Date ►►► October 8, 2005

Would a Miers Fight Hurt the GOP in 2006?

Over on Patterico's Pontifications, Patterico made the point that "Robert Bork’s defeat in 1987 didn’t seem to hurt Bush I much" (in his quest to succeed Reagan, I presume Patterico means).

Of course not. Reagan had already lost Congress, and the Senate was 55-45 in favor of the Democrats. It's expected that a president with a hostile Senate is going to lose nomination fights, and the electorate has already discounted that fact.

What hurts a party -- indeed, weakens it -- is when it has a strong majority and it still loses a nomination fight. Bush and the GOP were all right during the filibuster wars, but that was because of the wide perception among Republican voters that the Democrats were using improper and unfair tactics, where 41 senators could stop 59 senators from confirming a judge. The GOP repeatedly made the point that if those nominations had actually gone to a vote, each of them would have been confirmed: "we're not losers," the Republicans were saying; "the Democrats are cheating!" In fact, not a single confirmation cloture vote during Bush's presidency has failed to get a majority; each confirmation was blocked by a minority, typically even less than the entire Democratic caucus.

Americans hate cheaters.

But if the anti-Miers camp succeeds in sparking a revolt among six or seven of the most conservative Republican senators, leading to the rejection of Miers despite a strong GOP majority in the Senate, this will put the mark of Cain on the GOP, the scarlet-L for LOSERS. And that, much more than grudging acceptance by the Senate, is what will depress turnout.

How does that work, depressing turnout? The core of the base will vote; they always do; that's part of the definition of "core." But that only accounts for 38% - 40% of the total vote. So where does the other 11% - 13% come from to get to (say) 51%, as Bush got in 2004? It comes from what I call "sunshine voters." These are not party stalwarts but cast their votes depending on how they feel that particular day. This is not the same as "independents," because most of the latter have more-or-less consistent leanings but are unwilling to declare themselves members of either major party. I'm talking about the folks who truly switch their votes from election to election.

If the GOP comes across as Losers, it will be the sunshine voters who vote Democratic, vote for a goofy third-party candidate, or just stay home. They supported Bush in 2004 because he seemed like a winner, in contrast to Kerry, who seemed like a whiner. Americans hate losers just as much as they hate cheaters.

If you polled 1500 Republican voters, the percent that would recognize the name "J. Michael Luttig" would likely be in single digits, and virtually all would be core voters. The sunshiners are not upset that Bush nominated Miers instead of Luttig or Emilio Garza or Priscilla Owens; they don't even know who those people are, and they certainly wouldn't base a vote on that issue. What they're upset about right now is the absurd MSM-driven perception that we've lost in Iraq and thousands of American soldiers are being slaughtered every month, and the (partly true) perception that the Republicans are spending too much.

(I say "partly true" because spending as a pecent of GDP has been remarkably constant recently. In 2001, it was 18.5%; this rose to 19.4 and 19.9 in the next two years, dropped to 19.8 in 2004, rose to 20.3 this year (Katrina), and is 19.9 again in the 2006 budget. By contrast, the average during Reagan's administration was 22.4%, and at no time did spending ever drop below 21.)

By 2006, we will have pulled significant numbers of troops out of Iraq; and almost certainly, spending will be down from the Katrina-driven high this year. So there is no reason to believe, absent a civil war within the party, that the Republicans will do poorly in the 2006 campaign. Structurally, we're poised to pick up seats in the Senate (more engandered Democratic seats than Republican) and at least hold steady in the House.

But if we lose the sunshiners, that will spell electoral disaster. That's what happened to the Democrats in 1994; their core voted for them, but nobody else, and GOP turnout was unexpectedly high... because the sunshiners defected to the right for a variety of reasons (taxes, the failed Hillarycare proposal, and so forth). The 2006 sunshiners could defect left under several circumstances: if Iraq collapses; if Bush were to follow his father's lead and raise taxes; if some huge corruption scandal rocked the GOP (for example, if Patrick Fitzgerald indicted a dozen top Republicans in the Valerie Plame leak investigation); or if spending and deficits shot upward sharply. None of these is likely at this point; in Iraq, eventually perception will be forced at gunpoint to catch up to reality. Bush isn't going to raise taxes, and it's unlikely Fitzgerald can find any significant figures in the administration who (a) identified Plame by name to reporters and (b) actually had authorized access to the CIA personnel files -- neither Rove nor Libby would have that, for example. Indictments could only flow if officials stupidly lied under oath, which seems unlikely, since they're actually legally in the clear. And we're not likely to have another Cat-4 hurricane strike a huge city in 2006.

But the one thing that could turn the tide for the Democrats is if a civil war erupts within the GOP, and especially if several Republican senators campaign against and vote down Harriet Miers, or if they force Bush to withdraw her name. Ironically, the ones who might do this would be the most conservative senators in the reddest states -- and they won't suffer a bit for their defection, because red states vote red. Where it would make a difference would be in the purple states like Ohio, where DeWine is already in political trouble, and in Pennsylvania, where Rick Santorum is teetering on the brink. It could also hurt possible pickups in states like Washington (Cantwell) and Maryland, where disarray among the Democrats and a very atttractive Republican candidate in Lt. Gov. Michael Steele gives the GOP a real shot at stealing away the seat of retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes. The Loser Label on the Republican Party could the kiss of death in close Senate races.

So yes, a bloody internecine combat over Miers within the GOP has a much greater chance of damaging the party's chances in the 2006 elections, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, than could possibly happen if conservative senators gripe and bitch but in the end go ahead and vote to confirm her.

Patterico made another point earlier, that not even those calling for her confirmation, such as myself, actually think she was the best candidate -- or even a very good candidate. He's absolutely correct; I think this was a huge Bush mistake. And Patterico is also correct that Bush should have seen this reaction coming and been unsurprised. And in terms of "fault," if that is important to you, Bush certainly must shoulder some of the blame. But withdrawing her now in response to furious attacks by the conservatives would be just as bad as having her voted down by his own party: he would look like a right-wing sock puppet.

The last chance to avoid the collision with the eighteen-wheeler rests with the Senate Republicans. They, not Bush, are in the driver's seat now. And if the conservative senators put personal pique over party loyalty and start a donnybrook, and if we head-on the semi in 2006, then in the last analysis, the onus will be on them for not swerving when they had the chance.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 8, 2005, at the time of 3:48 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

BBC's Dilemma

The BBC planned to stake their reputation on the claim that President Bush said that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. But will they actually broadcast this story, now that their only source is backpedaling like a circus clown on a unicycle?

In its three-part series “Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs,” the BBC will feature Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Misnister, describing their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

The Bush administration denies that the subject of Iraq and Afghanistan even came up during the meeting. And now Shaath, the only source for the divine-guidance quotation from the president, has already begun to backtrack from his extraordinary claim, according to Fox News:

Shaath, whose comments will be featured in an upcoming BBC documentary, clarified his remarks Friday saying, "We never thought that God was literally whispering in his ears or that the angel Gabriel gave him a direct message from God ... We understood this to mean a commitment by President Bush in the Middle East." Late today Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement supporting the notion that Shaath's account was inaccurate.

So the MSM conundrum du jour is, what is the BBC to do? That depends on what they think they can get away with, and how much it will cost them. They may decide they can damage Bush’s credibility world-wide, or at least in the Arab countries, without losing too much of their own reputation when the charges collapse. Just like CBS, the BBC may well decide to trade some of their luster for a chance to bash Bush, and maybe damage Prime Minister Tony Blair on the bank shot, as well. But does even the Beeb have enough chutzpah to broadcast a story that their only source now repudiates?

They are left in a quandry: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of being caught in outrageous propagandizing, or to drop the only reason why anyone would want to watch a three-part series on the Palestinian Authority in the first place -- the ridiculous "God talks to me" charge -- and end up with the Masterpiece Theater version of Al Capone's Vault.

But there is another option for the BBC, if they're brazen enough to take it. I understand Mary Mapes and Bill Burkett are available at the moment... perhaps, if they put their collective mind to it, they can discover a gospel written by Lieutenant George W. Bush on a word-processer in 1973 in which he reveals that he's the fifth Beatle.

Then at least they'd have something.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 8, 2005, at the time of 12:59 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 7, 2005

Zawahiri to Zarqawi: Your Lifestyle's Too Extreme

When the number-two guy in al-Qaeda tells you that you're over the top, you might want to sit down and do some serious rethinking.

The United States recently intercepted a copy of a "letter of instructions and requests" sent in July, 2005 from bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In it, Zawahiri first articulates the al-Qaeda vision of the future:

The letter of instructions and requests outlines a four-stage plan, according to officials: First, expel American forces from Iraq. Second, establish a caliphate over as much of Iraq as possible. Third, extend the jihad to neighboring countries, with specific reference to Egypt and the Levant -- a term that describes Syria and Lebanon. And finally, war against Israel.

For al-Qaeda, kicking the "crusaders" out of Iraq is only a means to an end. Zawahiri understands that in order to realize this grand vision, al-Qaeda needs to win hearts and minds in the Moslem world, starting with the Iraqis; yet he fears that Zarqawi's brutal treatment of hostages is alienating the entire ummah. His sadistic bloodthirst is unhelpful, to use a Rumsfeldism.

Ayman Zawahiri… warns Abu Musab Zarqawi against alienating the Islamic world, and virtually reprimands the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda for beheading hostages and then distributing videotapes…

[H]e rebukes the leader of Iraq's insurgency for its brutal tactics -- noting that hostages can just as effectively be killed with bullets rather than by beheading.

Zawahiri the moderate! Zarqawi does not seem much perturbed by this warning though; he beheaded more hostages only two weeks ago, two months after presumably receiving the letter.

In a perverse way, Zarqawi’s insane urge to torture and kill has actually helped us. Because of his brutishness, no American soldier will ever surrender; they know that, unlike when we fight civilized people, surrender to Zarqawi means disgrace and a horrible death without honor. This makes for very determined warriors indeed.

Even though some Iraqis still cooperate with al-Qaeda, either through fear or powerlust, no one in Iraq, not even the Sunnis, wants to be ruled by Zarqawi; the cost in blood and freedom is too high. In economic terms, al-Qaeda has priced itself right out of the market!

Against this blood-red backdrop, even to the Sunnis, self-rule must seem a real bargain.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 7, 2005, at the time of 6:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Miers Mania

A lot of us here are old enough to actually remember the seventies, the shambles the country was in after half a century of liberal rule (including the liberal Republicans Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard "we're all Keynesians on this bus" Nixon, and Gerald "WIN" Ford).

Even more of us are old enough to remember Ronald Reagan. Reagan made some bad decisions (Beirut, Sandra Day O'Connor); and he suffered some serious disappointments and setbacks.

But the thing about Reagan was that he never lost heart. He was the cheerful warrior. If he lost a battle, he took the best compromise he could get -- and then continued to work together with his center-right and conservative allies for the victory that eluded him the last time. He famously said that if half a loaf was all we could get, then let's get half a loaf now and go back for the rest later.

There's an old British expression that may sound quaint, but it's just as critical today as in the days of Benjamin Disraeli: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

The center-right coalition is critical to everything the Republicans have achieved since 1995, when we took over the House and Senate... but it's in terrible danger now. And who is threatening it? President Bush, because he nominated Harriet Miers?

No. Bush isn't threatening to destroy the coalition: that honor goes to the enraged critics of Miss Miers.

I don't think it was a good nomination. I think it was a big mistake. But it is not a catastrophe... and it certainly is not worth pulling down the entire edifice upon our heads, like a blinded Samson pullling down the Temple of Dagon. Not only will that destroy the entire Republican agenda, it will result in even more judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- the very result the anti-Miers camp claims it wants to avoid! Remember, Samson, too, died in the collapse of the Philistine temple.

This is, quite literally, insane: because they're mad that Bush appointed someone they don't know will be a conservative judge, they'll engineer a situation where we'll get three hundred judges that we know damned well will be the most liberal judges President Dean can possibly find.

Oh, and we'll lose the war on terrorism, too. We'll try to fight it as a police action... you know, the European way. The French way. We'll get the opportunity to experience Intifada up close and personal.

If tax cuts, business deregulation, and litigation reform are your goals, then kiss them goodbye. If reform of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security are important to you, well, get used to disappointment. Say hello to Hillarycare. Shake hands with an expanded Americans with Disability Act, runaway crime rates, and even wilder spending that we're getting from the Republicans. If you love the Vermont, Massachusetts, and California state legislatures, you'll be in hog heaven... because that's Congress with the Democrats in charge. Oh, and get ready for same-sex marriage, nationwide hate-speech codes, a million Kelo confiscations of land and property, an even more powerful Endangered Species Act, $6 a gallon gas, and the swift Europeanization of the United States.

But there is an upside: the Miers attackers will have taught Bush a good, hard lesson for nominating someone they don't personally know and like to the Supreme Court.

I know this has become a holy war for many: but holy wars produce an awful lot more martyrs than victors. Please stop and think: do we really want to live in the world brought about by annihilating the center-right coalition of the past decade? Over this?

I would rather be Reagan than Samson. I'd rather work for the rest of the loaf than pull the temple down upon my own head. I will support Bush and the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 as strongly as ever, despite the nomination of Harriet Miers. And who knows? Maybe she'll turn out to be a good justice after all.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 7, 2005, at the time of 12:55 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

A Tale of Two Stories

I have clenched in my reptillian jaws a pair of stories. Both about Iraq; both about the prospects for the constitutional referrendum on October 15th. Both MSM: one is Reuters, the other Associated Press.

Night. And. Day.

(A tip of the hat to Pajamahideen, in the comments of Harry Reid's Babysitting Service, for calling the Reuters story to my attention.)

Here is the Reuters story:

Pollster says weary Iraqis back constitution
04 Oct 2005
Reuters
By Andrew Quinn

BAGHDAD, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Iraqis are exhausted by the country's descent into chaos and most pin their hopes on a new constitution as a first step toward order, the director of one of Iraq's few opinion polling agencies said on Tuesday.

Mehdi Hafedh of the Iraqi Centre for Development and International Dialogue said his latest poll showed support for the draft constitution going into a vote on Oct. 15 was widespread -- even in areas where Sunni Arab groups fighting a bloody campaign to derail the new charter are strong.

Hafedh believes the constitution will be approved. But he's not speaking from a gut feeling or wishful fantasy; unlike anybody else I have read, he actually polled Iraqis on the question.

Hafedh's poll of 3,625 Iraqis between Sept 14-19 showed 79 percent in favour of the new constitution against eight percent opposed. The remainder did not answer the question.

While support was particularly high in the northern Kurdish areas and southern regions dominated by Shi'ites, Hafedh said it also ran at over 50 percent in central provinces known as the heartland of Sunni Arab unrest -- a sign, he said, that the Sunni-Shi'ite split was not as wide as many fear.

"This is exaggerated by political elites who are seeking power and by Western media and analysts," Hafedh said.

"If you go down to the streets, you can't tell who is Sunni and who is Shi'ite. We are all mixed." [emphasis added]

Nobody imagines that the constitution will pull less than 50% of the voters, not even the Sunni "political elites" who are frantically rounding up Sunnis to vote against it. The constitution will only be derailed if any three of the eighteen provinces of Iraq vote against it by a two-to-one majority (more than 66%).

There are four provinces that are majority Sunni; but from what I have read, only three where the Sunnis are so overwhelming a majority that a two-thirds No vote is plausible. Even those provinces, however, are not 100% Sunni. If even 10% of the population are Shiite, and if the Shiite there vote at least as strongly for the constitution as their brethren elsewhere (which would be at least 86%, if Hafedh's poll is accurate among the Shia), the Sunni in that province would need about a 73% No vote to get the overall two-thirds to count for a "rejection" province.

But Hafegh's poll indicated there was "over50 percent" even in those provinces. So the only way the constitution can be rejected is if the poll is stunningly in error -- or if there is a huge turn-around in the next week.

It's not a done deal by any means; but there is great cause for optimism.

(I do actually have a dog in the fight; in a recent post here, I made a prediction:

Dafydd the Great, wearing turbin and holding back of hand to forehead, predicts that no more than one province will muster the necessary 67% rejection. (Actually, I believe none will; but I'm hedging my prediction slightly.)

We'll see if this one works out, or if blows up like my Judiciary-Committee prediction!)

But wait; what about the other story?

This one is so boilerplate, it could have been phoned in from the New York offices of AP:

Many Sunnis to Vote No in Iraq Referendum
Oct 7, 2005
by Thomas Wagner

BAGHDAD (AP) - Like many Sunni Arabs in Iraq, Faleh Hassan opposed the U.S.-led invasion, boycotted the election that brought the interim government to power and plans to vote "no" in the Oct. 15 referendum on the country's draft constitution.

As far as he's concerned, ever since U.S. forces drove Saddam Hussein, a fellow Sunni, from power, Iraq's Kurds and majority Shiites have used democracy to grab an unfair share of power and to penalize the Sunni minority for the many abuses Shiites suffered under Saddam. [emphasis added]

Several things to note: first, there is no quantification; this story is pure "feelings" and no thought: clearly, we are supposed to draw the conclusion that the constitution is going down in flames... despite the fact that nowhere does Wagner explicitly quantify how many Sunnis are likely to vote against it in the Sunni provinces -- which is, of course, the only relevant question in deciding whether it will be adopted.

Second, note the extraordinary number of sources of information Wagner drew from for his literary endeavor: four, counting himself! Much of the story is Wagner's personal recollection of the last Saddam Hussein "referendum," when Hussein was the only candidate on the ballot, and with the Fedayeen Saddam looking over the ballots before they were put into the box. From that wealth of data, we learn that:

Iraq's Sunni Arabs are mobilizing in large numbers to defeat the referendum. Many Sunni politicians believe the document would give Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiites in the south virtual autonomy, control of Iraq's oil wealth in both regions, and leave Sunnis powerless and poor in central and western Iraq.

And one other point is glossed over. Wagner casually admits that in the past, he was willing to report pro-Saddam "news" under duress:

To show off this "democratic reform" to the world, [Saddam Hussein] opened Iraq to hundreds of foreign journalists, including this reporter.

All of us were assigned "a government minder" to monitor the few interviews we won with the frightened general public and to make sure we didn't try to visit any of the many off-limit palaces that Saddam and his family owned.

So for "weeks" in 1995, Thomas Wagner filed stories from Iraq while he was being carefully controlled by Saddam's "government minder[s]." I wonder: during all that time, or even in the eight years between that sham election and the fall of Saddam, did Wagner ever once reveal to his readers that those stories he filed were actually orchestrated by Saddam Hussein to make a democratic silk purse out of the pig's ear of Saddam's tyranny?

I don't find very much charity in my heart for Thomas Wagner. Nor do I feel any great impluse towards believing him now.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 7, 2005, at the time of 4:06 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 6, 2005

Iraqi Children Thank Iraqi Troops

The Iraqi blog Friends of Democracy organized a touring gallery in many elementay and high schools in Iraq. The gallery displayed childeren's drawings and letters that show their appreciation and love for the Iraqi troops. Some of the heart warming pictures are shown here.

The words and drawings had a wonderful positive effect on the morale of our soldiers and policemen who received them with overwhelming happiness and tears of joy “we’re not going to let them down and these paintings will take their place on the walls in our base” these were the words of one grateful soldier to whom we handed some paintings while his unit was patrolling the streets of Baghdad, the next day we received a call from the officer in command asking for more of these paintings which he described as “a proof on national unity in this confrontation with the powers of evil”.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 6, 2005, at the time of 7:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Harry Reid's Babysitting Service

This morning, President Bush delivered yet another exceptionally good speech on the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), this time to the National Endowment for Democracy in D.C. Bush candidly explained where we are now, what our strategy is for the future, how Iraq fits into the plan, and what specifically we're doing to continue winning that smaller war, as well as the larger GWOT itself.

In response Sen. Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas) issued a terse and Kennedy-esque -- Ted Kennedy-esque, that is -- "response" that did not respond to anything the president said; in fact, it clearly was written before the speech, comprising nothing but boilerplate invective from the disloyal opposition. But even so, I will take up the smart man's burden and let you know what Sen. Reid said. It's a tedious task, but somebody gotta do it.

Reid: The Rhetoric Doesn't Match The Reality
Thursday, October 6, 2005

Washington, DC – Democratic Leader Harry Reid released the following statement today on Bush’s continued failure to talk straight to the American people about the war in Iraq:

Failure to "talk straight?" What about Harry Reid's continued failure to use the English language with clarity and precision? What on earth does that phrase, "talk straight," mean anyway? I'm really getting sick of this argument-by-illiterate-catch-phrase... and yes, I do include McCain's "Straight-Talk Express."

"Talk straight" is quite evidently a placeholder phrase, like a movie stand-in: you insert it into a sentence to take the place of what you really mean to say, so you can get the lighting and camera angles right without wasting the real term's time. The problem arises when, after you polish up the sentence, you forget to go back and replace the placeholder with the real words!

In that case, you end up with nothing but airy persiflage: things are looking bad, because the president won't bite the bullet and just do what needs doing. It's gut-check time, Mr. President! It's now or never! The American people eagerly await the straight talk, the real deal... but all you give us is the same-old, same-old. Our patience is not limitless, sir! For the last time, the American people demand to know just exactly where you stand: are you going to stick with the failed policies of the past? Or will you finally, at long last, move forward boldly into the future?

Once again the president had an opportunity to lay out for the American people the facts on the ground in Iraq and his strategy to achieve the military, political and economic success needed in order to bring our troops home.

Uh... yes; exactly like that.

Once again, he failed to do so. Instead, the president continued to falsely assert there is a link between the war in Iraq and the tragedy of September 11th, a link that did not and does not exist.

He did? I just read the speech, and I don't see anything like that in what I read. Of course, I have an unfair advantage over Sen. Reid... I actually did read the speech before attempting to comment on it.

Here is what Bush actually said on this subject, as opposed to what Harry Reid imagined Bush would say a couple of days ago, when Reid actually write his "response":

We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it — in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites. First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, quote, their "resources, sons and money to driving the infidels out of their lands." Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter-century: They hit us, and expect us to run. They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 — only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.

Second, the militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments. Over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and Jordan for potential takeover. They achieved their goal, for a time, in Afghanistan. Now they've set their sights on Iraq. Bin Laden has stated, "The whole world is watching this war and the two adversaries. It's either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation." The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.

Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

I'm curious which part of this Reid rejects. Does the good senator argue that al-Qaeda doesn't really mind us being in the Middle East, that they've decided democracy and peace are pretty cool after all, and that they've given up their Blofeldian ambitions of world domination?

Or maybe it's the second paragraph that Reid disputes: perhaps Harry Reid argues that if we pulled out of Iraq instanter, then Zarqawi and his butt-monkey brigade would be mollified and would likewise leave Iraq to return to certain arrest and execution in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Egypt. Or that they would emmigrate out of Iraq to Iran, Syria, Sudan, or Cechnya, but they would retire from the mindless mass murder biz; perhaps they would become shrimp farmers or start a cotton plantation.

If it's Bush's third point that Harry Reid pooh-poohs, then I can only conclude that Nevada's favorite son believes in the power of Islamist jihadi redemption: sure, the terrorist killers may have claimed they want a globe-spanning caliphate from "al-Andaluz" and the Moorish North Africa, the Persian Caliphate eastward to India, the deserts of Arabia, then following the old Ottoman Sultanate through Algiers, Tripoli, Egypt, through Mesopotamia right up against the Caspian Sea in Russia, up around into Europe, across Hungary, and right up to the gates of Vienna, Austria, plus the new elements of the ummah -- Indonesia (the largest Moslem country), Micronesia, the Philippines, and everything in between Australia and China.

Sure, maybe that's what they say; but it's just trash-talk (not straight talk, as Harry Reid gives us). They don't really want nukes, chemical weapons, or biological agents. And Israel? Heck, the jihadis are willing to "live and let live" alongside all those Jews and Crusaders. Don't harsh their mellow, man!

Show of hands: anybody here persuaded by Sen. Reid's read on the Jihadi mindset?

Once again, he failed to do so. Instead, the president continued to falsely assert there is a link between the war in Iraq and the tragedy of September 11th, a link that did not and does not exist.

Harry Reid's homework list:

• The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America
• Countdown to Crisis : The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
• 9/11 Commission Report: Staff Statement No. 15, Overview of the Enemy

(The official version of the document from the 9/11 Commission is unsearchable; they seem to have messed up something in the pdf. Here is a searchable version of that same document.)

The truth is the Administration’s mishandling of the war in Iraq has made us less safe and Iraq risks becoming what it was not before the war: a training ground for terrorists.

"Made us less safe." Hm. We're safer with an avowed and bitter enemy of America in charge of the world's second-largest known oil reserve, a military machine that includes missiles and chemical artillery shells, active and ongoing programs to develop nuclear and chemical/biological weapons, and who has deep, extensive, and rapidly expanding alliances with al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups that desperately desire to destroy America -- than we are with 140,000 American troops in Iraq protecting a democratic state that is about to vote on a constitution (and if they reject it, upon another, and another until they get their democracy)?

Yeah, I can see that... if the pronoun "us" in "made us less safe" stands for "Democrats in Congress," and "safe" refers to their electoral prospects. Indeed, Bush's entire prosecution of the GWOT has made Democratic seats in Congress very unsafe indeed, as the last couple of elections -- and the prospects for 2006 -- have shown. So in that sense, Harry Reid is right about this claim. Ten points for Slytherin!

I do note, however, that while Iraq may have become a training ground for terrorists, what it has mainly trained them to do is to be killed by the thousands by Coalition forces. And it has unquestionably become a training ground for American forces, turning us into the premier urban-terrorist warfare-fighting military on the face of the Earth.

It is clear our window of opportunity is closing in Iraq and the president continues to fail to provide a strategy for success in order to prevent this outcome.

See above, long discussion of Reid's obsession with torturing the English language until it converts.

My Democratic colleagues and I submitted four specific questions to the president about his strategy for Iraq that the American people demand be answered.

Which particular American people would those be? I don't recall being asked. Then again, statistical probability suggests that the vast majority of the people will not, in fact, be questioned for any particular poll. I'm willing to believe that Reid, Kerry, Leahy, Schumer, and Kennedy (and any other colleagues Reid has left) all got together and commissioned Gallup or Pew Research to poll the American people on which particular, specific four questions they demand the president answer, which turned out to be the very four that Reid asks below... so if he could give us a link or even a citation of this poll, it would be very helpful.

Instead of answering those questions, the president offered the same failed approach, stay the course. We cannot continue to stay the course, we must change the course. The American people and our brave men and women in Iraq deserve better.

It's like déjà-vu all over again!

Ah... here come those four questions that were determined by extensive polling among statistically weighted representative samples of the American people:

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE’S KEY QUESTIONS ON IRAQ

1. How many capable Iraqi forces do we need before we can bring our troops home?
2. What is the administration doing to forge a political consensus?
3. What is the administration doing to make Iraq’s neighbors a part of our strategy?
4. What progress is being made on the reconstruction in Iraq and how do we know taxpayers dollars are being spent wisely?

Let's see if we can answer the senator's questions; then he can say "my job here is done" and head back to the video-poker slots.

How many capable Iraqi forces do we need before we can bring our troops home?

I have no idea how to answer this. What is a "force?" If he means "how many individual soldiers," that's a much larger number than if he means "how many battalions."

And what does he mean by "capable?" Wretchard of the Belmont Club has done a bravura job of analyzing just what we have done so far in building up a free Iraqi army, composed of volunteers led by officers who actually care about democracy and freedom, to take the place of the Saddam's old army, led by would-be military dictators (such as Col. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the King of Clubs on my quasi-official Iraqi Deck of Death) and largely manned by wretched Shiite and Kurdish conscripts who desperately didn't want to be there and would flee at the first opportunity.

First the raw numbers. Secretary Rumsfeld reports there are "technically 194,000 Iraqis" in the security forces. In terms of what may properly be referred to as the Iraqi army, General Casey said there were 100 battalions in all. These were divided, in terms of their capability into three categories: Category 1, 2 and 3 -- with Category 1 being the most capable [and available, per Wretchard's update].

The widely circulated report in the press that of 3 Iraqi battalions that were formerly combat ready, only one is currently rated in that status is an example of how the 'quantity of men' issue has been misunderstood. That number turns out to be the number of Iraqi battalions in Category 1, which as we shall see later, is not the critical category at all.

When Democrats disparage the capability level of the Iraqi troops, they refer only to the paucity of "Category 1" battalions; but Category 1 refers to a capability nearly equal that of the United States; and by this measure, virtually no other nation in Christendom has more than one or two such battalions, most not even that. Even Israeli units don't come up to our present capability to fight an urban war against terrorists... though we certainly couldn't have said that prior to the Iraq War. It is the units in the middle capability level, Category 2, that form the backbone of the fighting force in Iraq, as Wretchard explains:

The eightfold increase in company-level operations in five months (from 160 company level operations in May rising to 1,300 in September) is one crude way to estimate the rate of training of Iraqi battalions . If operational tempo has not increased, this suggests that since there are 100 battalions now then there were only about 12 in May and the US military transition teams have been training about 18 new battalions each month. This is a very crude estimate, but it should in the correct order of magnitude.

Of these 100 battalions the truly important number are those in Category 2 (not the Category 1 batts the press was interested in) because it is on these that the operations over the next six months will be fought. The members of Press realized this in the course of the briefing and attempted to get the speakers to state this number without success.

All right, let's pick one measure that Reid might have meant and run with that. What does he mean by asking "how many capable Iraqi [battalions] do we need before we can bring our troops home?" Does he imagine that is the goal: as soon as there are X number of operational Iraqi battalions, we splitski?

This is a perfect example of Democratic illogic. Bush has enunciated a perfectly comprehensible "exist strategy": as soon as the Iraqis begin to be able to take over their own defense, we begin to pull out. This could be accomplished with the 100 battalions in place now, if they improve their capabilities. Or we could raise another fifty battalions who are at the same level as today. Or we could degrade the terrorist ability so much that a mere seventy Iraqi battalions would be enough to drive them out... there are many routes to the victory condition.

Look at it this way. You're driving to the Grand Canyon. When is the trip officially finished -- when you arrive at the parking lot of Bright Angel Lodge? Or do you pull over and park when you have traveled exactly three and a half hours or 210 miles, no matter where you actually are?

What is the administration doing to forge a political consensus?

Among whom? Is this question left over from a previous set of four about, say, Social Security reform?

What is the administration doing to make Iraq’s neighbors a part of our strategy?

Well, we're telling Saudi Arabia to stop exporting jihadi materials to American mosques; we're welcoming Kuwait's and Jordan's recognition of Israel; we're trying to bring Iran's nuclear program before the UN Security Council; we're supporting Turkey's bid to join the European Union; and we're pressuring Syria to pull its intelligence agents out of Lebanon and fighting a riverine campaign along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to seal the Iraq border against Syrian terrorist incursion. Why do you ask, Sen. Reid... has your newspaper been stopped?

What progress is being made on the reconstruction in Iraq and how do we know taxpayers dollars are being spent wisely?

First question in this double-question, reconstruction progress: ca. September 29th, 2005, see this post from Good News Central.

Second question, how we know taxpayer dollars are being spend wisely: we know, obviosuly, because they're being spent by the Bush administration, not by the Democratic Congressional caucus. Was this a trick question?

And that appears to cover the entirety of Sen. Reid's "response." I suspect I'll never have to write this again... because the next time President Bush gives a speech about Iraq -- or about Hurricane Rita, the repeal of the death tax, or the Patriot Act -- Harry Reid will send out this same general, all-purpose "response," and I can just link back to this post.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 6, 2005, at the time of 7:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Change In Comments Policy

Due to the diligent efforts of a particular commenter to disrupt the dialog and drive away other commenters through sheer insufferable boorishness, I am forced to add a new rule to the Big Lizards Reptillian Comments Policy, which is now Rule 4:

Comments whose primary purpose is to derail, disrupt, or destroy the conversation, or to drive away other commenters, or to serve any similiar troll-like goal, will be deleted and the troll warned; subsequent violations -- or even a single violation for anyone on comments probation -- can result in permanent termination. The hosts are the sole judges. Squeals of "censorship" will be considered further abuse. While the hosts dislike having to institute this rule, we dislike even more seeing other commenters driven away by the abuse of the few (or in this case, the one). Reasoned dissent is welcome; verbal assaults and intimidation will not be tolerated.

Enforcement of the rule begins immediately for all comments subsequent to this announcement.

Examples of such abuse include but are not limited to repeated deliberately off-topic comments, endless epithets to describe those the commenter dislikes, and incessant use of circumlocutions to insult other commenters.

The comments section is for conversation and discussion -- not infantile game-playing to see how close the troll can come to violating specific commenting rules without technically crossing over the line.

Simply put, the line is no longer one pixel wide; it is now thirty pixels wide and fuzzy. All other commenters on this blog, including others who disagree with the hosts, have managed to stay well within the lines, making reasoned arguments for their side without stooping to trollish behavior. One commenter has not.

These are the new rules, for which I apologize. But necessity is the mother of restriction.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 6, 2005, at the time of 2:33 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 5, 2005

Everybody's Gone Survey, SurveyUSA, Addendum

Per Daniel Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee and his BeeBlog, California Insider, three heavy-hitter "reform" groups have just endorsed Proposition 77, the Redistricting Reform initiative:

Three prominent reform groups -- Common Cause, CalPIRG and TheRestOfUs.org -- have endorsed Prop. 77, the redistricting reform measure. These groups, especially Common Cause, have been working for fair, independent district boundaries for a long time. Perhaps their backing of this measure will help dispel the opposition argument that it's a partisan power grab -- for either the Republicans or the Democrats, depending on who is making the accusation.

I think we're finally starting to roll here!

Speaking of which, I spoke to the California Republican Party yesterday, and they said that they were going to "roll out" a major ad campaign for all the governator's initiatives around "October 25th or 26th." I guess this is breaking news; I certainly haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, not that I've been poring over the newspapers lately.

We'll see if they keep their word this time. I still remember Dan Lungren, Stealth GOP Nominee for Governor in 1998. I think the CA-GOP's slogan that year was "No ads -- no votes -- no problemo!"

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 5, 2005, at the time of 4:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More Miers Musings

I just read George Will's typically elitist (and typically boorish and snide) hit piece on Harriet Miers, President Bush, and indeed upon everybody who didn't listen to George Will.

Perhaps it's the mathematician in me, but a conundrum just occurred. Will writes:

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers's confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Since Professor Will -- who has a PhD in politics, but not specifically in constitutional law, and who is not even a lawyer -- has not particularly demonstrated "years of practice sustained by intense interest" in constitutional law, nor that he is "among the leading lights of American jurisprudence," or that he possesses "the inclination []or the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution"... then perhaps he is also unqualified to set the standards to determine who actually does have the very qualities he, himself lacks.

Those are just my thoughts, but I'm not a lawyer, either. I'm not sure I'd take kindly to a journalist telling me who is qualified to be called a mathematician, however.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 5, 2005, at the time of 2:28 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Ron and Tom's Bogus Journey, part Deux

Once again, Democrats prove that, contrary to what some may think, it really is possible to fall off the floor.

If you -- I mean they -- today, Ronnie Earle -- oh for heaven's sake, just read this, from the Austin American Statesman:

Prosecutor Reveals Third Grand Jury Had Refused DeLay Indictment
Newly impaneled grand jury returned money-laundering charge within hours
By Laylan Copelin, American-Statesman Staff
October 4th, 2005

A Travis County grand jury last week refused to indict former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as prosecutors raced to salvage their felony case against the Sugar Land Republican. [emphasis added]

In a written statement Tuesday, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle acknowledged that prosecutors presented their case to three grand juries — not just the two they had discussed — and one grand jury refused to indict DeLay. When questions arose about whether the state's conspiracy statute applied to the first indictment returned last Wednesday, prosecutors presented a new money-laundering charge to second grand jury on Friday because the term of the initial grand jury had expired.

Working on its last day Friday, the second grand jury refused to indict DeLay. Normally, a "no-bill" document is available at the courthouse after such a decision. No such document was released Tuesday.

Ronnie Earle claims that after prosecuting the case with single-minded zeal -- "obsession" would be a better word -- for literally years, he suddenly discovered "new evidence" over the weekend, coincidentally just after fatal problems arose with the first indictment from the first grand jury, and just after a second grand jury refused to return an indictment. Amazing how perfectly that worked out. God must be in Ronnie Earle's back pocket.

DeLay's legal team, led by Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin, has been taking to the airwaves to portray Earle as an incompetent prosecutor who is pursuing DeLay only as a political vendetta.

"It just gets worse and worse," DeGuerin said. "He's gone to three grand juries over four days. Where does it stop?" [emphasis added]

I find it quite telling that the first grand jury, which returned the first (flawed) indictment, and the third, which returned the second indictment four hours after being seated on their first day, were both empaneled by Democratic judges; but the second grand jury, the one that heard Earle out but refused his call to indict (a very rare thing in a venue where the defense isn't even allowed to participate) was empaneled by a Republican judge.

Is it perhaps just barely possible that there might be something to this "partisan" charge after all?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 5, 2005, at the time of 1:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Changing Rules in the Middle of the Game - UPDATE and bump

UPDATE: See below.

Whenever I hear frustrated Americans complaining about the seemingly slow process of Iraqi democratization, I tell them, "give Iraq a chance; they are not used to this democracy thing; it will take time; they have a lot to learn from us." Well, they might have learned a bit too much from Democratic election committees of Florida 2000.

Over the weekend, the Shia dominated Iraqi parliament changed the rules of the upcoming election. They rigged it so that no matter how the Sunnis vote, the referendum will pass.

Iraq's parliament made a ruling on Sunday determining that for the October 15 referendum to pass, half of those who turn out to vote across the country would have to say, "Yes." However, a clause setting a two-thirds "No" vote in at least three of 18 provinces as a veto on the charter would be interpreted to mean two-thirds of all registered voters, rather than voters on the day. In other words, parliament was interpreting the word "voters" in the interim constitution in two different ways in the same article. [emphasis added]

In other words, the meaning of the word “voters” will be interpreted depending on how the voters voted! "Yes" voters are measured against other voters, while "No" voters are measured against all potential voters. This is just as bad as the infamous hanging chads.

This of course does not sit well with Sunnis.

Sunni Arab moderates threatened Tuesday to boycott the voting after the Shiite-led parliament passed new rules over the weekend that make it effectively impossible for Sunnis to defeat the charter at the ballot box. "Boycotting the referendum is a possible option... because we believe that participating in the voting might be a useless act," said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni politician.

Even the United Nation is perturbed, saying this does not follow international standards.

The United Nations also expressed concern about the new electoral rules, saying they don't meet international standards. U.N. officials have been meeting with Iraqi authorities and are confident that Iraq will ultimately agree to sound electoral rules, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The UN is negotiating with the parliament right now. But I don't have much faith in the UN. The United States government echoes the concern, but I don’t know what we can do.

"Ultimately, this will be a sovereign decision by the Iraqis and it's up to the Iraqi National Assembly to decide on the appropriate electoral framework," Dujarric said. "That being said, it is our duty in our role in Iraq to point out when the process does not meet international standards."

This is outrageous. You can't change the rules in the middle. It was wrong when Democrats did it in Florida 2000, and it's still wrong now in Iraq.

What the Iraqi parliament must realize is that Democracy constitutes the rule of law, and the law must apply equally to everyone. That’s the basis of Democracy. The Constitution is the cornerstone of that democracy: if you rig the election to ratify it, what kind of beginning is that?

I put no stock in the UN. They can negotiate all they want; but at the end of the day, the only voice Iraqis listen to is America's. The United States government has to do more than express its "deep concern" and "strongly suggest" that they change the rules back to the original. Hey, we've got the guns; we got to ram this democracy thing down them Iraqis' throats whether they like it or not!

Omar at Iraq the Model sums up my feeling.

I wasn't worried at all when the final draft came with several articles I didn't agree with since I thought my voice would count and could change things in either direction but now? Now I feel like I'm facing a challenge of having my voice ignored and hijacked again and that is something I cannot accept.

Any rules change that causes even the pro-democracy bloggers at Iraq the Model to back away is a terrible miscalculation. Rules are rules -- leave them alone, and just trust the Iraqi people.

UPDATE from Dafydd, 12:40 pm October 5th:

Sachi just e-mailed me that the Iraqi parliament has changed the rule back to the original (hat tip to Matoko Kusanagi and Terry Gain, who noticed and commented around the same time Sachi found the AP article). Via AP:

Sunnis Drop Threat to Boycott Referendum
Oct 5, 12:51 PM (ET)
by Qassim Abdul-Zahra

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's parliament voted Wednesday to reverse last-minute changes to rules for next week's referendum on a new constitution after the United Nations said they were unfair. Sunni Arabs responded by dropping their threat to boycott the vote and promised to reject the charter at the polls.

The United Nations, which was supervising the referendum, and U.S. officials had pressed Iraqi leaders to drop the rule change, which would have made it nearly impossible for the constitution to be defeated and jeopardized efforts to bring Sunnis into the political process.

One might, of course, conclude that American opposition to the rule change might perhaps have played slightly more of a role here than the objections of the toothless U.N., which fled Iraq after a single bombing of the U.N. facility there and have only crept back when assured of protection by the United States.

After a brief debate Wednesday, the National Assembly voted 119 to 28 to restore the original voting rules for the referendum. Only about half of the 275-member legislative body turned up for the vote.

The text approved by parliament Wednesday confirmed that the word "voters" throughout the election rules in the interim constitution has a single meaning: those who cast votes.

"The word 'voters' in paragraph (c), article 61 of the Transitional Administrative law, means registered voters who actually cast their votes in the referendum," reads the text, according to deputy speaker Hussain al-Shahristani....

Wednesday's vote came after intensive talks by U.N. and American officials to pressure the Iraqis to reverse the rule change as Sunnis accused the Shiite-led government of fixing the rules to guarantee a victory.

The Sunnis may "promise" to reject the new constitution, but they may find it harder to deliver. Mustering a two-thirds majority against the referendum in three separate provinces will not be as easy as they imagine: for one reason, more Sunnis than Sunni leaders care to admit actually support the constitution, believing that they can change clauses they don't like by subsequent amendment. The bloggers at Iraq the Model fall into this category, as seen in the post today by Mohammed:

Although I have my objections to several articles of the draft constitution, I will certainly respect my people’s choice and I do believe that half a step forward is still better than many steps backward. I still see this constitution as an upgradeable project that can be improved for better performance in the future and it’s much better than the no-constitution-state and the chaos that would accompany that.

UPDATE 2:

Captain Ed is all over this on Captain's Quarters, as well.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 5, 2005, at the time of 12:58 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

She Wants Her Money Back

Speaks for itself.

Private eye nabbed after woman contacts police over his failure to kill lover's wife.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 5, 2005, at the time of 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 4, 2005

Everybody's Gone Survey, SurveyUSA

Daniel Weintraub's always-excellent California Insider flagged new survey results on various California state ballot initiatives.

In an abrupt and rather stunning turn-around, SurveyUSA, the newest poll of the five California initiatives being pushed by Gov. Arnold Schawarzenegger, Propositions 73-77, shows all of them running ahead for the first time.

The smallest lead is held by Prop. 74, which requires teachers to serve for five years before getting tenure, rather than the two years they have to serve today; Prop. 74 leads by only 11%. The largest leads are held by Props. 75 and 77, both of which lead by 23%: Prop. 75, Paycheck Protection, requires prior written approval by a public-employee union member before the union can use any part of his dues for political purposes; Prop. 77, Redistricting Reform, requires districts to be drawn by a 3-judge panel and approved by voters, rather than allowing the legislature to draw the district lines, as they do today.

Results of SurveyUSA Election Poll #7043

Filtering: 1,200 California adults were interviewed 9/30/05 - 10/2/05. Of them, 989 were registered voters. Of them, 529 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 73. 528 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 74. 529 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 75. 507 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 76. 517 were judged to be "likely" voters on Proposition 77. Crosstabs reflect "likely" voters.

All survey questions have a margin of error of 4.3%, except for Prop. 76, where the MOE is 4.4%.

• Prop 73: 59 yes, 39 no (2% undecided) lead: +20
  Parental Abortion Notification
• Prop 74: 55 yes, 44 no (2% undecided) lead: +11
  Teacher Tenure Reform
• Prop 75: 60 yes, 37 no (3% undecided) lead: +23
  Paycheck Protection
• Prop 76: 58 yes, 36 no (6% undecided) lead: +22
  Limit State Spending Growth
• Prop 77: 59 yes, 36 no (5% undecided) lead: +23
  Redistricting Reform

SurveyUSA breaks down the vote by various demographics; their site is pretty cool and well designed -- if you have a recent browser -- I have no idea how well it would work on Internet Explorer 4.0!

This is truly excellent news. Previous polls had shown the measures limping towards defeat, but in each case with very large "undecided" respondents. I almost blogged about this earlier, but I wasn't sure how to explain it: the problem in the earlier polls were lengthy, hard-to-parse questions and no explanation of any of the measures. I was certain that most people's reaction was "huh? I don't get it," and that was artificially lowering the Yes vote.

But in the SurveyUSA poll, the measures are clearly, succinctly, and impartially explained. For example, Prop. 75, what I call Paycheck Protection, is explained thus:

Next, Proposition 75. Proposition 75 prohibits public employee unions from using union dues for political purposes without the written consent of union members. If the special election were today, would you vote Yes on Proposition 75? Or would you vote no?

And my favorite, Prop. 77, which I call Redistricting Reform:

Finally, Proposition 77. Proposition 77 changes the way California draws boundaries for Congressional and legislative districts. District boundaries would be drawn by a panel of retired judges and approved by voters in a statewide election. If the special election were today, would you vote Yes on 77? Or would you vote no?

Surprise, surprise on the Jungle Cruise tonight: when these simple and obvious reform measures are actually explained to the voters, the voters are overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

So chin up, folks; I think we're going to see some significant changes in the structure of California in just a few years. Redistricting Reform alone will break up the Democratic gerrymander and make a great many seats in the Assembly and State Senate competitive again.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 4, 2005, at the time of 8:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Memo to All Republicans:

TO: Republican stalwarts having the vapors over the nomination of Harriet Miers

FROM: Realm of Sanity

SUBJ: All is forgiven, please come home

Ladies and gentlemen; please lie down on the floor, put a cold compress on your foreheads, and try to calm yourselves. Deep breathing helps. If you begin to feel dizzy, recall that you cannot fall off the floor -- although recent actions of the Democratic Party cast some doubt on this observation.

So you were hoping for J. Michael Luttig or Emilio Garza, or maybe one of the Two Ediths, and you got Harriet Miers. You're disappointed or perhaps confused. I'm with you; so am I.

But.... Before you go flying off in all five directions, saying you've "had it" with President Bush and threatening to "sit out" the next eighteen elections (just to show those stinky Republicans who didn't listen to you), let's talk this out. If you prefer, take a stress pill, assuming that is legal in your neck of the woods.

What is your goal? What are you most concerned about anent judicial appointments? You want a conservative judge, or a strict constructionist, or an originalist, or a textualist, or somesuch other being who will not "legislate from the bench." Right?

First of all, you don't know that Miers is not just such a creature; you don't know she is, but you also don't know she isn't. In fact, President Bush also wants such persons on the bench. While you and I have been opining, he has been busily appointing conservative judges to district and circuit courts and to the Supreme Court.

He has known Miers for two decades and worked closely with her for his entire tenure as president, and as governor of Texas before that. Unless you think he's been taken over by the pod-aliens from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, he must think that Harriet Miers will be just such a conservative judge. He says she is; is he lying?

But even if he turns out to be wrong, and Miers is another Sandra Day O'Connor... how does hurting the GOP help your cause, which is still to get strict constructionists onto the bench? If a bunch of us fold our arms and refuse to vote, or vote for a wacky third-party candidate like Ross Perot, what happens? Well, what happened in 1992? Say, you've got a good memory; we ended up with William Jefferson Clinton in the White House. That sure worked out well!

And who did Mr. Clinton appoint to the federal courts? 373 judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Nearly every time I read about a despicable, activist decision by a federal court, I look up the judges and they turn out to have been appointed by either Bill Clinton or by Jimmy Carter -- not coincidentally the last Democratic president before WJC.

In fact, the worst justices on the Court appointed by Republicans -- Souter and Stevens -- are better than either justice appointed by Clinton; you know, the ones you gave us last time by sitting out the 1992 election.

If your goal is more Scalias and Thomas and fewer Ginsburgs and Breyers, and your strategy is to punish Republicans by refusing to vote for them... well, I don't know about you, but I see a bit of a disconnect from reality there. So bitch and moan privately, if you want, but then suck it up and support the Republicans in 2006 and beyond. After all, even if you think the lesser of two evils is still "evil," it's still also "lesser!"

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 4, 2005, at the time of 5:14 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Ron and Tom's Bogus Journey

I have now read all the way through the second indictment of Tom DeLay by Ronnie Earle, the obsessesed "Inspector Javert" of Travis County, TX. In fact, I read through it several times. And I'm completely befuddled.

Now, I'm what's known in the Navy as a "sea lawyer." That is, I'm not an attorney, but I sometimes play one in my own mind. So I may be unaware of case law that might clarify this indictment further. But so far as I can make out, reading the indictment and the sections of the Texas Election Code that it cites, it doesn't really even allege a crime... and in any event, the connection to Tom DeLay is as tenuous as gossamer.

DeLay is only mentioned twice in the indictment:

John Dominick Colyandro, James Walter Ellis, and Thomas Dale DeLay, the defendants herein, with intent that a felony be committed... did agree with one or more persons... that they or one or more of them engage in conduct that would constitute the aforesaid offense, and the defendant, John Dominick Colyandro, the defendant, James Walter Ellis, and the Republican National Committee, did perform an overt act in pursuance of the agreement....

[T]he defendants, John Dominick Colyandro, James Walter Ellis, and Thomas Dale DeLay, did knowingly conduct, supervise, and facilitate a transaction involving the proceeds of criminal activity that constituted an offense classified as a felony under the laws of this state....

In both cases, the only "law of that state" cited is the Texas Election Code, chapter 253, subchapter D. I didn't have any trouble finding that code section online, either (subchapter D begins at 253.091).

Sec. 253.104. CONTRIBUTION TO POLITICAL PARTY. (a) A corporation or labor organization may make a contribution from its own property to a political party to be used as provided by Chapter 257.

Chapter 257 lists the detailed restrictions in section 257.002:

Sec. 257.002. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO CORPORATE OR LABOR UNION CONTRIBUTIONS. (a) A political party that accepts a contribution authorized by Section 253.104 may use the contribution only to:

(1) defray normal overhead and administrative or operating costs incurred by the party; or

(2) administer a primary election or convention held by the party.

(b) A political party that accepts contributions authorized by Section 253.104 shall maintain the contributions in a separate account.

In other words, money contributed by corporations is "soft money," which can't be used directly for campaigns; and parties must maintain separate accounts to segregate "soft money" from "hard money" (contributions from individuals). This is exactly the same as the federal prohibition -- not surprising, since the Texas statute was modeled on the federal statute.

But the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC) responds that this is exactly how they handled these transactions, and indeed, all such soft-money transactions, since they must obey federal law themselves. They had two separate accounts, one for "soft money," the other for "hard money". The money from Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), which came from corporations, went into the "soft money" account. But the money sent back for use in political campaigns came from the "hard money" account.

Ronnie Earle calls this "money laundering." Now, I don't know about Texas, but to me, money laundering can only occur if the initial source of the money is itself criminal. I've never before heard the term used to mean money legally donated to a political party or political action committee.

Also, don't you have to show that the money at the end of the process is the same money that was criminal at the beginning -- that is, that there is no separate and distinct origin of the end money? But in this case, when the RNSEC donated money to the Texas campaigns, the money came from their separate "hard money" account collected from specific, named, and reported individual donors. It was not the same money.

Well, maybe there technically wasn't any crime; but what about the spirit of the law? Did this agreement attempt to circumvent the law? Again, the answer is emphatically No, it did not: Texas set up a procedure to follow for corporate/union money on the one hand and money from individual donors on the other; all that TRMPAC did was follow those rules.

In fact, it appears that Ronnie Earle has charged the defendants with willfully conspiring to obey the law.

The purpose of campaign finance reform is twofold: to strictly limit the amount of money that can be donated by corporations and unions to campaigns, and to sever the direct connection between candidates and deep-pocket donors. The money sent into the Texas campaigns came from individual donors, not corporations; every dollar sent to Texas was a dollar that could not be sent to any other state or federal campaign. Those Texas corporations could have contributed a billion dollars, and the RNSEC still would not have had one, single extra dime to spend on political campaigns!

And as far as severability, Earle's indictment doesn't even allege that a single candidate was told "pssst! this money is actually from such-and-such a corporation." There is no allegation they were even told it was from TRMPAC. So far as I can tell, the candidates would only know they had gotten money from the Republican Party.

Well how about coordination? Does the list of proposed recipients of the money that TRMPAC sent to the RNSEC make it into money laundering? Again, that seems quite a reach: the whole point of money laundering is to conceal the source of criminal proceeds or their destination; yet both the point of origin (XYZ Corporation) and the destination (RNSEC) were not only not concealed, they were reported to the Federal Elections Commission.

The final absurdity is the contortion that Ronnie Earle had to go through in order to extend the indictment to Tom DeLay himself. Every single act alleged in the indictment is the act of somebody other than Tom DeLay; hence the conspiracy charge... Earle has to prove that Tom DeLay "did agree" to do all the things that other people did, which Earle alleges were illegal.

But unless Earle has some explosive evidence that nobody else has heard about, the only thing Tom DeLay agreed to do is found a political action committee; he left all the day-to-day decisions to the people who actually ran it.

This indictment is no less tendentious (and ridiculous) than the first; the only difference is that Earle has added "money laundering," so he can threaten DeLay with a 99-year sentence. A bogus travesty has just been converted into a double-secret bogus travesty, if I can mix my movie metaphors.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 4, 2005, at the time of 4:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 3, 2005

Miller's Time

In an excellent post on Captain's Quarters about the sub-rosa negotiations that appear to have preceded Judith Miller's agreement to testify to what everybody has known for a year -- that Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was one of her sources that Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame worked for the CIA -- Captain Ed draws a conclusion about who won and who lost those negotiations; I think that conclusion is premature and unwarranted.

Captain Ed first breaks some news:

This revelation didn't receive a lot of notice, but the lawyer for Judith Miller told reporters yesterday that he asked Patrick Fitzgerald for essentially the same deal a year ago that sprang Miller from prison last week. This seems to indicate that Fitzgerald really wanted testimony from Miller on another matter and later on settled for testimony about Scooter Libby instead.

After quoting from an AP article to that effect, the Captain concludes:

This changes the context of the new agreement in a couple of subtle ways. First, the jailing of Miller never had anything to do with Libby or his statements to Miller. According to Abrams, the grand jury could have heard that testimony from Miller at any time as long as Fitzgerald agreed to only ask about Libby. Fitzgerald refused, which seems to clearly indicate that his investigative thrust didn't include Libby as a potential target. If so, it means that Fitzgerald's belated acceptance of this limitation acknowledges that he lost the battle with Miller and wanted to wrap up her situation before the grand jury mandate expired later this month.

The first part of Captain Ed's conclusion is sound; no question but that the naming of Libby was never what Miller and Fitzgerald were fighting about. But there may be a much bigger leviathan swimming beneath the waves, something only dimly seen on the sonar scope. Let's turn to Power Line for another submarine "ping."

In an earlier post, John at Power Line posted speculation he had received from a reader to the effect that Miller was involved in a case of much more moment than who outed Valerie Plame.

Sometime in late November or early December of 2001, less than two months after the 9/11 attacks, Judith Miller became aware that the FBI was planning to freeze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, a Moslem "charity" organization that has since been listed as a terrorist front. On December 3rd, Miller telephoned the offices of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) to ask for "comment" from them on this impending freeze; Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the Plame blame game, alleged in the district court case New York Times v. Gonzales (04 Civ. 7677) that Miller also warned them that "government action was imminent." (Opinion of Judge Robert W. Sweet at page 13.)

That "action" was more than just freezing the funds; the FBI conducted a search of the offices of the HLF on the day after Miller's article appeared in the New York Times. Then on December 13th, Miller's colleague Philip Shenon called the offices of the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), yet another Moslem "charity" foundation since identified as a front for terrorism, to warn them -- rather, to get "comment" from the GRF about the impending freezing of their assets, as well; in a curious coincidence, Shenon's phone call also came just one day before the FBI searched those offices. (Judge Sweet's opinion, p. 14.)

Both tips came from "confidential sources" inside the government, and Fitzgerald has been investigating who leaked word of those asset freezes, whether the leaker(s) likewise told Miller or Shenon that the charities' offices were to be raided, and whether the reporters inadvertently (or deliberately) passed along that information in their phone calls, allowing the terrorist fronts enough warning to sanitize their files, getting all incriminating evidence out of the office, or even to set a booby-trap for the FBI agents, had they so chosen.

Fitzgerald's office contacted Miller and Shenon, trying to find out who the tipster was; they refused, through the New York Times, and Fitzgerald threatened to subpoena the phone records from the Times's telephone service provider. After some back and forth, the Times sued in federal court to prevent such a subpoena, and Robert Sweet heard the case.

Sweet, a Jimmy Carter appointee, ruled in February 2005 that the records were protected under the First Amendment as well as federal laws and common law shielding reporters from having to reveal sources; the case is currently under appeal, I believe (unless it's already been adjudicated). But in reading the opinion, I stumbled across information that may well change the determination of who "won" this round, Fitzgerald or Miller. Here is the sequence of events:

1. After July 12th, 2004, the Times contacted its telephone service provider and asked that they inform the Times if they receive a subpoena for the records, and that they refuse to hand over the records until the Times can litigate the issue; the phone company refused. (Opinion, p. 17)

2. The Times received a letter from Fitzgerald dated July 27th, in which he wrote, "We do not intend to engage in debate by letter. We will not delay further and will proceed." (P. 19)

3. The Times' lead attorney, Floyd Abrams, called Fitzgerald to ask whether the government had already obtained Miller's and Shenon's phone records; Fitzgerald refused to answer. He did, however, offer Abrams "a period of time" during which they would not seek such records or review those they already had:

After The Times received Fitzgerald's July 27 letter, Abrams spoke with Fitzgerald by telephone. During the course of this conversation, Abrams asked Fitzgerald whether The Times' telephone records were being sought in connection with a grand jury investigation and whether the telephone records had already been obtained. Fitzgerald declined to answer either question. However, Fitzgerald agreed to give Abrams a period of time to familiarize himself with the situation, and that, in the interim, the government would not seek to obtain any of The Times' telephone records that it had not already obtained and that it would not review any such previously-obtained records. (P. 19)

4. On September 23rd, Deputy U.S. Attorney James Comey, who had looked into the possible subpoenas at Abrams' request, "concluded that Fitzgerald's conduct was proper in all respects." Comey found that Fitzgerald had no "obligation to share with the New York Times a summary of the investigation to date before we can conduct our investigation," nor that they need to "afford the New York Times an opportunity to challenge the obtaining of telephone records from a third party prior to our review of the records, especially in investigations in which the entity whose records are being subpoenaed chooses not to cooperate with the investigation." (P. 21)

Having diligently pursued all reasonable alternatives out of regard for First Amendment concerns, and having adhered scrupulously to [DOJ] policy, including a thorough review of Mr. Fitzgerald's request within [DOJ], we are now obliged to proceed.

5. On September 29th, the Times filed suit in federal court to quash any subpoenas that may have been issued for the phone records.

6. On October 14th, Abrams sent a letter to the court claiming that "the Government has agreed to forgo any action to obtain records or to review any records that may have already been obtained until such time as [the Court] has ruled on the planned motions." (P. 21)

This must have been a new agreement, because it is completely at odds with Judge Sweet's own characterization of the earlier agreement, in which Fitzgerald agreed only to give Abrams "time to familiarize himself with the situation."

Speculation alert: I believe that Fitzgerald would have concluded that from July 27th, 2004 until September 23rd, 2004, when Comey concluded that the Department of Justice had acted properly and "we are now obliged to proceed," was all the time that Fitzgerald had promised to Abrams to allow him to come up to speed.

And if there were a new agreement (if Abrams were not simply mischaracterizing the old one), it could only date from some time after the case was actually filed, on September 29th, 2004. That leaves a gap from Friday, September 23rd to some time after Thursday the 29th (the day the case was filed) during which there was, in Al Gore's infamous words, "no controlling legal authority" to prevent the Department of Justice from subpoenaing records or reviewing records it already had: at least four working days.

Four days might not have been enough time to issue a subpoena and have it complied with (though it might); but recall that as early as July 27th, Fitzgerald refused to tell Abrams whether he had already obtained those records. He only promised not to review them during the grace period. If I had to guess, Fitzgerald probably subpoenaed those records as soon as he realized the NYT was going to be intransigent about it... back in July of 2004, shortly after sending the letter to the Times informing them he was investigating Miller as well as Shenon and would obtain the phone records elsewhere. If, in fact, he did already have them, then four days was certainly ample time to run the phone numbers and determine to whom Miller and Shenon had talked just before calling those two terrorist front organizations.

In other words, Patrick Fitzgerald may already have known who leaked news of the impending FBI government action before the federal case was even filed.

It poses an interesting quandry. If Sweet's ruling is upheld, then presumably Fitzgerald cannot use those phone records even to investigate the leakers (fruit of the poisoned tree); if it's upheld, he can. But everything depends upon the fate of the appeal of Sweet's ruling -- not on the testimony of Judith Miller.

In fact, I am certain that Miller would refuse to testify about the HLF case in any event, on grounds much firmer than some journalistic shield law: she would probably stand on the Fifth Amendment, since she could well be incriminated as an accessory or even accomplice in obstruction of justice. And she could not be put in jail for refusing to testify if she took the Fifth, as she could (we now see) for refusing to testify on grounds of journalistic "privilege."

This is because a few days before Judge Sweet made his ruling, the D.C. Circuit held in Miller v. United States/Cooper v. United States that the reporters themselves could be compelled to testify; as this is certainly more chilling to investigative journalism than merely obtaining phone records, I suspect that Fitzgerald believes that when Sweet's ruling comes up in the New York Circuit -- or at least before the Supreme Court -- that it will be overturned. In which case, Fitzgerald can subpoena Miller and Shenon at that time (under a new or extended grand jury) and compel testimony, telephone records in hand, about who tipped them off to the action against HLF and GRF. Even if they take the Fifth, Fitzgerald can still proceed against whoever is incriminated by the phone records.

Abrams claims that he "tried to get a deal a year ago."

I spoke to Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, and he did not agree at that time to something that he later did agree to, which was to limit the scope of the questions he would ask, so as to assure that the only source he would effectively be asking about was Mr. Libby. [Emphasis added]

But we do not know the exact wording of the two deals, so there is no way to know whether they really are identical. I'm curious about the word "effectively" in there; it very much qualifies and limits the earlier phrase "the only source." The sticking point could indeed be the HLF case; and by "the only source," it's possible that Abrams now means the only source relating to the Plame affair.

More speculation: if the two deals are substantially similar, but they differ on the prospect of future testimony on the HLF case in the event that the appellate court overturns Sweet's decision, that would certainly be a good reason for Fitzgerald to refuse the first time but accept the second.

I think it very premature to conclude that Fitzgerald lost this contest of wills; it's more likely that he concluded that there was no reason to keep Miller in jail right now, because the real action will have to wait until he finds out whether he can proceed with the phone records he already has (or subpoena them, if he has not already done so), and neither Miller nor Shenon is likely to flee the country in the meantime.

My speculation does involve some reading between the lines; but I still think it more probable than the idea that Fitzgerald was so cowed by Miller's intransigence that he has simply given up on the Moslem "charity" leak probe, which he has been investigating since at least August of 2002.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 3, 2005, at the time of 6:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Evitable Collapse

Beebop, in the comments of Bill Bennett, Won't You Please Come Home?, called my attention to an article by Charles Murray linked at Real Clear Politics: "The Hallmark of the Underclass," from the Wall Street Journal's opinionjournal.com, Sunday, October 2, 2005.

It is a sobering article, even for those of us who haven't been drinking. Murray argues that Hurricane Katrina blew down the screens our society had erected to shield the "underclass" from view.

We haven't rediscovered poverty, we have rediscovered the underclass; the underclass has been growing during all the years that people were ignoring it, including the Clinton years; and the programs politicians tout as solutions are a mismatch for the people who constitute the problem.

What is the underclass? The Democrats like to portray all those currently in poverty as the underclass, undifferentiated between the deserving poor -- those who are temporarily poor because of bad luck, but who otherwise exemplify the virtues our society tries to inculcate -- and the undeserving poor, who are poor because of stupid choices they have made (and typically continue to make, over and over, until their miserable lives end in well-earned misery). But this is a tendentious (and tedious) class-warfare argument that Murray, of course, has no intention of perpetuating.

Charles Murray restricts the label "underclass" to the "looters and thugs," the "young men who grow up unsocialized and who, given the opportunity, commit crimes," the "young males who choose not to work," even when jobs are available, and the "inert women doing nothing to help themselves or their children. They are the underclass."

The underclass manifests as the "yeah, right, whatever" society (my quotation, not Murray's) who believe that life is pure destiny, though they would not have the words to describe it so concisely. They are not actors; they are passive elements that are acted upon by outside forces. Criminality is only one manifestation of the underclass; another is the complete lack of ambition or the mental connection between material comfort and holding a job:

Criminality is the most extreme manifestation of the unsocialized young male. Another is the proportion of young males who choose not to work. Among black males ages 20-24, for example, the percentage who were not working or looking for work when the first numbers were gathered in 1954 was 9%. That figure grew during the 1960s and 1970s, stabilizing at around 20% during the 1980s. The proportion rose again, reaching 30% in 1999, a year when employers were frantically seeking workers for every level of job. The dropout rate among young white males is lower, but has been increasing faster than among blacks.

Theodore Dalrymple, "a British doctor and writer... [who] now works in a British inner city hospital and a prison," published an entire book on the subject of the underclass: Life At the Bottom, © 2001, Ivan R. Dee Publisher. Dalrymple put his finger on the definition of the underclass, something which we urgently need to understand:

Nevertheless, patterns of behavior emerge -- in the case of the underclass, almost entirely self-destructive ones. Day after day I hear of the same violence, the same neglect and abuse of children, the same broken relationships, the same victimization by crime, the same nihilism, the same dumb despair. If everyone is a unique individual, how do patterns such as this emerge?

Dalrymple considers and rejects "economic determinism, of the vicious cycle-of-poverty variety," "genetic or racial determinism," and "the role of the welfare state." That last cause contributes and may even be a necessary precondition. Not even welfarism, however, makes the underclass inevitable.

What Dr. Dalrymple finally realized, after interviewing and treating literally thousands upon thousands of patients, is that the universal defining characteristic of the underclass is an idea: the utter lack of responsibility for their own lives. They all believe themselves to be helpless victims of forces beyond their control. It's immaterial whether those forces are economic, occult, or medical; it is the collapse of free will that sends a man or woman spiraling into the underclass.

The contrary idea [that we lack free will], however, has been endlessly propagated by intellectuals and acaemics who do not believe it of themselves, of course, but only of others less fortunately placed than themselves. In this there is a considerable element of condescension: that some people do not measure up fully to the status of human. The extension of the term "addiction," for example, to cover any undesirable but nonetheless gratifying behavior that is repeated, is one example of denial of personal agency that has swiftly percolated downward from academe....

In fact most of the social pathology exhibited by the underclass has its origin in ideas that have filtered down from the intelligentsia. Of nothing is this more true than the system of sexual relations that now prevails in the underclass, with the result that 70 percent of the births in my hospital are now illegitimate (a figure that would approach 100 percent if it were not for the presence in the area of a large number of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent).

In yet another brick in the wall of evidence that the underclass is growing to devour an ever-larger segment of society, Drudge linked an article from the Associated Press: Marriage On the Rocks in Britain.

Marriage is on the rocks in Britain, with the proportion of unmarried people set to exceed that of married people within 25 years as more men and women opt to live together without constraints, according to government statistics published this week.

The proportion of married men is expected to fall from 53 percent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2031, while the percentage of married women will decline from 50 percent to 40 percent, Britain's Office for National Statistics predicted Thursday.

The "Population Trends" report predicted on the other hand that the number of unmarried couples living together will almost double from two million in 2003 to 3.8 million in 2031.

We each have anecdotes that bring home the shock of the growing underclass -- including those rich in material wealth but impoverished of moral courage. My wife, Sachi, took a class in ethics at university some years ago; the students were asked what they would do if they discovered their best friend at work had been embezzling funds from his employer for months. Out of a class of forty-five students, exactly two said they would turn their friend in... by coincidence (perhaps), the only two girls in the class. (It was a class for engineering students only.)

When Sachi said that of course she would turn in the thief, that she could never remain friends with a person who could do such a thing, one of her male classmates sniggered "that's just like a woman!" He almost lost some teeth -- Sachi was furious.

Charles Murray gloomily notes (he was born with a dark thundercloud over his head) that none of the legislation proposed in the wake of Katrina stands even a chance of truely changing the mindset of the underclass. They will help the deserving poor, of course; but the deserving poor hardly even need help: with a mindset that a man is responsible for his own life, virtually nothing short of death can keep him down.

One might argue that by definition, only the deserving poor "deserve" to be helped. But reforming the underclass is not an act of altruism, which I find repugnant. Altruism is selflessness in the sense Ayn Rand used the term, the complete negation of self: a true altruist will take food from the mouth of his own starving child to give to another man's child.

Reforming the underclass -- ripping from their brains, root and branch, this crazed idea that somebody or something else is really to blame for the calamities the befall them -- is rather a life-and-death necessity for society. For even if we're willing to write off as "subhuman" the tens of millions of human beings in the underclass, without any concern for what will happen to them; even if we have icewater coursing through our veins; there is still the cancerous effect of such dreadful memes: they grow and metastasize through the body politic, infecting the young at all levels of society. As Dalrymple writes,

Worse still, cultural relativism spreads all too easily. The tastes, conduct, and mores of the underclass are seeping up the social scale with astonishing rapidity.... Never before has there been so much downward cultural aspiration.

Murray characteristically despairs that anything can or will be done. "Five years from now," he concludes, "the official evaluations will report that there were no statistically significant differences between the subsequent lives of people who got the government help and the lives of people in a control group. Newspapers will not carry that story, because no one will be interested any longer."

Murray's implication is that we are destined to tailspin inevitably down into a smoking hole; but this is flatly wrong. There is much we can do... but first we must shake not only the passivity induced by underclass-style disconnect between actions and consequences but also Murray's passivity of despair, cultural malaise, and gloom. What is most urgently needed to avoid losing yet another generation to the underclass mentality is not massive piles of money, nor smaller classrooms, nor better pedagogies, nor unions, nor governments, nor even homeschooling, though any of these can help along a program founded upon the proper strategy.

What we need more than anything else is to admit, first to ourselves and then to our children, that our own cultural virtues are worth learning and passing along. That there really is a right and wrong path; that evil exists, but so does good; that every person is absolutely responsible for the direction of his or her life. We need to teach that stealing is wrong; cheating is wrong; lying is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Those who say "there are no right or wrong answers" are colossally foolish. That still, small voice is not just a "Jiminy Cricket" to be crushed underfoot but a moral compass telling you that what you are doing is wrong. There are civil institutions -- police, military, religious, judicial, service organizations, and especially youth groups such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts -- that are worth preserving, not destroying. That voting may be a right, but voting intelligently is a duty. That children are for marriage, and that parenthood is for life. That sobriety is vital, while intoxication is toxic.

In other words, we need once again to begin teaching Civics to the young. It was stupid to stop in the first place... another brainy scheme from eggheaded intellectuals who never see the connection between ideas and their natural consequences. We need to begin teaching civics and requiring a passing grade in order to advance and graduate. And we need, above all else, to teach personal responsibility and accountability: as "Red" Foreman said in the only great line I ever heard on the TV series That 70s Show, "son, bad things happen to you because you're a dumbass."

The final collapse of society is not inevitable; it is, in fact, thoroughly evitable.

We didn't get to the edge of this cliff overnight; and it will take at least a generation to back away from the abyss. But two generations have already passed since Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his 1965 report for the Department of Labor, The Negro Family: the Case for National Action, warning of the impending dangers of fatherlessness, illegitimacy, divorce, and welfare dependency. Two lost generations.

If we allow another twenty years to pass, it will be three lost generations. The alarm is ringing; it is time to wake up.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 3, 2005, at the time of 4:36 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Date ►►► October 2, 2005

Al Qaeda's Plan. What Plan?

In today’s Reuters’ article, I found this passage:

Interior Minister Bayan Jabor told Reuters that documents seized after troops killed a purported aide to al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, indicated a plan to spread Islamist violence to other Arab countries.

Whenever I hear about a “plan” by al-Qaeda, I have to ask “What plan?” I have no doubt al-Qaeda has the capability to spread Islamist violence thinly around Arab countries. As Army Gen. John Abizaid said, al-Qaeda is like McDonalds -- a franchise: they can always find some local extremists willing to blow people up under the al-Qaeda umbrella. But that is just a mode of operation, a tactic. What is “spread[ing] Islamist violence” supposed to achieve? What is their strategy and ultimate goal? And, how exactly does random violence help achieve that goal?

Gen. Abizaid seems to know the answer:

"They believe in a jihad, a jihad to overthrow the legitimate regimes in the region," he said. "In order to do that, they first must drive America from the region."

Al Qaeda believes the most important prize is Saudi Arabia, which is home to the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina. If al Qaeda terrorists manage to take control of Saudi Arabia, they will try to create and expand their influence in the region and establish a caliphate, Abizaid said.

The term harkens back to the immediate successors of Muhammed and means a land led by a supreme secular and religious ruler. Al Qaeda insists that re-establishing a caliphate would mean that one man, as the successor to Muhammad, would possess clear political, military and legal standing as the global Muslim leader.

That sounds more like a daydream than a cohesive plan.

Take Iraq for example. Al-Qaeda has been trying to "spread Islamist violence" there ever since Zarqawi arrived in Northern Iraq ("Kurdistan") in May of 2002, nearly a year before the American invasion; and they have been spreading it at a fierce pace, especially since Hussein’s regime fell, killing an awful lot of people.

But what have they achieved? Have they gained territory? No. Have they succeeded in kicking out the "Crusaders?" No. Have they stopped or even delayed Iraq’s democratic progress? No. Have they won the Iraqi people’s hearts and minds? NO!

In fact they are losing ground. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said.

Foreign Arab militants now numbered fewer than 1,000, compared to between 2,500 and 3,000 six months ago....

(I don’t necessarily believe the exact number the minister states; after all he has his own agenda. But you get the drift.)

We should expect more terrorist attacks as the October 15 referendum on a post-Saddam constitution approaches. But that threat is not likely to deter the Iraqi people; they have shown themselves to be hard to intimidate.

After an opinion poll forecast turnout would be as high as 80 percent, one of Iraq's electoral commissioners said voter registration had gone well, including among the once dominant Sunni Arab minority, which largely boycotted a January election.

Al-Qaeda has overplayed their hand. Their relentless attacks have only hardened the Iraqi people’s determination: they have nothing left to lose by resisting the terrorists' demands. As Minister Jabor put it:

"What can the insurgents do that's worse? There are already car bombs every day."

This reminds me of a philosophical observation by Ann Coulter, which I paraphrase: the terrorists hate us and want to kill us; but if we fight against them, then they will hate us and want to kill us!

Well then, we might as well fight; because unlike Al Qaeda, we do have a plan to win.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, October 2, 2005, at the time of 3:41 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Three Minor Conveniences

It suddenly occurs to me that readers here may not be aware of some of the conveniences I built into Big Lizards (mostly because of my own irritation at the inconveniences I found in other blogs). Let me mention three and a half of them.

First, if you're like me, you try to read blogs in chronological order of posting. When I go to Power Line, Captain's Quarters, or Patterico's Pontifications in the afternoon, the first thing I do is scroll downward until I see the last post I read the previous day. The post directly above that is, of course, the first post I haven't read yet.

I scroll to the top of that post, then read it all the way to its bottom. But now, to read the next post, I must scroll up again to the top of the post I just read, then past it to the top of the next post above it. That's the part I find irritating: staring at the screen while I scroll often gives me a headache, which doesn't improve my mood, already grouchy from having just awakened.

Big Lizards Convenience Number One: On this blog, you may have noticed that at the bottom of every post (except the top one, of course) is a link titled "Lizard-leap to the head of the next scroll, o wise!" If you click that link, you will magically be transported to the top of the post right above the post you just finished reading... that is, the link skips all that scrolling, letting you read the next post immediately, shortening the time you're forced to spend on this furshlugginer blog.

Had anybody noticed this before? I don't think I've seen it in any other blog, but it's really easy to do in Movable Type. I had to ask someone who knew what he was doing to tell me how to do it; but the actual coding was easy. It's probably equally easy in other blogging software.

I wish all blogs would put such a button in. I hate scrolling.

The next one is so simple, I'm amazed nobody else seems to do it. Maybe people get annoyed by it; I don't know.

When I first start reading a blogpost on a multi-author blog (like this one, or like Power Line), I like to know right away who wrote the particular post. It annoys me when the name isn't right there at the top -- as it isn't on Power Line. Now, I know those three chaps' writing styles, so I can usually figure out who wrote a particular post after a paragraph or two. But not always; and I hate scrolling down to the bottom to find out, then scrolling back up to the top to commence reading (see above).

But on the other hand, if a post is long, and if the name of the author is up at the top near the title, it's not uncommon that the substance of the post drives) the author's name out of my miniscule, reptillian brain (about the size of a grain of rice) by the time I finish reading. Then I have to scroll up to the top to remind myself who wrote it. (As you've probably deduced by now, I'm annoyed by far too many little, petty things.)

Big Lizards Convenience Number Two: On this blog, therefore, the author's name is both at the top and the bottom. Simplicity itself. It's not because we're egoists -- though I don't deny the charge -- but for convenience's sake.

Finally, try this experiment on Captain's Quarters: go to the blog; slide the slidebar about two-thirds down; scroll down until you can see the bottom of a post. Note the permalink and what it says: it tells you the time of posting, called the "timestamp."

All right, Mr. or Ms. Smarty Pants... now tell me what date that post was put up! Uh-huh; you have to (sigh) scroll up -- and up -- and up, and up, and up until you finally get to a date header: September 30th, when I tried it just now. Yeesh!

Big Lizards Convenience Number Three: The permalink for every post on Big Lizards shows both the timestamp and the datestamp. Now, if you read a post here about a fast-breaking story, and the post seems hopelessly out of date, you can look at the permalink and say "oh, for Pete's sake, these scaley idiots wrote this two days ago!" Then you can roll your eyes in exasperation at lizardly laggardliness.

(A convenience I tossed in that doesn't really merit its own number is that all the categories attached to a post are listed and linked right beneath the post title; so if you're interested in the subject, and you want to search for other posts that might discuss that same subject, you can just click on one or more of the listed categories and be taken to that category's archive.)

Since I do all the XHTML programming on this site myself (being a skinflint), if any of you has a suggestion for other conveniences, please let me know in the comments. If it seems useful, and if I can figure out how to do it, I'll give it a shot.

And thanks!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 2, 2005, at the time of 2:47 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

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