripped the children, and then started shooting them? Maybe Michael Moore should make a movie about how the kids inside the school were having a grand old time, playing games and such. Maybe he should do some of his famous interviews with their parents. The only difference between these Islamist fanatics, and that term covers a lot of ground, and the Nazis, is that to the Islamists, we're all Jews, and they're not organized enough to build concentration camps. But they can strip and murder children, alright. They can manage that. They teach that in Jihad 101. Now let's all sit around and feel guilty about defending ourselves. After all, those Russian children had it coming. MORE . . . More photos . . . warning: graphic) more photos. Hostages included infants, children 2, 3, 4 years old. September 02, 2004
France and Terrorism By Mike Rappaport An accurate portrayal of the French, by Islamic extremists. Sadly, it demonstrates how the French fight terrorism. September 01, 2004
What about Zell? By Mike Rappaport In an extraordinary event, Zel Miller, both a Democratic Senator and Governor from Georgia, who gave the Keynote Address at the 1992 Democratic Convention, strongly supported George Bush and powerfully and brutually attacked John Kerry at the Republican Convention. So how does the New York Times report the story? With a story that has the following headline:"Cheney and G.O.P. Mount Vigorous Assault on Kerry" Update: The headline blackout continues. I agree with the Times about one thing. Miller's speech was very damaging to Kerry. W. By Gail Heriot My friend Ward Connerly explains on National Review Online one of the reasons that he and I are less than enthusiastic about Bush this time around. Yes, there are countervailing reasons to vote in favor of re-election, and those reasons are important, but asking me to ignore the bad is asking entirely too much. Krugman By Mike Rappaport James Taranto at the Best of the Web quotes from a discussion of a rant by Paul Krugman: "Krugman says he believes the United States needs a "mega-Watergate" scandal to uncover a far-reaching right-wing conspiracy, going back forty years, to gain control of the U.S. government and roll back civil rights. . . . Krugman told the crowd that the president is simply a front man for larger and more sinister forces. Krugman said he and other liberals had been "asleep" and unaware of the true dimensions of the danger during the years in which President Bill Clinton found himself facing a variety of scandal allegations. But Krugman said there is a "complete continuity" between today's politics and the "campaign of slander and innuendo" against Clinton.James Tarano, though, has the appropriate response: "Such paranoid lunacy would be merely laughable did it not come from someone who has a twice-weekly op-ed slot at the once-respected New York Times." Terrified to Use the Word "Terrorist"? By Gail Heriot When my radio alarm went off this morning, the news announcer was reporting the story of the school children, parents, and teachers who have been taken hostage in Russia. Several had already been killed and about a hundred were being threatened with death; demands had been issued to the Russian authorities by the "attackers," according to the report. The use of the word "attackers," rather than "terrorists," didn't strike me as odd at the time. But at the end of the report, the announcer said something like this: "No word yet on whether the attackers are terrorists." Hmmm. They've taken a bunch of school children hostage and threatened to kill them, some are wearing explosives on their belts in the manner of suicide bombers, and they have made demands on the Russian authorities. I'm all for careful reporting, but doesn't that make them terrorists? They are trying to scare people into caving to their political demands by attacking civilians, right? When I managed to get myself out of bed, I checked the CNN report, which also seems to studiously avoid using the term "terrorist" when referring to the incident, opting instead for "attacker." Unlike the radio report, the CNN web site does not suggest that it is unclear whether the hostage takers are terrorists, and it does use the word "terrorist" to refer to other recent incidents in Russia. That's to its credit, I suppose. But it still seemed odd to me. |