Disagreement, RIP

2003-06-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

THE END OF DISAGREEMENT

As you have probably noticed, there haven't been any updates in a couple weeks. After thorough consideration and by consulting with the other posters, we have decided that we have spread ourselves too thin online and off.

You can still read Daniel's, Michael's, and Laurence's posts at their respective sites. Adam and I will still be writing non-political posts at the No-Lyfe Journal.

I have some ideas in the works for political posts in the future. If I have anything that I absolutely must write in the short term, it will be at Reductio ad Absurdum. I am taking a brief break from all posting for the time being as I tend to personal matters, but those are the two places you can find me.

The site will remain up indefinitely, but will not be updated. Please feel free to remove all permalinks.

2003-05-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

REALLY, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY ANYMORE

about what the Bushies are doing to our economy. Congress of course has provided material assistance, unsurprisingly. And apparently, Republicans in general can simply make NO claim--none--on either the state or the federal level that they are in any ways more fiscally responsible than Democrats. We will be paying for the economic idiocy of this administration for years to come.

2003-05-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

QUESTIONS I DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWER TO

A. Since the current primary system has been in place, has any presidential incumbent running for re-election who did not have a serious primary rival lost a general election?

B. Since the current primary system has been in place, has any presidential incumbent with a serious primary rival won a general election?

Now, the "current primary system" was not, I believe, in place when Eisenhower ran for re-election in 1956, but even if it was, Eisenhower was unchallenged in the primaries and won.

The next incumbent to run was Johnson in 1964. I do not believe that he had any serious internal opposition and won re-election. Is that belief correct?

Nixon in 1972: Did Schmidt run against him in the GOP primaries or did he simply bolt to run third party? Would he count as a serious intraparty challenge? I really don't know.

Ford in 1976: Reagan ran against him in the primaries, he lost the general election.

Carter in 1980: Edward Kennedy ran against him in the primaries, he lost the general election.

Reagan in 1984: Did not have any serious internal opposition that I know about, won handily.

Bush 1992: Buchanan won New Hampshire and would thus qualify as a serious challenger. Bush lost the general election.

Clinton in 1996: No primary challenger, won.

So the questions then become:
(A) Do weak incumbents simply draw primary challengers and thus a primary challenger is indicative of a problem?
(B) Do primary challengers make the candidate appear even weak and therefore have a detrimentally negative effect on the president's odds for re-election.

Democratic Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey considered running against Clinton in 1996. For whatever reason, he chose not to. In the run-up to the election, Clinton's re-elect numbers were not all that great. In fact, I believe a "generic Republican" ran about even with him. Nonetheless, when Bob Dole won the nomination, Clinton's re-election seemed imminent. Would a Kerrey challenge have changed that perception? Or did Kerrey simply know that since the economy was doing well, Clinton would thus be strong because that was the issue he'd run on in 1992? In other words, was Kerrey's decision not to run based on a percieved lack of weakness (A) or was Clinton's sailing through to re-election a product of coming out of the primaries with a party unified behind him (B)?

What did Bush's numbers look like when Buchanan filed to run against him?

Anyone have any thoughts or answers?

2003-05-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

INS AND OUTS OF POWER

Jane Galt has a great post about the parties in and out of power. The crux of it is Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

She also goes on to explain her belief that Clinton's impeachment was done right: Clinton should have been impeached, but should not have been removed from office. While I don't precisely agree with her and believe that Clinton should indeed have been removed from office, her explanation of the entire situation is stellar:

I am the only person I've ever met who actually thinks we got about the right result in the impeachment. We impeached the guy, to say "No, you can't just commit perjury", but we didn't remove him from office over a minor civil suit. (Although Democrats who are planning on deluging me with elegant arguments about how he shouldn't have had to answer those questions -- I agree with you, except for one little thing, which is that he signed, with great fanfare, the law that made it so he had to answer those questions. As far as I'm concerned, therefore, he's the only guy in America who should have had to answer such questions under oath.)

But I could see how you wanted him impeached, and I could also see the argument for not impeaching him. It was a judgement call.

Except that a substantial portion of the Republican Party seemed, long before, to have lost all judgement. They were insane on the subject of Clinton. It wasn't enough that they disagreed with him politically; nothing would do but that he be the AntiChrist. They flooded the airwaves and newsprint with vituperative rants about the veriest trivialities of his administration. They raged impotently at the people in America -- THE FOOLS! -- who couldn't see that Clinton was the AntiChrist, even though it was as plain as the nose on your face. Every tiny shred of news about Clinton, no matter how innocuous, was waved about as evidence of his perfidy. I recall listening to some radio commenter go on and on about some Rose Garden ceremony for some law that was, as laws go, blandly heartwarming though ultimately useless, rather than, say, totally antithetical to basic concepts of liberty. The radio host used this law, which was so boring that I can't remember its topic except that it had something to do with kids and learning, as proof of Clinton's inherent evilness. How dare he cavort with children in the Rose Garden when, as we have already seen, he's EEEEVVVVVIIIIILLLL.

This was my conflict during the entire process. I was a Clinton defender and later apologist for most of his presidency. In fact, my very first column for the Daily Cougar outlined why I viewed impeachment as a mistake. In my generally tempered style, I fell short of explaining what I really thought: Republicans were insane.

And even though I now agree that there were grounds for Clinton to be impeached and removed from office, I still believe that they were. Not those that thought that lying under oath was an impeachable offense, of course, because I'm one of them. However, that's just the charge that they caught him one. Republicans had been aiming to get him removed since the 1996 election for whatever it was they could find. An investigation of a land deal became an investigation of marital indescretions resulted in impeachment on a crime that had not yet been committed when the investigations began. I don't say this because I think it lets Clinton off the hook because I obviously don't believe it does. Instead, I want to look at how irrational it all was and how they innoculated Clinton to the point that the public rallied behind a confessed adulturer, liar, and perjuror.

Bill Clinton was accused of everything from murder to treason. The former charge is thoroughly discredited and the latter is specious at best, but the point is when you accuse a man of being the Satan incarnate, discovering that he is an adulturer, liar, and perjuror just doesn't seem so bad. They had spent so much time trying to charge so much against the man that by the time actual wrongdoing was discovered, the people were sick of it.

On political grounds, Republican criticisms of Clinton's politics were equally inept. I remember a classic political cartoon that explained it all in a nutshell:
Panel 1:
Republican: Bill Clinton is liberal, liberal, liberal!
Arrow to Panel 2
Panel 2:
Democrat: Isn't it great to have a president that stands up for what he believes in?
Arrow to Panel 3
Panel 3
Republican: Stands up for what he believes in? Bill Clinton has never stood up for anything in his life!
Arrow to Panel 4
Panel 4
Democrat: Doesn't that just go to show how nice it is having a president that is so open to compromise.
Arrow to Panel 5
Panel 5
Republican: Compromise? Bill Clinton is taking credit for all our ideas!
Arrow to Panel 6
Panel 6
Democrat: How wonderful it must be for you that Bill Clinton supports Republican initiatives.
Arrow to Panel 1

The Republicans tried to attack President Clinton on every front at once to the point that the attacks were mutually exclusive. I don't know if it was irreconcilable hatred of the man or a desperate attempt to see what will stick.

Whatever the case, the parallels with Democratic criticisms of President Bush. Whereas Republicans vascilated between Bill Clinton having no principle and being a liberal hatchetman, Democrats do so between the notion that Bush is this machiavellian prince and that he's a moron (or smirking money or empty hat). Bush may well be defeated in 2004, but it will be despite, not because of, the Democratic's undisciplined, unfocused opposition to him.

In the post-Watergate era, only two elected presidents have not been re-elected: Jimmy Carter and George H. Bush. In both cases the economy weighed very heavily in their defeats. More than that, the opposition was able to make the case that the problem was the man in the White House and that replacing him would amount to change. More than even that, the case against them was very focused on their job performance. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that neither were hated by the opposing party nearly as much as Reagan and Clinton were. To put a finer point on it, Carter and Bush were difficult men to hate on a personal level so they were able to approach the situation with more level-headedness. Or maybe they were difficult to hate because they were inept.

Either way, at the present time Bush is more reminiscent of Clinton and Reagan. The Democrats lack a unified theory. Is Bush a conservative firebrand out of touch? Is he a machiavellian prince without any principle other than politics (note: you are running against Bush, so don't say "well Rove is this way and Bush is that way and together they unite to form the Axis of Republican Evil!")? Is he inept and his incompetence is to blame for percieved failures in Iraq and on the economy?

Lieberman presently strikes me as the only candidate who has a chance primarily because he's the only one who has picked an answer (ineptitude) and run with it. Unfortunately for him, his answers on foreign policy are largely incompatible with the Democratic primary electorate, so he will not win the nomination. Edwards is the only candidate that has to potential to have a chance because he hasn't closed any doors yet so he could make a case that he would be better than Bush on both foreign and domestic policy. Given his lack of experience, it's an uphill climb, but his lack of exprience also serves to explain why he hasn't developed a comprehensive plan, as opposed to John Kerry, where every new thing he says that contradicts something he's previously said serves as yet another example that he is a victim of a Gorean identity crisis and given that just about everything he has said this point has been already contradictory of something else, I just don't think there's much hope.

Bob Graham also could win, but by all indications he has appeared to have lost his mind, so I'm not sure what to say about him. Gephardt is running on the economy. He didn't get the memo.

Of course, the above analysis is in large part dependent that Iraq is not in the middle of a civil war that we're involved in and we're not in the middle of the Second Great Depression. If that's the case, everyone who isn't named Sharpton, Braun, or Kucinich could concievably win.

But praying for rain is not a political strategy.

So to wrap this post around, the point is that unbridled hatred only serves to insulate the party that's in power. The "insanity" of Republicans prior to impeachment innoculated Clinton when wrong-doing was demonstrated. Similarly, the current "insanity" of Democrats is innoculating Bush for 2004.

2003-05-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

THE INFINITE TOLL-WAY

A couple brief stories:

1.
My mother was once on a plane with James A. Baker, who was serving as Secretary of Treasury at the time. He was approached by someone who had an idea for easier taxation. The man said that everyone should have to pay for things with what today are called debit cards (but were not as prevalent at the time) and a portion of each purchase should just go straight to the government. Baker was polite (one suspects that he got ideas on taxation from strangers often) and explain, "Yes, that would make it simpler to collect taxes and a lot simpler to raise them."

2.
A left-of-center friend and I were getting gas on our way out of town for a road trip. Gas prices were abnormally high at the time and there was an ongoing debate as Republicans were pushing for them to be lowered. My friend saw a sticker on the pump that explained that fifty-three cents of every gallon was going to pay for local, state, and federal taxes. "Why do they do that?" he complained, "it's like they want to blame the government for the high gas prices."

I responded that if the government was responsible for fifty-three cents on the gallon, it's more than fair to say so. It's like when stores don't include sales taxes on their prices.

Turns out he also had a problem with that.

Charles Kuffner links to a report on taxes in passing that caught my interest. It explains the good and bad ways that states tax:

Of course, the burden a tax system must carry varies from state to state. There is no such thing as a perfect structure, no template that all, or even most, of the states could use. One of the glories of the American system of governance is that states are free to offer different degrees of service to their citizens. The main commonality is that they must raise whatever revenue they need to meet their chosen level of service. Raising money to meet irresponsible spending doesn’t make for a good tax system. But utilizing well-balanced streams of revenue and avoiding unsupportable tax cuts are critical, regardless of whether a state wants to have a Cadillac government or a Chevy.

Fair enough. I am generally in favor of balanced budgets, so tax cuts that create massive deficits are undesirable to me (though much more desirable than spending that creates deficits, which is why Democratic criticisms of Bush ring hollow to me, but that's an aside).

The question is what makes a taxism more or less fair than another? After all, a balanced budget is balanced whether the revenues are generated via sales, income, corporate, or property taxes. There's always the question of who is getting taxed. Income taxes are usually favored by liberals and sales taxes favored by conservatives since the former can be aimed at the wealthy and the latter are less likely to be targetted. There is also the question of what the taxing promotes and penalizes, conservatives arguing that the progressive income tax penalizes work, many arguing that property taxes discourage home ownership, and so on. But the report doesn't really explore these issues.

It's primary concern is making taxation as psychologically untaxing (pun intended) as possible.

States with unbalanced tax systems are particularly ripe for misinformation and misconception. In Texas, sales and property taxes are high because there is no income tax. Even though Texas ranks near the bottom in tax burden — per capita or otherwise — its citizens “think of themselves as overtaxed,” reports Judith Stallmann, a professor at the University of Missouri.

This kind of veracity vertigo wouldn’t be such a bad thing if complaining about high taxes were like complaining about the weather. But politicians who want to stay in office regularly disregard their better instincts and follow their citizens on a path to misbegotten policies. Tennessee’s tax structure, with its over-reliance on high sales taxes, is, for instance, famously dysfunctional and inadequate to state needs. Well-informed observers have long argued in favor of adding a state income tax to the mix. “Many in the legislature believed the income tax was the right approach to funding government,” says Bill Fox, a nationally known tax expert and professor at the University of Tennessee. “But the percentage who was willing to vote for it was different.”

Damn those voters! Always complaining about taxes! Except their complaints get in the way of bigger government!

I'm being hyperbolic, but I get a whole lot of that in Texas. Over and over again I'm told how low our state taxes are compared to other states and how if we're really going to be able to pay our bills, we're going to have to incorporate a state income taxes. Whether or not we should have a state income tax is, of course, open to debate. But I don't want to sign on to more taxes and more government in Texas because taxes are higher elsewhere. If the current taxes are "inadequate," as they presently are, they we either need to pare down state government to the point that they are adequate or raise current rates to meet our needs. How we raise rates is statistically insignificant as long as the money actually comes in.

That last part is important as in recent history states (including Texas) have pursued quick-fixes in the forms of state lotteries that have promised more revenue than they've brought in. But the article states as clear as day that income taxes are just as susceptable to the ebb and flow of the economy as are sales taxes and so on. So really it's not so much pushing for a state income tax.

What it is pushing for, though, is diversified taxation. In other words, a little taxes everywhere (income, sales, corporate, and property) so that people are less inclined to notice or be deeply psychologically scarred for life by the government taking its chomp out of our wallets. Hyperbolic again, but you get the point. What they're getting at is a desire to make taxes easier and less noticeable.

That's where I just can't agree. I want taxes to be noticeable. I hate counting out pennies because of sales taxes, but that reminds me that $8.25 of every $10 goes towards the government. When Pasadena raised their sales taxes from .075 to .0825, I didn't notice some macroeconomic manner of mildly increasing prices, I noticed that something $20 costed a buck and a half more. Black and white. Cut and dried. As it happens the people of Pasadena voted for the tax increase and that's perfectly fine. I'm sure they're happy with it. The buck-fifty isn't the point. The point was that taxes went up and people were made immediately aware of it.

Truth be told, I might not mind a state income tax if it were institution in place of, instead of in addition to, the current structure. Like the federal income tax, it wouldn't be hard to determine exactly how much bite of the apple the government is taking. It'll make voters think twice before that next tax hike. As someone who is generally anti-tax, I consider that a good thing. That's why I don't consider psychologically painful taxes to be such a bad thing: they keep us from getting to economically painful tax rates.

On a last note, there is one area on which I do agree with the report.

the golden rule of tax equity: collect the lowest possible rates on the widest possible base of taxpayers.

I call this the "divide and conquer" strategy. Tax hotels because theoretically (but not actually) those are paid for by out of towners (and some of those in-town hotel guests would just assume no one know that they... ahem... frequent hotels). Tax cigarettes cause smokers are a minority and you can add a moral dimension to it. Tax every concievable vice, and we'll all end up paying in the end, but we'll all have our barrels pointed at different taxes and they'll be much more difficult to fight.

The article calls that form of taxation the most "fair." While I maintain that the difference in fairness is marginal, I would call that taxation the most likely to be passed and the least likely to be reversed, so Ima ginnit.

2003-05-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

ENJOY OKLAHOMA, BOYS, AND DON'T COME BACK

A few interesting facts:

California:
2000 Election: 58% Gore/Nader, 42% Bush
Statewide elected officials: 10-0 (100%) Dem.
Congressional Delegation: 34-19 (64%) Dem.

Texas:
2000 Election: 59% Bush, 40% Gore/Nader
Statewide elected officials: 29-0 (100%) GOP
Congressional Delegation: 17-15 (53%) Dem.

If the 2000 elections had gone to the U.S. House, the same state that elected and re-elected Bush (by an astounding margin) would have cast its congressional vote for Al Gore.

In February I commented that while the House Majority Leader whose initials are TD (I am not supposed to mention his name in a negative context. Long story, bear with me) had a point about the Democratic tilt of Congress's congressional delegation, the GOP had its chance at redistricting to change that and they blew it. As such, the Texas GOP should not be pursuing redistricting after the 2002 election.

I take it back. Goodspeed House Majority Leader Tommy D!

When I first read the title "Democrats AWOL" peering over at someone else's edition of the Houston Chronicle on my way to jury duty today, I assumed it was a hyperbolic title about the relative impotence of the Democratic Party in our fair state. But no, a fair number of those little buggers, henceforth referred to as the Texas Democratic Coalition For a Permanent Minority (TDCPM) have actually fled Texas proper into our northern-most county, Oklahoma, which is by some freak occurance of history outside Texas's jurisdiction.

For those of you unaware, Texas legislature rules require 2/3 (100 of 150) to meet quorum. In order to duck the redistricting fight, Democrats have taken over 50 legislators across state lines. Why across state lines? Because Texas Rangers (the real ones, not the ball club) and the DPS were looking for them. Their jurisdiction ends at the Oklahoma border and as such, the Texas Democratic Coalition for a Permanent Minority have become the opposition in exile. Meanwhile, MSNBC, CBS News, and Fox News are eating it up. Why not? It's a funny story.

Except the joke is on us.

And I'm not laughing.

In fact, I am completely reversing my position on the issue of redistricting. Why? Because before I felt that the Texas GOP, lead by Tommy D, were using dirty (but constitutional and in accordance with with the letter of the law) tricks to make up for their shortcomings in redistricting. While I didn't disagree with their aim of having a state delegation that represents the views of the state, I did disagree with the notion that they get a "do over" just because they didn't like the results last time around. So what do the Democrats do? They use dirty (but constitutional and in accordance with the letter of the law) tricks to make up for their shortcoming of being in a state whose electorate repudiates their politics nearly every chance it gets. While I am sympathetic to their arguments that the GOP shouldn't get a do-over, they took our dirty laundry and waved it in front of the rest of the country.

Kuff and Lofty suggest that this is only a rational response to GOP strongarming. Quintessentially, the argument is that "They started it!"

That's true, but this little publicity stunt has taken it up about sixteen notches. The last time this parliamentary trick was used was in 1991, when liberals used it to get Governor Ann Richards to promise to return funding for Kindergarten programs. While I'd need to know the specifics to know whether or not I agree with the liberals on that issue, at least they pulled out the biggest gun in their arsenal for an actual issue! What are they doing it for right now? So that a staunchly Republican state continues to send a Democratic congressional delegation, all the while moaning and groaning on how it's the Republicans that are trying to subvert democracy and disenfranchise voters. Democrats are losing on almost every issue in the state (even some that this writer wishes that they were winning) and their response for being continually beaten up in the boxing ring of politics is to blame their opponent.

Well, Dems, you've drawn the line in the sand. It's not progressivism vs. conservatism or active government versus limited government, it's Republican vs. Democrat in a state that leans at least 55% Republican. Good luck with that.

2003-05-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

BEST DESCRIPTION OF MODERN CONSERVATISM I'VE SEEN IN A WHILE...

and it's from a die-hard liberal who is frightened by it!

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal--now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say. Stick together, because we are winning.

He goes on to explain why this self-assessment of conservatives is wrong. He's right, to a degree, that the effects of conservatism are not as grand as the vision. The same, of course, can be said of liberalism. This brings me back to my tug-of-war theory which states that one must not agree with one side or the other completely to be constantly tugging the political center to that side.

2003-05-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

I CAUGHT MICHAEL SAVAGE ON MSNBC TODAY...

What an obnoxious little twit.

2003-05-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

IN OTHER NEWS...

There are rumors that they're lining the pipes in Hell for a coming cold spell.

2003-05-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

LICENSE TO PREACH

There were some points I meant to get to in the below post that I never quite did because below was focused primarily on Bill Bennett. Now I'm going to take it to the abstract.

What makes someone a hypocrite?

Hypocrisy is conventionally defined as a "do what I say, not what I do" mentality. Thus, someone who is doing one thing but then saying that it shouldn't be done or vice-versa, they are a hypocrite. That much is pretty clear. If Thursday night, with a beer in my hand, I call a friend and tell him that alcohol drinking is a sin, then take another swig of my beer, I am a hypocrite.

Past vs. Present
Someone can also be a hypocrite for having done something and then telling someone not to do it, provided that they do not renounce their former deed. So, if I spent my teenage years getting high, I cannot tell my future kids not to do so unless I make an admission that I was wrong for doing so. If I make such an admission, then I am actually free to lecture hypocrisy-free. If I were to say "It was different in my day" and try to convince the kid that it was okay for me to do it (and therefore fail to renounce my involvement) then that is hypocrisy unless a forceful distinction can be made between "in my day" and "now." That would be possible when it comes to an older person's sexual escapades younger in life and now because of the prevalence of STD's. (inversely, the kid could argue that abortion is legal now so the difference actually works in his favor in that regard).

Rationale Overlap
Additionally, someone can be a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something else when the reasons for prohibition of one ought to apply to the other. For instance, if I am a Catholic woman preaching against homosexuality because it is contrary to my church's faith and then turn around and take the pill, I am being a hypocrite for engaging in an act different from the one I am committing by virtue of the rationale overlap (if one shouldn't be gay cause Catholicism says it's wrong, then they shouldn't have abortions either). Even if I don't invoke Catholicism but argue that homosexuality is wrong because it does not lead to procreation and yet I take the pill, I am also being hypocritical by virtue of the rationale overlap. This, like PvP, can be avoided with credible distinctions. In the case of the pill and homosexuality, I cannot think of any distinctions remotely credible. In other cases, their may be but such distinctions usually lead to two distinct rationales (homosexuality is wrong because it leads to indefinite non-procreation while one can go off the pill, thus not making the issue non-procreative sex but rather the indefinity of it).

Same But Worse
Lastly, someone can be a hypocrite by a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something similar. If I say "Heroin is bad because it messes with your mind" and then turn around and take LSD, I'm being a hypocrite. This is ostensibly similar to rationale overlap, but is different insofar as it is generally harder to get out of. If I say that heroin is bad because it messes with your mind but next Friday, just like last Friday, I'm going to get drunk again, I may or may not be a hypocrite depending on if a distinction can be made. Needless to say, it's much easier to make one between alcohol and heroin than LSD and heroin. For instance, if you are publically intoxicated, you have more freedom to roam about because you don't have to worry as much about getting caught. and therefore the amount that it messes with your mind is of less importance. Mostly, however, one messes with your mind to a much greater degree than the other so a distinction can be made about how much of the mind is messed with by any given narcotic.

There may be other cases where hypocrisy charges ring true, but these are the ones that come to mind. The only time that it is necessarily hypocrisy is when one is committing the very same act that they are condemning. Beyond that, it is up to the accuser to explain where the hypocrisy has occured, because this is not hypocrisy:

Sins In The Eyes Of Some
Someone is not necessarily a hypocrite if they engage in acts viewed wrong by many if they preach against other acts as viewed wrong by many, even if the finger-waggers are in league on some, or most, issues.

For instance, if I'm pro-life and so is Jerry Fallwell, and I donate money to his pro-life organization, does it then follow that I am held accountable for his views on homosexuality? Generally not. But let's say that I am someone believes that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong. Can I not be outspoken on those matters if I engage in homosexual acts because most organizations that oppose drinking, smoking, and gambling also oppose homosexuality? Would it make me a hypocrite if I was outspoken? It might if the reason I used was that "The Pentacostal Church says that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong, so we must not do it. Now, excuse me while I go have sex with other men." That would be hypocritical because Pentacostals also hold homosexuality in very low regard.

On a tangent, I once saw a CNN debate between Pat Buchanan and another fellow on abortion and the death penalty. They literally alternated in pointing out that the Vatican says that what they oppose is wrong. Neither addressed any form of distinction as to why the Vatican was right as far as they were concerned and wrong as far as the other was concerned. Both left themselves very much open to charges of hypocrisy as there were not any other substantive cases that either of them made.

My point is that it does not follow that someone who preaches virtue would necessarily have a restricted role of what's acceptable in every aspect of life. By viewing some things more restrictively than others isn't hypocritical, it's making distinctions.

There is a view on the left and the right that it's all black or white when it comes to intellectual consistency. If you're not a puritan but you're outspoken on the things that you do believe are wrong, you are a hypocrite to the left. The endgame of this is to just get you to shut up. It's a sign of the moral relativism on the left. Just because you view it wrong for you to do doesn't mean that you should view it wrong for others to. Or at least if you do, don't tell anyone lest we hold you accountable for views that are not your own.

On the other side of the gallery, of course, are the moral absolutists of the right. Those that believe anything fun is wrong. As for sex, well go ahead and do it since we have to for the preservation of our race, but don't enjoy it, lest you be labeled a hedonist.

In between is the center left, which doesn't mind vague platitudes of right and wrong but get very testy when someone says "It's wrong for me to do this, but it's wrong for you, to" when it comes to something not everyone agrees with. In an age where infidelity is publicly defensible, the boundaries of acceptability are becoming quite broad indeed. The epitome of this mindset are those that are pro-choice who say that "I wouldn't have an abortion but I believe it should be a woman's right" (a perfectly respectable position) but then when I say I view abortion as being wrong regardless of who is having it (with some very narrow exceptions) object not on the grounds that my views are wrong, but rather because I am judging others.

To the right of them and left of the puritans are those of us that are very vocal about what we view as being right and wrong, though are not inclined to push laws forcing our views on everyone else. I find myself getting increasingly testy when I'm constantly being told that I shouldn't call what's wrong wrong because I'm not allowed to judge the actions of others.

Chuck says in a comment to my post below, "It really is about glass houses and stones. If you care that much about how I lead my life, you'd better be sure your own life is in order."

That's a perfectly reasonable position insofar that if I say "Joe, you're doing wrong because you are cheating on your wife," Joe can turn around and say "You're doing wrong because you're living with a woman you are not married to"

Now, I either believe that premarital cohabitation is right or wrong. If I believe premarital cohabitational is okay and Joe doesn't, he is free to call on me and I am free to ignore him. If Joe believes in polygamy but that that premarital cohabitation is wrong, he can then disregard my condemnation as someone whose moral axis is screwed up. If he views both as being wrong and he sleeps better at night believing that all sins are created equal, power to him, I guess.

However, if Joe does not believe that premarital marriage is wrong but is merely bringing that up to shut me up, he is being fundamentally dishonest.

That is my problem with what Bill Bennett's critics are doing with him. I'd be much less bothered by all this if I believed that his critics actually believed that gambling is morally wrong. If I felt that were Joshua Green and Jon Alter's point, I likely wouldn't have written either of these two posts. I wouldn't agree with Green (I am generally in favor of legalizing gambling), but I'd chalk it up to a difference of opinion and my post (if I had one) would likely be on the subject of legalized gambling.

What they're doing, however, is telling us what we should believe. He's telling Bill Bennett what Bill Bennett must believe. It would be one thing if he made an argument that Bennett's views are inconsistent (as Michael Kinsley did), but it was not posited for a discussion and it did not invite any rationale response. Instead of making Bennett's beliefs (and the possible incoherency thereof) the issue, they made Bennett himself the issue. In the end, I'm forced to conclude that either Green and Alter are startlingly inept, or that was precisely the point: To silence a critic.

The message: Don't even speak of morality or we will hold you to standards above and beyond those that you are advocating.

Let me be clear that I am not a Bill Bennett fan. I disagree with him and his ilk on a number of issues. That's not the point, what is the point is that my personal views on premarital sex should not be the fodder by which my views on drug laws are shot down.

I'll go even further to say that I consider his actions, if true, immoral. Not the gambling so much as squandering $8M on such a self-gratifying enterprise. If I had $8 million, I would put quite a lot of it into an industry that didn't make its money in the dubious ways that the gambling industry does. It's one thing to gamble away play money (and I don't care how rich you are, $8 million is not play money, it's money that could go to some very worthy investments either via charities or companies that would improve our way of life) where you are essentially paying for the entertainment it provides. There isn't enough time in the world for that to be worthy of $8 million. But wait, since I don't believe that homosexuality is immoral, I suppose since I consumed a bunch of alcohol before hitting 21, I'm not allowed to talk about Bennett's immorality...

UPDATE: OTHER PERSPECTIVES

In the Comments Section below, Daniel pointed to a Michael Kinsley article on the subject that is definitely worth reading:

1) He never specifically criticized gambling. This, if true, doesn't show that Bennett is not a hypocrite. It just shows that he's not a complete idiot. Working his way down the list of other people's pleasures, weaknesses, and uses of American freedom, he just happened to skip over his own. How convenient. Is there some reason why his general intolerance of the standard vices does not apply to this one? None that he's ever mentioned.
[...]
2) His gambling never hurt anyone else. This is, of course, the classic libertarian standard of permissible behavior, and I think it's a good one. If a hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another, the problem with Bennett is what he says—not (as far as we know) what he does. Bennett can't plead liberty now because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about. He wants to put marijuana smokers in jail. He wants to make it harder to get divorced. He wants more "moral criticism of homosexuality" and "declining to accept that what they do is right."

In all these cases, Bennett wants laws against or heightened social disapproval of activities that have no direct harmful effects on anyone except the participants. He argues that the activities in question are encouraging other, more harmful activities or are eroding general social norms in some vague way. Empower America, one of Bennett's several shirt-pocket mass movements, officially opposes the spread of legalized gambling, and the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, one of Bennett's cleverer PR conceits, includes "problem" gambling as a negative indicator of cultural health. So, Bennett doesn't believe that gambling is harmless. He just believes that his own gambling is harmless. But by the standards he applies to everything else, it is not harmless.

Bennett has been especially critical of libertarian sentiments coming from intellectuals and the media elite. Smoking a bit of pot may not ruin their middle-class lives, but by smoking pot, they create an atmosphere of toleration that can be disastrous for others who are not so well-grounded. The Bill Bennett who can ooze disdain over this is the same Bill Bennett who apparently thinks he has no connection to all those "problem" gamblers because he makes millions preaching virtue and they don't.

3) He's doing no harm to himself. From the information in Alter's and Green's articles, Bennett seems to be in deep denial about this. If it's true that he's lost $8 million in gambling casinos over 10 years, that surely is addictive or compulsive behavior no matter how good virtue has been to him financially. He claims to have won more than he has lost, which is virtually (that word again!) impossible playing the machines as Bennett apparently does. If he's not in denial, then he's simply lying, which is a definite non-virtue. And he's spraying smarm like the worst kind of cornered politician—telling the Washington Post, for example, that his gambling habit started with "church bingo."

Even as an innocent hobby, playing the slots is about as far as you can get from the image Bennett paints of his notion of the Good Life. Surely even a high-roller can't "cycle through" $8 million so quickly that family, church, and community don't suffer. There are preachers who can preach an ideal they don't themselves meet and even use their own weaknesses as part of the lesson. Bill Bennett has not been such a preacher. He is smug, disdainful, intolerant. He gambled on bluster, and lost.

This is the most worthwhile commentary I've seen on the subject. This one actually bothers to make an argument that Bennett is hypocritical. A pretty good argument, too.

This falls into the "Rationale Overlap" category above. If he opposes pot because of the "environment it creates" and does not oppose gambling, he is either (a) completely unaware of the troubles gambling causes or (b) draws a distinction between the two. One such distinction may be that pot is illegal and gambling is not. Given that likens gambling to alcohol, which is legal and also ruins some lives, that is actually a quite plausible. So what about legal behavior such as infidelity? Presumably he gauges those by the damage they cause to non-participating parties. And homosexuality? The only thing I can think of is that homosexuality always hurts the participants in his eyes, whereas gambling only hurts the poor. It's a stretch, but being pro-gay rights, I am biased towards seeing it as such.

So, if Bennett believes that something must be (a) illegal, (b) injurious to non-participating parties, or (c) always harmful to the participants, it is immoral. Of course, it would be immensely helpful if he would explain it this clearly, but then again politicians (which I consider him one) rarely explain everything clearly.

On the other side of the aisle is a great column by Jonah Goldberg.

I guess Aesop's Fables are now wrong.

You see, Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues contained various moral lessons from Aesop's Fables. So, if Bill Bennett has made a mistake in his personal life, he must have been wrong about the educational utility of everything in his book. And, come to think of it, every other virtue and moral and fable and story he ever promoted, advanced, or advocated must be wrong now as well. It's okay for kids to do drugs now, too, I suppose. And I guess it's okay for the president of the United States to enforce sexual-harassment laws while he plays the Sultan and the Slave Girl with an intern and then lies about it under oath. Hell, it must be okay for terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center now.

This sea change is all because Bill Bennett plays high-stakes video poker from midnight to 6:00 AM.

That seems to be the upshot of Joshua Green's and Jonathan Alter's newsitorials about Bill Bennett's gambling.

I find it hard to recall a more asinine and intellectually shameless "gotcha" story in my adult lifetime.
[...]
I can surely see why some religious conservatives who take a dim view of gambling might be disappointed in the man. But I can assure you that any man — or woman — held in high esteem will disappoint the public in one way or another when scrutinized. "Disappointment," however, is not a standard taught at the Columbia School of Journalism. Usually, to have caused a "scandal," a public figure is supposed to have broken the law, lied, cheated, stolen, been hypocritical, or victimized someone in some significant way. But no one has charged any of these things. The only conceivable victims here are the Bennett family, and a little bird tells me that they'll do just fine. The same bird tells me that Alter and Green couldn't give a fig about Bennett's family. As for hypocrisy, neither author mentions the word.

Indeed, the stunner of the story — that Bennett wagered $8 million over the last decade — isn't even as stunning as Green and Alter desperately want it to be. There isn't any evidence that he lost $8 million dollars, only that he's bought $8 million in chips over a decade. If, as is more likely, his losses are half that, he'd have spent less than what numerous movie stars and CEOs spend on their country estates, private jets, and divorces.
[...]
In fact, you can always tell there's a hit job in the works when the victim is criticized for not being hypocritical. "The popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist speaks out, often indignantly, about almost every moral issue except one — gambling," writes Alter in Newsweek. "It's not hard to see why." Green is windier on this point, but writes, "If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler." In other words, if Bennett had spoken out against gambling he'd have been denounced for hypocrisy. And if Bennett had spoken in favor of gambling, he'd have been denounced for defending his preferred vice. If he's in the crosshairs for A, he'd surely be in the crosshairs for not-A as well.

I don't know that liberals are saying or implying that everything Bill Bennett says is naturally 100% wrong. They do seem to be (a) saying that this demonstrates that because Bill Bennett doesn't make it so, which is quite true, and (b) implying that anyone with a percieved moral blind spot has no business talking to anyone about morality. This argument would carry a lot more weight if his accusers actually thought Bennett had done something wrong. Instead, they're telling Bennett that he should believe that he has done something wrong. Why? Because people who are not Bennett say so.

But I digress. The lack of a journalistic angle is one of the things that has bothered me. If the articles hadn't been written by two liberal figures I wouldn't be reacting as I have. Even if it had been the New York Times (which I consider to be a liberal publication), it would have at least explored the issue from a couple of angles, gotten a substantive POV quote from someone against gambling, in favor of gambling, a Bennett support and a Bennett opponent (or six).

Which brings me to my primary disagreement with Goldberg, his assertion that there is no story here. I'll also tackle Andrew Sullivan's assertion that Bennett's privacy rights have been violated.

I believe that someone who puts himself into the public square automatically sacrifices some of his privacy. This is particularly true of someone who makes personal morality a staple of their niche. If a self-described paragon of immorality is doing something that many of his fellow travellers consider immoral, that's news. Why? Because it raises questions. It raises questions as to what Bennett truly believes, if he is a hypocrite (note, this is a question, not an answer), and why he breaks with his fellow social conservatives on this issue. But these are questions it raises, not answers.

Where I fall out of agreement with Bennett's critics is the "so what?" phase of the article. Namely, that Bennett is a hypocrite that should be ignored seems to be taken for granted, with only Kinsley explaining why that's the case. The "hypocrite" assumption is what I am mostly objecting to, not the "invasion of privacy."

2003-05-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

"HYPOCRITES AND HERETICS WEAR THE SAME FACE THROUGH THE YEARS"

For those of you that that are not politically inclined and yet for some reason still read this page, critics of conservative moralizer Bill Bennett have discovered that he has the gambling bug and accused him of... well that's just it, they haven't accused him of anything. In fact, there isn't too much to accuse him of unless you're willing to go out on a limb. Except gambling, of course, but most of his accusers don't have a problem with gambling. But what they're really trying to say is... what, exactly? They're just trying to say that Bennett is a gambler, shame on him (even though they don't necessarily think that his gambling is wrong), and leave the readers to fill in the blanks.

So what are the blanks that need filling? Bennett is a moralizer who is doing something that many view as being immoral.

Well, yeah, that's true enough.

The missing link here, I believe, is a misperception among liberals of conservative thought. While I won't go as far as to say that liberals lack moral conviction -- because they don't -- they often misunderstand the unilateral and multifaceted nature of the conservative view of morality. They are also deeply uncomfortable with the conservative black/white view of the world in which they call what they see as a spade a spade, when liberals (and libertarians, moderates, and even other conservatives) see a club. When many conservatives see someone doing wrong, they are more inclined to say "that's wrong" and, for them, the discussion ends there. With liberals, on the other hand, that's where the discussion begins. "Did they do wrong? Well, what makes it wrong? What makes this wrong committed by him worse than the wrong committed against him by society? If it is in fact wrong, will punishing him really make him less inclined to do wrong in the future or will it in turn isolate him and thus make him more likely to commit wrong in the future?"

To be sure, I'm painting both sides with a very broad brush here, but in their most extreme forms conservatives clutch to their inner convictions even when they're based on ignorance and liberals eschew not just easy answers, but often any realistic answer. Bill Bennett and his accusors, Joshua Green and Jonathan Alter, are not at the extremes of conservatism and liberalism, but nonetheless often see each other through that lense. I got a letter from Bill Bennett the other day, in fact, suggesting that contemporary liberalism's goal is to bring us all into some post-reality world in which all wrongs will be overlooked in the name of tolerance. Green and Alter, on the other hand, naturally assume that because Bennett is a conservative, his doing something that conservatives oppose is scandalous and make the assumption that Bennett doesn't have a problem with gambling because he is a compulsive gambler as opposed to the notion that his ambivalent views towards the evils of gambling influenced his decision to go on numerous trips to Atlantic City.

The undercurrent of Green's and Alter's arguments are basically "Conservatives view gambling as wrong, Bennett is a conservative, and Bennett is a gambler. Discuss. Condemn.

This is in many ways an effort to catch conservatives with their pants down. Conservative opponents of gambling must either condemn Bill Bennett, with whom they agree overwhelmingly on other issues, or they must face the charge of hypocrisy. Inversely, Bennett must eschew his fellow-travellers and would-be condemners or face a similar charge of hypocrisy by allying himself with those that believe his actions are immoral. Charges of hypocrisy, sometimes righteous and sometimes not, are the stock of liberalisms opposition to conservative moralizing. It essentially sets the bar for personal morality so high that one must be sinless to have anything to say on the matter of sin.

Nowhere was this more evident than during the impeachment trials in 1998. Liberals combed over the history of all of Clinton's accusers for cases of sexual infidelity. In many cases they hit their mark. Henry Hyde not only cheated on his own wife, but he did so with another man's. When Newt Gingrich resigned and was replaced with Bob Livingston, they hit the gold mine. Case after case and woman after woman came forth and Livingston was exposed as an adulterer the likes of which Clinton surely envied. Then a funny thing happened, Republicans called on Livingston to resign. It would later come out that those that exposed Livingston never intended that to happen. Rather, they were trying to prove a point. Conservatives, as usual, didn't get it. There are those that suggest that conservatives only pushed Livingston to step down as a public relations measure, and that's partially true, but a good part of it was the sincere belief on the part of many Republicans that such a person was not suited for leadership of the party. People within the GOP who ordinarily would have bit their tongue instead spoke out and, before he was even elected leader, Livingston was driven to early retirement.

It has since come out that many others involved in the proceedings had skeletons in their closet. Gingrich himself was cheating on his cancer-ridden wife and outspoken Clinton critic Tim Hutchinson later left his wife for his twenty-something secretary. Liberals are inclined to say "See? Hypocrites!" but the anger directed at these two individuals within the conservative community was palpable. When Gingrich resurfaced condemning the state department (an argument conservatives are partial to), it mostly fell on deaf ears. Mainline Republicans didn't appreciate the attacks on Bush and grassroots Republicans had forsaken Gingrich some time ago, in part because of his failure as a leader but in large part because of his hypocrisy. Hutchinson got the GOP nod for re-election, but when he lost the general election I don't personally know a single conservative that felt the fault lied anywhere but with him and his actions.

In Dinesh D'Souza's Letters To a Young Conservative, he argues:
The conservative virtues are many: civility, patriotism, national unity, a sense of local community, in attachment to family, and a belief in merit, in just desserts, and in personal responsibility for one’s actions. For many conservatives, the idea of virtue cannot be separated from the idea of God. But it is not necessary to believe in God to be a conservative. What unifies the vast majority of conservatives is the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life.

Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. Newt Gingrich was carrying on an affair at the same time that Bill Clinton was romancing Monica Lewinsky. But for conservatives, these lapses do not produce an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy—professing one thing but doing another—is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism.

While people may philosophically have a problem with the notion that we should hold ourselves to a standard that we cannot all achieve, this succinctly explains the conservative view on the subject. Puritanical ideologues aside (and no, we don't all fall into that category), most conservatives have a rather realistic grasp on the impossibility of human perfection. Nonetheless, most of us also see a reason to strive for these goals as much as possible and when people falter, not to make excuses for them. So if a Republican president were caught with his pants down and lying about it, would the GOP step up to the plate to defend him? In the name of pragmatism, most people allied with said president would. However, that would not fly in the conservative community and such a person would likely face a serious primary challenger in the next election, but I'm almost certain that he would meet a fate very similar to Mr. Hutchinson's. In an increasingly conservative state, he lost the conservative vote. Most straight-ticket Republicans still voted for him, but conservative-leaning independents didn't and many party-liners stayed home.

Liberals oftenly take a different view. Namely that personal morality should not only be taken out of lawbooks (which I agree with), but taken out of the public square. The recent round of attacks on Bennett are an indication of that mindset. The idea that "You should be careful to condemn others for what they do because there are those that would condemn you for what you do."

And there is some logic to that argument. Perhaps Bennett should have just stayed out of the morality racket altogether by virtue of the fact that he has what many view as an immoral hobby. But I think this line of reasoning lends itself to a number of dangerous ideas. Namely "let he that is without sin cast the first stone" squared is that no stones are ever cast ever. I think we've seen a lot of that in recent decades. Spouses are replaced with newer or more luxurious models while the welfare of children hang in the balance and people no longer bat an eye as long as that person's name isn't preceeded by Senator or Congressman. Even then, it's often overlooked. If we don't enforce morality by legal codes, and I don't believe we should, it makes it all the more imperitive that we do it societally.

Whether gambling or pornography or other ostensibly victimless crimes (except, perhaps, for the people that choose to participate) fall into this category is subject to debate. But waving your finger and saying "hypocrite" is not an adequate substitution for debate. Neither is yelling "homophobe" or "religious zealot." Inversely, societal standards are not adequately defended by saying "moral relativist!" or "heretic!"

I'd love to know what Green and Alter think about gambling and whether or not Bennett is right or wrong. Alter's article is typically vapid, but Green has the following to say:
Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. This is a notable omission, since on this issue morality and public policy are deeply intertwined. During Bennett's years as a public figure, casinos, once restricted to Nevada and New Jersey, have expanded to 28 states, and the number continues to grow. In Maryland, where Bennett lives, the newly elected Republican governor Robert Ehrlich is trying to introduce slot machines to fill revenue shortfalls. As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems. Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy. According to a 1998 study commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, residents within 50 miles of a casino are twice as likely to be classified as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers than those who live further away.

So then am I to understand that Green views legal gambling as a threat to our national health? Is he opposing casinos? He mentions the problems associated with gambling on a couple of occasions, but fails to take a position or cite anyone else taking a position on the issue (as opposed to making Bennett the issue, which he does). I suspect that's because Green isn't opposed to gambling as a public policy (though probably opposed to the Maryland governor instituting it), but saying or implying such would take all the air out of the story built on the hot kind.

2003-04-26T02:37:00.000-07:00

HOMOSEXUALITY, PEDOPHILIA, ~~AND THE NATURE OF HUMAN SEXUALITY~~

Owen Courreges leaves some thoughtful comments on the "Santorum ad Nauseum" post below that are worthy of an entirely new post on sexuality. I'm at odds whether it belongs here, on the No-Lyfe Journal, or somewhere else. But since it was spawned here, here it will go.

On the subject of whether or not homosexuality is learned or genetic, Owen makes the following observation:

When I think of a great many people who do a great many things, I wonder how they could simply wake up one morning by deciding to do it. I wonder why pedophiles like children, and I wonder why serial adulterers like making committments and breaking them. Pointing out that there are negative consequences to homosexuality does not prove in the slightest that it is entirely involuntary.
...
On the theological point, however, I do agree but still have my doubts. After all, many people have genetic predispositions and disorders that do not preclude moral responibility for their actions, but nevertheless place a burden on them to control certain desires. Does this mean God places a special burden on some people, but not others? Does this mean God is hateful? You'd have to go into a serious debate over the nature of suffering and of moral obligation to sort this out.

Kudos to Owen for his honesty on this subject. Unfortunately, juxtiposing homosexuality and pedophilia, however intellectually, is often when serious discussion ends without the actual merits of such a comparison and contrast being made.

First, the similarities of pro-homosexual and pro-pedophilia arguments: Human sexuality ought to be realized. God, nature, or whomever would not have given us these desires if they were not meant to be realized. At a cursory glance, it may sound like that was an argument I was advancing below, but it is not. Same goes for adult heterosexuality, which is very often felt in contexts where it should not be realized. But on the subject at hand, homosexuality has only recently had its legitimacy recognized in many quarters (and it remains rejected in most) and though pedophilia is rejected in the great majority of contemporary western society, there are various movements underway to have its legitimacy recognized.

Except in the case of homosexual pedophilia, that's more or less where the similarities end. Men having sex with and wanting to have sex with other adult men and men having sex or wanting to have sex with female children are, in practice, very different things with different consequences. For information on my view of homosexuality and why I do not believe it wrong, read #1 two posts down so I don't have to repeat it here.

So, Owen reasonably asks, if God would not punish us by giving some desire for other men, why would he do it by giving some desire for children?

To answer this question, I believe that we must first make the distinction between attraction to young girls (and boys) of pre-pubescent age and young ladies (and boys) of later adolescence. I don't think many would argue that a man molesting a six year old and seducing a sixteen year old are on the same moral plane except insofar as they are both wrong and damaging to the younger party involved. The scope of immorality and damage, however, are worlds apart. So, for the sake of discussion, I will refer to pedophilic acts as Pre-Pubescent Pedophilia (3P) or Late Adolescence Pedophilia (LAP).

In the case of LAP, I believe the attraction to be the mere perversion of standard heterosexuality (or homosexuality). Having gone through puberty (or mostly having done so), they set off the same chemical reactions in men than do women their own age that capture their interest. People, all people, are generally attracted to a certain "type." For some people, this type includes highly energetic, spunky girls. Such a person would likely constantly find themselves attracted to the younger sort. The corrolation may be so strong that they trick themselves into believing that it is all they are attracted to, when in reality a woman their own age with these characteristics would just as easily be able to keep their attention. To the degree that is not possible, they are likely unable to deal with real women with unavoidable adult issues and he is a case of stunted maturity level that likely transcends their sexuality.

In the case of 3P, it is in my observation linked to one of two things: lost innocence and powerlessness.

In the case of lost innocence, their attraction to the very young is linked to a feeling of innocence or that they long to return to. It is less a sexual problem and more a root psychological one that becomes sexual by emotional confusion of callous decision. That is why, for instance, otherwise heterosexual men will molest young boys. It also helps explain the link to being abused as a child and growing into being an abuser. If a man loses his innocence at a very young age, when he gets older he is more likely to be attracted to the innocence they feel they were denied. The desire to return to that innocence, to become "one" with it, can turn sexual if left unchecked. It is, therefore, a learned behavior in my experience based in large part off of experience.

The other motivation is powerlessness of either a sexual nature or a non-sexual nature that becomes one. Sexual powerlessness can be motivated either by unwanted celibacy, being sexually dominated in childhood (which also explains molestation cycles), or an unhappy marriage (possibly related to unwanted celibacy). Non-sexual powerlessness can be attributed to dissatisfaction at work (powerlessness against boss), a domineering spouse (powerlessness against wife), over overbearing family or acquaintances (powerlessness against them). The percieved remedy is a sexual power trip, which can take many strpes. It explains 3P, but also LAP, S&M, prostitution, and sexual harassment. In the case of pedophilia, by virtue of experience and size, they have the ability to completely dominate their victims. Psychologically, physically, and emotionally. The assymetry of the relationship is an aphrodesiac of sorts. Like the 'lost innocence' motivation, it is largely situational and not biological.

So what situational motivations would make one homosexual? Some of the above could do it, but the corrolation just isn't as strong. If a young man is abused by his father, he may grow up equating men with sexuality. If a young woman is, she may grow up hating men. That may explain some cases of it, but it doesn't explain all of them. Many come from good, loving homes. A number of self-fulfilling reasons can be come up with to explain it, but they are transparent in the long view. "Well he's gay because his parents were really authoritarian and therefore they are rebelling" vs. "Well he's gay because his parents were really permissive and liberal." The weak corrolation between those that are gay doesn't explain very much. Some are feminine men and masculine women, but many aren't. Some have troubled youths, others don't. Some are at odds with the way they were raised, others aren't.

But here's a real indication of how different homosexuality is from pedophilia of all stripes: It affects men and women almost equally.

Pedophilia, on the other hand, is largely a male issue. While women are perpetrators in some cases, most offenders are male. The attentioned garnered to Mary Kay Laterneaux underscores that point. It was newsworthy because it was so atypical. This assymetry also lends creedence to the sexual power trip motivation of many abusers. Men often feel that they are supposed to be dominating and when they are being dominated are inclined to find someone to dominate. A woman under the same set of circumstances will react differently than does a man. That suggests to me that the degree to which it becomes sexual is, in large part, a decision by the sexual aggressor. It is the sexualization of a psychological problem and a reaction predisposed by men. Accordingly, men could choose to respond differently (as many do).

Homosexuality, on the other hand, is the solution to no psychological problem unrelated to sex and gender. The only exception that comes to mind are the stereotypical man-hating lesbian, but they are generally rare and there is the strong possibility that it is borne from being female and being uninclined to "fratrinize with the enemy." In other words, they are not male, they don't need or want anything from males, and therefore they are free to hate males all they like while boosting their ego. In other words, it is their lesbianism that feeds their contempt for men and not vice-versa.

Anyhow, I think that covers it. Keep in mind the above is my opinion and most of it will be forever unproven, but it is my rationale for why pedophilia and homosexuality are two different birds entirely and why I can find one repugnant and the other a valid expression of sexuality.

I intended to write more about human sexuality in general, but I'll have to save it for another time.

2003-04-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

TOO AMUSING!

Friend of Disagreement Inc. Kris Lofgren and I had a debate a while back on those Iraqi playing cards. I viewed them as harmless and he saw them as indicative of a problem with the Bush Administration. (link here, permalinks not working so look for "cowboy props")

So when I saw this on his site today, I couldn't help but be amused:

2003-04-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

SANTORUM AD NAUSEUM

Let me count the ways Santorum is wrong.

1) An old friend of mine used to date a guy I'll name Stone. I never much cared for Stone, in part because the way he treated her. He didn't mistreat her necessarily, but he was always rather distant, even after a year together. I took that as a facet of his personality and a facet that I didn't like. During their breakup, some odd stories started floating around about Stone. Sort of. It was an uncomfortable flux between rumors and dead silent loyalty to him. It wasn't until the breakup was complete that the details started coming out. Stone had cheated on her with another guy. The more this theory was floated, the more it made sense.

Stone's father is a pastor in the Church of Christ. For those of you unfamiliar with the CoC, it is a self-described fundamentalist sect that takes the Bible very literally and very seriously. They are also so confident in their interpretation of the Bible that they believe marrying outside the sect out to be discouraged, if not outright forbidden (this was in fact what we thought the problem might be as my friend is Catholic). To say the least, the CoC holds homosexuality in very low regard. So much so that Stone, to this day, remains closetted skipping between serial monagomy and his very close (and not-so-closetted) male friend.

Though I never cared much for Stone because he hurt my friend, I can't help but feel very sorry for him. He will always be at conflict with himself and his father, whom he admires greatly and has always sought approval from. I can't imagine him ever being happy. When I think of Stone, I simply cannot imagine that he woke up one morning and decided "I'm going to fuck up my entire life by liking other men!"

Recently, conservatives opposed to homosexuality have change their tact. Instead of arguing that it is a choice, they argue that maybe it it genetic, but they should fight it. I believe God is a loving God, having sent Jesus Christ, his only son, down to redeem us. Though there is much unfortunate suffering in the world, I believe it is man-made. By saying that God took a small but significant section of the population and told them that they'd never be allowed to be romantically satisfied, conservatives of this ilk are suggesting that there is misery that is not man-made, but rather purely the province of God. That quite simply is not the God that I believe in and it strikes me as logically circumspect that would be the God that would go to such great pains to redeem and save us. As such, I believe the position of many conservative Christians is very misguided in this regard.

2) Even if I did believe that homosexuality is wrong, I would still not support laws forbidding it. I believe that adultery is wrong, but it is not the province of the government to meddle in the private affairs of the citizens. In the case of adultery, the only victims are the perpetrators and their spouses, who are victims emotionally and not physically. It is not the domain of the criminal court system to defend people against emotional torment. If it were, the courts would be bogged down hearing the case of every emotionally scarred adult who'd been handed down one too many megaweggies. So, while I may agree that such laws are constitutional, I do not agree that what is constitutional is right and what is morally wrong ought to be outlawed. Santorum speaks of a slippery slope, but that is more of one than legalizing the private acts of consenting adults could ever be. While such laws may be constitutionally permissable (or perhaps not, as Inc. commenter Ulysses brings up the equal protection clause, and there is a case to be made there) they are not necessarily a good idea.

3) Even if homosexuality were wrong and things wrong should be legalized, Santorum's logic was seriously flawed on a rational level. He suggests that the slippery slope of legalizing gay intercourse could lead to, among other things, polygamy. As someone who opposes polygamy on both a moral and legal plain, I have to take issue with that view. Polygamy is a matter of law. Whether or not the government accepts multiple concurrent marriages between individuals is necessarily the government's business. As mentioned prior, making sure that a man only sleeps with one woman is not. So we're dealing with two distinct issues. One is what the law will allow and the other is what the law will condone, sanction, and codify. One could argue that gay marriage (which I do support) might lead to polygamy (which I don't), but favoring the former and opposing the latter suggests that I don't buy it. I don't think many others will either accept as a mechanism to rationalize the double standard allowed to straights and gays when it comes to legal, financial, and social benefits of marriage.

As such, despite my earlier defense of him, I feel that I should reiterate that I believe Santorum's views are religiously, philosophically, and logically wrong.

They are. Consider it reiterated.

2003-04-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

SANTORUM AD INFINUM

Son: So anyway, the wedding is going to be on the 15th and we're going on a honeymoo-
Father: Son, I need to tell you something.
Son: What?
Father: I cannot, and will not, have any part of your intended marriage.
Son: Huh? Why not?
Father: It is incompatible with the church's teachings.
Son: What are you talking about?
Father: You are divorced. Under the church's teachings, you are not permitted to remarry.
Son: What do you mean? She left me, Dad!
Father: I've talked to our paster and I've consulted the Bible. When you signed the divorce papers, you consented to a divorce.
Son: But we're not Catholic, divorce is okay, isn't it?
Father: Divorce is fine, remarriage is not.
Son: But Dad, don't you understand? I love her. My first wife left me in pieces, but my fiance has managed to put them all back together again. She's managed to put me back together again.
Father: And I want to be happy for you, but I can't. The Scripture is clear.
Son: What if we get married by the Justice of the Peace?
Father: It doesn't matter. What matters is that when you consumate your marriage, you will be committing sin. Every time you consummate your marriage, you will be committing sin over and over again. As much as I love you, I cannot be a party to it. I can't encourage that.
Son: But I love her! We make each other happy! You understand that you can't stop me from doing this, right?
Father: I do, but refraining from involvement is the only tangible way I can express my disapproval. I cannot approve of this.
Son: So you're not going to have anything to do with my marriage? We're going to have kids, Dad. By doing this, you're not even going to be a part of their life.
Father: If that's your choice, I'll have to live with that, but I have to stand with what I believe is right.

There are two levels to Rick Santorum's recent comments about homosexuality. The first is legal, which I will talk about in a minute. The second is moral, which I've tried my best to illustrate above.

Does the father above care about his son's feelings? Some will say no, but I believe that he does. The father above believes that sin is a degradation of the soul and, despite the fact that his son is in a near-impossible position according to his church's teachings, any other option than remaining celibate the rest of his life is the equivalent of living in sin and will assue that his son will go to Hell. More than anything else, that is what the father seeks to avoid.

It's quite possible that Rick Santorum hates gays.Only he knows for sure. He does hate sin, though, and he equates homosexual activity with sin. By doing so, he leaves homosexuals in the near-impossible position with the only option to avoid a life of sin is celibacy. He may be fine with that because he hates gays or he may be fine with that because he views that as their only way to avoid a life of sin. As I said, only Santorum knows for sure. And, to a degree, that is true of everyone that believes that homosexuality is a sin.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that at all. Nor do I believe that remarriage is a sin. I don't believe that either the son or gays should be forced to live a life of celibacy to be okay in the eyes of God. Rick Santorum and the father are wrong. That being said, it does not follow that Rick Santorum hates gays anymore than it follows that the father must hate his son.

Liberals are deriding the "hate the sin, love the sinner" philosophy by saying that you cannot seperate a man from his sexuality. Depending on whether or not you believe homosexuality is a choice or a predisposition, that may have credence or not with any given person on the subject of homosexuality. The question, though, is whether or not someone can love (or tolerate) someone that they view is perpetually doing wrong. I believe that it is possible, though it puts such people in a rather awkward position, as demonstrated by the stammering of conservatives that believe homosexuality is wrong but do not believe that homosexuals are worthy of hate by virtue of that one sin.

John Scalzi says the following:

Saying that you have no problems with homosexuals but have a problem with homosexual acts is logically equivalent, for example, to saying that you have no problems with Christians but have a problem with them accepting Christ, or that you have no problems with Republicans but have a problem with them registering as Republicans, or that you have no problem with Marines but have a problem with them enlisting (or receiving commissions in the case of officers). Each X' is an affirmative act of association and identification, without which the identification of X cannot exist.

The way to check this is to determine whether the condition of X can exist without X'. So, to go back to our examples -- can you be a Christian without accepting Christ? Pretty much not. Can you be a Republican without registering as a Republican? Not really. Can you be a Marine without enlisting or being commissioned? Can't do it. In each case it's absolutely possible to manifest an outward appearance of each group -- lead a Christly life, vote Republican, or swagger around saying "Semper Fi" to people -- But until you get baptized, register or enlist/are commissioned, you're not one of the members of these groups. The act matters; thereby, having a problem with the act means you have a problem with the condition because the only way to the condition is the act.

I have to disagree. You can love a Christian as a person but hate the fact that they believe what they do. You can love a Marine but hate the fact that their job. You can love a Republican but hate the way that they vote. To put a point on it, if someone were to say that they hate conservatism or Christianity, my immediate assumption would not be that they hate me personally, but rather that they hate that aspect of me. If they were to say that they hate Christians and hate Republicans, that's when it starts to get personal.

Here's the thing, though: Santorum has not said, at any point, that he hates gays. He has compared homosexuality to other acts he views as deviant, but he is comparing acts, not people.

Daniel (who I seem to be picking on today) infers that homosexuality is integral to a homosexual. Maybe so. Being a Christian is integral to me. Nonetheless, if someone compares Christianity to fascism, they are expressing hatred or disdain to a part of me, not the whole of me. They view a part of me as evil and while that may hurt my feelings, it does not mean that I would be correct in going around saying that they hate all Christians because while they may mean that, they may not mean that at all.

In a way, it breaks down to semantics. However, when it comes to semantics, it's the speaker's intent that is more important than their wordage. So if you don't see a distinction between hating who someone is and hating what they do, you should at least note that they do view one and, in the interest of intellectual honesty, try to see things from their point of view before going around and suggesting that that they hate people solely based on their sexuality. Hating what someone does is not the same as hating who they are. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. For all you know, someone they love is gay and they are in the same awkward position as the father above. Wrong as all heck, but earnest and well-intentioned nonetheless.

So does that mean that those of us that believe that gays should be able to do whatever they like with their lives without being condemned just sit back and say nothing? Absolutely not. They may be well-intentioned, but their still wrong and their ideas still cause harm. But that's not what's happening. Instead, liberals are using this as a battering ram to suggest that Santorum, and thus all those that view homosexuality as a sin, of bigotry on the same level as bigotry based on skin color, which unlike homosexuality or Christianity, is a physical trait and not an act embarked on or a religion embraced. They, as much if not more than Santorum, are the ones making this personal. That's where the comparisons to Trent Lott fail. Blacks are unquestionably and inexplicably born that way. There is no room for debate there. One cannot stop being black if they chose. One can stop being a practicing homosexual, and as out-of-reach as that option seems to be, that's one more option than racial minorities have.

The second way that the comparison to Trent Lott fails is what they actually said. Lott expressed approval for a putrid 1948 platform that Strom Thurmond ascribed to. These were concrete laws used to indignify and oppress blacks for decades. In regards to Santorum's personal view that homosexuality is wrong, that does not necessarily translate into law.

Except that it does, of course, in a way, because he said it in the context of a court decision of a law that is the manifestation of his view.

This brings us to the second level of Santorum's comment: the law.

I believe the Texas sodomy law is wrong on a legal and moral level. I oppose the law and if Democrats were to run on repealing this law and laws like it in 2006, I'd likely vote for them. That is how much I disdain these laws.

That being said, Santorum was arguing about the constitutionality of these laws. He asked, quite plainly, if we say taht there can't be laws against homosexuality because it is a private act in the bedroom, whether that mean that all consensual private acts in the bedroom are therefore inherently justified by the constitution. It's a valid question that makes many liberals, and even libertarian-minded conservatives like myself, uncomfortable. Unfortunately, Santorum may be right. If the constitution protects the rights of gays to have consensual sex, it protects the rights of anyone to do so. I personally don't believe that the constution necessarily protects that (and thus laws could be passed against all non-procreational sex, or for that matter sex altogether) and still technically be constitutional. That being said, I believe that all such laws violent the spirit of freedom and personal liberty set forth in the Constitution. I don't believe there should be laws against adultery, even though I consider that morally wrong in a way that I don't consider homosexuality not to be. In other words, because something is Constitutional that does not make it right. It's a lesson both liberals and conservatives would do well to remember.

So there is room here to debate the issue at hand. There are issues on what degree to which morality can, and should, be legislated. That's where Santorum is most wrong and that's where Democrats should hone their energies. It's also where Republicans like me need to speak up, which I have done and will continue to do. We need to try to convince those that believe homosexuality is morally wrong (which is more people than many liberals would like to believe) that it should still be legal and to remind them that there are those that believe contraception should be illegal and ask them how they would react if that were legislated into reality. Santorum used a few degrees of hyperbole to illustrate his point and we can do the same. Just as there are NAMBLAs on the left that unfortunately discredit the gay rights clause, there are many puritans on the right that would want to legislate so many things into law 95% of Americans would suddenly become criminals. To get the attention of legislators, we only need half of those people.

By making this about Santorum, the debate itself has been sacrificed at the alter of political point-scoring. By making this about the Republican Party, it's made moderate Republicans more defensive rather than giving them to join a common cause that would make the views of Santorum and Nickles obselete.

Or you can just paint all Republicans with a super broad brush, paint everyone with misguided views of homosexuality as haters, and keep potential allies at bay.

Your choice.

2003-04-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

TAX CUTS, SUBSIDIES, AND FOREVER

Jane Galt has a great post on what the procedural difference is between a tax cut and increased spending is. Namely, that the latter considerably outlast the former:
What's going to happen when the Democrats control at two out of three of the Senate, House, and Oval Office? Those tax cuts are going away. Don't believe me? Tax rates have fluctuated by as much as 50% between presidents in the last half-century, maybe more. Just one example: Reagan cut 'em, Bush/Clinton raised them, Bush II cut them again. Projecting deficits from these tax cuts forever and ever is stupid, because we're only one election away from seeing them reversed.

Daniel Goldberg has been very tough on the Bush Administration for increasing spending and cutting taxes, thus increasing the deficit. Rightfully so. As someone who would very much like a near-balanced budget, I am concerned about the growing deficit and hefty interest payments that we will be paying for some time to come.

However, that's where my agreement with budget hawk liberals ends. My problem isn't with the tax cuts, it's with the spending increase. I support the Department of Homeland Security (though I would do it differently, if I were in charge of it), but Bush's failure to contain spending in other areas is quite unsettling and the education bill he passed in his first year in office was absolutely odious.

So does that mean that I regret voting for Bush and/or will vote for his Democratic rival in 2004? Absolutely not. The alternative to Bush's dubious financial policies are Democratic calls for more spending which, in the long run, is much worse, because once those are instituted, they won't be going away until fiscal restraint is the only issue of the day, and that just doesn't happen very often. In the 90's, it took a mentally unstable Texas businessman winning 20% of the vote to catch the major parties' attention to make it happen.

The economy going down the crapper and the deficits aren't so much a reason that I shouldn't have voted for Bush, it's actually the reason that I did.

Up until late 1999, I had planned to vote for Al Gore. I was almost excited about the prospect of it. "He's Bill Clinton without the gross immorality," I reasoned.

At some point, I jumped on the John McCain bandwagon and, had it not been for what became a deeply personal discomfort for the man, that's likely where I'd still be. Loony views on campaign finance reform aside, McCain advocated very modest tax cuts, decreased government spending, and paying down the national debt.

That was, and remains, the perfect platform to win my vote.

Once Bush won the nomination, that no longer became an option. The choice, as I saw it, was tax cuts that might lead to deficits if the economy turns sour, or a cash givaways to seniors (whether they need it or not) that might also lead to deficits.

In the end, I had to conclude that in the long term, Gore's views were much more dangerous to our fiscal health. Bush's tax cuts might backfire, but they could be retracted. Of the last four presidents, two raised taxes and two lowered them. If Gore were to get elected on his Free-Prescription-Drugs-for-Everyone-and-their-Dog platform, it would take a lot more political courage to tell seniors (in which everyone is or hopes to be one day) that the government is going to stop giving them what it once did. That's too much money to too many people ever to reverse.

So, the question is, when is Bush going to retract his tax cuts? I expect that to be a year or so after never. So does that mean that I will vote for someone to raise taxes to balance the budget?

Yes, actually, that's exactly what that means, so long as it is met with corresponding (and equal would be nice, but not necessary) cut in spending. Show me the Democrat that advocates a balanced budget over a brand-spanking new prescription drug plan and throwing federal money at education like confetti at a parade, and chances are (assuming his foreign policy is kosher) he's got my vote.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath either.

2003-04-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

SADDAM'S BIGGEST MISTAKE

Even before his adventures in totalitarianism, it has always frustrated me to no end how many on the left admire or even tolerate Fidel Castro. It's one thing to oppose sanctions on the grounds that it merely tightens Fidel's grip. It's another to try to say "Well, as bad as Cuba is, at least it has national health care" and make some insinuations and America's democratic and free system's superiority to the dreck rule of Fidel is subjective. As James Lileks onced asked, would you rather be poor and in need of emergency medical help in the United States of Cuba? I'd take the US any day. Considering the hundreds that have died trying to escape that island to make it here, I suspect that I am not alone. Many in the media try to portray the Cuban refugees in Florida as maniacs and fascists but they fail to ask why it is that those who know the most about Cuba also hate Castro the most. We are a nation of immigrants and most of our immigrants take great pride in their homeland. Irish Americans want us to appreciate Irish culture and Mexicans theirs as well. The Cubans want us to kick its leader's butt. For many on the left, it seems, all that matters is that Cubans lean rightward and Fidel is left and they immediately sympathize with the latter.

To their credit, with the exception of ANSWER and their ilk no one against the war has made excuses for Saddam Hussein. Those opposed to the war tried to convince us not to engage in it because they felt it a disproportionate response to a very minor threat or because it would make the rest of the world angry or a myriad of other reasons. None of which were "Saddam isn't so bad." For all the voices against the war, only the fringe ever actually defended Saddam on any moral or idealistic level.

Why is that? In a remarkably well-written post (go read the whole thing), fellow Houstonian Angie Schultz pinpoints the answer:
Your big mistake, Saddam old man, was not calling yourself a Communist. You could have had exactly the same power, exactly the same control, gassed exactly as many Kurds, and the Julie Burchills of the world would've defended your regime to the end. All you had to do was fly a few red flags and put up a few posters of Lenin. Maybe salted your rhetoric with a little "glorious workers' revolution". Would that have been too high a price to pay?

2003-04-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

BEST. HEADLINE. EVER.

'Naked man on Interstate 45 allegedly used drugs'

Do you even need the article?

2003-04-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

MORE ON DISSENT, VIA TIM ROBBINS:

I don't really care whether you like Tim Robbins or not, or agree with his political positions or not. But I do think he has something important to say in this speech, via TalkLeft. I highly recommend reading the whole speech, but I'll excerpt some parts of it, to highlight the type of suppression of dissent that has so troubled me the past few months:

A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we are coming to the school play. They're not welcome here, said the molder of young minds.

Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer.

Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers, and by their fair and balanced electronic media cousins, 19th Century Fox. (Laughter.) Apologies to Gore Vidal. (Applause.)

Two weeks ago, the United Way canceled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership. And both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame.[Yes, I know he's plain wrong on the First Amendment point, but the fact that the Hall of Fame can constitutionally prevent him from speaking does not mean that it ought to--ed.]

Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear [I know, no one is taking away those rights--ed.], to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat.

It's a fine speech, though I don't necessarily agree with everything he says.

UPDATE: I don't know how I missed this post from Volokh, which does a superb job of explaining that private retaliation for speech cannot be summarily dismissed by noting that the First Amendment applies only to state actors. This is a different form of speech suppression than mere condemnation, of course, but is close enough to the center of my concerns that I feel it's worth mentioning. He concludes:

So, here's my narrow proposal: We should indeed resist claims that private boycotts and firings violate the First Amendment -- those claims are legally incorrect . . . But we should also look behind the erroneous claims of First Amendment protection, and take seriously the deeper arguments that generally underlie such claims -- the arguments that it is indeed unethical and in the long run harmful to try to economically retaliate against people in certain ways based on certain kinds of speech.

UPDATE II: Volokh now has a post up specifically dealing with the Hall of Fame Unvitation. Certainly worth reading.

2003-04-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY HAVE A CONGRESSMAN I CAN FEEL PROUD OF

Houston Chronicle:
The only person who has said he won't support us is Congressman [John] Culberson [R-Houston]," said Steve Lufburrow, president of Goodwill Industries in Houston and a resident in Culberson's district.

Goodwill Industries is seeking $200 million for a nationwide capital project that would include five new locations in the Houston area. The organization provides job training and employment to otherwise unemployable people -- including recovering drug addicts and released felons trying to rebuild a work history to return to mainstream employment.

"We've been taking people that the community has given up on. We're doing the federal government's job, putting people to work," said Lufburrow.

Culberson disagreed, emphatically. He said Goodwill's request is "absolutely wrong" and something he will "vigorously oppose," even if the request is submitted by others on the committee.

...

To say Culberson has strong beliefs would be an understatement. His colleagues have called him aggressive, energetic, ideological, earnest and overeager. He has a youthful charm that is unique on Capitol Hill.

But his approach to the appropriations process, and attempts to get Houston-area institutions to rely on him, have upset the usual order.

"I don't view the Medical Center as just mine. I view it as belonging to the entire state and want statewide support for it," said Bell, whose district includes almost all of the 740-acre Texas Medical Center campus. "So it makes no sense to turn it into a turf war."

...

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas' only member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she uses her privileged place on the panel to secure as much money as possible for worthy Texas projects.

And Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco, the House appropriations panel's only Texas Democrat, added: "Once a funding level is agreed to, to not ask for support for a project in my district doesn't mean that money will be saved and go back to the Treasury, it means it will go to some other part of the country."

But Culberson has committed to supporting a measure by an Oklahoma Republican that would add up money that would have been spent on rejected appropriations, and send it into a fund to pay down the debt.

Members of both parties say the plan is unworkable because federal spending levels are budgeted through separate debates and votes. The appropriations battles only decide where the budgeted money is going to be spent. That's where seniority and connections give certain lawmakers an advantage.

To change that may be too much of a challenge for a third-year member of Congress. But Culberson, always an optimist, said he won't always be so junior.

As sympathetic I am to the points that Edwards, Hutchison, and the like are trying to make, pork starts at home. It is absolutely hypocritical for us to deride pork (and always, of course, criticize the other party for it) and then turn around and vote for someone because they're going to bring more money into the area.

After spending most of my life in Tom DeLay's district, I finally live in a district with a congressman I can wholeheartedly support. From the same congressional district that Bill Archer and George H. Bush served, he is in good company.

2003-04-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

ON HYGIENE METHODS: The political debates on this blog have been fast, furious, and not always a paragon of civility, though the last is more of a rueful observation than a complaint. In the interest of lightening things up, at least a tad, I propose a new topic on which we can disagree: showers or baths? My preferences on this question of vital global importance are, as usual, captured in an episode of Seinfeld:

Kramer walks in wearing a bathrobe, his hair is still flat.

JERRY: Hey Kramer, my parents are gonna have to move back to Florida, isn't that great?

KRAMER (halfheartedly): Yeah, well I'm really happy for ya.

JERRY: Hey, you're not giving it to me, man. What's wrong?

KRAMER: I just took a bath, Jerry. A bath!

JERRY: No good?

KRAMER: It's disgusting. I'm sitting there in a tepid pool of my own filth. All kinds of microscopic parasites and organisms having sex all around me.

Precisely.

2003-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

DISAGREEMENT, INC. ANNOUNCEMENT!

Disagreement, Inc. expands! Now joining our ranks is Laurence Simon, of Amish Tech Support. There may be another addition soon, though we will start to run the risk of a rightward slant, which I'd like to avoid. If anyone knows any Democrats or Greens from Texas (or even better, Houston) that are interested in trying out the group blog thing, please sent them out way and drop me an email.

2003-04-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

"IN THE END? NOTHING ENDS, ADRIAN. NOTHING EVER ENDS..." -Dr. Manhatten

I am going on a brief hiatus from political blogging. I will return at a later date.

2003-04-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

ON DISSENT: A philosophical point: there is a difference between the exercise of dissent in the abstract, and any particular exercise of that dissent. It is entirely possible to criticize the latter on the merits or on the mode of expression chosen, but the former is virtually beyond reproach, to me. What upsets me so much about some pro-war bloggers' insistence that dissent is unpatriotic or is somehow undesirable is the apparent failure to grasp the essence of this distinction. I think the mere exercise of dissent is innately virtuous.

I'd argue that it, along with John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas concept, lies at the core of the First Amendment, of which I am something of a militant. It does not follow from this that any particular instantiation of dissent is meritorious. I have no problem with anyone anywhere critizicing the merits of any particular dissent; what bothers me no end is the reference to 'dissent' to the war in the abstract as unpatriotic, traitorous, or even worthy of criticism.

It's fascinating to me that so many conservatives consider themselves solid free-marketists, yet do not subscribe to Mill's famous notion of the marketplace of ideas when it comes to dissent. All I am requesting is that the distinction between the mere exercise of dissent in general and the substance of any particular dissent specific to a context be understood. Criticism confined to the latter is entirely appropriate, IMO. There can be unpatriotic expressions of dissent, to be sure. But dissent itself, ex nihilo, is, IMO, one of the most unique and important political values that exists, and I'll have (and have had) words with anyone whom I perceive to think differently on the matter.

2003-04-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

I JUST THOUGHT I'D SAY...

Vigilante justice never looked so sweet.

UPDATE: Lest I be accused of hypocrisy, I'm not trying to rationalize or justify the war with this post. This isn't a "boy are we doing the right thing" argument. It's not a celebration of the morality of the war, but rather of its prospects. For more, see the accompanying post on Reductio ad Absurdum.

2003-04-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER PRO-WAR ALEX IS TIRED OF THE DEBATE

Heretical Idealist Alex Knapp has a post that should look familiar to those of you who read my work here and elsewhere.

'Bush is a moron!"
"Kerry's a traitor!"

"Our anti-war rally had 1,000 people!"
"Oh yeah? Our pro-war rally had 2,000 people!"

"Neocons want to rule the world!"
"Liberals want to replace elementary schools with maddrasses!"

'Hey, this website is funny--it shows that all conservatives are racists!"
"Hey, this website is funny--it shows that liberals don't care about the rights of women in the Muslim world!"

and on and on it goes...

Obviously, I'm not against debating aspects of the war. I believe that the time for debating whether or not we should be engaging in it has past. There will be time again when Iraq is free or, six months later, we still haven't succeeded. Right now we're two weeks into the war and some want to prove that we should just pack it in while others still want to justify what's barely begun and continue a fight that they've won.

Enough, already.

2003-04-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

THOSE THAT FIGHT SO WE DON'T HAVE TO

Over on Joshua Claybourn's blog is a powerful letter from a reader about the Red Americans that disproportionately serve in our military:

No, the people of Alabama didn’t ask ‘why did this happen?’ on 9/11; it never crossed their mind. They knew that they had to kick some ass, damn it, not because they wanted – in that predictable, lazy stereotype that, when Ted Rall connects ink to paper to memorialize it in caricature, must seem like a moment of sheer f***ing ingenuity – to scalp an Arab’s head and ‘avenge’ the deaths of a few thousand fellow Americans (a lot of them, it should be noted, from the Upper West Side), but to prevent the murder of countless thousands, maybe millions, in the future, many of them Arabs.

When I heard the story of Private Lynch, prior to her heroic rescue, it tore my heart out. Yes, she enlisted for the education, but also because of the 15 percent unemployment rate in her West Virginia hometown. My father has been employed for a quarter-century now; can anyone who has shared that lifestyle possibly attest that he really ‘feels’ recessions, or high unemployment figures? Only, perhaps, in the narrow sense that someone can ‘feel’ the suffering of Somalians who would probably die from the shock of eating just what the average, flabby American considers not a meal, but a ‘snack.’ But I think I feel it now. And I think others do too.

Read it.

2003-04-05T17:36:00.000-08:00

"HOW TO MAKE THEN LOSE POTENTIAL SYMPATHIZERS", BY ATRIOS

Step 1: Point out an outrage that even the more reasonable of your ideological opponents would support:

Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths

BY MEG LAUGHLIN
mlaughlin@herald.com

CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks.

''They do appear physically and spiritually cleansed,'' Llano said.

First, though, the soldiers have to go to one of Llano's hour-and-a-half sermons in his dirt-floor tent. Then the baptism takes an hour of quoting from the Bible.

''Regardless of their motives,'' Llano said, ``I get the chance to take them closer to the Lord.''

It's crap like this that made me skeptical of Christianity for quite a while, before returning to the flock. I'd rather go dirty than support this nonsense. You don't coerce people into Baptism. It weakens the nature of religion, which is by necessity voluntary.

Step 2: Explain why this is so wrongheaded

So, if you are a desperately thirsty Jewish soldier, do you have to accept Christ to get a juice box from this "man of God"?

My first thought was atheists and/or agnostics, but that's true, it'd affect Jews, too.

Step 3: Accuse people who would cross ideological lines to agree with you of being racists

Fucking hell. And people bitch about anti-Semitism 'on the left.' I'm also pissed off that I have to use the example of the Jewish soldier to bring the point home. If I had said "Muslim" or "Atheist" most people wouldn't even give a damn.

Go to hell, Atrios.

Secularly speaking, of course.

2003-04-04T20:33:00.000-08:00

DOMESTIC TERRORISM, HATE CRIMES, AND THE MOTIVATIONS OF WRONG-DOING

Anyone interested in me talk about the war, I also contribute to the Reductio Ad Absurdum blog (that makes what, four blogs? Overextended? Me? Well yeah, probably). Though you don't have to go there to know that I am in favor of it and have been and so on.

That said, this kind of crap is more UnAmerican than any non-violent anti-war protest I've seen to date has been... by a factor of two at least.

Those conservatives that are tempted to rationalize it by saying that there's no right to block traffic and cause substantive disruptions, I ask that you think of it again in another context: hate crimes.

What the Oregon law does is take something already illegal (blocking traffic) and then gauge its seriousness on the context of the motives. Motivations are, of course, an important determinant as to how serious a crime is or if something is a crime at all. You can kill someone as long as it's in self-defense. If you kill someone in the heat of passion or by accident, it's differentiated from a contract killing, even though the effect is the same. If you stop traffic to work on the roads, it's obviously different than doing so because you're against a war that the traffic you're stopping may well be.

But the context of the motives ought to be factored differently than the beneficence or malevolence of them, which is to say they shouldn't be a factor in the seriousness of the crime). If Person A kills Person B because B looked at A funny, the penalty ought to be roughly the same as if Person A kills Person B cause A is white and B is black (or vice-versa). The effect is the same (B is dead) as is the basic motivation (evil as opposed to benign, greedy, or temporarily out of their gourd).

Similarly, if someone blocks traffic in order to prevent a local porn shop from getting patrons, it's little different than if they do so cause they oppose the war. Both are seeking to break the law in order to apply pressure to achieve desired results. They are both criminals and neither are terrorists.

Many protesters and their supporters are claiming persecution because they police are intervening in their protests. That is, of course, silly. You break the law, you invite the police to get involved. During the WTO protests several years back, I couldn't help but be amazed at the martyr status the protesters, who destroyed public property, looted, and injured non-participants with their recklessness, took. Crap like this lends that sort of silliness all the more credence because we are singling out protester and while the first amendment right to protest doesn't make it okay, it definitely procludes it from being terroristic.

2003-04-03T07:04:00.000-08:00

ON TAXES AND INTELLECTUAL HONESTY: PG has an excellent post on Republicans and taxes over at her blog, the Bertrand Russell blog (gotta love Bertrand Russell). She writes of a Republican interlocutor who

comments on my plea for Republicans to admit that they don't genuinely think that tax cuts for the wealthy will help the economy, but instead believe that people simply should keep as much of their money as possible, and that taxes are inherently an evil.

In one of our tax debates, noted conservative Owen Courrèges and I eventually reached this understanding, that we differ on the issue of taxes b/c we have different views of the fairness, or justice, of various taxation forms. I appreciated that no end, b/c it struck me as intellectually honest. Look, there is a serious philosophical and political case to be made for the illegitimacy of taxes. But it reeks of intellectual dishonesty to me to argue, contrary to almost all actual economic indicators, that tax cuts will actually help the economy, will reduce deficits when the government must spend billions of dollars on national security, or that the dollars the affluent save from tax cuts will somehow 'trickle down' to the McDonald's employee. Nothing even approaching empirical, real-world proof of these effects has been shown. As I noted on Trivial Pursuits, this is a sheory.

Let's put the debate in its proper terms. Intellectual dishonesty infuriates me.

2003-04-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Dahlia Lithwick, reporting from the Supreme Court, has what I deem to be a particularly insightful perspective on the root difficulty of the AA debate:

All this makes for a long morning of head-scratching. Everyone seems to agree that the racial divisions in this country are a terrible problem, and almost everyone agrees that they need to be handled via subterfuge: The affirmative action camp is for "critical masses" that look like quotas and for "diversity" that may not bring about diversity. The anti-affirmative action camp is for pretending that other remedies work when it's clear that you can't fix race problems by ignoring race. These are not really legal questions at heart; they are almost insoluble social and moral ones. Take heart in the fact that the court at least respected us enough today to address them as such.

Well-said.

2003-04-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES

It seems to be becoming popular among many on the right to lay the recent French troubles on the doorstep of the government. Chirac and company denounced the graffiti on the graves of the British WWII liberators and the response seems to be "You can't feed the flames then complain about the fire."

Now, I'm not one to defend the French. In fact, I'm not going to. I am, however, going to tentatively defend the government. The underlying principal is that since Chirac was so vocally, obstructionally against the war, people taking anti-war sentiment to the next level are, of course, to be blamed on Chirac. To test this, leave our distaste for the French aside and take the inverse of the statement and see if it holds.

Let's say that there was a rash of killings against Arab Americans and immigrants in the south as Bush declares war against a Muslim country. Is Bush "feeding the flames of anti-Arab hatred"? I'm certain many French and others in Europe would say so, but let's get real here. A leader of a free nation only has nominal control over its people. Bush has his reasons for pursuing the war as does Chirac in his reasons for opposing it, but it has nothing to do with persecuting Muslims or defacing graves in France (or, for that matter, the unfortunate violence against Jews going on over there). What Bush has said about the evils of extreme Islam was tailored in speak about Islam being the "religion of peace." What Chirac has said about American (and British) aggression and unilateralism is a message of restraint, which the vandals certainly did not show.

To be sure, I am very angry with Chirac and hold no personal goodwill towards the man. I wish the (Socialist candidate) Lionel Jospin, who I was rooting against in their last election, had won. Jospin would have been more adamently opposed to the war than Chirac, but his opposition would have been more honest. I am also unhappy with the French at-large, who seem to be undecided as to whether they would like the liberal democracy or brutal dictatorship to win. Then again, I'm sure the hostility is mutual, so oh well.

All these thing being said, the goverment's condemnation was immediate and did not tuck any deflections such as "I'm sorry the American hostilities have provoked..." I don't know what the future holds for America and France, former and possibly future friends. Maybe we'll be able to mend our bridges or maybe we're just too far apart to be able to do that. Whatever the case, lets at least save our debates for important issues and not waste them on tarring an entire nation and its government on the actions of a few. Let's accept their apology as we'd hope that they'd accept our apology if someone were to ransack the French embassy.

The issues that lay ahead are more important than this. Not to say we shouldn't be angry. I'm furious. Nor is it to say that we should let it slide. On the contrary, we need to make sure that Chirac backs up his words with actions. But Chirac is sitting on a powder keg of Europeans and Muslim immigrants, left with the derision of the only other local nation with a serious army to speak of, and isolated from the most powerful nation on the planet. This is all, quite literally, Chirac's problem.

2003-04-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

ON JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY, PART II: Many thanks to Unlearned Hand for granting me permission to reprint an entire post of his. I hold a very similar opinion: that one main difference between liberal and conservative judges is that some of the former are intellectually honest about what they are doing, while most of the latter are not. He says,

UPI has an editorial bashing the 9th Circuit for their decision on the Pledge of Allegiance:

"God bless the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges in America's most liberal court have finally written a decision so blatantly ideological that it may well cause a popular uprising against liberal judges and their pretensions to exclusive authority over interpreting the Constitution."

Right, as if liberal judges were the only ones who pretend to have exclusive authority. Are there any judges out there who think that jurisprudential philosophies other than their own are acceptable? I haven't read any of their decisions if they exist. Reading a little further, we find the classic ill-informed 'originalist' attack on liberal judges:

"The appellate judges of the 9th Circuit know perfectly well that such an equation was never the intent of framers who wrote the First Amendment. These liberal judges simply do not give a damn. Their personal modern-day ideological agenda is what matters to them, not the intent of the authors of the Constitution."

Conservative judges would never allow for that. Well let's look at a few interesting areas of law: segregation, affirmative action, and gender discrimination.

First, let's have an originalist explain Brown on its face. Mike McConnell has tried (and failed in my opinion). Considering the authors of the 14th Amendment allowed school segregation in D.C. and in most Northern states (i.e. the ones that didn't ban blacks outright), how can that decision be seen as anything other than flaunting the intent of the authors? Damn those liberals and their pretensions. Look what they did! They forced white children AND black children to attend the same schools! What would the framers have thought!?!

Now let's ask Scalia why the Constitution bans all racial classifications (thus disallowing affirmative action). Do you see that in the text? I sure don't. He can say that it's the most natural reading of the text, but that doesn't make it true. The fact that the authors of the 14th Amendment were in no way committed to color blindness (see segregation above) and passed the Amendment in large part to give Congress power to make race-specific remedies, makes Scalia's claim more dubious. It certainly suggests that maybe, just maybe, his personal views on affirmative action might be informing his 'natural' reading of the text.

Finally, let's hear Robert Bork waffle some more on whether women are protected by the 14th Amendment. It doesn't take a history degree to realize that the authors of that amendment didn't believe in gender equality. Yet the amendment has been so applied, apparently another result of liberals wresting control of the country away from the intent of the framers.

Let's not even touch Bush v. Gore. It's just too much evidence, and wouldn't make it a fair fight.

The point? Of course the liberal 9th Circuit has made questionably principled and decidely liberal decisions. Just as the conservative 4th Circuit has made questionably principled and decidely conservative decisions. Just as the Supreme Court has made questionably principled and both liberal and conservative decisions in its time. It's not a problem of politics, it's a problem of principles, pragmatism, and jurisprudence. And it affects all our judges, NOT just the liberal ones.

Hear hear. I reach a very similar conclusion, based on different premises, in my first law review article.

2003-04-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

ON JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY, PART I: Conservatives think that the difference between conservative judges and liberal judges are that the latter are 'judicial activists.' When I query what this means (very little, IMO), the response virtually always involves some use of the phrase 'legislating from the bench,' which is incoherent. Legislation, in the American model, in every state and in Congress, must satisfy two requirements:

(1) bicameralism

(2) presentment

What this means is that every bill, before it can become a law, must be presented to both houses of the relevant legislature, and must be presented to the chief executive for signature or veto. Art. I. § 7 of the U.S. Constitution instructs,

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States.

Therefore, no judge has ever legislated from the bench, because judicial opinions satisfy neither requirement. Now, hang on a second, before y'all blast me for blatant sophistry and pedantry, b/c I do have a substantive point. We think that judges should not be legislating b/c we, as a legal and political culture, tend to think it is important for the branches of government to be relatively independent: legislators ought not be deciding cases, the president ought not be making filibusters, and judges ought not be vetoing legislation.

Thus, the criticism that a judge is 'legislating from the bench' is perceived to be particularly potent, because it seems to undermine one of the crucial threads of our constitutional system. However, if no judge ever legislates from the bench, then we are left with the comparatively pedestrian and far less-threatening notion that judges make policy. Well, of course they do. No one disputes that. What is disputed is the particular merits of the policy that a decision instantiates. The phrase 'legislates from the bench' is, therefore, not only incoherent, but obfuscatory as well, insofar as it shifts the terms of the legitimate debate over policy to one over constitutional authority.

Anyone catch Senator Cornyn's testimony during Justice Owen's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee? It's not available from GPO yet, but I distinctly recall him explaining to the SJC that when one judge accuses another of 'judicial activism,' often, that is simply judicial shorthand for expressing vehement disagreement with a colleague's interpretation of the applicable statute. In other words, he suggested, when judges accuse each other of judicial activism in their opinions, they do not necessarily mean what they are often taken to mean. Often, it is just a viable way of expressing heated disagreement.

Now, I may hear argument explaining that, even if the phrase 'legislates from the bench' is hopeless, there is still a sense in which conservative judges are more faithful to the words of a text than are liberal judges. This is the subject of Part II. My point in this post is clarify what I think are the proper terms of the debate.

UPDATE: Kevin points out in the comments that Nebraska has a unicameral legislature, so not "every" state requires bicameralism as a component of statute-genesis. He is absolutely correct, though that doesn't alter my substantive point. Even in states with unicameral legislatures, a bill must still go through the legislature (unicameralism) and be presented to the chief executive. Judicial opinions do not pass either test here, and therefore the substance of my criticism stands. Thanks to Kevin for correcting me, however.

2003-03-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

THE SUPREME COURT HEARD ARGUMENT yesterday in Lawrence v. Texas (click here to read the State of Texas's brief), the Texas homosexual sodomy case. I'm not going to post much on the merits of this case, as this is well covered elsewhere in the blogosphere, but as our corporate headquarters is Houston, I thought it might be worthwhile, not to mention amusing (to me), to survey some bloggers' respective takes on the quality of the oral argument delivered by our illustrious District Attorney, Chuck Rosenthal. Says the highly reputable team at SCOTUSblog (Supreme Court blog),

Today's oral argument in Lawrence v. Texas was presented by Paul Smith of Jenner & Block, who did an excellent job, and by Harris County, TX, District Attorney Charles Rosenthal, who gave what may have been the worst oral argument in a truly important case in the past decade.

That's some funny *it. Or take this scathing review from an admittedly more partisan source, The American Prospect:

Then it was time to hear from Charles Rosenthal, the district attorney for Harris County, Texas. Why such a low-ranking legal figure, you may well ask? Why not the state attorney general or the U.S. solicitor general? My guess is that no one wants to go down in history as a famous loser. The startling vapidity of the Texas brief -- the state's written argument, in which it lays out all its facts and reasons -- has led some observers to wonder whether the state decided to cut its losses and invest only an absolute minimum amount of time and resources in this case. Really. You try reading the brief and see if you can find the argument.

Rosenthal stumbled through three arguments: First, there is no fundamental right to extramarital sexual conduct. Second, the state has a rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy as an expression of moral disapproval. Third, the petitioners -- Lawrence and gay-rights advocates -- never even proved they were gay. (A general and slightly disbelieving gasp from the audience greeted that remark.) We have no objection to gay people in Texas, Rosenthal said. We have a hate-crimes law and everything. We're not banning a class of people, which would be prohibited under Romer, we're simply banning an act. We prohibit anyone -- not just gay people but heterosexuals as well -- from doing the deed with someone of the same sex. You should have heard the courtroom laughing at that.

Or consider this from Erik Jaffe over at the Volokh Conspiracy (which has excellent discussion of this case):

If I understood the gist of the State's argument -- not an easy thing to understand given the incoherence of the presentation . . . .

Or this take, from a University of Chicago student who was present at the argument:

The counsel for Texas came to the stand, at which point it became clear that the question for watchers of the court is not "Will the court find in favor of Lawrence?" (it will), but rather, "Will Scalia's scathing dissent even manage to capture the support of Rehnquist and Thomas, or have they some dignity?"

[ . . .]

At this point Scalia realized that he was going to have to drag Mr. Rosenthal by the ears through his own arguments . . . Breyer, in his best law-professor voice, demanded to know exactly what rational basis Texas was using. Counsel started to talk about the possibility that Lawrence's conduct had been non-consensual (nowhere in the record) and Breyer demanded a "straight answer" as the courtroom tittered and Breyer apologized . . .

In all, Rosenthal looked like a southern legislator misplaced through time and space. He repeated logic that he must have known to be circular, as if he cared more about the sound byte than the substance. It was as if he had forgotten that he had to convince five of the Justices on the court, with O'Connor unreadable, Kennedy anything but sympathetic, and Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer and Stevens almost openly hostile. My personal suspicion is that Texas did not actually want to win this case, but merely to put on an act of trying for the sake of public appearances. I can think of no other explanation.

Texas's council's performance was so unconvincing that when Smith took his remaining four minutes of time, the Justices didn't even ask him any question. Smith reminded them that it was Texas who had to prove facts for the record (it could not simply speculate about otherwise illegal things that Lawrence might have done), walked them through the health-effects testimony, and pointed out that Texas hadn't even mustered that dubious claim in its brief. Scalia covered his eyes.

Hilarious. I suppose the 'other' explanation for Mr. Rosenthal's performance is that he was taking one for the team, no pun intended, or tanking the case, if he truly thought the law was as in(s)ane and discriminatory as it is. Though he might be commended for such behavior in that case, (1) I don't see it as all that likely; and (2) he's certainly not discharging his role as an attorney for the state of Texas, which may be problematic in its own right. Whaddya say, shall we give Rosenthal the benefit of the doubt? Nahhhhh . . .

UPDATE: Oliver Willis offers this quote from Mr. Rosenthal following the argument:

'I didn't do as well as I'd like,' he volunteered, but added that Texas had filed "a great brief." He quickly added that he did not write it.

2003-03-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

Enough with the Armchair Quarterbacking, Please.

The current criticism I've seen directed at the manner in which our Generals are prosecuting the war is inappropriate and unfounded, in my opinion.

Part of the problem is the "Shock and Awe" paradigm. As witnesses to the war via embedded journalists, we were told that initial strikes were not "Shock and Awe" and that when the primary air offensive opened up there would be no doubt; the force and scale of the attack would give clear evidence that something shocking and awesome was taking place. And then we saw it. For a few minutes. Last Saturday we witnessed massive strikes on various riverside government buildings within sight of Western reporters situated on rooftops in Baghdad, a massive and destructive raid. It was very impressive. It was also very short. It was the last really "cool" news I've seen regarding the war. I may be missing more, though, since I don't have cable.

Then Sunday came, and we had prisoners taken and people killed, displayed for the whole world to see on Al Jazeera television, and we got angry. I suspect that for many people, the war became real on Sunday. It certainly became real for Anecita Hudson and others, families of the killed and captured maintenance crew. And then came the accusations that our forces were not being led effectively, that we were being too careful, too conservative in our targeting.

Sure, we hear reports of continued bombing in and around Iraq, but nothing as visible as what we saw on Saturday. Overall we are only seeing bits and pieces of the action, often reported and speculated on simultaneously. We want to see more, we expected to see more. We thought we'd see MOABs rain from the skies. We want to see someone pay for what seems to be executed American soldiers, naturally, and we are annoyed by anecdotal reports of American soldiers becoming casualties out of deference to a strategy which regards the protection of the Iraqi civilians so highly.
However, abandoning the principles that we hold so dearly, such as the protection of the innocent, will not help our cause. We must continue to prosecute the war with an even hand, else we risk spoiling the fruits of our labor. Certainly this may increase the duration of the war. It may cost lives. But showing the Iraqi people and the rest of the Muslim world that we are indeed the conscientious liberators that we promote ourselves to be will go further towards protecting American lives than engaging in a "total war".

Our current casualty figures are encouraging. Our media has exploited the footage of our POWs to a sickening degree and has blown our actual losses and setbacks completely out of proportion to reality. If our boys and girls begin dropping like flies due to our strategy I might advocate a change in policy, but the facts are clear: we have lost more soldiers to accidents and friendly fire than we have to enemy action so far. As long as the situation remains this way, there is no benefit to adjusting our rules of engagement. Let's recall that we lost more men each second on Normandy's beaches that we've lost all week in Iraq.

We have made great progress in this war and I have no doubt that we will continue to do so. We should all be proud of our fighting men, and we should all be disgusted by the actions of the hostile forces. We should not ask our soldiers to abandon the very principles that make them what they are and set them so clearly apart from our enemies: the principles of decency and justice. Until our casualty figures show a clear need to do otherwise, we must continue to place the greatest of emphasis on how the war effort effects the Iraqi civilians. There are many reasons for our forces to be in Iraq, but the one that will resonate most through the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim world will be the cause of Liberty.

Let's make sure that we continue to conduct ourselves as the liberators that we are. In the long run, doing so will save lives, American and otherwise.

2003-03-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

WILL ALL THOSE CONSERVATIVES who insisted that California's recent energy crisis had nothing to do with supply manipulation by energy companies report to the teacher's desk for their whuppin'? I can't single anyone out in particular, but I'm quite certain you all know who you are. In this case, it looks like the crooks came from Texas, and squeezed the entire state of California to make a profit (Owen, I hope this doesn't undermine your perspective on why Texas is superior to California). Ah yes; deregulation is certainly an unqualified good.

Incidentally, I'm not inherently opposed to deregulation, I just don't think it's the unreserved good its proponents make it out to be. Funny, since the wave of corporate fiascos struck, the catcalls for deregulation are a little bit softer and less strident than they were prior. Though, I suppose that may speak to the political climate on deregulation as much as it speaks to the case on the merits regarding deregulation.

The cynic in me wonders if Pat Wood, Chairman of FERC and former high level Enron official, would have as aggressively pursued the culprits of the power gouging (who, shock of shocks, were mostly Enron subsidiaries) had Enron not tumbled like Jericho. IIRC correctly, the FERC was guilty of more than a little foot dragging on the Cali power crisis (a Commissioner admits in the article that "he regretted that FERC did not intervene earlier to police the newly deregulated power market in California"), and eventually broke ranks with Dubya to impose some limited price caps on the energy market, which--shock of shocks--stabilized said markets and greatly reduced the frequent brownouts across the state.

If Enron was still hoodwinking the world, would Chairman Wood be as willing and as ready to investigate its practices? I doubt it. It would have been politically feasible to attribute the claims of anticompetitive behavior to the ravings of that @ssclown Gray Davis, whereas, post-Enron, it is politically feasible to kick the dog that's now down, which, apparently, is also the dog that stole the bacon. Of course, Chairman Wood managed to give that dog up for adoption just in the nick of time, but not before breeding (bleeding?) the bitch and earning a fortune . . .

2003-03-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Q: What was the last large military operation the US has undertaken that critics did not liberally compare to the Vietnam war?

A: The Vietnam War.

Sometimes it feels like Vietnam is analogous to some to that one ex-girlfriend or most hurtful rejection that we've all had that we just can't quite get over. We meet someone new and instinctively compare and contrast them to the original heartbreaker. No matter how many successful relationships we have, we continually re-live that dead one and the pain it caused.

To be sure, there may be some similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. Iraq will likely end up with us fighting guerillas to one extent or another. Both will involve civilian casualties. Both take place half the world away.

In my analogy above, that's the equivalent of saying "She has dark hair, a vagina, and soft skin just like Judy, so she'll probably break my heart, too!"

Personally, I thought that Afghanistan would take a lot longer than it did. I also think the parallels between Kosovo and Vietnam are greater than Iraq and Vietnam, both Serbia and Vietnam having been in the thrusts of civil war. Similarities aside, however, the outcomes were not remotely the same because our military was not the same. Our tactics are not the same. The terrain is not the same. The enemy is not the same. And it hasn't actually been the same as Vietnam since the war.

None of this is to say that I know Iraq will not become a long, bloody, drawn out affair. It might, it might not. No matter what happens, though, we're not forever doomed to be that pimply-faced kid that Judy rejected. In spheres where confidence matters, it's important that we remember that.

2003-03-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

ON OPPOSING THE WAR: On Trivial Pursuits (and elsewhere), I've wailed about the unfortunate and all-too-frequent tendency of some hawks to equate 'opposition to the war' with 'being unpatriotic' or 'anti-Americanism', which is so preposterous that it (almost) leaves me speechless.

I've been ambivalent about this war effort from the get-go, and have been unable to get off of the fence, one way or the other, for any period of time before I find myself astride the fence once again. What I do believe, quite firmly, is that the tone and substance of pro-warbloggers' opinions on those who are opposed to war is demeaning, childish, and rhetorically feeble inasmuch as they rely on the straw man of fringe elements like ANSWER to depict 'the lefty opposition to war.' How preposterous.

Ted Barlow says it much, much, much better than I:

"At the same time, it seems pretty obvious to me that anti-war protestors who are 'actively rooting for the other side' are pretty freakin' thin on the ground."

Go on. Read the rest of his outstanding post, especially if you're a liberal who is or has been ambivalent on the war. FWIW, Alex, who is pro-war, also voiced his approval of Barlow's analysis in the comments.

2003-03-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

ANWR DIES AN UNFORTUNATE DEATH

The Senate's defeat of ANWR represents a loss for US energy independence, though more a symbolic one than that of pure gallonage. There were two main areas of disagreement between the oilers and environmentalists.

1) How much oil is in the refuge: Environmentalists say little, supporters say a lot. From what I understand of the matter the environmentalists are probably correct insofar as the ANWR supporters have overoptomistic views of how much can be obtained. However, we know it's there. Oil drilling is generally a gamble. You set up a derrick and hope for the best, sometimes you find nothing and lose money, but when you win you win big. This was a sure thing for the oil companies and why they tried so hard for it, but in the greater scheme of things and the goal for US independence, it likely didn't mean much on its own. More on this later.

2) How much damage would it do to the environment: Oil companies have come a long way in recent years towards environmentally safe drilling. The National Academies of the Sciences released a report on the similar North Slope drilling, which produced few of the negative consequences feared by environmentalists. What damage was caused was not by the drilling itself, but rather by the necessary commodities of the employees working on the site. This means that a compromise could have been struck on restoring the area once the drilling had finished, but unfortunately the environmentalists were not interested in any compromise whatsoever.

That's unfortunate, because Gregg Easterbrook recommended one not so long ago in various publications. In exchanging ANWR drilling for tougher automotive standards, both sides could have achieved a victory and both environmental and energy concerns could have been met.

One of the more interesting aspects of the vote were the defectors. Many of which could have been predicted, but others could not have:

Republicans against:
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island,
Norm Coleman of Minnesota,
Susan Collins of Maine,
Olympia Snowe of Maine,
Mike DeWine of Ohio,
Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois,
John McCain of Arizona and
Gordon Smith of Oregon.

Democrats in favor:
Daniel Akaka of Hawaii,
Daniel Inouye of Hawaii,
John Breaux of Louisiana,
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana,
Zell Miller of Georgia.

I suppose Norm Coleman and Mary Landrieu got an opportunity to demonstrate the bipartisan credentials. I'm sure this will play well in Minnesota for Norm, though I'm still disappointed by his defection. Kudos to Landreiu, though, for following her fellow Louisianan's lead and supporting the worthwhile bill.

I have no idea why DeWine and Fitzgerald, two of the more conservative Republicans in the Senate, defected. Same goes for Akaka and Inouye, both from one of the most liberal states in the nation. Can anyone else draw a connection that would explain two Hawaiians voting for drilling in Alaska?

Owen Courreges agrees, Kris Lofgren does not.

[Full disclosure: The oil products company I work for manufactures tools for drilling on the Alaskan soft-ice and therefore had a stake in the Senate's vote. The company specializes in off-shore drilling and therefore ANWR's defeat benefits us indirectly. That said, an informal poll around the office represents near-unanimous support for the bill]

2003-03-20T12:16:00.000-08:00

NICE TAKE FROM Kos on the stunning ineptitude of the Bushies' economic policy. And the beat goes on . . . .

2003-03-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

PERSPECTIVE

2003-03-14T18:09:00.000-08:00

Color Me Shocked

Republican - You believe that the free market will
take care of most things, but that the
government should be there with moderate
taxation to provide for national defense and
enforcing morality. Your historical role model
is Ronald Reagan.

Which political sterotype are you?
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2003-02-25T07:39:00.000-08:00

Pinkerton & Kaus: Revolution From Within

What's up with James Pinkerton lately? I was surfing through his columns and it was astonishing to read the former Reagan and Bush 41 official has, since December 2002, written approximately 0 pro-Republican columns. Did I miss something?

Now, to be sure, Pinkerton has always been a moderate Republican and that's one of the reasons that I've always liked him. People like Pinkerton and James Q. Wilson who've advocating using the market to bolster welfare without the reverse incentives and bloating that government welfare requires is actually one of the things that got me out of the libertarian/independent camp and into the libertarian-minded-Republican one. It's somewhat disheartening to see Pinkerton so far off the reservation.

Pinkerton is against the war in Iraq (nearly every other week, in fact). Fair enough.

He's also pro-Israeli-appeasement-with-Palestinians. That's a little harder for me to stomach, but this is assuredly a position that he's held for some time that I've just been unaware of.

He takes a number of swipes at Bush's budget which, frankly, is not a hard thing to have problems with.

With the exception of one column on Columbia and another on Matt Drudge, every one of them comes down against Republicans. Here's the count:
Total: 28
War+Iraq=bad: 15
Bush's economic policy stinks: 3
Israel should focus on peace: 2
GOP racists: 2
Columbia: 1
Matt Drudge: 1
Bush in trouble in 2004: 1
EU=noble enterprise: 1
Maureen Dowd impression: 1
Homeland Security: 1

I suspect that, at the end of the day, Pinkerton's views haven't changed much. So the question is why he's writing all these liberal columns in succession. The answer is likely a frustration with Bush's Iraq and fiscal policies and a feeling that the party is headed in the wrong direction. Part of me wants to say "C'mon, James, go-along-get-along" but then I know if the GOP were to go on a homophobic tear, I'd likely be its harshest critic. That wouldn't make me a Democrat anymore than the pending Iraq invasion makes Pinkerton one. It does alienate us from our party and there is nothing wrong with that as Pinkerton's criticism is the only way for anti-Iraq Republicanism to be heard. When people ask me how I can reconcile my pro-gay marriage views with pulling the lever for a party adamently opposed to it, part of my answer is that I want to change the party from within. I also see it as a less daunting task to oppose the GOP stance from within on gay marriage and the death penalty to being a pro-market, anti-regulation, anti-abortion, anti-tax, pro-gun, anti-welfare Democrat.

The biggest counterexample that comes to mind is Mickey Kaus, whom many liberals have accused of turning conservative or of being fundamentally unserious. Anyone who has read Kaus's End of Equality book would know that Kaus is by no means conservative. He's just a different kind of liberal and finds himself at odds with with the current liberal dogma. He comes off as a Republican because in many ways he holds them to a much lower standard. After all, he rarely agrees with them and views them as suspect, so it's not a difficult bar for them to rise above. Liberals, on the other hand, are much more frustrating because even if they do win, Kaus still won't get the sort of changes he's after. Pinkerton's frustration with the direction of the all-GOP government is similar. His team won, but is going in the opposite direction. He may still agree with the Republicans more often than the Democrats, but it wouldn't be as frustrating if it was the other team taking us in the wrong direction.

Kaus could write column after column explaining why he's liberal. He's written a novel on it, but his faith really should be reaffirmed somehow. It'd be nice if Pinkerton took a time out to remind himself why he's conservative. It'd probably do them both a world of good and give them quite a bit of perspective.

2003-02-24T23:00:00.000-08:00

IRAQ REBUTTLE

Daniel,

Where I disagree with you (and the writer of the letter to Sullivan) is the failure to answer the question of what he plans to use the nukes for. Will he give/sell them to al-Qaeda? Maybe, maybe not. I am skeptical of the claims that they are that closely linked (though, it's worth mentioning, those that say because Hussein is secular and bin Laden a fundamentalist they hate each other are forgetting what strange bedfellows a common enemy makes). If Hussein needed money, though, I don't think he'd have a problem doing it. And risk nuclear annihilation? Only if he's directly implicated. But really, then what? As some have pointed out, can you imagine discovering a link three months after the fact and Colin Powell going to the UN to get a resolution to nuke Baghdad? I can't imagine they'd approve because, honestly, I'm not sure how much I would if I were in their shoes either.

So what does he want the nukes for? Defense purposes? Defense against whom? Iran? Militarily, he has the upper hand in that ongoing conflict anyway against a very disunited Iran. Why risk what's about to happen? Is he trying to stock up in order to pre-empt a US attack? That's really circular logic since sans a threat, it's unlikely we'd invade anyway. To use against his own people? In some cases possibly, but his current arsenal seems to do a good job of that. If, as the writer of the letter to Sullivan suggests, they have no use for them, why is Hussein risking so much to build them?

I can think of two possible reasons, both justify invasion:

1) Immortality. We're all going to die and I am utterly convinced that he's not that concerned about what happens to Iraq post-him. If he were, he wouldn't be playing his kids off against one another to the point of leading to a probable civil war when he dies anyway. So what if his plan is to leave his mark and achieve immortality? A Middle East expert commented shortly after 9/11 that bin Laden is what Hussein wanted to be: An immortal ghost, untouchable yet powerful. Because of his station as a national leader, his hands are somewhat tied (we know what country he's in, at least). Even if Iraq does get leveled and he (especially if) he starts World War III, his deeds will live after him. People dirisively say that Bush wants Hussein becuase he tried to kill Bush Sr. Seriously, though, think about that. He tried to kill a president. Is that something a rational national leader acting in a defensive posture (as critics of invasion say he must be as he doesn't intend to use these weapons) would do? How, strategically speaking, would that help him? Had he succeeded, he could have set off a war that would have knocked him out of power.

2) Empire. Hussein's imperial ambitions are well known and we've seen it before. Let's say that he has a nuke or some vials carefully placed in a major US city. Having these, he invades Kuwaitt. If you were president, wouldn't you think twice before trying to push him back? What if he invades Qatar and Yemen. What can the president do? What we've been doing in North Korea, which is precisely nothing. Our hands suddenly become tied. Threats and tough talk become empty. As we fall all over ourselves to give North Korea whatever the hell they want to go ballistic, we'd have to do with Iraq... except Hussein has always been the more obviously ambitious of the two. Unlike the five permanent security council member nations and unlike India and even Pakistan, Iraq and North Korea has nothing to lose. By geography, Hussein has much more to gain.

There are two arguments against war that weigh against these. Namely, that war with Iraq would be protracted and casualty-ridden and that by attacking him, we'd be setting off whatever arsenal he presently has. In both cases, I feel it's risk it now or risk it later. In the first, that might well be what happens, but we've been ahead of the curve thus far and it's fear of the Middle East that has caused many of our recent trouble with the region. We're scared of losing Saudi oil and we've been too scared of casualties to take Hussein out. This has not gone unnoticed. It's a gambit, but one I think that favors us in the long run. In the case of Hussein setting off what he already has, I am worried about that myself. However, this one will get exponentially worse as he successfully develops more and more.

I was upposed to trying to topple Saddam prior to 9/11. When Bush talked of it during the 2000 election, I was hoping it was just big talk. I thought if we just don't make any waves, they will just beat their chest and at the end of the day we'd be okay. I thought the same about going all-out against bin Laden.

I was wrong in both cases.

2003-02-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

I HAVEN'T BLOGGED MUCH ON THE WAR, mostly because I'm fairly ambivalent about it, similar to Greg Wythe. I do think about it a great deal, however, and this post, from Andrew Sullivan's Letters page, really captures most of my feelings on the matter:

"Where exactly are we after twelve years of containment? Saddam's got a few WMD programs, yes. Saddam almost certainly wouldn't give WMD to al Qaeda because if we got hit he would be the first person we would go after, and there can be no doubt he would go down hard. There's no incentive for him to do it, and his death is the disincentive.

He won't invade Kuwait because his conventional forces are in disarray, and it would be awfully hard for him to credibly threaten us with nukes given our arsenal. Israel and Iran would level Iraq if they got hit. They're both much stronger than he is, and Israeli nuclear response doctrine is pretty unambiguous - a suitcase nuke in Tel Aviv would leave Baghdad and half the rest of the Middle East in flames.

So basically he poses no immediate threat, nor is there a high likelihood of a major future threat. So I guess after 12 years we are where we spent most of the Cold War with the USSR and China - that has worked out fairly well for us.

And do you honestly believe al Qaeda would somehow be disheartened if Saddam was taken out by us? I think quite the opposite- while he may provide them with low-level support, our attack might just prove to many Arabs that al Qaeda is right about the US intention to dominate by arms the region.

I am actually cautiously in favor of the war purely on humanitarian (I spent last spring researching atrocities in Bosnia and am a believer in armed interventions) and to a lesser extent non-proliferation grounds. But I really hate the hyperbolic threat assessments ("Just close your eyes, whistle cheerfully and wait for the nerve gas") in terms of both capabilities and intentions that get thrown around.

If al Qaeda gets a nuke they will undoubtedly hit us. They all need to be killed, or at least arrested. So I don't understand why the Bushies didn't appropriate any money for Afghanistan reconstruction, aren't pushing for more funding on the safeguarding of former USSR nukes, and have decided that they are going to needlessly and immaturely toss around ad hominem attacks against countries that have unceasingly provided us with intelligence about and arrests of al Qaeda. I'll back this war because our troops will be in harm's way, Saddam is an awful person who has ceaselessly tormented his people, and on balance I guess it is somewhat important to back up the UN resolutions (though sending US kids to die for the UN is a problematic idea). But this BS about the imminent Iraqi threat seems, though I could be wrong, to be discrediting the other, much better, cases that can be made for war."

2003-02-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

Well, This Is News

A celebrity actually refuses to state her opinion on a political issue!

Never saw that one coming.

2003-02-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

I Demand a Recount.

How Republican Are You?
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2003-02-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

For Those Of You Wondering

Yes, I am aware that I have a grossly unfair charactature of anti-war liberals. Please note that in my introduction I clearly announce it as such. Those that read the new Peace in Our Time parody blog also ought to note the obvious comedic intent. Same with those that read Oliver Willis's Warbloggerpundit when it comes out. Meanspirited? Sometimes. Meant to convince people or inspire people into political action? Get real.

2003-02-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

The Erosion of Discourse

I haven't commented on Jane Galt's temporary (we hope) departure from the 'sphere. Jane is my favorite political blogger and the reason I never linked to her much over at RAWbservations was merely because I didn't have much to add. She's thorough, thoughtful, and approached issues from a fresh perspective. What more can a reader ask for?

The first thing that tempted me to say something was Ted Barlow's post on the subject:

Speaking personally, there is no more effective tool to drive me away from the right than hate mail from conservatives. I strongly suspect that this is a leading cause of creeping polarization in the blogosphere, a subject that's been on my mind recently. It's hard enough to change people's minds using reason and evidence. Attempting to change people's minds with hateful emails is not only abusive and uncivilized, it's utterly counterproductive.

He demonstrated the class I've come to expect from him. I hit the comment button to express my appreciation, then read the replies. From the liberals, nearly all of them came in defense of those that sent the letters or, at best, said "Yeah, well, she had it coming." Others accused her of lying about the letters. D-Squared suggested that this was all a ruse to have an excuse to take the post down. "Thumb" suggested that it was a fundraising effort to buy a new computer.

The general response was that the right does it more.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

Ted states that retarded immature actions like hateful emails "push people away" from the side of the sender. Let me elaborate on how that is true, for those of you who think that anyone who would be driven further away are already on the other team.

Before RAWbservations shut down, there was a post by Tacitus demanding that anti-Iraq marchers denounce ANSWER, who lead the protests. I wrote a response to the nature of the question, basically saying that Tacitus was out of line in his tone and that by de facto comparing anyone on the opposing side to its worst element only drives the debate further and further away from civil, rational discourse. To make a long story short, I took my own side to task for its verbal excesses.

I am now less inclined to do so in the future.

Not because I suddenly agree with Tacitus's tactics, mind you. But rather because I wonder what the point is. If Jane Galt deserved to be bullied into hiatus because she is on the same side as Rush Limbaugh, then maybe you believe I should be so bullied, too. Jane suggested, in passing, that protest vandals (and she limited this to people who destroy other people's property) should be stopped with physical force. When Mark Kleiman said that was illegal, she made the argument that it was. Jane is a generally hypothetical thinker much of the time and those that suggested that she was going to lead a goon squad to do this were, in my view, taking her words out of context.

In a way, it's tit-for-tat, though. Galt took unseemly joy at the prospect of whacking a protester with a 2x4 (which is really what got the left riled up) and Atrios mused that Galt's "goons" were responsible for a crime hundreds of miles away without specifying that he was being hyperbolic or otherwise unserious.

No harm, no foul.

But once the obviously hurtful and personal letters were sent, the response to it should have been pretty obvious. Ted, as you see above, got it. So did Mark Kleiman. The commenters in Ted's comment section, quite obviously, did not. For Ted's trouble, he got a response by Martin Wisse saying "Why are you always more willing to defend bullies then their victims, Ted?"

We are bullies, of course, because we are on the right. We are the party of Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity. Because I believe in lower taxes and school choice and Jane muses that people who vandalize private property are subject to a whack by a 2x4, we are all inherently bullies. Any attack on us and on our character is therefore justified, allusions that we are fascist or that we lead a secret army of vigilantes with two-by-fours that are taken seriously are, well, our fault. Why? Cause of Rush Limbaugh.

I saw something interesting on Pejman's site that sent off a red flag in my head:

It's tempting to appreciate the fact that Atrios is trying to put on pretenses to humility--after all, he has much to be humble about. The most overrated and one of the most demagogic bloggers on the Internet, Atrios is clearly no thinking person's epitome of opinion-dispensing talent. Basically, the vast majority of his posts are made up of the same kind of throwaway invective that he used to attack Jane, and that he used to dismiss Kleiman's charges without answering them. It doesn't take more than two brain cells to put out this kind of puerile output for the unthinking and knuckle-dragging masses that frequent Atrios's site and nod approvingly at any and every inane and asinine thing he has to say--it certainly is a hell of a lot easier than actually constructing an argument (and God forbid that anyone should call on Atrios to do something like that--assuming that there even exists a brain inside the anony-blogger's head, we wouldn't want to be responsible for inducing either an aneurysm or an inadvertent and embarrassing bowel movement by making the poor little sap do anything as complicated and stress-inducing as thinking).

But Atrios's sudden embrace of the "Little Ol' Me" defense belies the fact that in perhaps one of the greatest instances of shame to afflict the human race since the French swore off bathing on a regular basis, Atrios is a popular fella in the Blogosphere. And that means that when Atrios decides to smear someone, the unfortunate target of his infantile rage is sure to receive a storm of idiotic and intemperate commentary--much as Jane Galt has found out.

When I read this, I knew that I'd heard this before. It took me a second to place it. If I weren't so lazy I'd look up recent words by Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle regarding Rush Limbaugh. Exact. Same. Argument.

Atrios is a partisan warrior. Fine. But it's not his fault if anyone takes him seriously, right? Rush Limbaugh considers himself an entertainer. It's not his fault if anyone takes him seriously, right?

Atrios isn't Limbaugh - he just links to them. I link to sites I disagree with regularly and those who use tone and language of which I do not approve. I also have people who agree with me and then expound on it in a way that I wish they didn't agree. That doesn't make me responsible for them (nor Charles Johnson for many of his undesirable commenters). If I were in his shoes, though, and some offhanded and comments intended to be humorous lead some people to make real asses of themselves, I'd be damned angry. I wouldn't issue a weak non-apology apology and then say it's all okay cause the opposition does it, too, or does it more often (of course they do so to me cause they're the ones that piss me off).

Is that what we want, though? Do you want people like me that are more interested in exchanging ideas rather than insults to reconsider that? Is that how you hope to win?

It's not a left problem and it's not a right problem, but it is a problem and not one anyone should be proud to be a part of.

2003-02-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

A Couple Thoughts

For those of you who don't know me well (which is probably most of you), I am a lifelong Democrat. Being from Texas, that means I am generally further to the right than most of the Democratic Party but not right of center. I have never found a Republican candidate that I agreed on the issues with more than his Democratic opponent. In regards to international relations, I am for diplomacy and civility at all times, conferring with allies over major decisions and taking their thoughts into major consideration, and striving for peaceful solutions to things as long as peace is possible. Obviously, there are many places I disagree with the current Bush Administration.

That being said, we should invade Iraq right now.

Why? Because it is the right thing to do. How? What? Yes, it is the right thing to do. If you look over the last 20 years (and even further back), you'll see that whatever party was not in power was saying something along the lines of "We shouldn't be the world's cops." Doesn't fail. Happened to every President that ever was engaged in some sort of conflict, whether it be Clinton or Bush. But the question we should ask ourselves is "Why shouldn't we?" Aren't we for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? As the sole superpoweer in the world, we can guarantee the same freedoms we take for granted for people all over the world who don't have them themselves. I'm not advocating using our military as a steamroller over every government we disagree with, but in the case of oppressive regimes who only ratchet up tension and aggression at every turn. We should invade Iraq and free those people from one of the most oppressive and dangerous regimes since Hitler.

The only reason to wait is if there is a reasonable expectation that by waiting we can get more international support. That way there will be less problems down the road with legitimacy. But that said, we should do this whether or not we can get more support than we have now.

This is the right thing to do. For the Iraqi people, and for us as a nation that values personal, political, religious, and all other freedoms. We did it for ourselves, and look at our prosperity. We did it for the British, for the French, for the Germans, for the Italians, for the Japanese, for the Afghanis, and in less forceful but just as pwoerful ways for the nations of Eastern Europe. And look at their prosprity. It's time to do it again, this time for the Iraqis.

2003-02-14T08:12:00.000-08:00

Insert Foot, Open Mouth

Some make the argument that the current leftist/socialist/communist/anti-war movement is also anti-Semitic. Gary Hart's words seem to lend support to that conclusion:

"We must not let our role in the world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and agendas, by militarists who long for the clarity of Cold War confrontation, by think-tank theorists who grind their academic axes, or by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests."

Some think that such rhetoric may work against him:

"There is absolutely no way the Democratic party is going to throw away its nomination on a two-time loser from the '80s who is scandal-tinged," said Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "I don't care what he has to say about terrorism."

I sure hope he doesn't get the Dem's nod for Prez in '04. My pick's Sharpton. I'd just love to see him debate G.W., or even simply face the public scrutiny that serious presidential run would attract.

2003-02-12T19:26:00.000-08:00

IT'S ALL OUR FAULT

France, Germany, and Belgium reneg on an obligation to Turkey to spite Bush, and this petulence is Bush's fault. According to J.J. Marshall, anyway. Why do I suspect that if Bush were reneging on said obligation to spite the French, he would still be blaming Bush?

The NATO pact is essentially "I will support my fellow NATO nations in times of need," not "I will support my fellow NATO nations in times of need unless there is a Republican in the White House in which case we will not let them use our bases, air space, or lend them even cursory support as needed."

France and Germany are big boys. Cheating them like children will only allow them to continue to act like children.

2003-02-12T12:15:00.000-08:00

I AM TORN BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL HONESTY AND FUNNY

Daniel Drezner writes a thoughtful and thoroughly correct piece on why the argument that the French should fall in line cause we saved their ass in World War II:
Now, this boils down to the notion of indebtedness -- that because the U.S. sacrificed to liberate France during two World Wars, they owe us some gratitude now. The same could be said of Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, etc.

Let's be blunt -- this is a bullshit argument. First of all, what's the statute of limitations on such gratitude? Surely we Americans owe a debt to France for their invaluable assistance during the Revolutionary War -- not to mention the Louisiana Purchase. How much does this place us in France's debt? [But that was more than 200 years ago--ed. World War Two was more than a half-century ago, and an overwhelming majority of Americans and French have no personal memory of that time period. History is history.]

On the other hand, if I completely ignore the point he's making, I can laugh at what The Majority Leader said:
DeLay is trying a more personal approach. "I was at a celebration of India's Independence Day," he told reporters, "and a Frenchman came walking up to me and started talking to me about Iraq, and it was obvious we were not going to agree. And I said, 'Wait a minute. Do you speak German?' And he looked at me kind of funny and said, 'No, I don't speak German.' And I said, 'You're welcome,' turned around and walked off."

Hehe.

2003-02-10T16:59:00.000-08:00

MY NEW NON-TROLL FEEDING POLICY

After this post, I will no longer entertain or respond to anyone who levies a charge of hypocrisy without first asking and recieving my opinion on a news item. If after I give my opinion and that opinion is contradictory to something I have said before, I will then gladly elaborate and explain why I do not see a contradiction, or I will revise my statement.

If NYC is denying marching permits on the basis of disagreement with the message, they are wrong for doing so.

That my silence on the matter (unawareness, actually) implied otherwise or can somehow be described as "deafening" suggests not that I am a hypocrite, but that Oliver Willis is deaf, dumb, or both.

2003-02-07T17:19:00.000-08:00

WHY I CAN'T TAKE ROBERT WRIGHT SERIOUSLY

As I said in the post below, there are two legitimate stances one can take on Iraq:

(1) Iraq is amassing weapons and evading inspectors. This cannot be allowed to happen.

(2) Iraq is amassing weapons and evading inspectors. This does not pose enough of a threat to justify a pre-emptive invasion.

People can rattle on all day long about multilateralism and the UN all they want to, but at the end of the day, those are the two stances. President Bush and company opt for #1. Europe opts for #2 by default. Their talk of weapons inspection after years upon years of failure demonstrate that they are idiots or, at the end of the day, they fear US hegemony more than they do Saddam Hussein. I do not intend to question the patriotism of those opposed to the war (and I hope you liberals believe me on that), though I do call on those calling for us to defer to the UNSC sensibilities to ask themselves whether or not they agree with that assessment. There are, as near as I can tell, five concrete rationales for opposing the war.

(1) The Franco-German and Asian view that the United States is a bigger threat to world peace than is Iraq.

(2) War with Iraq will only anger the Arabs.

(3) War with Iraq is a risky venture that could turn into another Vietnam or, at least, not worth the casualties that may be wrought.

(4) War with Iraq will get Bush re-elected and Bush is a bigger threat to the US than is Hussein.

(5) War with anyone in any circumstances is bad because it's not healthy for children and other living things.

That the UN is not on board with the war is not a legitimate stance in opposition. If you're using that as an excuse to hide behind, you're evading your real reason, which is one of the above*. They are also, it's worth noting, mutually exclusive (with the exception of #s 1 and 4; and 2 and 5)

Now, on to Robert Wright, who assures us that while certain other liberals have fallen victim to common sense, he continues to take leave of his own.

Wright's reason for opposing the war in Iraq seems to be #2. He only dedicates a couple paragraphs to this, and for good reason. It reaks of appeasement. Of course it reaks of appeasement because it is appeasement. The question is will the appeasement work. Will letting one ruthless dictator stay in power so that they don't get upset make them less likely to attack us in the future? Is the greater threat Saddam Hussein or a little kid inspired by our actions to become a terrorist. This question doesn't make Wright very comfortable because it leads credence to the unpopular notion that it was US policy that inspired 9/11, so he glosses over it and says the latter. That he suggested terrorists would be less likely to attack us if we left Afghanistan in power does not lend me much confidence in his risk-analysis capabilities. He has, in fact, practically suggested that we do nothing, cross our fingers, and hope for the best (in regards to our war with al-Qaeda, to say nothing of Saddam).

Make no mistake, that's what he's suggesting here. Except he doesn't have the guts to just do it (or the brains to realize that that's what he's suggesting).

Instead he trots out the true-but-nonetheless-irrelevent point that it would look a lot better if the UN were involved. Well yes, it would. It'd also look better if it were done by Iraqi civilians. Actually, it would look better better if Saddam and all his lieutenants all dropped dead of a heart attack at the same instance. Better better better still would be if a giant Multilateral Consortium Of Unity and Cooperation For Everybody created a magic deathray, let's call it the Bad Guy Deathray, that only killed the people we want to kill. At a safe distance of course so no one would get hurt.

Back in the real world, there is no Bad Guy Deathray, another round of inspections won't do anything, the UN will always continue to ask for them, and at the end of the day they will support us or not regardless of whether we're on our 73rd try with diplomacy or our 93rd.

There will be no true weapons inspections. There will be no voluntary disarmament. If we don't attack, what there will be is continued sanctions (which liberals rightly abhored prior to the alternative being war), continued smattering combat, and eventually Saddam Hussin, or his kids, with a serious supply of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. That, by default, is an acceptable conclusion to those who oppose the war.

Should we just cross my fingers and hope for the best?

*- There may well be a fifth reason that I haven't heard, but it's not the UN or that weapons inspections can work.

2003-02-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

SPINSANITY HAS A SERIES of excellent articles destroying the Administration's budget statistics and tax analyses, and pointing out how misleading their "facts" have been. Talk about fuzzy math; it's worth checking out, for sure. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan pens a new article in Salon decrying Dubya's budget and spending philosophies (I'm not linking to it because it is subscription-required). Dubya is allegedly obsessed with not repeating his father's mistakes. It's the economy, stupid. When noted conservatives like Owen Courreges and Sullivan are decrying the budget along with the usual chorus of squawking Dems and liberals, it might be time for Dub to reassess his economic vision, assuming he is not economically blind.

Additionally, if I hear any conservatives refusing to admit that the 2001 tax cut had an effect on the current deficit, I'm going to toss my cookies (that's a threat). To be sure, war and the bubble-bursting had a significant effect, but it is staggering to me that so many intelligent people can adamantly and blindly, in my opinion, refuse to acknowledge that when the government takes in significantly less revenue but spends more, deficits ensue. Attention to the lower taxes = lower deficit theorists: that is a sheory, in my opinion. And even if it isn't, and there is in reality such an effect, I'd like to see any economist anywhere with anything that could remotely merit the label of "proof" showing that the 'increased revenues' from the 2001 tax cut zero out with the decreased revenues that actually do (and have been proven to) result from cutting taxes. This Administration doesn't have a rat's @ss clue what it is doing on economic issues, and even conservatives are increasingly pointing this out.

2003-02-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

COLOR ME SHOCKED

The New York Times editorial board has an idea. They're a little cagey in their presentation with it, seeing as how they spend the first 9/10 of the column explaining why the idea hasn't worked, isn't working, and will not work. In the last paragraph, though, they take their stand.

Mr. Hussein is a cagey despot, and he is certain to use the coming week to make a dramatic concession or two. But Hans Blix, the chief inspector for chemical and biological weapons, has demonstrated a stern resistance to eyewash, and the Security Council seems to be tiring of Mr. Hussein's antics. Coercive diplomacy has its limits — it didn't budge Mr. Hussein from Kuwait a decade ago. But it is well worth trying.

Oh boy, diplomacy! If only we'd thought of that sooner...

More seriously, at this point I think there are two serious positions on the inspections issue:

(1) Iraq is amassing weapons and evading inspectors. This cannot be allowed to happen.

(2) Iraq is amassing weapons and evading inspectors. This does not pose enough of a threat to justify a pre-emptive invasion.

Or, of course, the J.J. Marshall position:

(3) Iraq is amassing weapons and evading inspectors. This cannot be allowed to happen... as long as it isn't the Republicans that make sure it isn't.

2003-02-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

RAW'S QUOTE OF THE DAY

I laughed out loud when I read this:

"The bottom line is this: only when Mumia is elected prime minister of Israel will there be peace in the Middle East. Together we can make it happen. Dare to dream". -NC

2003-02-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Victor Davis Hanson says it best:

In sum, in a strict military sense, if the Iraqi army — there is no real navy or air force — fights, it will do so as poorly as it has in the past against any good force that it cannot surprise. But we should also remember that in fighting a series of wars, Saddam Hussein has shown a preference for the unconventional and even nightmarish: taking human hostages during the prelude to the 1991 war; putting women and children into the bunkers of the military elite; launching scuds into Israel, Teheran, and Saudi Arabia; torching the Kuwaiti oilfields; sending gas shells and high-voltage electrical currents against the Iranians; and suddenly slaughtering Shiites and Kurds once American officials allowed Iraqis to fly armed aircraft immediately following the armistice.

We should anticipate, then, that a few scuds (which are not supposed to exist) will be sent into Israel as well as launched into Kuwait. Chemical and biological weapons (which, again, are not supposed to exist) may be attached to missiles or shot out of some artillery shells at initial marching columns. Like the scud that hit American troops in Saudi Arabia, some Americans could fall.

2003-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Disband the U.N.

The U.N. Human rights commission is chaired by Libya.

The U.N. Conference on Disarmament's presidency will pass to Iraq in May.

France has veto power and is a permanent member of the Security Council. Population: ~60 million.

India (for example) is not a member of the Security Council and does not have veto power. Population: ~1,027,015,247 (yep, that's billions).

I'm not making the argument that power in the U.N. should necessarily be tied to total population, since I don't advocate giving the keys to the kingdom to the Red Chinese, the Indians, or anyone else. But it's clear that the U.N., as it is organized and administrated today is a relic of the post-World War II situation in Europe rather than a governing body that can encourage and enforce peace across the globe. The argument that I'm making, instead, is that the U.S. should withdraw from the U.N. and, maybe, establish a new world governing body with a different organizational structure and a more limited focus.

2003-02-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST LIBERAL VERSUS GOOD GUY CONSERVATIVE

(This new feature is not meant to demonstrate that Liberals are inherently Intellectually Dishonest or Conservatives are inherently good guys. Rather I will use it poke fun at sillier liberal arguments by taking them to their most ludicrous extreme.)

There are a number of reasons that people oppose war with Iraq. There's the War Hurts Children And Other Living Things group, to whom I will not dignify a response. There are those that fear backlash or that we'll sustain a lot of casualties and that we may not win. I am sympathetic to those arguments, though I don't agree with them. Then there's the argument that a number of otherwise level-headed individuals make that strikes me more as a rhetorical ploy than anything else. The "Why Iraq? Why now?" question, as if they would support attacking Syria next year. That's not a legitimate argument, it's a question and one that isn't part of the aGGCegate question as to whether or not war in Iraq is a good thing or a bad one. What

So, today we join Intellectually Dishonest Liberal (IDL) and Good Guy Conservative (GGC) as they hang out in GGC's house. Suddenly, they hear a loud noise.

GGC: Oh cruddy-fingers, they're at it again.
IDL: Who are at it?
GGC: The neighborhood boys. Every Thursday night they get drunk and wrap all the houses on the street. They leave beer cans everywhere. That's it, I've warned them repeatedly. I'm going to file a complaint.
IDL: Why would you do that?!
GGC: Because I'm tired of it! I don't know how many times I have to warn them...
IDL: Exactly!
GGC: Huh?
IDL: You said that they always do this. Why call the police now? Perhaps you should try to reason with them...
GGC: Reason with them? They said after the last three times I've warned them that they wouldn't do it again.
IDL: Yes, and you still haven't called the police. This is quite suspicious.[1]
GGC: That's because I didn't want to call the police. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a choice.
IDL: But why these boys? Why now?
GGC: Cause these boys are wrapping my damn house!
IDL: And I can understand your agitation with that, but it's not like these are the only boys wrapping houses anywhere. Why don't you call the police on the people that are housewrapping across town? [2]
GGC: Because I don't see them doing it in the act?
IDL: But you know people do it, yet you do nothing about it. You could start up a neighborhood watch.
GGC: I don't need a neighborhood watch. I can just look out the front window.
IDL: I meant across town.
GGC: Across town?
IDL: Of course.
GGC: Just so I can justify calling the people who are wrapping my house and throwing junk all over my front lawn?
IDL: Right.
GGC: Okay, so you would support me calling the police on vandalism going on across town, but not here?
IDL: Well no, because then you would be neglecting the vandalism that's happening to your neighbors. [3]
GGC: So I have to get everybody at once just to get anybody?
IDL: Basically. Come to think of it, last time you were at my house, you left a little bit of toilet paper on the floor and you left an empty beer can on my coaster. Should I call the police on you? It doesn't seem to me that you're in a position to judge here. Quite hypocritical, if you ask me. [4]
GGC: And I'm sorry about that. You know me and my slopiness and short term memory...
IDL: And how do you know those boys don't have a bad short term memory and just accidentally misplaced several toilet paper rolls on your trees? [5]
GGC: Look for yourself...
[AD sees a kid throw up a toilet roll. The one next to him hi-fives him]
IDL: Isn't that the Thompson boy?
GGC: Yeah it is.
IDL: Uh huh, and didn't your store once sell his brother alcohol when you knew he would share with his little brother? Didn't you contribute to all of this? Quite the hypocrite, aren't we? [6]
GGC: There's a difference between selling his brother a six-pack and letting him run rampant on two quarts of vodka.
IDL: Only in degree. Admit it! You've contributed to this alcoholic mayhem!
GGC: This is the dumbest argument I have ever had.
IDL: Dumber than our one last week about how satellite TV is a civil right?
GGC: This is the second dumbest argument I have ever had.
IDL: Besides, It's not like this place is spotless. You can hardly complain about the beer bottles and toilet paper while there is still this thin layer of dust on your window blinds. Not to mention that you have been known to get food on the table when you go to restaurants...[7]
GGC: [starts heading towards the closet]
IDL: What are you looking for?
GGC: Somewhere in here, I have the object with which I exercise my second amendment rights.
IDL: You mean you're going to go out there brandishing your gun at those boys?!
GGC: Not at the boys outside...
IDL: Maybe I should be going now...
GGC: Good idea.

[1] - "That Iraq has been breaking the UN resolutions repeatedly is old news. What right do you have to go after them now? What's changed?"
[2] - "Saudi Arabia is sponsoring terrorism. Why aren't we going after them? North Korea has nukes, why aren't we going after them?"
[3] - Unsaid: "If you threatened war with Syria, we'd be asking why you aren't going after Saddam."
[4] - "Sure, Iraq has gassed it's civilians, but the US is turning into a totalitarian state with this whole USA Patriot Act, so who are we to judge?"
[5] - Unsaid: "Maybe he's building those weapons cause if he puts them under his pillow, the Weapons Fairie will give him a quarter."
[6] - "We gave Iraq weapons back in the eighties to fight a greater threat at the time, so we are now unable to act on its much more serious excesses now."
[7] - "Until we never have a Florida 2000 ever again and until Afghanistan is the epitome of the perfect free democracy, we can't even consider Iraq."

Next Week On Intellectually Dishonest Liberal and Good Guy Conservative, AD tries to convince GGC that it's morally impermissable to give a homeless man the change in his pocket.

[clip]
GGC: Let me get this straight, you're saying that until I give $.73 to every homeless man in this city, I can't give this man a dime?
IDL: That would be accurate...
GGC: [to Homeless Guy] Bet you'd like to show this guy a thing or two, huh?
HOMELESS GUY: [grunt]
IDL: [runs away]
[/clip]

2003-02-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

IT HAPPENED AGAIN

I first heard about the Space Shuttle Columbia when I was getting out of the shower at my friend Brett's house. All I could hear was that they were talking about the inherent risks of space flight. I thought it was an odd topic. I wondered to myself if it was perhaps the anniversary of the Challenger explosion. Unfortunately, of course, it was nothing so benign.

My father works for NASA and I'm from Clear Lake, where most of the astronauts live. I immediately called him to ask if there was anyone that we knew on the shuttle. It turns out that Kalpana Chawla lives in the house where my best friend from preschool to the 6th grade or so lived. We never really knew her, though.

I was talking to someone and watching to news in the hotel bar for a good part of the day. People had different comments. Some suggested that we're making too big a deal of it (one said that we blew 9-11 way out of proportion, too). One lady called into a news station to hope that Bush "won't use this as another reason to go to war against Iraq" and another said something about "heartless Democrats."

For the most part though, I think our reaction is the same. We went through this all with the Challenger explosion some time ago, so it doesn't seem as devestating. We (and the astronauts) are more aware of the risks involved. Nonetheless, despite the fact they knew they were risking their lives, we should all be saddened that they had to spend them. Seven people gave up their lives for science, technology, and space exploration. For that we owe them our thanks.

For more thoughtful perspective, check out the newly restored American Kaiser, Justin Weitz