Kevin Smith Reviews Revenge of the Sith

Kevin Smith, creator of Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Jersey Girl, has published his review of the upcoming Star Wars finale Revenge of the Sith. He uses colorful language and provides many spoilers, and enthusastically praises the film.

This is the "Star Wars" prequel the haters have been bitching for since "Menace" came out, and if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying. As dark as "Empire" was, this movie goes a thousand times darker..this flick is so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching "Othello" or "Hamlet".

Can't wait!

Dafur Eyewitness: Brian Steidle

Brian Steidle has posted a collection of photographs and a first-hand account from Darfur.

Social Security Contradiction

Josh Marshall points out a signfiicant contradiction in the president's comments last night.

There was so much bamboozling going on tonight in that press conference that it was easy to miss one essential contradiction in the president's argument. You don't have to worry about private accounts, he said, because if you want you can fill your account with US Treasury bonds which have no risk at all. They're backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. But he says that the very same Treasury notes, when they're in the Trust Fund, are just worthless IOUs.

I've talked about this before. (I even used the bank account comment before the president did.)

Darfur Petition

Africa Action has an online petition calling for more US leadership in addressing the genocide in Darfur.

Coalition for Darfur: The Man Nobody Knows

This week's Coalition for Darfur post is about Eric Reeves.

For over two years, Eric Reeves has been the driving force behind efforts to call attention to the genocide in Darfur by writing weekly updates and providing on-going analysis of the situation on the ground. As early as 2003, Reeves was calling the situation in Darfur a genocide, nine months before former Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar declaration. In January of 2005, Reeves lashed out against "shamefully irresponsible" journalists who "contented themselves with a shockingly distorting mortality figure for Darfur's ongoing genocide." Reeves' analysis led to a series of news articles highlighting the limitations of the widely cited figure of 70,000 deaths and culminated in a recent Coalition for International Justice survey that concluded that death toll was nearly 400,000; an figure nearly identical to the one Reeves had calculated on his own.

Action Plan for Darfur

Coalition for Darfur has a link to a new action plan for Darfur, released by the International Crisis Group. The plan includes

1. protect civilians and relief agencies in Darfur by reinforcing AU peacekeepers with a stronger mandate and more troops -- up to at least 10,000 total -- that are properly resourced; enforcing the arms embargo and military flight ban over Darfur; neutralising government-controlled militias and enabling IDPs and refugees to return home;
2. implement accountability by getting the proposed Sanctions Committee operational; by widening targeted sanctions; and aiding the International Criminal Court investigation;
3. build a Darfur peace process by devising a blueprint for negotiations and appointing a lead senior mediator from the AU as well as U.S., EU, and UN envoys to lend support;
4. implement the existing peace agreement for southern Sudan by deploying the proposed UN mission rapidly; effectively managing the oil sector; pressing for security sector reform; and ending the capacity of Khartoum hardliners to use the Ugandan insurgency, the Lord's Resistance Army, to sabotage stability in southern Sudan; and
5. prevent new conflict in the east, before it becomes the next major civil war.

Elsewhere, there is a link to a Reuters article in which ICG's special advisor on Sudan "estimates as many as 10,000 people or more die each month in Darfur."

Andrew Sullivan: Crisis of Faith

Since the election of George Bush, and particularly since his re-election in 2004, tensions between the various branches of American conservatism have been rising. There have always been tensions, but the different groups have typically been able to brush aside their differences in favor of those issues on which they agree. But that is changing as the religious right element in conservatism grows more and more unrestrained in its ambition and power.

Andrew Sullivan has written a very good article on this. He breaks down conservatism into two very broad groups: conservatives of faith and conservatives of doubt. Breaking down the internal logic of these two groups, Sullivan explains how they have been able to work side by side for so long, and also why that collegiality is breaking down.

For the last few decades, enough has united conservatives of doubt and conservatives of faith to keep the coalition in one rickety piece. Both groups were passionately anti-communist, even if there were some disagreements on strategy and tactics. Today, both groups are just as hostile to Islamist terrorism and fundamentalism. Both groups have historically backed lower taxes. Both oppose affirmative action and gun control. And there have been conservative personalities who have managed to appeal to both sides--Ronald Reagan is the exemplar.

But recently the conservatism of faith has given way to a more radical fundamentalism which rejects any form of compromise.

Sullivan concludes that the growing gap between these two groups threatens the very substance of the conservative movement.

I'm not saying that Republicanism is headed for an institutional crack-up. What I am saying is that, unless the religious presence within Republicanism becomes less dogmatic and fundamentalist, the conservative coalition as we have known it cannot long endure. Advocates for government restraint cannot, in good conscience, keep supporting a party that believes in its own God-given mission to change people's souls. Believers in fiscal discipline cannot keep backing an administration that boasts of its huge spending increases and has no intention of changing. Those inclined to prudence cannot join forces with fanatics (at least not in times when national security doesn't hang in the balance). Retreating to the Democrats is not an option. Small government conservatives are even less powerful within the opposition's base than in the GOP's. Bill Clinton's small-c conservatism was made possible only by what now looks like a blessed interaction with a Republican Congress. The only pragmatic option is to persuade those who run the Republican Party that religious zeal is a highly unstable base for conservative politics: It is divisive, inflammatory, and intolerant of the very mechanisms that keep freedom alive.

How the Republican party deals with the gap between these two groups will dominate political events in 2006, 2008, and beyond.

Weld to Run for Governor in New York?

The New York Times has an interview with Bill Weld, former Republican governor of the Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts who is now considering a run for the New York governor's mansion. Weld is a very good politician and was a good governor. (I lived in Mass. in the 90's and voted for him in 1994.) He's the kind of the Republican that party needs to develop and push onto the national stage, though the right-wingers who have a stranglehold on the party machinery would never allow it. But with the growing tensions within the party, who knows.

Filibusters of Judicial Nominees

Right wing Republicans are ratcheting up their efforts to force the Senate to approve 10 judicial nominees who have thus far been blocked by Democrat led filibusters. The move now is to alter the Senate rules to ban filibusters, a movement led by the Christian right conservatives. This past weekend saw a broadcast on Christian TV and radio called "Justice Sunday, Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith" and featured, among others, a speech by Senator Frist.

First off, as a person of faith myself, let me get this off my chest. HOW DARE YOU! A church is a place to worship God, not a platform for politicians to corrupt and co-opt the Word of God for their own purposes! The pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, from which the show was telecast, should be fired. We Christians need to start standing up for the truth and stop allowing the politicians to abuse our faith and our God. I've written more on this from a Christian point of view elsewhere.

I have bought into this argument in the past, before I got some of the information straight. The right-wingers portray this as a crisis and epidemic. It is not. Of the 215 judicial nominees brought up by the president, 205 have been approved by the Senate without recourse to filibuster. Only 10 of these nominees have been blocked. (That's compared to the 61 the Republicans blocked during the Clinton years through other procedural maneuvers.) It is hard, then, to argue that the nation faces a looming crisis.

Interestingly, both the left- and right- wingers argue the same essential point. They are both against "judicial activism", which is basically deciding things from the bench they disagree with. But there is a valid point here. The men and women appointed to these judgeships are appointed for life with little accountability for their decisions once they are approved. The law is whatever the judges say it is. There is tremendous power there to basically issue laws by judicial decree. Conservatives would argue this is what happened in Roe v. Wade and in the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision to require gay marriage: a small group of judges bypassed the democratic process and decreed some laws.

On the general point, I would have to agree. The judiciary fundamentally has three options to choose from when answering questions about a law.

• yes, it is constitutional
• no, it is not constitutional
• none of the above, i.e. the constitution has no guidance so the decision is left to the democratic process and the will of the people

Increasingly it seems that third option is disappearing. Show me where in the constitution the founders addressed abortion or gay marriage. They didn't, so both should have been left to the will of the people expressed through the democratic process. Instead, the courts decided they had to provide an answer, and there is no appeal of their answer short of constitutional amendment, which is designed to happen rarely.

Because of the tremendous power instilled in the judiciary, and the fact that these judges will be there for life, great caution must be taken when considering nominees to the bench. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to have a procedural check on the power of the majority party to address concerns about specific nominees. Certainly this opens the door to abuse of that check, but that is something we have to live with in a democracy. Any of the checks and balances designed by the founders in the Constitution can be abused. But the idea that the nation should err on the side of caution and restriction is sound. So the right to filibuster should be maintained.

Do Away with the National Weather Service

Over the years, the Republicans have tried to eliminate many government agencies and services they don't like. Now, they are targeting the National Weather Service's publicly available weather forecasts. In a stunning example of the conservative vision of small, unintrusive government, Senator Santorum wants to help Americans decide their online source for weather information. Palm Beach Post reports

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

The right of Americans to choose their weather forecast providers apparently does not extend to services they have already paid for with their taxes.

To demonstrate the conservative zeal for free market economics, the Senator justifies the move by arguing that this free service negatively impacts the private sector services, which are also free.

It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free.

After all, why would I go to the Weather Channel's free data when I can get the data for free from NWS? But then, hold on. If we take NWS data out of the picture, why would I go to the Weather Channel for free data when I can go to AccuWeather's free data? We had better shutdown Accuweather, because

It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when [AccuWeather] is providing similar products and services for free.

Oh, AccuWeather supports the bill. I guess we need to shut down the Weather Channel. Those crazy market forces just make things too confusing. We should just have one company, which the government will define, that will provide all data on the weather. That's the old Soviet American way.

Oh man. Like Josh Marshall wrote, "You just can't make this stuff up."

Controlling Distribution

The internet revolution has been on us now for 10 years. It has changed the way we communicate, share information, apply for jobs, get our news, and obtain music. Why has the internet been such a revolution. Commenting on the impact of blogs to the publishing industry, Business Week writes

The printing press set the model for mass media. A lucky handful owns the publishing machinery and controls the information. Whether at newspapers or global manufacturing giants, they decide what the masses will learn. This elite still holds sway at most companies. You know them. They generally park in sheltered spaces, have longer rides on elevators, and avoid the cafeteria. They keep the secrets safe and coif the company's message. Then they distribute it -- usually on a need-to-know basis -- to customers, employees, investors, and the press.

This is the key. In the world before the publicly accessible internet, every major industry had a select handful of businesses that controlled the industry's product. In particular, they controlled the distribution of that product, which gave them control of the industry. The flow of news was controlled by the major TV networks and a handful of wire services. The music industry labels controlled the distribution of music. The movie studios controlled the distribution of movies.

The internet changed all that. Distribution of any electronic data is completely decentralized so that no one controls it. Furthermore, global distribution comes at the cost of an internet connection. Anyone can be a distributor. This is most famously seen in the music realm, where the so-called file swapping networks represent an uncontrolled distribution network for music that allow fans to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. Musicians can now distribute their music globally at little cost and without the need sign away control to a record label. With blogging systems, bloggers like myself can potentially reach a global audience without having to sign away control of their writing to some syndication network, wire service, or newspaper. Anyone can have the same reach as the New York Times, while working in their pajamas and retaining total control over their output. As Business Week wrote,

Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted, but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art -- like how to get other bloggers to link to them -- they reach a huge audience.

Established industries have been struggling to acclimate themselves to this new world, and it has been an awkward process. Witness the embarrassments that have befallen the news industry at the hands of bloggers, or the struggles of the music business to adjust to a world where fans get their music for free. This revolution has not yet ended. Many industries are still operating in the model set out by the printing press. But they will have to endure the same struggles the news and music businesses are enduring now.

The French, again

Our French allies are showing their true tri-colors again. Reuters reports

The United States urged NATO Thursday to respond quickly to any request for help in the Darfur conflict, but France insisted the alliance could not be the "gendarme of the world."

In Hotel Rwanda, did anyone catch who Paul told his Belgian boss to call to save them? The French, of course. Why? Because the French were supplying the Hutus, you know, the genocidal guys, in that conflict. How much do you want to bet the French have trade going with the Sudanese government?

Genocide or not Genocide

I and my family watched Hotel Rwanda earlier this week on DVD. In the film, there is a scene where Paul (the lead character) listens to a totally absurd debate on the terminology used to describe the slaughter in Rwanda, with the speaker being very careful to avoid the word "genocide." The UN and many nations around the world have been playing the same word games regarding Sudan. I gave President Bush and the Congress credit for calling it like it is. But Eric Reeves writes

The ultimate purpose of this statistical and semantic lowballing of Darfur’s urgent requirements and brutal destruction is evidently to forestall any need for a US commitment to humanitarian intervention. Unable to fashion a policy that halts genocide in Darfur, the Bush administration has instead committed to a strategy of re-definition. The administration’s previous genocide determination---formally rendered by former Secretary of State Colin Powell in Senate testimony of September 9, 2004---has devolved into a “former Secretary of State” simply “making a point” to Congress (Financial Times, April 15, 2005). “I don’t want to get into a debate over terminology,” [Zoellick] said, when asked if the US believed that genocide was still being committed in Darfur against the mostly African villagers by Arab militias and their government backers” (Financial Times, April 15, 2005).

(The FT article Reeves writes about is linked to and excerpted here.) I don't know if that's totally fair to say the administration is backing off its finding of genocide. Just last week, Senator Frist said

I urge the United Nations to formally recognize the reality of the Darfur crisis. What is happening there is genocide. The Khartoum government will not stop the killing until it is faced with stiff international pressure.

While he is obviously not part of the administration, this speech does show that the US government is not backing down.

Coalition for Darfur

I just found the Coalition for Darfur blog, which updates readers on the steps being taken to address the genocide, excuse me, "widespread and systematic violations by all parties of human rights and international humanitarian law" taking place in Sudan.

Bush Signs Bankruptcy Bill (washingtonpost.com)

Signing the bankruptcy bill, the president said

"In recent years too many people have abused the bankruptcy laws," Bush said. "They walked away from debts even when they had the ability to repay them."

Notice that no one has ever actually proven this oft-repeated claim.

Evolution Versus Creationism in Schools

Folkbum posts on the movement that is heating up to change how science is taught in schools. As one who is both an educated scientist and a Christian, this is a topic near to my heart. As I once wrote in a more sarcastic way, there are problems on both sides of the argument, but most especially on the "reform" side.

Fundamentally, the "reformist" movement, i.e. that which wants to change science education to include the so-called intelligent design concept, claims that evolution is taught in schools as a proven fact, which it is not. In this, they are right. Nothing in science is or can ever be proven. Demonstrating evidence in support of a theory is not proving that theory, in the sense of prove meaning "to establish truth or fact." A theory can today neatly agree with experiments, therefore "proving" the theory, and tomorrow be thrown away. All scientific theories change over time as more observations are made which expose flaws in what is already established, forcing scientists to rework their theories. At times, these flaws are so pronounced that they force scientists to start over completely, as with the birth of quantum physics. The reformists are right that a proper education in science should include an examination of the flaws of the current theory, rather than simply teaching the students what works about the theory.

However, does that mean that teachers should be teaching intelligent design or creationism? Certainly not. That those are unscientific ideas best suited to the church pulpit rather than the science classroom should be readily obvious. Beyond that, the existence of flaws in evolution does not mean creationism is right. That seems to be the most common line of "evidence" for intelligent design and creationism: evolution doesn't explain everything, so creationism is supported. (Witness David Berlinski's "defense" of intelligent design.) That's just silly, and demonstrates exactly why these "theories" should not be taught in schools.

Science education should be a tool to teach students critical thought. The "reformers" would throw away critical thought, attributing any flaw in a theory to God. By the same token, establishment education in schools discourages critical thought by ignoring the holes in the theories, compelling students to accept these ideas without question, the antithesis of critical thought. Educating students to believe evolution is a fact is no better than educating them to believe creationism is science.

Science education should teach science in all its wonder. That means teaching the details of established theory, but also embracing the holes in the theory as a launching pad to greater discovery and insight into the world.

Islamic Terror & The Oklahoma City Bombing

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, which claimed 171 lives. For this crime, Timothy McVeigh has been executed and Terry Nichols is serving a life sentence in prison. But do those two represent the full list of the guilty? Bizblogger has a lengthy post, with links to other lengthy articles, detailing a conspiracy theory that "Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were just two actors in the bombing plot that included Iraqi and other Middle East terrorists." This theory is documented by Jayna Davis, an investigative reporter in Oklahoma City.

I certainly do not claim to have any answers to this charge. From what I read, it seems there are a number of unanswered questions and coincidences rather than hard evidence to indicate an Islamic terrorist connection. The theory itself seems somewhat confused. At times, the theorists implicate agents of Saddam Hussein in the attack. There's even been a lawsuit filed against Iraq for its alleged involvement. At other times, it's al Qaida and its offshoots. (The PLO shows up too.) As everyone knows or should know from picking apart the administration's justification for the Iraq war, there is no evidence of any connection between the secular Hussein and the fundamentalist bin Laden. If anything, the two despised each other. So a theory that has these two working together is awkward.

The big question in any conspiracy theory would have to be, why would the government cover things up? Bizblogger's answer is

Most likely, the Clinton Administration leadership was anxious to avoid any recognition of Middle Eastern involvement in the bombing because such an event would almost certainly call for a military response against the nations or individuals who helped carry out the attack. Instead, the military response would have to wait another 6 years.

This, of course, ignores the military action taken against bin Laden after the embassy bombings. Admittedly, that action was so slight it would be easy to overlook it. Another suggested explanation comes from Laurie Mylroie:

Only the people in charge of the investigation can explain their motives in failing to focus public attention on this, but I can guess. Remember that before the bombing [President Bill] Clinton was in deep political trouble but, by dealing with it in the fashion he did, his kite rose and he was able to make it look like the FBI did a splendid, knockdown investigation. It was kind of like, 'Okay, Tim McVeigh is the mastermind; Terry Nichols assisted him; don't ask any more questions.' That settled, with Clinton's tremendous capacity to feel everyone's pain, he improved his own position.

In the end, only an investigation of these allegations of cover up will answer the questions. Given that, if there really was a larger conspiracy, this would represent yet another colossal failure of American intelligence and law enforcement, my guess would be there will be no investigation. Right or wrong, the case is closed.

Eliminating Bad News

They say statistics can be made to prove anything. But what if the government cannot make the statistics say that terrorism is on the decline, as the administration has long claimed? Well, stop publishing the statistics. Knight Ridder reports

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.

Not only were there more attacks in 2004, there were significantly more. According to the stats the administration doesn't want us to see, the number of "significant" attacks rose from 175 in 2003, that itself the highest in two decades, to 625 in 2004. For those keeping score, that's a 250% increase in one year.

Some might think the statistics are biased by attacks in Iraq. Those attacks are not included, so actually the number is much higher. Of course, it would also be higher in 2003, assuming Iraq attacks were excluded for that year as well.

Now, there is no legal requirement that the report be published. The administration is required to submit a global assessment of terrorism annually to the House and Senate Foreign relations committees. Since 1986, a declassified version has been made available to the public. It is this version that the administration is stopping. Secretary of State Rice has tried to get the counterterrorism center to use an "alternative methodology" for counting attacks that "would have reported fewer significant attacks." (If you can't really lower the number, then change how you count.) When she was unsuccessful in getting the numbers reduced, the public publication was stopped.

Bankruptcy Bill House Vote

Techpolitics has a table listing all the House members and their vote on the bankruptcy bill. Only one Republican, Kevin Brady of Texas, voted no, whereas 74 Democrats voted yes. Of the 38 so-called new Democrats, 25 voted yes. Of the forty members of the congressional black caucus, only 10 voted yes. (There are some mistakes in this table, because the House roll call lists Brady as voting for, not against.)

The table lists the median household income in each representative's district. I thought there might be a correlation between household income and the vote, but there wasn't. The average of the district median income for representatives voting no is $42,772.62 and $43,720.42 for those voting yes, a mere $947.80 difference. But, interestingly, looking only at the Democrats, the yes vote came from the poorer districts (average median income $39,647.09 versus $42,806.73 for the no vote). This is, perhaps not so surprising. The main impact of this legislation will be on families with a little bit higher income, families who today could file under chapter 7, but with the rigid means test dictated by the reform will now have to file chapter 13. The lowest income families will not be impacted.

Bankruptcy Bill Ignorance

As often happens in politics, the men and women in the Congress did not really understand bankruptcy or the bankruptcy reform bill when they passed it. Case in point, here is an excerpt from a letter sent to members of the New Democrat Coalition, written by a few members of the House:

This bill reflects the New Democrat principle of greater personal responsibility by ensuring that those who have the ability to pay off some of their debt do so, and reaffirming that bankruptcy should be a last resort instead of a first option. Requiring people to file under Chapter 7, rather than Chapter 13, and set up a payment plan to repay some or all of their debt is reasonable and fair.

(emphasis mine) The only problem is this is the exact opposite of what the bill does. It forces people to file under chapter 13 (repayment) rather than chapter 7 (write off).

We cannot even count on our representatives to have a simple understanding of the most basic element of legislation they are voting on! How can people have a debate on whether or not this is a good bill, if the people voting on it don't even know what the thing says! These people don't even know the different chapters of bankruptcy, and they are going about reforming it! I hope ignorance is not one of the New Democrat principles.

John Edwards on the Bankruptcy Bill

John Edwards, yes the former Senator and 2004 vice-presidential nominee, has posted his comments on the bankruptcy so-called reform bill.

Like a lot of Democrats, I voted for a bankruptcy reform bill before. I can't say it more simply than this: I was wrong.

Read why. It's nothing I and many others haven't already said, but it deserves to be said again.

Good Title

Josh Marshall has a good name for the bankruptcy reform bill: "the Household Repossession and Foreclosure Empowerment Act of 2005."

Online Freedom of Speech Act

The problem of applying campaign finance reform to the internet has been noted on this blog, and many others, in recent months. I wrote originally, "Without Congress stepping in and explicitly addressing internet communications, 'It's going to be bizarre.'" Well, Congress is stepping in and explicitly addressing internet communications. Redstate.org has a note and link to legislation proposed on both the House and Senate that would ensure that the exemptions applied up to now for internet communications, exemptions that were overruled by a judge because there was no legal basis for them, would continue. "It basically resets the clock back to last summer, in regards to regulation." It certainly seems better that what the FEC has come up with for regulation.

Letting the Other Guy Shoot Himself

Howard Fineman writes

President George W. Bush started 2005 in triumph, with lofty poll numbers, sweeping goals, a tightened grip on both houses of Congress and a united Republican Party. Now those numbers are falling, his domestic programs are in trouble and the GOP is increasingly divided and wary of igniting an Armageddon-like confrontation with the Democrats over rules by which the Senate votes on presidential nominees for the federal bench. "Some of our guys are getting a little bit nervous," said a GOP strategist with close ties to Bush. "And with good reason."

The Democrats have kept a pretty low profile since the election. The lack of a constant partisan war to fight has given the Republicans the freedom to show their true colors. The last few months have seen the Republicans bend over backward to defend and stand behind ethics challenged Tom Delay and increasing strain within the party between the more classic conservatives and the religious right. The result has been dropping poll numbers for the president and his party.

I am reminded of Bill Clinton's strategy after the 1994 election disaster. When the Republicans came in in 1995, Clinton took a low profile and let them have the stage. In their zeal to pursue fairly extreme policies, then tied their own noose. Clinton roared back to life later in the year and never looked back, the Republicans in Congress having neutralized themselves.

Politically, this is a good strategy, for a time. At some point, the Democrats have to step back out and show leadership. This has been lacking in the Congress since Clinton left the White House. The party has not shown any backbone in dealing with Bush, going all the way back to the tax cuts. In the current debate on Social Security, the Democrats are celebrating the apparent defeat of the president's privatization plan, but have offered nothing in response. The issue is still very real, yet the Democrats in Congress are doing nothing to solve it. To exploit the Republican hari kari, the Democrats have to show strong leadership. It's time.

Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

In his battle to stay alive politically, embattled Congressman Tom Delay spoke at a breakfast for GOP Senators. The Associated Press reports

DeLay recommended that senators respond to questions by saying Democrats have no agenda other than partisanship, and are attacking him to prevent Republicans from accomplishing their legislative program.

Just to refresh the reader's memory, here are some of examples of Delay's corruption, er, Democratic partisanship:

(From Mike Hersh, in 2003)

• DeLay obstructed justice for low-paid sweatshop workers on the island of Saipan by taking large campaign contributions from Saipan's chief lobbyist and blocking any Congressional investigation of the appalling conditions there.
  
• DeLay obstructed justice by lying to the FBI when he charged that the reporter who broke the Henry Hyde adultery story in the 1990s had been working with the White House to expose Hyde.
  
• During a deposition for a lawsuit filed by a former business partner in the pest company in 1994, DeLay lied that he had not been an officer of the company for two or three years. On congressional financial disclosure forms filed in 1995, he listed himself as chairman of the company's board of directors.
  
• In 1997, DeLay actually shoved Rep. David Obey [D-Wisconsin] and called him a "chicken shit" on the House floor. That same year, DeLay tried to impeach federal judges he didn't like.
  
• In 1998, DeLay said that people with "foreign-sounding names" probably aren't Americans.
  

(More recently from the DNC)

• Tom DeLay claims that a 1997 trip to Moscow (where he met with the Russian Prime Minister) was arranged and paid for by a nonprofit public policy organization. But people who knew about the arrangements claim that the trip was actually arranged by lobbyists and funded by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that may have served as a front for Russian companies with ties to Russian security forces.
  
• Tom DeLay participated in a $70,000 expenses-paid trip to London and Scotland in 2000 that sources said was indirectly financed in part by an Indian tribe and gambling services company lobbying Congress.
  
• Since 2001, Tom DeLay's political action committees and campaigns have funneled more than $500,000 to his wife and daughter since 2001.
  
• In Texas, it's illegal for corporations to make donations to fund political campaigns. So Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) took $190,000 in corporate contributions and funneled them to the RNC, which then donated exactly $190,000 to TRMPAC-supported candidates. DeLay and TRMPAC are currently under investigation by a grand jury.
  
• An investigation by the Justice Department showed that Tom DeLay accepted a trip financed by the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, breaking House rules that prohibit accepting travel expenses from "a registered lobbyist or agent of a foreign principal."
  
• Knowing that he faced investigation for a growing pile of scandals, Tom DeLay and the GOP House leadership purged the Ethics Committee of Republicans -- including Chairman Joel Hefley (R-CO) -- who weren't willing to overlook charges against DeLay, replacing them with members loyal to the leadership. They then changed the Committee rules to make it more difficult to begin investigations. Democrats on the Committee have refused to take any action in protest until the rules are restored.
  
• Tom DeLay has pushed lobbying firms to deny jobs to Democrats, and hire only Republicans, resulting in another Ethics Committee admonishment for inappropriately pushing a lobbying firm to hire a former GOP congressman. DeLay has pressured GOP lobbyists to make contributions to Republican candidates and the RNC.
  
• Tom DeLay and the Republican leadership kept open the vote for the Medicare bill for three hours -- long past the 15 minutes specified in House procedures -- in order to pressure Republicans to vote for the bill. Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) said GOP leaders offered "bribes and special deals," leading to an investigation by the Ethics Committee, which admonished DeLay.
  
• When DeLay and his fellow Republicans were redrawing the Congressional districts in Texas to push Democrats out of the House, he used the Federal Aviation Administration to try and track a plane containing Democratic state legislators. The House Ethics Committee investigated DeLay's actions and once again admonished him.
  
• In 2002, executives at Kansas energy company Westar wrote a memo outlining how they could purchase a "seat at the table" with $56,500 in contributions to political committees associated with Tom DeLay and the GOP. DeLay was later admonished by the House Ethics Committee for creating the appearance of impropriety.
  

The House ethics committee, controlled by the GOP mind you, reprimanded Delay three times in 2004, which prompted the Republicans to change their own rules such that ethics violations would not disqualify someone from being Majority Leader, the so-called Delay rule.

Looking over the lengthy list of issues, we see grand jury investigations, Justice Department investigations, multiple ethics committee admonishments, and obstruction of justice allegations, not to mention several actions smacking of abuse of power. But the problem is that the Democrats don't have an agenda? Sure, there's a vast left wing conspiracy to smear Delay. Come on! (In all fairness, few if any of these have actually been proven at this point, and that must be kept in mind. But that isn't really the point. To have all this hanging over his head, there is obviously more at work here than a political smear campaign.)

Given all this sleaze, why are so many Republicans bending over backwards to support him? And not only to support him, but to make Delay out to be the heart and soul of American conservatism? Could it be because he donated over $2 million to other Republican congressional campaigns, primarily for House seats, in 2004? Maybe that's why Tony Perkins "said his mission is to remind people that DeLay is a large reason that Congress has a conservative majority."

Principal Fired for Failing to Report Sex Assault Case

I'm speechless. The New York Times reports

A high school principal in Columbus, Ohio, has been fired and three assistant principals suspended without pay because they failed to notify the police last month about accusations that a 16-year-old special-education student had been sexually assaulted in the school auditorium by a group of boys, one of whom videotaped the incident, school officials said yesterday.

The principal and her assistants not only failed to report the incident but also urged the girl's father to avoid calling the police out of concerns that reporters would become aware of the assault, according to statements given to school investigators.

So a student gets sexually assaulted, and the principal's immediate concern is the media? Believe it or not, it gets worse. After a teacher disobeyed and called the girl's father, the administration asked him not to come in right away to tend to his daughter. Then, when he did anyway,

Mr. Watson [the victim's father] and other administrators told investigators that the principal, Regina B. Crenshaw, had also advised the father to avoid calling the police, the investigation report says. Mrs. Crenshaw recommended that the father return the next morning and report the incident to a police officer who was usually stationed at the school but who was not there on March 9, the report added.

So, not only should they not call the police and risk media attention, the father is told to wait until the next day and talk to the on-site officer, whose job is primarily to run the D.A.R.E. program, with the promise that "you will be happy with the results!"

The story pretty much speaks for itself. Bill Quick writes

I remain convinced that most working teachers still try to keep the best interests of their students first and foremost, but the parasitical adminstrative [sic] maze that battens, topheavy, upon the corpus of the American educational system is like any other self-serving bureaucracy: Soulless, pitiless, monstrous.

Religious Right Radicalization

Andrew Sullivan links to two stories indicating that at least some elements of the religious right are rapidly getting more radical. Both deal with the courts who are so enamored with annoying things like the Constitution and the law. He points to James Dobson, who compared the judiciary to the KKK, and to meetings of some conservative groups opposed to the judiciary. Scary stuff.

US to Support Democracy in Iran

USA Today reports the Bush administration is about to begin spending money in Iran, for the first time in nearly 25 years. This money, about $3 million, will be used to support democracy there. It's about time. Iran is a much more complex country than most Americans think. We typically see Iran as this fundamentalist Islamic fanatical state, ruled by the iron fist of the clergy. That view is not completely wrong, nor is it completely right. Iran is also the closest thing to a functioning democracy there is in the Middle East, with an elected parliament and president. Over the last several years, there has been a great struggle inside Iran behind the more moderate democrats, including the elected president Khatami, and the clerics, who still wield the power to override the elected officials and who control the judiciary. Wikipedia puts it

Khatami is regarded as Iran's first reformist president, since the focus of his campaign was on the rule of law, democracy and the inclusion of all Iranians in the political decision-making process. However his policies of reform have led to repeated clashes with the hardline and conservative Islamists in the Iranian government, who control powerful governmental organizations like the Guardian Council whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

It is in the American interest for the more moderate democrats to gain ascendancy over the clerics, even if those democrats have no love for the United States and do not want direct US involvement in Iranian affairs. President Bush has pursued, up to now, a foreign policy in regard to Iran that appears guided by the overly simplistic view many Americans have. With this move, perhaps a more nuanced policy, cognizant of the complexities internal to Iran, is emerging. That would be a move in the right direction.

Living in the Past

Jane Fonda said on David Letterman

I think the war is wrong. I think it's a mistake and I think that we should get out.

Um, the war ended almost two years ago! Why are people still talking about how wrong it was? Look, I opposed the war like many others. But it happened. Get over it. Stop living in the past and start dealing with the world as it is now.

J.C. Watts

I always liked J.C. Watts when he was in the House. I used to see him as a future presidential candidate. He has left politics, and apparently has no ambition to run for anything. The Dartmouth Online writes

In an interview with The Dartmouth, Watts quashed speculation about his political ambitions and commented on the influence of race on politics.

Speculation about a 2008 presidential run was fueled by his visit to New Hampshire, a forthcoming syndicated column and success in a popular online straw poll. But Watts dismissed such conjectures, saying he has no plans to run for political office.

"It's not on my top five things-to-do-before-I-die list," he said, but added, "never say never."

If he ever chose to run for office again, his combination of looks (let's face it, those are important in the TV age), eloquence, style, and substance would make for a formidable candidate.

On the Social Security debate,

Watts criticized President Bush's social security plan, saying that the President should focus on more than just privatized accounts. But the Democrats, he said, have failed to propose any plan of their own.

With all the focus on the president's plan for private (or personal, whatever the latest polls say the word should be) accounts, it seems to have escaped everyone's notice, except for Watts', that the Democrats have proposed precisely 0 alternatives to address the issues of Social Security. Yet another example of the breakdown of Congress, with the body doing nothing to actually solve problems facing the nation.

Oh well

I mentioned last week that this blog was up for a blog of the week award. Well, Brewtown Politico won. Thanks to anyone who voted for me. Folkbum, the first (and so far only) blog to have a permanent link to this one, is up for this week's award.

Social Security Trust Fund

The president is arguing that the social security trust fund is essentially a myth.

"A lot of people in America think there's a trust," Bush told a forum here, shortly after he stopped off at the Bureau of Public Debt, the agency that keeps records on the nation's debt.

"But that's not the way it works," he said. "There is no trust fund -- just IOUs."

What the president calls IOU's are government bonds, backed by the credibility of the United States. If those bonds are worthless, as the president basically argues, what's he saying about our country? The Social Security Administration explains that

most of the money flowing into the trust funds is invested in U. S. Government securities. Because the government spends this borrowed cash, some people see the current increase in the trust fund assets as an accumulation of securities that the government will be unable to make good on in the future. Without legislation to restore long-range solvency of the trust funds, redemption of long-term securities prior to maturity would be necessary.

Far from being "worthless IOUs," the investments held by the trust funds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U. S. Government. The government has always repaid Social Security, with interest. The special-issue securities are, therefore, just as safe as U.S. Savings Bonds or other financial instruments of the Federal government.

The president's comments are an example of what Ted Rall once called "fuzzing it up." This is where the president says something that is actually correct, but which conveys a meaning that is not correct. What he said is technically correct. There is no bank account with all the money that is supposedly in the trust fund. Rather, the money is tied up in government bonds, and what are government bonds but glorified IOUs? However, the impression given by the president's comment is that the IOUs comprising the trust fund value are worthless, which in turn means the trust fund has no real value. This is, of course, wrong.

Social Reform and Unintended Consequences

Jane Galt writes a very interesting article about gay marriage. What's interesting has nothing directly to do with gay marriage. The big chunk of her article deals with illustrations from history about reformers who, with all the best intentions, changed social structures apparently for the better, only to see the institutions underlying our society be changed in totally unintended ways. She examines three particular examples, of which I will summarize two (the third, capping income tax rates at 10%, I did not find particularly convincing or relevant).

Welfare for unwed mothers State-based financial support for mothers who had lost their husbands, i.e. the primary bread winner, did not extend to unwed mothers. This caused tremendous hardship and was blatantly unfair. So the social reformers in the 1950's argued that these welfare benefits should be extended to unwed mothers. Critics argued that this would result in more unwed mothers, something undesirable in the culture. "Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?" What happened? Illegitimacy rates began climbing, especially in poor black areas most dependent on welfare benefits. "By 1990, that rate was over 70%."

Easy divorce "Divorce, in the nineteenth century, was unbelievably hard to get. It took years, was expensive, and required proving that your spouse had abandonned you for an extended period with no financial support; was (if male) not merely discreetly dallying but flagrantly carrying on; or was not just belting you one now and again when you got mouthy, but routinely pummeling you within an inch of your life. After you got divorced, you were a pariah in all but the largest cities." There were many unhappy marriages in which people were stuck with no escape route. So the reformers decided to make divorce easier for these people. Critics argued that would result in more divorce. "That's ridiculous! said the reformers. (Can we sing it all together now?) People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!" Now, the divorce rate is over 50%.

Galt summarizes these examples

Three laws. Three well-meaning reformers who were genuinely, sincerely incapable of imagining that their changes would wreak such institutional havoc. Three sets of utterly logical and convincing, and wrong arguments about how people would behave after a major change.

In the two I've included, Galt argues that the reformers assumed the institution of marriage was an unshakable, unalterable given in society. The constant social pressure to marry would compensate for the financial incentives for illegitimate children. The constant social expectation that people be married would compensate for the simplifications in obtaining divorce. Yet marriage, like any institution, is dynamic. Changing the laws transformed the institution of marriage.

The reformers Galt talks about were well intentioned and attempted to address problems that were real and needed addressing. But their reforms had the unintended side effect of severely undermining the institution of marriage. In particular, in the inner cities, with illegitimacy rates of 70%, marriage has all but ceased to exist. This has ramifications throughout our culture. Does this mean we should avoid any reform? Of course not. Galt writes

Now, of course, this can turn into a sort of precautionary principle that prevents reform from ever happening. That would be bad; all sorts of things need changing all the time, because society and our environment change. But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that "it just growed". You don't have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.

But reformers must recognize that there is a reason certain cultural institutions exist (see the excellent quote from GK Chesterton she includes), and consequently they must take great care in making their reforms.

Broken Congress

Tunesmith writes very eloquently about the systematic failure shown by the upcoming passage of the bankruptcy bill.

To put it simply, this bill illustrates our broken Congress. A representative government exists so we can empower our representatives to make the decisions that we don't have to think about. They are to make decisions on behalf of the public, on behalf of the people.

But the people did not lobby for this bill. Furthermore, this bill is not a necessary sacrifice, like taxes for defense, or laws for the public good.

Congress will pass this bill, and it will only pass for one reason - they are able to sneak it by us and reward their lobbyists. The only way to oppose a bill like this is to attain critical mass in public opposition. But the bill is not sexy. It is politically boring. It hurts the public, but quietly. And therefore, it doesn't capture the public imagination, and the public gets abused by Congress.

It proves that our representative government does not function as it should. To abuse a public, all you need is a sleeping public, and a government that does not act in the interests of the public and cannot be held strictly accountable. We have all that.

In one of my first blog postings, I wrote about the failure of Congress to fulfill its responsibilities in the runup to the Iraq war. We Americans need to wake up and demand more from our leaders and government officials.

Leadership Style

Why was there such a catastrophic failure in the intelligence system that led the United States to wage war on the basis of information that was "dead wrong?" There are probably many explanations, all of which are part of the problem. I think one of the problems is the president's leadership style. Jonathan Alter writes

When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush presided over 152 executions, more than took place in the rest of the country combined. In at least a few of these cases, reasonable doubts about the guilt of the condemned were raised. But Bush cut his personal review time for each case from a half hour to a mere 15 minutes (most other governors spend many hours reviewing each capital case to assure themselves that there's no doubt of guilt). His explanation was that he trusted the courts to sort through the life-and-death complexities. That's right: the courts.

This provides an insight into the president's views of his responsibilities. He views his job as being an administrator, a view no doubt derived from his experience in business. He expects subordinates and associates to do their jobs and acts on what they give him. In the case of capital punishment in Texas, he expected the courts to do their job in determining guilt or innocence, and simply accepted their verdict. In the case of pre-war Iraq intelligence, he expected the intelligence apparatus to do its job, and accepted what they gave him.

Now, there's certainly nothing wrong in expecting people to do their jobs. But in the end, the president is responsible for everything that happens in the administration. Consequently, the president is responsible for making sure his people do do their job. Deferring to George Tenet or the Texas courts effectively shifts responsibility to them and away from Bush. This is why, unlike Tony Blair, the president has never said, "I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made."

If the president does not view himself responsible, then who is? This fundamental attitude of avoiding responsibility has been manifested many times, the most obvious being the torture in Abu Ghraib for which no one was apparently responsible. Or in effectively making Tenet the scapegoat for intelligence failures.

In an environment in which no one is responsible or accountable, there will be a breakdown of the system. That's what we see in the intelligence fiasco. No one was responsible for what came out, no one was responsible for the interpretations made, and the decisions made based on them. A president who took his responsibility seriously, and we are talking about a decision to wage war here, would have demanded to be personally convinced which would have allowed dissenting views to be expressed, exposing the gaping holes in CIA's story. But that's just not the president's leadership style.

Dead Wrong

Making official what has been plain to everyone for a long time, a commission has reported on its analysis of US pre-war Iraq intelligence.

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commissioners wrote.

One of the most important questions about how intelligence was analyzed is to what extent the administration pressured CIA to draw expected conclusions. In one of my earliest writings (from Feb. 2004) on the web, I said

A vigorous analysis community must pull together these scraps of information, judge the reliability of the information, and arrive at an optimal interpretation. For this to function, the process must be unbiased. Because of the nature of the data, any interpretative bias will inevitably lead to conclusions that conform to the biases. This invalidates the process because we are fitting data to conclusions rather than conclusions to data. Such procedures blind the front line of national security.

Over the last many months, there have been numerous reports of how the administration pressured analysts at CIA and elsewhere to arrive at the "correct", i.e. preconceived, conclusions. If CIA would not cooperate and give the right answers, e.g. in case of the Niger memo, the administration went to other sources (in that case British intelligence) who gave an acceptable interpretation. That one would be considered fact; CIA's dissenting view was considered non-existent.

On this question, the commission concluded

"The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," the report said.

But the report added: "It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom."

But isn't the second statement effectively a contradiction of the first? Just because the administration did not directly tell CIA what to conclude, they did make it clear what conclusions were expected and that deviations from conventional wisdom would not be looked on favorably.

In my workplace last year, I was in a group charged with evaluating software packages that could be bought to provide some required functionality. We explored several different commercial packages as well as the option of building the software in house with the goal of recommending a solution to upper management. Now, no one ever told us what we were supposed to conclude. On the surface, we were free to evaluate everything and recommend the best solution. But everyone knew what the expected results were. We knew there was no interest in building something in house, and that one particular package was preferred and recommending any of the other packages would be a hard sell. That knowledge put pressure on the group to draw the "right" conclusions. Needless to say, the package that upper management wanted all along was deemed best and that was chosen.

Analysts at CIA are pursuing a career. With such pursuits come a desire for attention from on high, for promotions, etc. Against such a backdrop, analysts are not likely to draw conclusions deviating from the expected results. Not only will those analysts not get attention from supervisors and upper management for their work, they would actually be frowned on. When no one wants to hear anything other than the expected result, writing unacceptable conclusions could well damage one's career at CIA. As the LA Times reports, "And when CIA analysts argued after the war that the agency needed to admit it had been duped, they were forced out of their jobs." So, the desire for career advancement and security would pressure the analysts to conclude what was expected.

Again, these expectations do not have to be conveyed explicitly or directly for pressure to be applied. Therefore, the commission's conclusion that dissenting views were not encouraged or sought did apply pressure on CIA "to skew or alter ... their analytical judgments."